Archduke and Emperor K team thread

[TheArchduke]

If you read my threads you know that I am not prone to long text passages and overlong planning. If this seems the case it is because I am rather lazy with my writing as I tend to analyze situation and plans silently in my head. As we are doing a team game I must abandon this selfish style and go a bit more into depth what my thoughts are so we can share and analyze them, so without further ado.


OPPO - Opposition Research


Players (Teams)
Team 1 Japper (Kongo) /Mikeforall (Khmer) – The possible Underperformers
Team 2 Emperor K (Russia) /TheArchduke (Germany) - us
Team 3 BrickAstley (Rome) /Singaboy (China) – Our main problem
Team 4 Woden (Nubia) / ChevalierMalFet (England) – Builders without a cause?
 
Team 1 Japper (Kongo) /Mikeforall (Khmer) – The possible Underperformers

Japper has finished one PBEM rather badly, PBEM #4 and is playing in PBEM #5. Whilst I am cautious to overinterpret his performance based on a loss and a nascent PBEM, this is all I have. In one word, unfocused.

In PBEM #4 he made the baffling decision of indulging in one off raiding with a longship, but instead of doing this in a serious way with maybe 4-5 ships and focused on one player, he just assumed that the players will let him get away with a bit of raiding here and there. Singaboy did not. One rather nasty detail of his double dow, that even I as England was more worried over Norwegian raiders on my south coast instead of fearing for his survival and stopping Singaboy in a timely manner.

So what did he whilst ruining his diplomatic situation? A settler spam which left him overstretched, underdeveloped and unprepared when a carefully planned and well executed assault of Singaboy came.  His defense against that is underwhelming and prone to the misplays that I myself at one time showed. A panic buy of a useless warrior for his gold reserve, moving precious city defense boosting units out to be killed for little gain. Add to this that Mike seems to be a close friend of Japper, this does not bode well. Either they have tons of chat logs between them, or they are going at this without a plan.

Do check out PBEM #6, it is as baffling as the stuff he pulled in PBEM #4.

With the horse we could also consider an Encampment to get the godlike GG+Horsies combo, heck we could stick it on that sad desert hill for some extra defensive strenght and hardly any loss in yields! I want a Great General this game, time to be the one doing the kicking this time!

Really, you play rome and want to go for a classical GG and horses? Why take Rome if not for the legions. You should play to your strengths as Rome. Which is doing city spam and classical rush with a fall back to Baths for economic development. But if you plan for a GG, where are your encampments? Krill and Jesterfool will get those.

Then later:

Perhaps a bit greedy as a setup, but I need two builders and those two settlers finished to satisfy my economy needs for near future, and most importantly to knock out two fish in Terra to knock out half of Celestial Navigation. Also the 20% experience and +4 combat make us no slough on the war-front either. I wonder what Firaxis was thinking making Oligarghy the better military government than Autocracy (which is more a wonderwhore/capital government) exactly, but oh well play the game as it is not as the designers intended right?

What the heck does he need Oligarchy for? For the settler spam? Their warriors when they fight against barbarians? I would accept it for a quick 5-6 turn kill of an important CS, but if you are in settler spam mode, by god take Classical Republic!

I do not mind playing badly, I did so myself to a huge extent in PBEM #1 and PBEM #2. But Japper does not seem to take any lessons to heart from PBEM #4. A bit of a settler spam, a bit of economy, a bit of military and all without a plan. Now I do post page long exposes when I play a PBEM alone, but I sure as hell have a focused plan lying around.
Sorry for the rant. All in all with their Civ choices they sabotaged a bit of my plan to spam commercial hubs and gets artists with their choice of Kongo. I am confident that we can outproduce by better planning and most especially if a team will be the target of early aggression I am rather confident that they will be that team. They will be our main opposition to churning out Great Artists and Writers with our Lavras.

Their plan seems to be to found a religion and relic spam by murdering their own apostles? I do not like the choice of Khmer, it is a strong Singleplayer civilization to be sure, but Holy Sites on a river with housing? Aqueducts giving more food? Rome does all of this a lot better and has early monuments to boot.
To summarise, let´s hope they are our neighbours.
 
Team 3 BrickAstley (Rome) /Singaboy (China) – Our main problem

Quite in contrast to Japper, Singaboy is a scary opponent. Brickastley is not a newbie to this forum at all, so I would rate this team as rather dangerous.
Singaboy is focused, careful, a planner, tenacious, if at times a little panicky though he recovers quite quickly from those setbacks and if you do not mind me saying holds a bit of a grudge towards me. Granted he was the target of my aggression in PBEM #2 and PBEM #4 with bad results for him, costing him a good leading position and relegating to him former ran.

In both cases though I caught Singaboy with his pants down and distracted. Just look at the meticulous plan for the invasion of Norway.


Beautiful is it not. Add to the fact that Sullla has several times posted in their thread and it seems nowhere else I fear we have the Grandmaster as a dedlurker in that team, we can´t be sure yet, but we will in time.

Brickastley, well he is an oldtimer on the forum not the newbies to PBEM that Woden, Singaboy and to a certain extent I was (just check my CIV IV PBEM track record. Ugh..)
In any case, after some digging, here check out a micro plan:
http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...#pid367410
Scary, ain´t it? Funnily enough apart from that I could not get a good feel for Brickastley as I did not find a PBEM where he shared his thoughts too much which reminds me a bit of myself. Apart from the banter with Bacchus in PBEM #2, though.

So this team like us, did not go for any DLC one trick ponies or experiments, but for two heck of scary civs. Rome will go for culture inspirations and share them with China thanks to their monuments, and China will probably enter full world wonder build mode. If there is a wonder to be had, China will build it, so we will be hard pressed to put our foot on a wonder we really need. So we can safely assume that stuff like Oracle, the Colosseum and maybe Stonehenge will be landed by China.

Team 4 Woden (Nubia) / ChevalierMalFet (England) - Builders without a cause?

Woden and Chevalier. Woden is an excellent builder, he will squeeze every ounce of efficiency out of his civilization timing builds, builders, civic switches for maximum gain. This is also his greatest weakness. Sulllas comment in the main thread is telling, he summaries Oledavy´s analysis:

Oledavy and Chevalier Mal Fet have figured Woden's playstyle out. He'll sit around building things forever, always getting ready for a war that's "20 turns away" and never actually arrives. We saw it in PBEM2, we're seeing it again here. If Woden wants to be successful in one of these games, he needs to get over this passivity and focus more clearly on directing all of his civ's energies towards a single goal. Sitting on the sidelines and waiting for the other players to fall apart is never going to lead to victory.

So, Woden´s strength is his greatest weakness. He is a builder at heart and lacks the decisive aggressiveness to put any advantage he has to use and sail to a win. When forced into wars his performance is disorganized, lacking in focus and defensive. I put down my loss of PBEM #4 mainly at my rather bad decision to ally Woden over Singaboy. He planned a whole game for MGs, builds about 6 off them and gets them killed easily by Oledavy. I may sound a bit complacent, but I am really not expecting Woden to change in this game. But it is a teamgame and he has Chevalier with him.

Chevalier has yet to play a PBEM, but his advice to Oledavy was on point and he could very well be the thorn in Woden´s side to steer him into action. He did an admirable job with Oledavy as his dedlurker, challenging him, analyzing the situation with him. I am curious to see how he influences Woden during this game.

I am not discouting this team, especially Woden will have a scary Empire, but I very much doubt we will see aggressive moves by them, especially early.

Summary

Let us hope we are next to Team 1 and Team 4 and maybe dogpile one of them with Team 3. I think we have a good option to play this is a longterm builder game which will play into our strengths as Cossacks and Uboats (do check them out, they are scary..) will be fueled by our Hansas and Religion for a brutal midgame.

Next up is an analysis of our strength and weaknesses and what I think our plans should be for the opening, midgame and longterm.

[TheArchduke]

Naming Sheme

I will probably go with Rammstein songs, I liked my Queen themed naming sheme in PBEM #4.

Anything you have in mind for Russia?

[Emperor K]

I figured the best way to start this game off is with a bit of an introduction as well as my personal assessment of my experience and skills.

Introduction
I have lurked these forums for many years starting, around the time I bought Civ 4 when it came bundled with the first expansion. I have read Sulla's report's as well as all of the PBEM's for Civ 6 to date. I was dead lurking Krill in PBEM #5 however I think now I have been spoiled and can no longer do that. Don't take this the wrong way I did not mention this at all (completely forgot) and since suboptimal is also dead lurking him I don't think I will be missed.

I have read all of your reports from PBEM #1, #2 and #4.
(On a side note I actually thought you and woden were going to win until his MG's got destoyed, and singaboy stopped your land invasion. Oledavy really had a good sense of woden that entire thread and chevalier now knows this as well like you mentioned.)

Team Analysis 

Team 1 Japper (Kongo) /Mikeforall (Khmer) – The possible Underperformers

Now that I can read Japper's PBEM #5 thread I'll do a bit more research, from what I can tell it sounds like he will continue to under utilize is Civ choice. One thing on this team comp is that I can almost guarantee that they are shooting for Mike to grab Defenders of the Faith and spread it to Kongo. That provides some what of a buffer for them the entire game. Part of me thinks that letting them have it not only takes the pressure off of me trying to grab the first religion, but ensures that no one else will get it. I don't think they would be able to utilize this belief as well as any one else, and it should force any would be invader to bring more troops.

I also don't think we will see there UU's put to any use. They are both early on the tech tree and with the size of the map and the fact that every one is on continents a land invasion become's more difficult. Singaboy pulled this off in PBEM #4, but I don't think teams will be that close to get an attack like that off so quickly.

The Martyr ability only spawns a relic if the unit dies in theological combat. So killing them with military units does not get them a relic from what I understand. So that makes there Civ choices / purposed plan even worse.

I think that our biggest worry with these 2 is if singaboy and brick decide they want Kongo lands for themselves and neither of the other teams can stop them.

Team 3 BrickAstley (Rome) /Singaboy (China) – Our main problem

The one thing that singaboy had going for him in that picture you posted, and the reason that attack went so flawless was the way Japper played. A border city in an MP game and no knowledge what so ever of the area around it as Norway!!!! I mean he was just asking to loose Midgard. That being said I think PBEM #4 highlights how important navy is and singaboy definitely know's that now.

I think any one with him would have been scary but after reading your post it sounds like Brick is just as meticulous as he is. They are going to play insync with each other as you stated and be a major threat. I am at a lose at the moment on how to deal with Rome and China early / mid game other than making sure we aren't the targets. This can backfire though if they take out a neighbor so we will need to watch them as closely as possible.

I agree that it is safe to assume that all ancient / classic wonders are not worth the risk of pursuing so we can plan accordingly. (The colussus and great library may be the only 2 they don't go after. Not that they are all that important but something to keep in mind.


Team 4 Woden (Nubia) / ChevalierMalFet (England) - Builders without a cause?

I don't have much to add to what you said about them. I think with the map setup Nubia's godly UU will see little use. Chevalier knows the importance of the VA though and they may have the idea of woden building (playing to his strong points) while England just ensures that no land army can ever enter there territory.

I think of all the wonders the VA is going to be one that will have much use in this game, and it would be best if you can build it. I don't think we should beeline for it, just keep it in the forefront of our strategy. Of our enemies though I really think that England will be able to put this wonder to use.

Experience


My personal PBEM experience is limited to what I have done in PBEM #6, and this one. I have played several MP games online with varied settings and play games with some of my friends from time to time. They are however much different than PBEM games. Turn times are not long and games are usually wrapped up over the course of a week at max. Also the people I play with do not have the skill and knowledge of this game that it seems PBEM players do so not sure how much that helps me.

I will add that between SP and MP the only victory types I have ever completed were Religious, Domination and Science. I don't know that I have ever built a theater in SP (the ai seems to favor this type of district so I get plenty via conquests) and in MP 1 or 2 is all that I have ever needed. Will be a good change of pace this game.

PBEM #6 has changed the way I play the game though. The amount of time dedicated to each turn really ensures that each turn can be played as optimal as possible given the changing dynamic of the game.

I have however been playing multiplayer games for over 20 years now. Everything for first person shooters to real time strategy to turn based games, so I am well aware of how dogpiles and being leader of the pack can be worse at times than being at the bottom.

I also do not harbor bad feelings so even though in PBEM #6 we are playing under a different setting, regardless of the outcome of that game my sentiments will not carry over into this one.

Strategy - More to come this is the only one that came to mind for the beginning of the game

I am actually going to start a game as Russia after this post to get a feel for how the beginning could play out. I have played several games as Russia when I first bought the game, but could use a couple fresh starts with the updated client (and UI).

HOLY CULTURE - Divine Spark, the culturally holy Russia
This focus is on getting the first larva down asap in my capital regardless of adjacency, grabbing divine spark and getting the first GG with +3 GPP. Ill experiment in a game with no cs to see how fast this can be accomplished. I think I would go scout->settler->larva in this case which would give us the first religion without question. What beliefs to take would be up for grabs. This also gets +2 GPP for all the culture GP's. First research would be Astrology. If we find a natural wonder great if not oh well.

All my posts are just idea's when as I think stuff up. I am not committed to anything and understand how strategies can change from turn to turn.

Well this post is long enough, more to come as we continue to iron out or strategies.

[Emperor K]

I usually name my cities with what ever comes to mind as I build them. If you are going with song names I can follow suite, one of my favorite bands is a band called NOFX, so I can go with that.

[TheArchduke]

Sorry for spoiling you, I followed PBEM # 5 loosely and only dug into his thread as part of my Oppo Research.
Nah, go with your own naming sheme. I just wanted to announce mine.

Strategywise, divine Spark might be the best thing to do. After all you are going to build cultural districts to house those great works as well.

I will try to write another piece on the first couple of turns.

In terms of opponents, I think we seem to be pretty much on the same page.

[Cornflakes]

I saw this in your thread, please confirm:
Emperor K as Russia starts at Egypt location (EAST)
THeArchduke as Germany starts at France location (WEST)

[TheArchduke]

Other way round, Germany EAST, Russia WEST.

[Cornflakes]

Other way round, Germany EAST, Russia WEST.

Got it, thanks for confirming

[TheArchduke]

Specialisation to the extreme is the name of the game.

Basically if I research a tech or a civic you will receive the eureka and inspiration for them and vice versa. This means we should specialize and right from the start.
Our initial split should be that I build the scientific side of the districts, the campus and you the religious. This is immediately followed by a further split alongside you building cultural districts and me commercial ones. Encampments will be my special district which I can squeeze in before Size 7 as well thanks to being Germany. Size 7 means Industrial for me and then harbors, entertainment and what else we need. Not sure there. Harbors and coastal cities should be my affair with my UU in the long run. Entertainment with a Colosseum on your side would be nice, but you can bet your ass that China will rush that.

To that end, we will also try to chase alongside each other in the tech and civic trees. That means one of us builds a builder for Craftsmanship and goes for the early district (you), whilst the other goes for the settler and early empire inspiration. For the cultural districts you should go for a cheap wonder and I should try to go for the Wheel and Games and Recreation. I expect that this point will become moot except for outliers as your culture rate will dwarf mine very soon.

Same on the tech side, one of us goes for the Archery Eureka with early slingers, the other goes for scouting. The one with the slinger goes discipline, kills barbarians and Bronze Working.

So with that in mind:
Germany:
Slinger->Settler->Builder->Warrior (barbbusting)->Campus
Pottery->Writing->Basic worker techs
Russia:
Scout->Builder->Holy Site->Settler
Astrology->Basic Worker Techs

[Emperor K]

Will comment more later.

Plans sounds good, only 2 things stick out that i see as a bit of a problem
Scout->Builder->Holy Site->Settler
I am thinking
Scout->Settler->Holy Site - mostly because there will be nothing for my builder to do except farm the rice. I would rather have a second production queue than a builder standing around. My initial warrior and scout will find city spot #2. I can put some hammers into a builder until i hit size 2. With this being prince I think One warrior can defend 2 cities.
What am I going to do about getting trade routes? Or do you think they are not needed? I should get science and good production to each route I sent to you.