Gandhi of France II - Assuming Direct Control

[plako]

Your starting position:



Good luck!

[oledavy]

Oye, it's only Turn 1 and I'm already losing the update war Probably not going to win it in this crowd. At any rate, have not had the time to write-up an opponent analysis yet, will probably get around to that after this weekend.

I'll post a screenshot of what I've uncovered thus far next time the save comes around. For now, I've built my sim and am focusing on re-running and optimizing this start. I ended up settling in place, and uncovering another grassland forested spice in the Capital's BFC. Not a great city-site, but not terrible. My build order is worker -> warrior -> ??? and my tech path is going to be mining -> BW -> AH.

My big debate right now is how I'm going to approach The Pyramids. Given their leader choice and the legacy of PBEM29v, I will be shocked if Gaspar and NH do not make a run at the pyramids here. Facing three financial Civs, they're going to see it as their only option to stay competitive in this game. Honestly, I don't think I can beat them to The Pyramids in a straight up race. They've got EXP workers which I don't, and are both significantly more proficient at micro than me. Alternatively, I could try going the Oracle -> Forge -> Engineer route. However, I am not sure that can beat chopping the mids out - I need to run sims side by side after I uncover more territory to ascertain which finishes it first. However, this runs afoul of Yuri's likely play of nabbing the Oracle.

I've briefly considering not going for the pyramids at all. However, that goes against all my instincts. Considering my civ/leader pairing, it will probably relegate me to insignificance in this game. Basically, since I lack FIN, I need some economic wonder to boost my economy. In the event my pyramids bid fails, I'll regroup and make a pass at the GLH or MoM.

[Tankra]

I'm interested to see what you'll do with this pick, and I'm as of yet unspoiled, so I'll be ded-lurking you!

Your picks aren't bad, you just have a little bit too much mid- to late-game bonuses for an ancient start. If you do manage to get the Pyramids though, you have a fairly decent shot at making it to later eras where your picks will be able to shine.

What's your strategy for the Pyramids, then? You're Philosphical - maybe you can go for the whole Oracle -> metal casting -> running an early engineer with your forge and using the Great Engineer to hurry the mids strategy. Haven't done the sim, but I remember doing the thought experiment once and deciding that it was actually a pretty viable way of getting the Pyramids early with PHI.

And of course, with this strategy, if you don't manage to get the mids with your Great Engineer, there will still be other advantages to having Metal Casting and a Great Engineer.

[oledavy]

I'm interested to see what you'll do with this pick, and I'm as of yet unspoiled, so I'll be ded-lurking you!

Awesome, glad to have you aboard Tankra

And of course, with this strategy, if you don't manage to get the mids with your Great Engineer, there will still be other advantages to having Metal Casting and a Great Engineer.

The problem with this approach is that it comes into competition of Yuri's likely approach to the game as an industrious leader. He has the inside track on completing the Oracle. We'll see what develops, we're still a little ways away from having to make a firm decision on how we approach the pyramids. Rushing with a GE would leave significantly more flexibility, but it is even riskier that straight up chopping out the pyramids - more moving parts and a higher chance of failure. I generally like sticking to the KISS principle when it comes to planning.

[Tankra]

Yeah I understand that there's more moving parts to making an Oracle build, but I don't see why Yuris would get it before you were you to decide that you wanted it. He's playing Financial as well as Industrious, so I assume that he'll want to get Pottery before trying to grab Meditation or Polytheism, because his cottages are just too badass to pass up. Given that you guys have the exact same starting techs, if you were to not grab Pottery and go directly for Myst -> Meditation -> Priesthood, you'd theoretically have at least a 4-5 turn advance on him for the Oracle. And besides, the way I see it, he has just as much chance of deciding to get Stonehenge as he does for deciding on the Oracle.

At that point, if you've managed to chop the Oracle in your 2nd city, and then immediately followed up with a quick Forge in your capital, I don't think anyone would be able to get the Pyramids quicker than you. That is, unless there's some Stones nearby. That would send the Oracle plan to hell quite quickly.

Just some food for thought. I don't expect you to take a decision now. I just think it would be an awesome use of PHI.

[oledavy]

[SIZE="7"]Turns 0-9[/SIZE]

Alright, as per the usual, these early turns have been pretty boring - move warrior, hit enter.

When I was looking where to settle my city, the best locations seemed to be SIP or 1N. I unfortunately couldn't move my warrior to check out any of the tiles in question; so I had to do it blind.



Fortunately, settling in place turned out to be the best option. Now, this isn't the greatest capital. Too many plains, and two weaker food bonuses. However, it's not awful, and I have some decent production between the cows and the three grassland hills. Six forests to chop is pretty decent too.



The surrounding geography leads me to believe I'm on the far western edge of the pangaea, though it is still too early to tell. I'm south of the jungle belt, that I do know from the bananas and jungle to the northeast of The Citadel. I've already found salt water in the south and I suspect the land to my west tapers off into a peninsula.



The surrounding land looks relatively fertile, and there is a potentially really strong city to my southeast picking up corn, rice and the grassland hill silver. I've already spotted three sources of rice. There also seems to be an abundance of rivers around my start, really good news for the SE I want to run.

I still haven't really had time to give my start the micro treatment it deserves with family in town, however, hopefully I'll get around to that sometime this weekend. Thankfully, there haven't been that many choices to make so far. I just completed a worker in the cap, who is going to farm the wheat and then move into a forest to chop it right after I complete BW and make an anarchy free revolt into Slavery. At that point, I'm going to build a warrior in the city, completing it and growing to Size 2 on the same turn; and then start a settler. The plan is to sink my second chop into the settler, whip the city own to one pop to complete it, then grow back in time to pick up the improved cows. This is just my impulse on what is the optimal start here, as I have not tested it yet.

Commander Shephard has been running a tight circle around the capital, and I intend to use him to fan out and explore the land to the East. Here's hoping for Marble or Stone. With a game plan like mine, I want to get as many explorers out as early as I can to identify any local sources of these resources. Accordingly, I'm going to try and get a scout out soon to check out the territory to my west.

The one problem I am facing is that I have yet to really identify a strong location for a second city. There is basically no good location that can overlap with the capital's food, which is what I prefer for my second city.

After I knock out Animal Husbandry, I'm going to make a play for Hinduism or Buddhism, hopefully timed to pop it in my second city, so that I have some way to get my borders expanding. Spiritual really needs a religion to get going anyway. If my attempt fails, I'll make a longer term play at Confucianism or Judaism. With only 5 players, I'm not expecting too much difficulty in getting a religion. Commodore is going to be stuck researching economic techs for quite some time, and Gassy Helium are going to want to get pottery up ASAP to build EXP granaries. So, that probably just leaves me, Yuris, and IckyMist in the running for the early religions. Byzantium starts with Mysticism, so I expect to see them land whatever religion they want. Given Yuris' strong preference for the Oracle, I expect him to found Buddhism. You never know though, maybe this will be the one game he doesn't build the Oracle :neenernee

I don't practice the dark arts of C&D, mostly because I'm lazy; thus I won't be doing other than cursory checks of the demographics, espionage, and top 5 city screens. However, I would love to get eyes on the Nephalem Capital so I can track progress on the pyramids when they inevitably make their run at them. Likewise, eyes on Yuris' capital to track his progress on the Oracle would be invaluable. Tankra, if you're remotely interested in honing your C&D-fu this game, let me know and I'll get you what you need. Be assured, the effort would be very much appreciated. However, if you don't want to, I can't say I blame you I never had the patience for it myself and find it fascinating that others do.

End Turn.

[oledavy]

Could someone refresh me on the base and plantationed yields of the plains and grassland spice? (without forests).

[oledavy]

Alrighty, probably about time I said a word or two about my lovely opposition. I sincerely can't wait until the end of the game so I can read Gaspar and Commodore's analyses of me, but until then, I'll need to be content with my own.

So, without further ado:

[SIZE="7"]The Codex[/SIZE]

ENTRY: CERBERUS - REDIRECTS: ILLUSIVE MAN, KAI LENG.



and



of



Gaspar (Paranoid, Angry) & NobleHelium (Terse, Snarky) Playing as Isabella (Spiritual, Expansive) of China (Agriculture, Mining, Cho-Ko-Nu, Pavillion)

Since coming to RB, Gaspar has been one of my favorite reporters to lurk. He is a generally solid player, who keeps ending up in games that feature much better civvers (Kyan, Mackoti, Seven) such that he can't show off his own skill; getting himself stuck just trying to keep up with the big dogs. I really did not have to think long to come up with ME avatars for them, as Gaspar embodies the Illusive Man with his great perception of the metagame and control of the entire situation. NH is more like Kai Leng - the person who makes things happen, and their enemies disappear. I think Gaspar's teaming up with NH is possibly one of the best pairings on the site, with Gaspar adding his solid macro to NH's great micro. All in all, I consider them the most skilled team in this game by a pretty decent margin.

They are the perfect players to make use of the pick of Isabella of Spain. Making this combo work well really requires competent micro ability, which they both bring to the table. With the best starting techs, and EXP granaries and workers, Isabella of China is all about getting out to four or five cities while your opponents still have three, and snowballing from there. SPI gives them some mid-game strength, and, if it wasn't already apparent from my past threads, is my favorite trait because of what it allows you to do in the renaissance.

However, this combo does has some problems, specifically in this particular field of leader/civ picks, which they will have to work hard to surmount. With three financial civs playing, the Spi/Exp Isabella is going to need something to help keep up in tech pace. Getting to all those cities earlier than anyone else will mean very little once the late-game CEs come online and start stomping you into a GNP hole. So, their game comes down to getting more land before this happens so they can stay competitive with the FIN civs. Indeed, me and NobleGas are probably going to play this game in extremely similar ways. We both want an early wonder to boost the economy - preferably the Pyramids. We both want to leverage that wonder and GP bulbs into a tech lead, then a military advantage during the medieval/renaissance period. Then, finally, we both will want to seize some land from the unlucky players next to us. We'll see how well we're able to do this. It should be fun to compare our threads and approaches in the postgame.

Gaspar and NH's big weaknesses as players are that neither responds well to setbacks and both have a tendency to flip-flop between plans and not commit to anything wholeheartedly - which is really what you need to do to be successful in this game. PBEM24, the game their pick is drawn from, is a perfect example of the former. Gaspar played a brilliant opening; but when Mackoti's chariots rolled up, he was forced into a foreverNAP and everything went to hell from there. For an example of both, look no further than PBEM29v. As one of their ded-lurkers, I remember the moment they lost that game, even though I said nothing at the time. They kept trying to decide whether to go for the Pyramids, or GLH or both, when they really needed to go balls to the wall to build one or the other. Consequently, they lost them both, and their game fell apart from there.

So, what we have are two players who have a history of not responding well to setbacks. If I have something not go my way, I will stubbornly try to figure out another way to win. If Commodore faces a setback, he'll enter Lewwyn mode and attack the person nearest him. If Gaspar and NH face a setback, they're likely to start mailing the save in. So, if I beat them to the Pyramids, I expect that will throw their early game-plan off kilter and they'll basically give up. I genuinely hope they don't and they fight it out to the bitter end, it would make the game more enjoyable. However, I don't expect to win the pyramid race and am already working on back-up plans. We'll see what happens I suppose.

In summary though, despite their flaws, Gaspar and NobleHelium are undoubtedly the best players here, and with their fast-starting combo, I expect them....

...to come in second behind the glorious empire that I will lead to victory :neenernee

[oledavy]

[SIZE="7"]THE CODEX[/SIZE]

ENTRY: KROGAN - REDIRECT: URDNOT WREX



of



Commodore (Fatalistic, Lewwyn) Playing as Darius (Financial, Organized) of The Holy Roman Empire (Hunting, Mysticism, Landschneckt, Rathaus)

I postulated at some point during the course of PB6 that Commodore and Lewwyn switched personalities. While Lewwyn was patiently husbanding his forces as the our armies marched upon Beijing, Commodore started angrily rushing his neighbors in both his PB games. In all seriousness, I think at some point between PBEM24/PBEM26/PBEM31, Commodore snapped and replaced his usual solid play with a strong preference for early rushes. This has not been a change for the better I think. I always had Commodore pegged as a fairly good player who could manage extremely solid mid-games. However, at some point his modus operendi became: play mediocre opening, realize you're behind, rush someone, crash, burn. Now, Commodore is no fool. Nobody takes Darius of HRE and says "IMMA KILL SOMEONE!"

Commodore keeps deprecating his pick as the "noobiest of noob combos," but honestly I don't see it. The pick takes a very basic synergy, nooby, perhaps; but one that's hard to beat. Super-Effective Rathauses paired with the usual awesomeness of Financial, and the savings of ORG, means that you're rolling in the dough from the Renaissance onward. I'm honestly looking forward to how this combo does, because both games it featured in to date were dominated by much better players, making it hard to get a read on it's true strength. While ORG is generally map-dependent, I honestly think it a bit of an underrated trait on RB. As an aside though, I would never play this combo. Far too boring :neenernee

At any rate, with this pick, Commodore is going to want to play the slow builders game, keep his head down until the renaissance, then start throwing his weight around. What he has to overcome is an ungodly slow start. Between mysticism and hunting as starting techs, he's probably going to be expanding the slowest of the five of us. If he does manage his start well-enough and isn't behind at that point, he has to deal with two Specialist Economies coming to fruition and Mistibod's Cataphracts. If he does make it through all that intact, he should be in good shape. So the question is, can Commodore make it to the part of the game where his traits really come into play and still be competitive? I certainly think it's within his capabilities as a player. Unfortunately, his propensity for sabotaging himself might get the better of him. Either way, it should be interesting to watch play out. Let's just hope we don't end up on the wrong end of Commodore's ire if he decides to go Krogan on us.

[oledavy]

[SIZE="7"]The Codex[/SIZE]

ENTRY: SALARIAN - REDIRECT: CAPTAIN KIRRAHE



of



Yuris125 (Understated, Second Fiddle) Playing as Huyana Capac (Financial, Industrious) as the Ottomans (Agriculture, The Wheel, Jannisary, Hamman).

When I was coming up with an appropriate ME avatar for Yuri2125, Captain Kirrahe was an obvious choice. For those not familiar with the ME lore, Captain Kirahe was a Salarian soldier you encounter in the first game who, before the battle of Vimire, gives his soldiers a speech urging them to Hold the Line. This seemed a rather appropriate metaphor for Yuris Doesn'tKnowWhereThePeriodKeyIs. He's been in quite a few games on the site, never wins, but never does badly either. He usually ends up allying with a stronger power and playing second fiddle as while they score the victory.

It would be a vast understatement to say Yuri hasn't improved at all, as he has gotten better in every game he's played. However, it's a rather shallow learning curve. I think this can be traced back to his infrequent reports. On the whole, the players who improve the most between games are generally those that report a lot and have their mistakes critiqued. I've played against Yuri once before in Civ5 PBEM1. I get the feeling he's a pretty good-natured guy who doesn't take the game too seriously and plays to have fun; and it' really hard to argue with that.All this being said, I think Yuris has a pretty decent chance to win this thing. As I've said, he's a generally solid player, and in this field, he might just be able to have his breakthrough and join the winner's club. Even if his generally good gameplay doesn't put him ahead, his pick will.

Huyana Capac of the Ottomans is...damn scary, I'm not going to lie. This is the best of the picks featured in this game, hands down. With the Ottomans, you get a really solid UB and UU. Neither is spectacular, but both can be leveraged to some effect. The Wheel and Agriculture mean Yuris is going to be off to a very fast start. However, the real strength here lies in Huyana Capac. Financial needs no introduction, and, combined with Industrious, is really strong. Industrious is another one of those traits that's a bit map dependent. Marble and Stone, or the lack thereof, has a major influence in how strong it ends up being. I'm assuming that this map has normal stone and marble distribution, in which case IND won't be top tier, but still really good. In general, I agree with LP that RB underrates IND. The boost on National Wonders is really nice and often overlooked, and the quick forges are extremely strong. However, the format of the game itself really boosts Industrious. Building wonders is a much better option in these 4-5 players PBEM than it is in a 12-player PB. Wonders are generally strong builds and provide benefits worthwhile to their cost, and Industrious means you can get pretty much any ones you want.

Yuris is smart enough to make this pick work for him, and I feel certain he will make a play for the Oracle and early forges. He's built the thing is almost every game he's been in, including the game that this pick was drawn from. Other than that, I expect him to target the HG, which dovetails well with the Ottoman UB. Running a Priest Economy may be a really strong option for Yuris considering the discounts he'll get on the key wonders. I expect Yuris to play a wonderwhoring game, nabbing key economic wonders and using them to power his economy until his cottages really kick in. I hope everyone is aware of just how strong this pick is, because if the other players just operate under the assumption that Yuri will not be able to leverage this civ/leader into a victory; this game will be over very quickly.