RMOG: Renaissance Men of Genius

[oledavy]

So, with all this in mind, let's mock up a snake pick:

We've got our top civs, as far as top leaders go:

Julius (IMP/ORG)
Victoria (IMP/FIN)
Kublai Khan (IMP/AGG)
Cyrus (IMP/CHA)
Suleiman (IMP/PHI)

Asoka (SPI/ORG)
Gandhi (SPI/PHI)
Monty (SPI/AGG)
Brennus (SPI/CHA)
Mansa (SPI/FIN)

I think in general, the economic traits pair better with SPI, and the military with IMP. Civs will probably go first because the drop off is steeper.

1st Pick: Khmer
2nd Pick: France
3rd Pick: Julius
4th Pick: Russia
5th Pick: Victoria
6th Pick: Gandhi
7th Pick: England
8th Pick: Holland
9th Pick: Cyrus
10th Pick: Byzantium
11th Pick: Kublai Khan
12th PIck: Suleiman

Given the ending of PB33, I generally privileged IMP > SPI. However, it also would make sense for players to prefer it as most of the civs favor going wide (Dutch/Khmer) or being aggressive with plants (France/Byzantium). I also had Byzantium fall late in the draft because I don't believe players won't value it terribly highly due to the strategy it commits you to.

So, here's what we end up with:

Suleiman of Khmer - Plant cities everywhere, run specialists with extra food.
Kublai Khan of France - Threaten people with your UU.
Julius of Byzantium - Threaten people with your UU, maybe rush.
Cyrus of Russia - All about the cossacks
Victoria of Holland - Spam coastal cities
Gandhi of England - Bulb/rush something fun early

So, that's my prediction (of course based on other people valuing traits similarly XD).

In this setup, we get Cyrus of Russia, which I would be pretty happy with. I've never played with Cossacks before, but they'd be fun to try out.

[WarriorKnight]

Viking: +1 move not as gamebreaking when 4-move galleons are right around the corner (as opposed to a +50% move range increase for galleys).

Comment on this real quick. Don't forget that with free Nav1, Nav2 is only 2xp away (very easy to get with Theo) for another +1 move. Other civs need 5/10xp to get Nav1/2, while Vikings need 0/2 (and extra promotions can go into Combat). 6 move galleons IMO are better than 4 move galleys since you don't have the ocean limitation. Viking naval game is not to be underestimated.

Otherwise my thoughts on civs are about the same. I'd probably move Byz/Viking up while moving Dutch/England down though.

EDIT: Just tested it, turns out you need Flanking 1 for Nav 2 regardless so my theory is wrong. Plus I think I've been underestimating Dutch so I would only move Byz up and England down on your civ list.

[oledavy]

Computer update: Have internet access from my gaming PC now! I should be good to log in now.

To elaborate a little further on the Dutch:

Dikes are very strong, although a feel like you really need FIN to make the coastal heavy strategy they encourage really work. EI's were also a major deciding factor in my war with Rego in PBEM17, they allowed me to fight him for control of the water and continue to boat his cities even though he had frigates and I had none.

My reservations about the Dutch stem from the map request though, 20%-30% water would put us in the neighborhood of PB6's water situation. I'm thinking specifically here of my front with Sullla that game. Dikes would have been nice but not game-breaking, although EI's would have been amazing to have in that situation.

Assuming that water situation is similar, we can run with it here and try to maximize our advantage by focusing on lots of coastal cities - but for that we absolutely need Victoria.

With this in mind, I would suggest the following flow chart for deciding if we want to pick Dutch:

1. If starting screenshot makes it look like there will be a decent amount of water.

and

2. If we can get Victoria on our first pass through the snake pick.

Then we can grab Dutch on the back end, I doubt anyone else will pick them without Vicky up.

Otherwise, I would rather pick up someone really safe and solid like Khmer/Russia/etc.

[WarriorKnight]

Computer update: Have internet access from my gaming PC now! I should be good to log in now.

Huzzah.

I would like to make a couple of thoughts regarding IMP vs SPI. 33 showed us just how powerful IMP can be in Industrial can be compared to SPI. However, I'm not convinced it's strictly superior to SPI in this game for a few reasons.

Advantages of SPI

Firstly while there are many similarities to Industrial era, Ren era is slightly worse for IMP than SPI. Settlers are only ~75% the cost compared to Industrial era, that's less hammers saved per settler for IMP. Compare to SPI, which only loses 1) the ability to rush buy a worker T0 and 2) the ability to switch to Nationhood early on for rushing/defense. Everything else is still available (Emancipation, Free Speech, Free Market and Free Religion you don't use in early Industrial, if all all).

Also if we are comparing this game to 33 and Sculla to REM (Dreylin can't be a comparison due to Kremlin), I would point out that Sculla underused the whip in that game, only whipping once in the very early game. They rightfully acknowledge that as a mistake in their game (and I go into a bit more detail below about the difficulty of fully utilizing SPI) and may have been able to keep up if they used the whip more. Since SP workshops are nowhere nearby I expect the whip to be used far more often so a comparison to 33 may not be as accurate as we think.

Finally if we want to metagame a bit, then if the above is right then there is a high chance that everyone else will overvalue IMP over SPI this game. Sculla will almost certainly be IMP, and Alhazard/Nicolae may be thinking along those lines too. Obviously this only affects choices made by others and not any directly in-game benefit, but it is something to keep in mind (we may have fewer IMP leaders to choose from then SPI ones for instance).

Disadvantages of SPI

That said, IMP is a hell lot easier to use than SPI. All you need to do to get the most out of IMP is 1) build settlers and 2) build them with mostly hammers. With proper usage of whipping/chopping neither is particularly difficult to do, so it is very easy to leverage. SPI requires you to get as much out of all the civics as possible, which is far from a simple matter. You need to:

• Ideally whip every 10t early on while boosting workers in Serfdom to speed development
  
• Spend time in Caste/Pacifism for GP production
  
• Be in Theocracy/Vassalage or Theocracy/Nationhood for unit production
  
• Spend as much time as possible in Bureaucracy/OR for the passive bonuses, while not neglecting Slavery whips
  

Sculla did a pretty good job utilizing SPI in 33, but didn't maximize GP production or the whip (IMO). If we were to go SPI, we would need to try and squeeze as much out of all of these as possible. I'm not sure if I could, but meticulous planning is your specialty so as long as that still is the case this shouldn't be a issue.

As far as what IMP leaders are worthwhile, Vicky and Julius are obviously top tier. Genghis is very good too, you can use the GG bonus to help getting a Commando factory online (to say nothing about the synergy with certain UU's). The only reason I would pick Cyrus over Brennus is if we got Byzantium. If we are Russia, Brennus can get 3 promo horses much easier with Theocracy/Vassalage and can probably tech better to Rifling/MT too. Suleiman just doesn't impress me at all as his advantages are all over the place, you would need to give me a clear reason to pick him over Asoka, Mansa or Brennus.

For our first pick, we should probably choose out of:

Gandhi
Vicky
Julius maybe
Byz
France
Khmer
Russia maybe

Since we're 4th, we'll have a good selection to pick from even if half of these are gone before us. What we choose 2nd will ideally pair well with our 1st pick, if we can find 3 choices of remaining leaders/civs to pair with our 1st pick I think that'll work out. We have a preference for civ first over leader first, and I agree that's probably the right thing to do.

[oledavy]

So I played around with Ren start last night, and I have to say, not being spiritual REALLY made we want to be spiritual. The two turns of anarchy at the start is not super-impactful but felt really punishing.

Don't overestimate my micro capability I've been away from this game for 3 years and really tight early micro was never my strong suit anyway I can work with SPI pretty decently though, and have some experience at this point timing things to take advantage of switching civics. The temptation of IMP to me is twofold:

1. Who cares if your micro is really tight and you have higher promoted units/more efficiently built buildings if your opponent has 33% more cities than you.

2. IMP seems really idiot proof. It will be easy to screw up a SPI civ and not take full advantage of the ability, losing out to our peers. With IMP, the only way we lose out is by not building settlers.

So, onto whipping. Whipping is super-efficient, even late into the game. If we get Kremlin, then there is a good chance we'll be whipping until the very end of the game. I was regularly whipping cities with periodic bouts of slavery in PB6 until the very end. That being said, I'm not sure whipping early with a REN start is really good.

Keep in mind I have not run the math on this to figure out what is truly most efficient. But here is my general idea for opening micro:

1st City: Chop out worker, grow on library/explorers to six 4/5/6, work improved food/production tiles and stagnate, chopping out 4 settlers one after another making maximum use of the BC bonus.

2nd City: Open with worker, whip, bring second worker over to improve, put on a whip cycle and pump out workers/grow on MPs.

After this initial period of expansion ends, we shift over to growing the first two cities and begin chopping out workers and settlers from cities #3-#6. Meanwhile, we will grow cities #1 and #2, the capital to focus on cottages, the 2nd city to focus on great people (pending map of course).

I feel like whipping extensively right off the bat without a couple improved food resources is not super efficient. Moreover, and this is the main point, since we can improve every resource tile right off the bat, we will have better yields available for your 3rd-5th pop points and the happiness from resources/religion to run that population.

With this in mind, I feel like for a ren start game you want to be growing to size 5-7 and whipping off excess pop rather than whipping at size 3-4. This is all conjecture though, and I will look into the actual numbers before committing us to an opening like this. Generally though, I think focus on lots of chops early to get out workers and settlers, then switch to whipping out infrastructure/military.

[WarriorKnight]

So I played around with Ren start last night, and I have to say, not being spiritual REALLY made we want to be spiritual. The two turns of anarchy at the start is not super-impactful but felt really punishing.

If anything, it gives us another turn to scout out city locations before planting.

Don't overestimate my micro capability I've been away from this game for 3 years and really tight early micro was never my strong suit anyway I can work with SPI pretty decently though, and have some experience at this point timing things to take advantage of switching civics. The temptation of IMP to me is twofold:

1. Who cares if your micro is really tight and you have higher promoted units/more efficiently built buildings if your opponent has 33% more cities than you.

2. IMP seems really idiot proof. It will be easy to screw up a SPI civ and not take full advantage of the ability, losing out to our peers. With IMP, the only way we lose out is by not building settlers.

I'm not suggesting SPI > IMP, but I do think that RB may be underestimating SPI atm and the gap may not be as big as 33 suggests. I talked IMP being easy to use already, so let's address the first point.

Obviously IMP should have more cities than SPI (or at least will save a lot of hammers getting to that city count). SPI however has a better initial snowball due to serfdom and no anarchy and much easier access to GP's for bulbing/GA's. It is a losing battle to try and turn that into a hammer advantage vs IMP, so they can turn that into a research advantage. That means Cavs/Rifles sooner to use for military conquest. The gist of where I'm going with this is:

SPI favors tech early, expansion late
IMP favors expansion early, tech late

The question I want to ask is which strategy do we prefer?

Keep in mind I have not run the math on this to figure out what is truly most efficient. But here is my general idea for opening micro:

1st City: Chop out worker, grow on library/explorers to six 4/5/6, work improved food/production tiles and stagnate, chopping out 4 settlers one after another making maximum use of the BC bonus.

2nd City: Open with worker, whip, bring second worker over to improve, put on a whip cycle and pump out workers/grow on MPs.

Looks pretty good for a general idea. I haven't sandboxed anything yet and won't until we see our start. Couple of points though:

1) How many workers do we have to start with? I'd like roughly 5-6 before we transition the capital towards settler production
2) No settler whipping? You mention chopping out settlers, but how many chops will we have to do that? I think most/all settlers should include a 3 pop whip for max efficiency.
3) As a continuation of 2), stagnating isn't a great idea. I think a whip cycle of building settlers at size 6 -> whip to size 3 -> grow back to size 6 while waiting for whip cooldown is ideal if we are IMP.

After this initial period of expansion ends, we shift over to growing the first two cities and begin chopping out workers and settlers from cities #3-#6. Meanwhile, we will grow cities #1 and #2, the capital to focus on cottages, the 2nd city to focus on great people (pending map of course).

Question, assuming we are IMP how can we focus specifically on great people? Without Caste we need to build the relevant specialist building, and even then it'll take quite some time to pop the GP out (and may need to dilute the GP pool with multiple types so we can't strategize out GP usage). This is an area where SPI seems to shine.

I feel like whipping extensively right off the bat without a couple improved food resources is not super efficient. Moreover, and this is the main point, since we can improve every resource tile right off the bat, we will have better yields available for your 3rd-5th pop points and the happiness from resources/religion to run that population.

I'm not suggesting whipping more than once every 10t, and that's more than enough time for cities to grow back whipped pop.

With this in mind, I feel like for a ren start game you want to be growing to size 5-7 and whipping off excess pop rather than whipping at size 3-4. This is all conjecture though, and I will look into the actual numbers before committing us to an opening like this. Generally though, I think focus on lots of chops early to get out workers and settlers, then switch to whipping out infrastructure/military.

Exactly. I don't think we should be whipping at low pop either (aside from the initial worker) and should grow to at least size 6 before starting a settler. My only concern is that we shouldn't rely on chops as our REX strategy because there are only a limited number of chops available and everyone else will want to put chops into workers/settlers anyway.

[Mardoc]

Your start will be this, or a mirror/rotation of this. Fog lies.

[oledavy]

Logged on to reply to your post WK, but we have a starting screenshot!

So, here is my stream of consciousness looking at it.

1. Goddammit Mardoc, whales in a lake We can drop a workboat on those, right?
2. There is water right beyond the entire edge of the visible area, except to the northeast where I think it connects to where the rest of the players are.
3. It definitely looks like Dutch could actually be pretty strong, although idk how far that water goes. I suspect the sea is pretty narrow.
4. We have to be very careful about where we settle, as we risk orphaning fish/clams/etc.
5. Furs/whales/oasis buff FIN

3W1S looks like a decent coastal commerce city, however, if we settle it, the iron city will have to share pigs with the capital.

On that note.

I don't think we want 1S for the capital, as that potentially orphans a lot of shit. However, I think 1W looks really compelling. 1 NW is also pretty compelling, missing out on Marble but picking up more riverside tiles. How badly do we want Marble early? Also, do we want to even consider rendering the whales unimprovable?

6. Markets give +3 happiness with all those resources iirc.

So I think for capital, it's either SIP, 1W, or 1S. 1W is the best city, but it orphans whales, and risks orphaning a lot more. I don't see a compelling reason off the top of my head to consider settling our capital anywhere else (and what a fine BC capital it is).

[oledavy]

On closer examination, I think there is water to the northeast as well? It's a little hard to tell from the shot. Regardless, while I still think the sea will probably end up being pretty narrow, it means our first half dozen cities will be coastal.

So yeah, I think we definitely want to consider Financial and the Dutch. FIN actually looks really strong with this start.

[oledavy]

First attempt at a dotmap assuming SIP:



Finally, there are not a lot of forests to chop, nor is there incredibly abundant visible food. Hoping for seafood, and that we can use it to rely on the whip for expansion.