[SPOILERS] Team Orgynized: Parkin/Arki/Magno embark on a kinky adventure

[Arkipeller]

Pretty nice picks, I look forward to the wonder whoring.

The question is which do we want. We cant have all

[antisocialmunky]

Not familiar enough with KrillMod to recommend anything.

You should probably just try and slingshot something with Oracle.

[Lord Parkin]

1. Team Eagles & Condors - Kurumi / HBHR (with Oxyphenbutazone) - Pacal II
2. Team Dinosaurs - Whiteye / Raptorous - Darius
3. Team Master and Margarita - Slaze / Maga_R (with Jovan Kukic dedlurking) - Willem
4. Bowsling / Aivoturso - Mansa Musa
5. Team Orgynized - Lord Parkin / Arkipeller / Magno_uy (with WilliamLP dedlurking and Dp101) - Huayna Capac
6. Team Blame Caledorn - YossarianLives / Caledorn (with Scooter, Old Harry and Cheater Hater dedlurking) - Inca
7. Team Care Bears - Yuufo / Bisons - India
8. Dick76 / DMOC - Suryavarman II
9. Team My Little Marathon Cannibal Pony - Classical_Hero / Halvgud - Sumeria
10. Barteq / Geo (with Harami dedlurking) - Ragnar
11. Barteq / Geo (with Harami dedlurking) - Rome
12. Team My Little Marathon Cannibal Pony - Classical_Hero / Halvgud - Napoleon
13. Dick76 / DMOC - Byzantium
14. Team Care Bears - Yuufo / Bisons - Victoria
15. Team Blame Caledorn - YossarianLives / Caledorn (with Scooter, Old Harry and Cheater Hater dedlurking) - Isabella
16. Team Orgynized - Lord Parkin / Arkipeller / Magno_uy (with WilliamLP dedlurking and Dp101) - Netherlands
17. Bowsling / Aivoturso - Zulu
18. Team Master and Margarita - Slaze / Maga_R (with Jovan Kukic dedlurking) - Ottoman
19. Team Dinosaurs - Whiteye / Raptorous
20. Team Eagles & Condors - Kurumi / HBHR (with Oxyphenbutazone)

Hmm, so Bowsling/Aivoturso are Mansa Musa of Zulu - alright I suppose, but no real synergy to speak of. Bowsling doesn't strike me as a massively aggressive player, so I presume they're going for the Ikhanda more than the Impi... but who knows.

And Slaze/Maga_R/Jovan Kukic are Willem of Ottoman - both good picks.

Only two to go! Wonder if Darius will be paired with HRE (probably not) or Vikings (maybe) for Organized synergy. Not sure who Pacal will be paired with - Carthage would give some synergy with Expansive, but there are plenty of other strong options out there even without any synergy.

Hmm, Care Bears missed their chance to re-enact PB2 with a Lizzy of India pick. I'm pretty surprised she wasn't taken by anyone.

Yeah... especially when both Vicky and Ragnar were chosen ahead of her.

I don't really get the Napoleon of Sumeria pick. I guess I just don't see building courthouses earlier as that big a deal. At that point in the game there aren't many spare hammers going around for extra infrastructure that only yields a couple of gpt - you really need military first! So they cost 45 instead of 60, yeah that's nice but is that worth giving up a FIN leader for? Or even an Exp leader like Mehmed - that way you save 30 hammers for every city (granary) plus about 12 for every worker, plus the health bonus is really nice too.

I agree it's not really an optimal pick. Probably can't read too much into it, though I'd be interested to know how much of the choice was up to Classical_Hero.

I also don't know if I've ever seen Byzantium shine in a PB, with the awful starting techs. Sury has arguably the fastest early game traits so clearly Dick / DMOC want to power through to cataphracts and assert dominance there. I guess that isn't crazy. If they have a double-grain start than I guess they can make it work as long as the lack of worker techs doesn't slow them down. Still it's painful how slow you get Bronze with a Myst / Wheel start, no matter what happens.

Yeah, pretty much the least useful starting techs in terms of food and chopping/whipping - which are the key things you want to be doing early on.

Getting the only IND leader in the game is phenomenal. Netherlands is pretty clear - America is useless and Native America has a UU that makes you wonder if it's even better than what it replaces, though it does give the ability to build Dog Soldiers without metal.

Yeah, couldn't have hoped for a better situation with Industrious. Dog Soldiers are okay on random maps where you can sometimes miss out on metals, but far less useful on hand-made maps where you can be pretty certain everyone will have Copper within reach.

The East Indiaman would be a definite advantage post Astronomy. The feature to scout and traverse closed borders is an interesting one!

Yeah, looking forward to giving it a try in a multiplayer environment. I don't think I've actually played the Netherlands outside of single player, at least not in recent memory.

[Lord Parkin]

Yeah, finishing the work boat with 2f/1h seems clearly best because it allows being size 2 on T22, growing onto improved sheep, and size 3 on T25, both with exact food. And the hammer overflow doesn't speed up the worker.

Yeah, our moves up until T25 seem pretty clear, then the possible paths diverge. For the record:

• T0 - Settle in place, work plains-hill-forest, start building Work Boat, start researching Hunting
  
• T7 - Finish Hunting, start researching Animal Husbandry
  
• T7 - Switch to work grassland-forest on the last turn of the Work Boat
  
• T8 - Net the Fish, work the Fish, start building Worker
  
• T16 - Finish Animal Husbandry, start researching Mining
  
• T18 - Finish Worker, start improving Sheep, start building Warrior
  
• T21 - Finish improving Sheep
  
• T22 - Growth to size 2, work Sheep + Fish, move Worker towards Deer, finish Mining, start researching Bronze Working
  
• T23 - Start improving Deer
  
• T25 - Growth to size 3

I'm really interested in how to decide when to build a first settler.

Here's a devil's advocate build:

- On growth to size 3, spend 1 turn before deer is improved on the 3h tile.
- Warrior finishes EOT 28, start settler at size 4.
- Chop, but delay 1T (prebuild a mine).
- Settler is available T37 (it could also be T36, but I don't think we can get Myst until T37)

(I forgot the grass hill forest 2W of the capital was a random growth, pretend I chopped the one 1W of the capital instead.)

- Another chop goes into Henge:

This would delay a turn if switching to slavery while the settler is in transit.

Now this is obviously short a worker, a warrior, and many worker turns including two mines. And defense against early poke aggression is sketchy with one warrior only. But the settler earlier has advantages and this is a really early Henge that would be nearly impossible to beat without someone going for it before a settler (which would destroy the game for them economically).

Always good to play devil's advocate, never know if we might come across a better strategy. Will test this myself later, but gut feeling is we'll have plenty of room and time to expand early on, and as such the best long-term play is probably a double Worker before Settler. But worth checking these things, so will try it out later in the week. (We have until T25 until we have to make a decision anyway, which is probably a couple of weeks away right now.)

- Because of being IND, maybe consider taking the short term disadvantage settling 1N because forests in the capital BFC are really valuable later?

Hmm... this delays the Sheep by a turn, though that doesn't matter too much.

- GLH is so good that some RB games ban it. With IND and a fishing start we'd probably be best positioned to grab it. Maybe an extreme micro plan that gets it is worth considering? (E.g. even sailing + masonry before pottery). In other RB games it has fallen around turn 58-60 when someone has really committed to it.

Will depend on the map... if we can only fit in ~3 coastal cities GLH will be great but not game-changing. More and it'll definitely be worth prioritising though. Once we're a few turns into the game hopefully our Scout will have revealed enough information for us to make a more informed decision. But absolutely worth thinking about!

[Lord Parkin]

1. Choose Netherlands.
2. ???
3. Reach Steam Power!
4. Profit!!!

Heh. It seems that we got a good combo for me. I tried to play as Huyana of Netherlands yesterday and it went ok.
Our disadvantage is that people consider Parkin as a very good player, so diplo may get hard (but not impossible)

Yep, it's definitely a good combo, though the payoff comes quite late in the game. Not too late though, hopefully.

I don't expect diplo will be easy, but perhaps you and/or Magno will be able to help there.

Pretty nice picks, I look forward to the wonder whoring.

The question is which do we want. We cant have all

Will have to decide once we know a bit more about the map. Stonehenge, The Oracle and the Great Lighthouse are usually pretty good, and obviously the Pyramids. We won't be able to get all of those though. Later on, the Great Library and the Parthenon are great to have, and of course the Mausoleum of Mausollus. Again, I don't expect we'll get all of them, but hopefully we can grab one or two of the best ones for cheap.

Not familiar enough with KrillMod to recommend anything.

You should probably just try and slingshot something with Oracle.

Uh, this is an unmodded game. But yeah, the Oracle's usually nice to have.

[antisocialmunky]

Huh, I got this mixed up with PB13 settings then. Was wondering why you were talking about diplo.

[WilliamLP]

So where are you going to go with the scout? NE-NW seems logical because it's the move that could reveal something to make us want to settle 1N?

[Lord Parkin]

Final two civs are picked...

1. Team Eagles & Condors - Kurumi / HBHR (with Oxyphenbutazone) - Pacal II
2. Team Dinosaurs - Whiteye / Raptorous - Darius
3. Team Master and Margarita - Slaze / Maga_R (with Jovan Kukic dedlurking) - Willem
4. Bowsling / Aivoturso - Mansa Musa
5. Team Orgynized - Lord Parkin / Arkipeller / Magno_uy (with WilliamLP dedlurking and Dp101) - Huayna Capac
6. Team Blame Caledorn - YossarianLives / Caledorn (with Scooter, Old Harry and Cheater Hater dedlurking) - Inca
7. Team Care Bears - Yuufo / Bisons - India
8. Dick76 / DMOC - Suryavarman II
9. Team My Little Marathon Cannibal Pony - Classical_Hero / Halvgud - Sumeria
10. Barteq / Geo (with Harami dedlurking) - Ragnar
11. Barteq / Geo (with Harami dedlurking) - Rome
12. Team My Little Marathon Cannibal Pony - Classical_Hero / Halvgud - Napoleon
13. Dick76 / DMOC - Byzantium
14. Team Care Bears - Yuufo / Bisons - Victoria
15. Team Blame Caledorn - YossarianLives / Caledorn (with Scooter, Old Harry and Cheater Hater dedlurking) - Isabella
16. Team Orgynized - Lord Parkin / Arkipeller / Magno_uy (with WilliamLP dedlurking and Dp101) - Netherlands
17. Bowsling / Aivoturso - Zulu
18. Team Master and Margarita - Slaze / Maga_R (with Jovan Kukic dedlurking) - Ottoman
19. Team Dinosaurs - Whiteye / Raptorous - England
20. Team Eagles & Condors - Kurumi / HBHR (with Oxyphenbutazone) - Native America

Team Dinosaurs (Whiteye/Raptorous) are Darius of England. No synergy to speak of, though the nice economic techs will probably help shave off a few turns on getting to Redcoats.

Team Eagles & Condors (Kurumi/HBHR/Oxyphenbutazone) are Pacal of Native America. Obviously Pacal is good, though the Native America pick is a bit more dubious. Perhaps they have similar starting resources to us and wanted that civ for the starting techs. Dog Soldiers are really a bit pointless on a map which discourages early rushes and is almost certain to have plenty of metal around for everyone. As for the Totem Pole, how often do you really want to build archery units if you're not China?

So that's it! Overall there was only one definitively weak pick (Napoleon of Sumeria), the rest all have many more ups than downs. Sury of Byzantium is probably the weaker of the two remaining non-Financial picks with their starting techs, but if they last to the mid-game they'll be set with Cataphracts. It'll be interesting to see how well Isabella of Inca compensates for lacking the Financial trait - that's probably close to the strongest non-Financial combination you could pick (except maybe Mehmed or Bismarck of Inca).

Of the Financial combinations, I think Victoria of India is probably the most dubious due to the maintenance costs on the map, but still a good pick. I suspect Ragnar of Rome won't last as a power in this game, as the eyes of the world will be fixed on them - but they'll probably take at least one team out of the running for victory before they're beaten back. Best case scenario, they don't start near us and draw attention away from us in the early stages of the game. Worst case scenario, they start as our neighbour, target their attack at us and we get a chance to brush up on early military tactics. With 9 teams they could attack, the odds of the target being us are actually not too high. But we'll see how it plays out.

[Lord Parkin]

Huh, I got this mixed up with PB13 settings then. Was wondering why you were talking about diplo.

That would explain it.

So where are you going to go with the scout? NE-NW seems logical because it's the move that could reveal something to make us want to settle 1N?

Yeah, I think 1NE-1NW with the Scout on the first turn makes the most sense, though I'd be surprised if we find any more resources to fit into a capital BFC founded 1N. But equally, I can't imagine there being anything strong enough to significantly benefit from settling 1W or 2W and giving up the Fish either. Especially now that we've specifically chosen a Fishing civ. (If there is, that'd be quite cruel of the mapmaker. ) So we may as well explore in the direction where there's at least an outside chance of us wanting to move our capital.

[antisocialmunky]

You know how well I read rules.

I third NE NW.