[SPOILERS] naufragar is in for a penny

[naufragar]

Let's stir the pot.

[Cornflakes]

Let's stir the pot.

Your post is borderline for a no-diplomacy game that has essentially begun already. You should not be posting things publicly which might have an impact on the other players in-game actions.

[naufragar]

Apologies. Deleted.

[naufragar]

The pairings are up. I'm going with a whole "Judge not lest ye be mortally embarrassed." I imagine lurkers will have plenty of sharp commentary from people who actually know what they're talking about to choose from. Honestly, it's a testament to RtR than none of the leader/civs we have seem bad. Some thoughts out loud.

Imp was the most popular, with 8 representatives. Fin and Phi were the least, with two each. I'm kind of surprised we don't have more philosophers running around. Mackoti is Imp/Phi (because of course he's Imp) and that seems like a solid combo. The only other is The Black Sword incarnating Pericles. (I think Phi will turn out to be quite good, if you trust yourself to develop on pace with neighbors with less help.) There are only three Ind leaders in this 25 player game. I guess everyone just thought they weren't going to bother competing for wonders and this left the field open? Dreylin is Roosevelt (Ind/Org) of Vikings, whom I thought was the obvious choice for Great Lighthouse winner, until I read the next group. OT4E & Chumchu are Qin Shi Huang (Ind/Pro) of Carthage, which also kinda looks like a Lighthouse pick. I suppose Org is more directed at the Lighthouse and Pro can go a bunch of ways. I mentioned my fondness for Augustus (Ind/Imp) before, and I hope Shallow Old Human Tourist (SOHT?) demonstrates his many virtues with Persia. Given the talent concentrated in their steering committee, I'm sure they will. Persia doesn't start with mysticism, so I suspect they'll go for the Pyramids. Pyramids plus Imp settlers? That'd be neat.

Lastly, this one: GermanJoey - Charlemagne (Imp/Pro) of Mongolia. Whelp. That's as unsubtle as it is terrifying. This basically announces to the world that GermanJoey is going to expand as fast as he can to the point of crashing while teching to keshiks and then eating a neighbor or two to put himself back in the black. If we see him nearby, we build lots of extra spears and pray.

Lastly lastly, spacetyrantxenu is Hatshepsut (Cre/Spi) of Greece. I don't know why, but I love this pick. Forget the haters. Grow big beautiful cities with lots of land and happy.

Edit: I didn't intend to talk about even all the picks I did, but here's one more. 13) 2metraninja - Napoleon (Cha/Org) of the Aztecs. Org with Aztecs is fun (one of a few of my favorite things. See first page). Is Charismatic good or bad here, though? I could see the argument for good: you can slave even harder with the extra happy cap and given enough food you can just whip and whip and whip. The argument for bad is that the Aztec's altar already reduces whip unhappy, so one gets less out of Charismatic. Hmm. I could be swayed either way.

[naufragar]

The players are obviously thankful Ref posted the history of the draft. The lurkers too are probably going to get a kick out of all the attempted mindreading by the players.

So, for your amusement, here I try to read minds. I said that OT4E + Chumchu could be another contender for Great Lighthouse, but now I'm not so sure. They went Ind/Pro first and rejected Germany. Perhaps they just rejected Germany because it's UU and UB are inconsequential. More likely, their food isn't unlocked by Hunting. They then rejected England (Mining/Fishing), so I assume their food is Agricultural. They then drew Carthage, which has England's techs. This means those techs can't be the techs they wanted. They might not even have a water start. If they are non-coastal with grains, that's really a rough deal. Cothons are great, and Pottery will be cheaper due to pre-reqs, but that's about the only positive spin I can put on it. So, my crystal ball says TGL will be built by Dreylin instead.

Now for an example where I fail to read minds. Elkad picked Shaka (Agg/Exp) of Korea (Mining/Myst) in the first round. Both are good separately, but I don't know what to do with them together. Korea has trouble founding a religion early because it wants a food tech. Expansive + Mysticism/Mining is probably pretty good at winning Stonehenge, but that's not something Agg leaders need so badly. So, I don't know what this pairing does. I do know, however, that Elkad has a plan for it (not just based on the principle that it's safer to assume your opponents are crafty rather than foolish). First, he's a vet, so he knows his way around a pick list. Second, this was locked in during the first round. That tells me there was some eagerness to it, otherwise he could've fiddled with the combo in the later rounds. I'm interested in what the plan is, but I don't know if I'll be able to figure it out.

Miscellaneous thoughts now. It looks like BGN and Commodore have been listening to Krill wax poetic in PB37 about the beauties of Boudicca's swordspeople, and they want to try it out themselves (with Agg/Cha Swords ~= Cha Praets). Having my way to vanilla civ4 via FFH, I am 100% for super promo'd units. And I think I figured out why I like Xenu's Hatshepsut of Greece pick. In the mid-game, he's going to have a whole bunch of very big cities running caste safely and he's going to get there on the back of free border pops and outstanding axemen.

My crystal ball is used up. I look forward to laughing at just how off base I was in the future, but hey, it's something to think about besides micro. (Is one improved tile in a two city empire too much or too little? Asking for a friend.)

Edit: Korea is not Mining/Myst. I'm an idiot, and Shaka/Korea is a phenomenal combo.

[Coeurva]

Hi, here's your MapCad-generated sandbox to help you plan your opening. You'll need to have RtR 2.0.8.4 installed. If something doesn't work as it should, let me know.

[naufragar]

Thanks Coeurva, mapmakers, and GermanJoey. Your rivers are much prettier than mine.

Do the forums scale pics based on browser size? Test below.



Do the forums scale pics in spoiler tags?

Would hate to have to manually resize the pics to blurry hell and back like the screenshot on the first page, but it looks like they do.

[Coeurva]

There is a [screenshot] tag. I think it defaults to a different size and allows readers to click the image to enhance it.

[naufragar]

Thanks. I'll start using the screenshot tag.

Question for the lurkers: In pitboss, are the beakers for the first five turns stored? As in, can I not commit to a starting tech until turn 5?

(We are 99.9% going Bronze Working first, but I'd like the flexibility in case some wacky start comes to mind.)

Using the screenshot tag, here's turn 25 from my 2.0.8.3 sandbox. I'll switch to Coeurva's once the game begins, I think.




To reach this point, I've made some questionable decisions. For example, we do chop out a warrior before we start on our first settler, and on turn 26 we probably start this unholy mining/whip combo with both workers stacked but doing different tasks! I'm also already paranoid about my defense. I don't think we'll see a lot, if any, warrior rushes, but I honestly think they are more useful than the current RB meta grants. (Again, apologies for baiting in the tech thread.) As you can see by turn 25, I only have the one. If I die to a warrior rush, so be it; it'd be hilariously ironic if nothing else.

[RefSteel]

Question for the lurkers: In pitboss, are the beakers for the first five turns stored? As in, can I not commit to a starting tech until turn 5?

My understanding is this: If you end the first few turns with no tech selected, the game saves up the beakers to be poured into whatever tech you first select. BUT! If you wait one turn too long to select your tech, the game automatically selects a tech for you and dumps all your saved-up beakers into that. It is unlikely to be the tech you want. Moreover, Pitboss appears to be inconsistent with Single Player about the turn on which this occurs. Do the beakers go into the game-selected tech at EoT5? At the end of the fifth turn? (So EoT4?) At the start of the 5th turn (so EoT3?) I'm not sure, and players have been bitten by this before; again, it seems to happen sooner in Pitboss than in SP for reasons that are mysterious to me. Choosing a tech on/by T3 should be safe as far as I know though. (Note I've never logged into an RtR Pitboss game though, and I've never delayed selecting techs in MP; I'm mostly recalling these facts from ancient BtS Pitboss threads.) Errr ... so I hope that's sort of helpful?