[SPOILERS] Rusten prepares to face the music

[Rusten]

No rush. Take your time and enjoy the weekend.

I think Missionaries are important if we found an early religion. Not to spread to our cities but to foreign lands.

It's a given to me that the religion happiness doesn't matter to us ;
Civics can have their use (especially Theocracy, which requires that awkward tech but OR as a standard civic is excellent) ;
Shrine has the most upside. Shrine needs missionaries. 1 per player, let them do the dirty work.

Yes, OR is the main draw actually. OR+monarchy is a natural swap. OR also means that we can train missionaries without meditation/a monastery. These games are very heavy on infrastructure, largely due to the innate defenders advantage and spacious maps. 
Theocracy doesn't come into play for a long time. Sending a missionary to selected civs should be worth yes.

Would you expand on that ? It's not obvious to me.
Meditation opens up the Philo bulb, which can screw... what bulbs ?
What's with CHA and Aesthetics ?

Meditation can potentially ruin astronomy bulb. Possibility of ruining machinery bulb if we need early CoL.
CHA goes well with aesthetics+literature due to the ease of getting 3rd XP level units. If we build the SoZ we can unlock the HE early (possibly without even going to war). That opens up options.

[Rusten]

Also worth adding that non-charismatic require early monarchy and/or calendar before aesthetics. Otherwise they will struggle a lot with the happiness cap. We can afford to delay those techs some extra turns. +2 from trait and possibly +1 from religion.
That gives us the upper hand in a race. The Great Library is nice too and we do have a capital rich with natural hammers.

[Rusten]

Summary of pre-game brainstorming or: How we will win this game if all goes according to plan

No plan survives contact with the enemy, but here's a list of our current tactical and strategical advantages (as I see it). The overarching game plan.

Machinery bulb:
Inland start without fishing. MC is cheap in this mod. Crossbows are a great answer to the beefed up RtR swordsmen on the defense as well as great stack defense in enemy territory. Discourages dogpiles (easier to defend on multiple fronts so we can go attack with less paranoia). Speeds up guilds (knights are great and CAs only add to their strength).
Early religion:
Perfect starting techs means it barely slows the early game. Guaranteed shrine later. Theocracy combined with IMP/CHA may result in important promotions later on (blitz and commando). OR is a strong civic and encourages early forges.
Early aesthetics:
CHA+ SoZ. Early happy surplus (can beeline). Build GL for early machinery bulb followed by GA. Could consider grabbing aesthetics with the Oracle, but I imagine there will be competition for it. Not willing to sacrifice the early game too much for this. Will reassess Oracle timeline after the first ~40 turns.
Madrassa:
~52 hammer library with CHA. The +4 culture will pop borders in no time and win potential "culture wars" where we share border with rivals. If we plant a hill city on a natural border and put crossbows in garrison it will dissuade attacks.
Golden ages:
Easy access to priest slots means it's a piece of cake to start our 2nd GA. Does not require extreme planning or turns of caste. As a result we can possibly do an early 1st GA. A Vassalage+serfdom (on the path to guilds) and possibly theocracy swap together with first GA comes to mind as an option. Prepare UBERmills in advance (RtR watermills and windmills). Run priests during GA for shrine+2nd GA priest.
Imperialistic:
Cheaper settlers free up hammers for wonders and/or working commerce tiles.

Quick IMP expansion into aesthetics+lit wonders into machinery bulb into guilds path. Can eat an "easy" opponent with xbows+siege+swords --> attack a more difficult target with CAs (possibly with tech advantage).

[vandale]

Ah, yes ! I had totally forgotten about the SoZ's extra promotions.
Good point about the Heroic Epic.

It will be very interesting to see what strat resources we have/lack (@ stone & esp. marble).

Thanks for the summary. It's useful and seems pretty accurate to me, in the grand scheme of things.
Cheap Madrasa... I had forgotten about that as well.

I'd love it if we could wage some culture wars. I'd love it ! I'm a total Theatre / Monastery freak.
When you start going after the Sistine Chapel, you also get that extra incentive to go Sankore, Minaret, AP... It's unlikely we will have the necessary city count by then, though. Would need like... 15 ? So... a successful Classical Era war ? Eeek... Seems like a long shot.

Any thoughts on Banking vs Liberalism ? Banking might be a better tech target. The building is very strong (no gold trades, possible shrine). Mercantilism is a choice civic, too.
Banking is a natural fit after Guilds.
Feudalism is also a very strong tech that could/should be prioritized heavily. Certainly before Paper. Not sure at what point exactly, though. Longbows rule and there are civics again.

^ Mentioning those techs, I'm not sure going after Music is reasonable by any means.
I have my doubts about going for religion and then the Oracle on top. I feel the religion should be a sufficient commitment.

Banking has been a central tech in many an Always War game.

[Rusten]

Yeah banking is best.
Following the outlined plan we'll have a big empire with a lot maintenance (low slider) making banks a must have.
Also don't think we can compete with a philosophical civ gunning for liberalism.
Feudalism is needed for guilds anyway, so it's clear that we'll make it a priority.

Oracle wouldn't be a big tech commitment. Priesthood is only 100 beakers and gives a pre-req bonus to writing. Certainly a feasible tech target after the initial improvement techs (hunting, AH, wheel, pottery, etc). But chances are it's gone by then, that's why I'll reassess timeline later. I'm not sacrificing early cities for it.

I agree that music seems too expensive. We have other priorities at the time.

[vandale]

Replay this opening and tell me what you think:

Poly-mining-bw
Worker-warrior-warrior (part)-size 4 (exact food) worker-settler
2nd worker is made using flood plains over ivory for a few turns in order to speed up BW by 1 turn (no wait after mining hill).

Actions: farm-farm-mine-mine (both workers)-double chop

T33 first settler (one of the later ones), but overall development looks okay. Especially if 2nd city goes to corn.
T35 2nd settler. I quite like it.

I'd also be interested to hear what you think about size 4 settler-worker (everything else the same). Results in T29 settler but less flexible.

EDIT: I'd also like to hear your thoughts on growing to 5 (completing warrior with a lot of overflow) and then going worker-settler. I think there might be a way of getting T34+T36 settlers there with precise micro (I'd need to replay to check). T35+36 is easy.

I replayed that opening and toyed around a bit.
I like that growth from size 3 to 4 takes only 2 turns.
I dislike that you're stuck on a single Warrior. I feel that's prohibitive.
I agree it feels better to double up the workers to improve the second mine quicker.

Growing to size 5 is interesting. Growth from 4 to 5 takes 3 turns, which is loooong.
But the worker then takes 1 less turn to complete. And you get the extra warrior. I need to look into it more.
I worry that the more we test this single city thing, the higher we grow Mecca and the more we delay the first settler.
ex : growth to 5 brings in a lot of commerce but just getting an earlier trade route makes up for it.

I quite miss the worker at size 2. But it loses its whole point with such delayed Mining + BW.

Whatever the timing of Bronze Working : I think it's worth it to have the 2nd worker online by then.

Poly vs Med :
- to me, there's no way to predict whether other players would chase Buddh or Hindu. It's a coin flip. I don't think Poly is "safer" than Med ;
- I'm not sure Litterature is a valid reason to favour Poly over Med (such a long way) ;
- Poly delays BW some more ;
- Only real advantage I see is that we can afford the 11 turns worker with Poly ; and that might be reason enough to chase Hindu.
// I've thought about balancing starts :
A reason to provide a player with a Plains hills incense city tile would be that they lack a high commerce tile in their capital's BFC
--> we might be doing more bpt than other players on t0 ;
--> some of them will have gold tiles but it wouldn't affect a religion race.


I really want to see the location for city 2, now. Planning to share the corn before even scouting feels wrong.

[Rusten]

I'd be surprised if it's not a riverside PH start with a calendar resource for everyone.
-encourages SIP (balancing maps where people are likely to move around is very difficult).
-speeds up the repetitive early game (the extra +1 commerce helps balance out the tech costs from huge).
-Only 2 players picked financial and there were plenty of opportunities to pick it. Of the two players who picked it 1 is new to PB and the mod (may not have read the patch notes) and the other is very casual.

I favour polytheism over meditation. You forgot about the astronomy bulb block (big tech in MP). After having thought about the pros and cons of medi/poly I don't consider poly safer anymore -- I simply consider it stronger. 140ish beakers saved towards literature can be significant in a 25 player game.

I'm not ruling out settling elsewhere, but there's no way around the fact that settling with corn in BFC is extremely strong. So strong that it's almost certainly the play.
-once we start settler/worker production in Mecca we are unlikely to want to grow again until granary/pottery.
-for a newly settled city the +6 FPT from turn 1 is INSANE.
-for our capital the corn barely beats a riverside mine while producing settlers.
-the location of corn is very flexible despite being in 1st ring (7 possible city spots).
-with early religion and trade connection we will get the border pop for free which means settling another resource in 2nd ring isn't a problem.

We can probably sit back and wait for the game to start at this point. Not much else to be done until we see more of the map. Hopefully it's still on track for next weekend.

[vandale]

Ok, agreed @ Poly vs Med. Easy border pop in city 2 is nice indeed. Med also has that drawback that it delays Mecca's growth by a turn.
Between the rice and the corn, chances are high, true enough, that we can claim another food source, all while sharing some grain from Mecca.


You might just be right about the incense. This game will last long enough. No need to prolong the early game for everybody.

[Rusten]

Are you around on the 19th and possibly the 20th to cover for me in case I can't play? If not then it'd be nice to have a lurker on standby.

I'm going to Kiev on the 19th. I'm renting an apartment with internet and all I need to play, but you never know with these things, there could be complications.

[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.