[SPOILER] Nicolae Karpathia Khan of France

[Nicolae Carpathia]

This is what I'm going to do to you if you're a fellow player:



This me and my lurker bros will be up to:

[Nicolae Carpathia]

These are some thoughts I've written before we've been assigned a leader and
civ, and shown our starts:

GE:
Let's get this out of the way. GE is not good at Civ4. Okay, that sounds
pretty harsh, but I had no idea he did that poorly in PBEM12 when I signed
into PBEM18noob. Expansive Inca is extremely solid combination, and GE
completely wasted it with early wars, lack of infrastructure, and tile
improvements (no cottages for something like 60 turns). He does not
fundementally understand how Civ4 works, I believed he beelined Replaceable
Parts (with like zero cottages). I hope to god he has a good dedicated
lurker so he doesn't get completely rolled by Ioan or SareIn (alternatively,
he starts next to me and I roll him over and eat all his cities ).

PBEM12 ended ~1 month ago. Could he have improved in that time? Possibly.
Does he have the drive to improve? Possibly not, Sandover (by all
indications a solid player), expressed that GE was unwilling to learn. All
in all, I don't expect him to be a danger in the long term. His only threat
is that he's surprisingly aggressive, agg-warrior-rushing Whosit in PBEM12
and picking off a good city. I'll just post a couple of sentries by his
borders, pick off vulnerable cities, and hopefully finish him off with my
tech lead.

SareIn:
I know nothing about SareIn. I know he plays alot of FFH, which I personally
find complely esoteric and designed with the kitchen-sink approach. He's
probably a solid player, he's been here since '04, so I expect him to have a
good grasp of 4X games and trade-offs and Returns on Interests and all that
jazz. I'm wary of him.

Ioan:
An extremely solid player. I've played an AW game against him ~2 weeks ago,
and he definitely understands things like empire management and using early
aggression to deal economic damage. The only problem is that his team in
RBPB4 is getting rolled, and his teammate is by all accounts extremely good.
Of course, that doesn't guarantee anything, Sunrise/Rego/Darrell made some
bad decisions in RBPB2 as well but they're still excellent players.

Ioan may have some gaps in his understand of visibility, and didn't seem to
place as high a priority as me in sentries and defence. Let's hope I can
punish him for that.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

The civ/leader pairings are:

1) Augustus of China (SleepingMoogle, GingerEagle1969)
2) Lincoln of Ethiopia (Lewwyn, Sareln)
3) Kublai Khan of France (mackoti, Nicolae Carpathia)
4) Asoka of Aztec (DMOC/Nakor, Ioan76)

Gingereagle: Augustus of China
I have a new-found respect for Imp, especially on Noble difficulty where maintenance is low. Cheap cities a faster landgrab and more hammers that can be devoted to workers and troops and infrastructure. Ind is simply a solid mid-tier trait, investing in forges during a low-pressure time can pay huge dividends to your growth. China is an excellent civ, I'd say they have the most flexible starting traits in Ag and Mine, the UU is solid, but their UB is mediocre.

SareIn: Lincoln of Ethiopia
Excellent traits, Phi gives fast academies and GAbombs, and Chm is good for valuable early happiness and mid-game warfare. There's some nice synergy between Chm and Steles, but I don't expect him to be able to get to +4culture for a while. Oromos are good, but they come at a weird time when most people would be pushing for economy. The downside of Ethiopia is a scout start, if Sevenspirits doesn't give everyone a starting warrior, then I hope I can choke him with mine.

Me: Kublai Khan of France
Cre is an awesome trait, and Agg gives a ton of flexibility in early warfare. Chm is strictly speaking better, but hopefully not before I've gotten the snowball rolling. France has the 2 most expensive starting techs (though I prefer Ag and Mine), the UU is extremely useful in MP, and the UB is mediocre (comes too late, GA GPPs have their downsides).

Ioan: Asoka of Aztecia
That's pretty gimped. Org is weak on Noble maintenance, and Hunt/Myst is probably the 2nd worse starting tech combo after Hunt/Fish. I can see the synergy between Spi, Org and Sac Altars, switch between Slave and CS and save whip anger with cheap Sac Altars, but this is Quick speed. The whip timer is normally 6turns, Sac Altars drop it to 3turns, but the civics timer remains at 5 turns anyway. No real boost there! Spi is still solid for micromanaging sperglords, and saves some important turns in the early game (1 for revolt into slavery, 2 for revolt into religion)

C&D:
With 4 players, C&D becomes remarkably easier and more powerful! Just multiply world average by 4, subtract yours, subtract the rival worse and rival best, and you have the demonumbers for every single person! The trick is to have the graphs on at least 2 of the enemy. If Ioan starts next to me, I'm not even going to bother trying to catch up with him on EPs, cheap courthouses are too strong.

[SevenSpirits]

Thanks for posting your analysis. I'm looking forward to seeing you play!

One minor note though, it is Prince difficulty.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Thanks. I should also put down some analysis of my own skills.

I'm an Emperor player, so I think my general mechanics are solid. I just tend to make bad decisions all the time, like setting up 2-city fronts, underexpanding to backfill sites, and bad worker priorities. I hope to solve this with a more measured PBEM game, and hopefully what I've learnt let's me make good decisions more quickly during normal games. After all, you don't learn anything by stomping random pubbies on Gamespy .ie. people who leave settlers and cities and workers unguarded, send massive stacks of nothing but pre-CR I promoted axes at your hill city, etc.

If I do well, hopefully I'll graduate to the big boy's club

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Hunt/Myst is probably the 2nd worse starting tech combo after Hunt/Fish.

Wait what an incredibly idiotic thing to say. Hunt/Fish is probably better, because at least there's a chance you can build a workboat in a seafood start.

[SevenSpirits]

Ah, but with hunt/myst, there is a chance you completely ignore worker techs and get a religion!

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Here's the start.


I really don't like SIP, as I'd only have 2 hills for production. In addition, I don't expect a resource to appear 1W of the pigs.

I'm extremely tempted to settle on top of the rice for the 4-yield city tile. Why? Because it's dry, and that will only give +2 food for the next 80 or so turns. At 1S, I get worker production accelerated by 2 turns (5FH vs 4FH). Same with 2S, but then I lose a turn settling, and lose access to the 5/1 pigs (much better than 4/0/2 clams). However, this burns 2 worker turns moving onto the pigs tile.

Let's see, 1S gives a +6F at size 2, the hills cost -5F. 3 riverside tiles for cottages, can possibly do a series of size 7-5 settler cycles.

Do the demos take a turn to update? World power average is 3.3k, does that mean 10k split amongst the other 3, or 10 split amongst GE, SareIn and me (the ones that have received the save?). If the former, then it's split as 4, 4 and 2. If the latter, then it's split as 6, 4 and 2. I have a warrior and wheel (5k), GE has a warrior and mining (3k), SareIn has hunting and Mining (4k), Ioan has hunting only (2k). This doesn't make sense to me, unless it's been edited so everyone has a warrior start or something.



More pigs! I see a candidate city site already!

Sim 1: Settle 1S
Tech plan is AH-Fishing-Mining-BW-Pottery
Build plan is Worker-Warrior-Workboat-Settler-Worker. A farmers gambit, not my original plan, but that's okay, the amount of water and chokepoints should protect me somewhat. Gives me a settler and 3 improved tiles (5/1/0, 5/0/2, 0/0/4) on T22. I'm effectively going worker-settler, but the lack of improvable tiles pre-BW makes it kinda okay.

Sim 2: Settle in place
Tech plan is AH-Mining-BW
Build plan is Worker-Warrior-Settler. Gets me a settler and 3 improved tiles on T24 (5/1/0, 4/0/0, 0/0/4). Much weaker than the above, mainly because 4/0/0 is rather shit compared to 5/0/2. I do burn 1 less turn walking to the pigs, but of course now have to sink 5 turns escaping hills and farming the rice.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Plan:
T0 - Settle 1S, work plains forest, +2F, +3H, Worker 0/40
T1 - Worker 5/40
...
T7 - Worker 35/40
T8 - Worker completes, moves 8, plains forest citizen, +2F, +3H, F0/14 Warrior 0/15, Research Fish
T9 - Worker moves 7, F 2/14, Warrior 3/10
T10 - Worker improves pigs, F 4/14, Warrior 6/10
T11 - F 6/14, Warrior 9/10
T12 - Pigs pastured, Citizen pigs, +6F +2H +2 overflow, F 8/14, WB 0/20, Research Mining
T13 - Worker moves 3, new citizen on 0/3/0, +4F +5H, F 0/16, WB 4/20
T14 - Worker roads, F 4/16, WB 9/20
T15 - Worker roads, F 8/16, WB 14/20
T16 - Worker moves 22, F 12/16, WB 19/20
T17 - Worker mines, new citizen, +4F +6H +4 overflow, Settler 0/65, Research BW
T18 - Citizen onto Fish 5/0/2, +7F +5H, Settler 14/65
T19 - Citizen onto Mine 0/4/0, +7F +6H, Settler 26/65
T20 - Worker does whatever, Settler 39/65
T21 - Settler 52/65
T22 - Settler completes!

I'd probably go Worker next and pottery next, to take advantage of the forests.

I've been simming it out. Is it risky? Yes, I've got a mere 2 warriors. BUT, I have a candidate site out already, and the map seems to be full of chokepoints, making it much much easier to defend. Not only that, I'm aggressive, hopefully discouraging others from pulling the same shenanigans. If I can pull this off, then I can get a serious snowball going.

Another risk is that I'm going to discover BW 3 turns after my settler completes, but I should be able to get another settler out, or divert him towards horse.

Another question, should I keep my warrior moving west or east? I'm thinking west, my border is going to pop on T2, which will cover the east plains hill, the vision of which should give me 3-4 turns of warning.

Also, I was wrong about demonumbers, warriors are 2k power. Therefore, I'm 6k from warrior + wheel, GE is 4k from warrior + mining, SareIn is 4k from Hunting + Mining, and Ioan is 2k from Hunting only.

Here's a nice little sim of what I've uncovered thus far:

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Huh, so some pics didn't load up (did I forget to type it up?).

Anyway, settled 1S.



Demo and victory screens: