[LURKERS] Who cares about PYFT? RYFT!

[ipecac]

(feel free to change the thread title to a better one)

Going by the "pbemlist" google doc, it doesn't look like anyone else has used the combo before? That doesn't sound right

I think he'll certainly find out why.

[GermanJoey]

(feel free to change the thread title to a better one)

Going by the "pbemlist" google doc, it doesn't look like anyone else has used the combo before? That doesn't sound right

I think he'll certainly find out why.

Why do you say that? IMHO Bob has the best combo by far. Joao of China is like a 7 pointer in a 5 point snakepick.

edit: oh, this will be on a Toroid? I just assumed it wasn't because Commodore was setting up the game. Bob's gonna need to be super careful with his economy in that case. He might want to think about skipping SH and Oracling MC ASAP. I really like Catherine of Sumeria for a Toroid too... Oracle Monarchy and then REX until you're break-even at 0%, using scientists from cheap libraries and your early courthouses to limp to Currency.

[ipecac]

Toroid has high cost, plus all the opponents having great ancient era UUs means that he has to maintain higher than normal military (especially on a tight map and also since Toroids maps generally have few backlines) which only slows down REXing even further. But IMP/EXP needs to REX, so essentially he has to run a risky farmer's gambit and pray that your neighbours don't feel like calling him on it. And since the REXing is blunted and he have no long-term traits, his only strategy is to go eat a lot of one neighbour's land at CKNs or knights but again Toroidal costs will be killer.

[spacetyrantxenu]

With Joao he'll have spare hammers available to keep up military power.

[GermanJoey]

Eh, Imp/Exp doesn't *need* to continuously pump out settlers. One of the best things about it is that its super flexible. It's also very good at putting hammers towards other things early, like military and wonders. Instead of out-expanding your opponents, you can try to just maintain the same rate of expansion. Because you're paying only 2 hammers for every 3 on workers/settlers/granaries, which is 90% of your first 60-70 turns production, that gives you hundreds of hammers to spend on other junk. On a Toroid, I think needs to grab a couple early big wonders, at least two of the following, depending on what the map ends up looking like: GLH, Oracling CoL or MC, SH, the Mids (if Stone's available; an early Moai would be good too). Another thing is, because REX is so easy, you don't really need to focus on hammer production. You can start spamming (and working) cottages super early.

[GermanJoey]

With Joao he'll have spare hammers available to keep up military power.

Yeah, exactly. It's like, you might not have a 5 str chariot, but instead have three 4 str chariots. In PB19, for example, TBS always had a huge standing army on hand. Even though he was out-expanding everyone else, nobody could call him on his "farmer's gambit" because there's actually nothing farmers-gambitty about being #1 on the power charts by a big margin.

[ipecac]

Good points; I didn't think about them. This should be interesting to watch.

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, Joao has loads of spare hammers to put into other things. Bob needs to make sure the other things are all commerce focused though. For my money, DTG has the best combo and a pretty impressive 66 performance.

[BRickAstley]

A 'final' draft of the map: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4491...inal.1.zip

Let me know if you see any big imbalances. The map is not meant to be symmetrical, not also not unfairly geared toward or against any one player/position.

[ipecac]

No stone or marble?