[LURKERS] Sweet 16: Civ Party Fun Time and Philosophical Debate

[darrelljs]

I agree with Serdoa. You don't have to rush to Guilds to make Cataphracts devastating. Especially given the poor starting techs you need to focus your efforts on economy.

Darrell

[spacetyrantxenu]

Yeah, normally i would agree, but we had done the mids/rep/caste thing by then and needed slavery, etc to get the war machine rolling. But therein lay part of the problem, it clearly wasn't much of a beeline. I think someone else already said this though, you don't have to get there super early to play with phracts, just early enough that your victims can't stop you.

Anybody got thoughts on the other selections, maybe Seven's Monty Zulu? Is this BTS or RB mod? If BTS Monty seems like a bit of a self imposed penalty. Ikhanda maintenance spam with AGG then? They probably explained their reasons in their thread, but I haven't read it.

[TheHumanHydra]

This is base BtS. Yeah, seems like it was a self-imposed penalty. I don't know if that's chivalrous or condescending. I must confess a certain amount of ambivalence about seeing the vets alongside the newer players here - though it's not at all mine to say.

Edit: Overall, I'm a bit disappointed by some of the picks. Every time I see a non-Fin leader picked when a Fin leader is available I cringe. Nothing compares - don't we all know this? As for the civs, some odd choices there too - one of the Org players should have picked HRE. Wish we could have seen some more later-game UUs, like redcoats and conquistadors, but that's just me (yeah yeah, starting techs blah blah - but look at some of the choices here!).

[Serdoa]

- Oracle is very specific and imo a noob-trap. Take the IND -> Oracle into MC -> Forge play, sometimes with Mali. That costs you a ton of early growth (I'd guess that I can have 2 cities up on you when you finish the Oracle) and the gain? Forges... that you can't build because you neither have the cities nor the production. Even with IND these are not cheap. Worse, even if you invest all that, you gain in most cities at that point in the game between 1-2 hammers, maybe 3 in your capital if you are lucky with happy-res nearby.

- IND -> Oracle into Forge into GE for Mids can be done. If your competition allows it. And if you do you again have most likely stunted your growth like crazy.

Basically, all the great synergy-plays with IND are mostly not so great really because even if they work out chances are that the map isn't supporting that play well enough and you'll still just be on par with the others or even behind. And if you lose one of the wonders you had planned for, you have dug yourself a deep hole to crawl out of. Is fun for some, I'd rather play at the top of the field beginning to end.

@THH: If you can do all what you described, playing like that can probably be considered a self-imposed penalty Have you thought about how much you have to delay the settler from the overflow-cascading city for that to work? I don't say it isn't possible, but getting that micro done correctly and not delaying stuff in the process if at all possible and having some military against barbs and other players and expanding and getting some basic infra and teching actually useful tech as well... ouch. And then someone has Stone at the start and gets Mids. And SH. Which by itself is a stronger wonder than Oracle imo.

[TheHumanHydra]

- Oracle is very specific and imo a noob-trap.

Is that why you built it in 46? *Ducks* Sorry! Couldn't resist. (As Byzantium too ...)

Basically, all the great synergy-plays with IND are mostly not so great really because even if they work out chances are that the map isn't supporting that play well enough and you'll still just be on par with the others or even behind. And if you lose one of the wonders you had planned for, you have dug yourself a deep hole to crawl out of. Is fun for some, I'd rather play at the top of the field beginning to end.

@THH: If you can do all what you described, playing like that can probably be considered a self-imposed penalty Have you thought about how much you have to delay the settler from the overflow-cascading city for that to work? I don't say it isn't possible, but getting that micro done correctly and not delaying stuff in the process if at all possible and having some military against barbs and other players and expanding and getting some basic infra and teching actually useful tech as well... ouch. And then someone has Stone at the start and gets Mids. And SH. Which by itself is a stronger wonder than Oracle imo.

No, you're totally right, as I've already said. It's even a challenge to pull off in single-player. As for the overflow-cascading, etc., that was a response to sunrise's query; the answer is yes, you can.

I do have to say, though, that I'd rather see something dramatic and penalizing like this attempted on the part of Seven and Krill than the pure showmanship they (unintentionally or not) seem to have planned. I suppose they see it as a micro challenge, which is fair enough, but a bit bland imho.

[Qgqqqqq]

I think it's their desire to do something interesting they haven't done before, combined with a bit of digging out of a hole mentality - Seven has said previously that the horrible starting situation of Pitboss 7 was one of his favorite games.
I don't think there's any real condescension there, while Seven obviously is the strongest player here, the restriction seems to be for his own benefit rather then any others.

I also don't think that there's anything inherently wrong with vets in this game, sure it may be different from what some were expecting when they started it, but there's such incredible variance in pitbosses because of the amount of players that you're never going to get an even playing field. Even if all the players were at the same level, then someone would still be devoting more effort, or a player might screw up the opening and be swallowed, or a big mistake might lose a capital or so on. Pitbosses are very random things as they allow many more players into the game on a generally large map, which means there is great variability in situations and circumstances between players.

[sunrise089]

@Serdoa - I've read like 1/10th of the MP games here so take this with a grain of salt, but on a higher difficulty level to try and change the REX >> all other strategies calculation, do you think things like Oracle slingshot, rush-to-UU, etc, would work better?

[TheHumanHydra]

@Q: Sure, that makes sense. I was probably being a bit unfair to them.

I do kinda think people should know before they sign up for a game whether uber-vets are going to be playing in it, because imho that changes a lot, but no one's complained in this game I don't think, so in this case I guess it doesn't matter.

[Mardoc]

@THH - yeah, but then what do you do about newbie signups? You might have people sign up at my level, or you might get someone like Dtay who could stomp me into the ground. And it's not like self-evaluation works in most cases. The best players can be humble, and great SP skills might make someone overconfident for MP.

This one was just advertised as 'another game', not any particular skill level, on top. I'd be annoyed if Seven signed up for an explicitly greens game, but that's not what we have here. Plus if someone was particularly annoyed, well, it's not that difficult to unsign and wait for the next one to come around. Not a particularly long wait, these days.

[Ichabod]

Well, when I sign up for these games, I know I'm not going to win and I don't have a problem with it. I guess that's how most people feel.