[PB61 - Spoiler] bell's uncreatively named spoiler thread

[Mjmd]

Mining cow makes sense as long as you have the spare worker labor (again I didn't dive in yet).

PB60 spoiler

I picked Industrial India in PB60. If there isn't a clearer sign of "THIS PERSON IS GOING FOR STONEHENGE" I don't know what is. I was beaten to it by over 14 turns (estimate).........

Mind that was no barbs, so random defenders weren't as important. I still wouldn't mind going for post first quencha. Up to you of course.

[bellarch]

To get the screenshots to display properly, try the [ screenshot ] tag with the image extension (in this case .jpeg) included, like this:

This was very helpful and I was able to fix the issue. Thanks very much!!

[Mjmd]

Its late. I'm tipsy. You as a player are required to give an analysis of this ( I joke, but no serious your required ). I might later /waves hand in a random fashion.



Somewhere around T10 when you've done some scouting, I'm going to ask about Stonehenge again. To note Vanrober didn't pick a Imp leader so in order to keep up some number of chops SHOULD go towards speeding up settlers. I'm not saying people read things the same way I do, but listen.

[bellarch]

And here I was thinking I might be being a bit too eager giving my takes on all the picks!!

Somewhere around T10 when you've done some scouting, I'm going to ask about Stonehenge again. To note Vanrober didn't pick a Imp leader so in order to keep up some number of chops SHOULD go towards speeding up settlers. I'm not saying people read things the same way I do, but listen.

We'll see; you very well may be right. That being said, I think the capital is good enough that Vanrober might be able to just build Stonehenge with nat production and chops, then work on Settlers. Just going by our start, forest deer + plains hill capital + cow mine is 7 hammers/turn right off the bat; with the forested plains hill, it's 10 hammers/turn. And early BW also gives access to the whip. I'm still thinking about Stonehenge, because it would be a very good pickup, but I'm just worried that we'll end up investing a ton of resources that we could use on military or Settlers and only get fail gold out of it.

-- pick thoughts --

JackRB - I'm still surprised Khmer was the first pick, but it seems to have worked out well enough. Caesar is obviously a good leader - he was my second leader pick for a reason - and Khmer is a solid civ with perhaps the single best pair of starting techs for the start. (I'm assuming that everyone got at least the forested deer tile - if only for the sake of fairness!) I'm expecting them to go for BW right out of the gate and start chopping out settlers ASAP.

rekenner - First leader pick and you take Cathy, with no econ traits? Huh. I suppose the Mint may make up for that a bit, but I would feel uncomfortable without any sort of econ trait on my side. Anyway, Cathy's one of the best leaders without econ traits, especially when it comes to early expansion, but I can see them falling behind later if there isn't something else to back it up. Mali is obviously good. I feel very good about the fact that our #3 and #4 civ picks were taken in the draft; it suggests that we may actually know what we're doing 


Joshy - I can kind of see the value of Cyrus here. If their start looks anything like ours, it has a lot of food, and the extra happy from CHA can help with whipping and etc. On the other hand, there's at one happiness resource at our start, meaning that they also (likely) have a happy resource, which means that they don't need the extra CHA happiness like they might if there wasn't extra at the start. That, combined with the Rome pick, makes me think that they're likely to whip/chop a bunch of Praets and try to go for an early conquest. I think we'll be prioritizing military if we end up being neighbors.

Vanrober - This pick telegraphs one thing, and that's CULTURE. By my understanding, while Spiritual is useful in general for the ability to swap between civics for free, its main value is in halving the cost of temples and therefore making the temple -> cathedral -> big culture path easier. Organized just helps pay for some of the more expensive civics that enable a cultural victory. I honestly would have leaned toward Mansa for the Financial trait in this situation, but oh well. India allows them to get a head start on religion and early wonders, researching Bronze Working as the first or second tech and sending Fast Workers to start chopping Stonehenge immediately (and maybe the Oracle or Pyramids later!). I expect that Vanrober could be dangerous, but not in a military sense. If we end up being neighbors and we're in a good enough position, we may want to go to war early to at least cripple them.

BING - Well, I was expecting someone to go for a rush strategy, and this looks like the most likely candidate! The CHA/Mongol pairing means that they can produce 3-promotion horse units right out of the gate, and that's presumably going to be used to attack someone. Whether they're planning to rush with Keshiks or wait for Knights or Cuirassiers is the main question here. Hannibal's Financial trait makes me think it's the latter - using Financial to fund the early expansionary push before running over opponents with a highly-promoted horse army. This isn't what I would have picked, but I think it's a reasonable - and dangerous - strategy.

bellarch - I'm very happy with our picks here. Victoria is IMO the best leader in CIV in a player's hands - perhaps less with the CtH changes, but I imagine that Financial will still be good - and Inca looks to be a good choice for our early expansion pick. It might be difficult in the beginning, but I think I have the micro obsession skills to pull it off! especially with help I'm sort of curious to see what other people think my goal is here, but I suppose we'll find out at the end . . .

JesseL - I can't tell whether this pick is good or bad, to be honest. Germany is pretty terrible in base CIV but the CtH changes give it several advantages if the game goes long, and their Grenadier replacement is bulbable at Chemistry. Plus they probably have the best pair of starting techs once again! Churchill isn't a great pick IMO, but he enables double-promoted Grenadiers with Protective bonuses for the mid-to-late game, and Protective will give some economic boost to their civ early. If this civ is one of the power civs when we get to the Rennaissance then I'll be taking them very seriously.

Overall, everything here looks like a solid choice. While I question some of the logic of the earlier picks, I think they're all at least defensible, and there isn't anything really bad on this list. Notably, everyone appears to be following a similar sort of gameplan - everyone is Imperialistic or Charismatic, the traits we had pegged as crucial for early expansion purposes (except for Vanrober, who I think is pursuing a somewhat different gameplan). Everyone has either taken traits that enable maximum early expansion or fuel economy for later. There's no Philosophical or Industrious to enable more Great People; no Aggressive for maximum early conquest; no Expansive for the late game when health is more important. Every player seems to be pursuing what I think is the standard expand-and-cottage-your-way-to-a-tech-lead strategy. Which is sensible for a game where everyone's supposed to be inexperienced!

[Mjmd]

No PB59 turn so you get thoughts! Lot of charismatic as part econ part expansion trait. We will see how tight it is. I think people without an econ trait will probably still be hurting though.

JackRB - Good stuff pick. Khmer is good and I firmly believe you don't need to be expansive for it. That being said I think he should have done leader first. Not sure if this was planned leader or not, but Khmer while good isn't 1st pick territory.

Reckenner - Maili is a solid civ and I'm glad its seeing play. I do wonder if it was first pick for them to pair with Cathy. Seems like they are trying to balance Cathy out a bit / protect what she expands into. I'm pretty sure with Cathy your supposed to lean into the agro? If you are going for the anti crash civ maybe Zulu would be a better pick?

Joshy - This strat would be dead on higher difficulties and may still be a little weak here map dependent. I don't hate the charismatic pick as a part econ part military trait though. With improved aggressive though I'm curious if Rome was first pick or just best civ left (I could see him wanting India, Inca, or Mongols with these traits).

Vanrober - Spiritual does not scream culture. It screams Vanrober thinks new and improved serfdom is sexy (and to be fair PB58 winning team sang its praises). There are other fun things to do with spiritual. I would expect pyramids to be key. Spiritual is a high skill trait that doesn't help at all early. I would not have expected Vanrober to pick. I'm also not seeing immediate synergy with organized other than maybe he wanted a econ trait with some early game helping.

Bing - Financial and Mongols is a weird combo. If Mongols was always the plan curious why not org/cha instead. I agree with you that probably planning a knight attack? I mean there are always opportunity snipes available though.

Bellarch - is awesome.

JesseL - TBS is well known as one of the best players on the forum. I do not think TBS had any input into this pick. TBS is all about early hammer savings and early game.

[bellarch]

Vanrober - Spiritual does not scream culture. It screams Vanrober thinks new and improved serfdom is sexy (and to be fair PB58 winning team sang its praises). There are other fun things to do with spiritual. I would expect pyramids to be key. Spiritual is a high skill trait that doesn't help at all early. I would not have expected Vanrober to pick. I'm also not seeing immediate synergy with organized other than maybe he wanted a econ trait with some early game helping.

Okay, good to know that's what could be going on with Vanrober's pick. I admit that I'm not that knowledgeable about how people take advantage of Spiritual so hearing more input about that is good! Other than that, I think we're thinking similar things about the picks. It's interesting to know that the Churchill/Germany people I was kind of   about may not have been the most advisable option . . . 

While I'm thinking about it, since the game is supposed to start soon, I want to check in about scouting. I think you were suggesting before that we move the scout to the cow hill first, and then check out down south of there, with the goal of possibly finding a good place for the second city? Then I imagine we go north to look at the possible tiles for a city that shares the rice, since I'm thinking that one of our first two cities will also go there. Or do we continue sending the scout south and use the first Quechua to check out that area? I don't think it's a huge deal, but since we've already got an at-least-decent micro plan and the plan for the first 10 turns shouldn't change anyway I thought I would check in about it.

[Mjmd]

With border pops you could technically skip the cow. However, it looks like there is a hill 3SE you are likely to step on anyways, so shrug. 

You could also go NE first and then do a tight circle around east then south (taking into account where city will see).

I would like scout to follow A coast at some point to find out how far away people are which might affect plans. After that probably come back to barb bust.

Edit: btw if you post every turn scouting report I will destroy you! Just when you have questions / every 5 turns / when you meet someone.

[bellarch]

I missed the 3SE hill; I think I should definitely check that out first if it's on the finalized map. Then if we find a coast send the scout to take a look around it. We'll have at least one Quechua for scouting duties to the NE, and most of the relevant tiles there get revealed by the northern hills in the BFC anyway.

[Mjmd]

Ok now that you actually got me thinking, go 1N of rice. Then scout diagonal 2SE then go to hill. Very small detour to basically scout entire rice area. I agree northern area with all the hills and forests can wait. Also, harder to share food that way and no river for early trade so less likely we care.

[bellarch]

I've pressed End Turn on Turn 2 now, so let's look at the state of things.

First, the map:




If you're wondering why the scout is going in the opposite direction from what was discussed above, it's because Mjmd and I changed our minds in a discussion outside the thread. The big news is that there are gems right by the capital! We're not going to be hurting for happiness or commerce here. Unfortunately, the southern river is short and there's jungle below it, so we won't be settling a bunch of cities in that area in the near future. The gems city will likely be the third -- we won't start running into happiness problems until later, and we'd like the second city to have a food resource outside Ater's BFC. We can also see water to the north! After the scout reveals enough tiles to plan our second city, I'll send it to follow the coast until we find someone else.

Now for the other important screen: demographics!




Examining this doesn't really tell us too much of note, aside from the land area. That being said, we can still glean a few important things from it.
- Everyone has either 3 or 4 hammers and 4 or 5 food. I think that means every capital is on a plains hill and has either a forested grassland deer (3F/1H) or a forested grassland ivory (2F/2H). This isn't super surprising - fairness alone would suggest that something like this would be the case - but it's good to know.
-GNP reveals that everyone is (most likely) working 0-commerce tiles - the Rival Best is from rekenner's Creative culture giving 2 more GNP than everyone else. Also consistent with forest deer or forest ivory.
- The interesting thing is in land area. Now there isn't anything super interesting to see here. (I originally thought that the land area revealed that someone had moved their capital - which would have been shocking! - but that turns out not to be true. I made a mistake because I assumed that the Incan land area was included in the rival average, which is apparently false. That and because I'm doing this well past midnight . . . ) That being said, what this can tell us is how many people start on the coast. How do we do that? Well, strap in for some math:

-- math starts --

The number of sq. km. displayed on the demos screen is actually very simple: every land tile is 1000 sq. km. The Rival Best and Worst are 9000 and 7000, meaning that the best and worst (and thus every rival capital) has 7, 8, or 9 land tiles. However, that's not all the screen tells us! Looking at the Rival Average, we see that this number is 7,666. We know that we have 6 rivals, so multiplying the average by 6 gives 46 tiles total between the rival capitals. We can add these to see that

46 = Rival Best + Rival Worst + x1 + x2 + x3 + x4 = 9 + 7 + x1 + x2 + x3 + x4

which means that besides the rival best and rival worst, there are 30 tiles total. Because we know that each rival capital has between 7 and 9 tiles, this means that the other tile counts can occur in two combinations:

7, 7, 7, 9 or 7, 7, 8, 8

These are the only possible combinations of four integers between 7 and 9 that add up to 30.

-- math over --

What does this actually tell us? Well, it says that either 4 or 5 civs have less than 9 land tiles, which means that they have water in their first ring - meaning that they're coastal. I'd bet that there are 4 coastal civs and 3 inland civs because of symmetry, but we have no way of knowing that right now.

I'll be keeping a close eye on the demographics screen as we move forward, at least over the first few turns - I think that we'll be able to get a good idea of what everyone else is doing just by manipulating the best, worst, and average statistics! (My inner math major is very happy right now . . . )