dtay pb38 [spoilers]

[dtay]

Thanks!

[dtay]

So this start is both mildly interesting and boring. Boring in the sense that I'm pretty sure the base-case optimal path (meaning no tricks or gimmicks, just explore-expand as efficiently as possible) is pretty obvious for the first 50 turns or so. I have a good 2nd city site to the SW that can have 4 first-ring food (not quite as OP as it sounds, since i'm including like plains-hill sheep as "food"). The pretty much no-tradeoff good path at least extends to worker -> size 2 + 14/15 warrior-> worker -> settler.

Screenshot of what I'm talking about:




The real (only mild) puzzle is as follows. The 4f city requires all 3 food-techs. Also roads are nice. I would love to NOT research a food tech, and contest for Judaism, Oracle, or raw-MC* instead (I mean, not permanently instead, just sooner). How efficiently can I run pretty-great city 2 WITHOUT the techs it needs, and is it worth it? Ignoring AH? Seems ok, the deer tile will just be a GH-mine in the meantime. What about ignoring Ag? What about ignoring wheel? What about ignoring ALL of them? Probably won't sim this at all for a bit yet, but that's the question I'm left with.

*These are the early game gimmicks/rushes (+ stonehenge except I'm Agg) I think are actually worth it in the true "opening" (in a game of this size). Religion first I just don't think actually results in wins**, especially when the field is large and people are liable to do strange things. Mids and GHL are v good, but I don't think worth thinking about until you're in the 2nd phase of the game (and are more meaningfully helped by Ind). If someone else wants to land it before then good for them, and their neighbors got lucky. Warrior/Ax/Archer/Chariot rushes are mostly I think straight up a bad idea.*** I think that covers all the obvious early-game things to roll dice on?

**I think more often than not either results in tasty food or rump/small states that can keep up in tech and therefore successfully last to the late game with little chances of winning, since you probably have to delay the initial worker to get the religion in a game this large.

***Of a capital. Doing it in response to someone settling up on you in sometimes but not always a good idea.****

****Man this post has a lot of asterisks*****

*****I could rewrite it to have reasonably flow but at this point I think it's funny

[RefSteel]

Thanks for posting your thoughts, dtay! On the boring aspect, do you think there's anything the mapmakers could have done to make it more interesting, or is it just in the nature of a 25-player game as Agg that the bog-standard opening is best? (Your list of early game gimmicks and rushes seems to suggest you think one is unworthwhile in a game this size, another doesn't fit Agg, two others have to wait, and the last is bad because you are playing FFA Civ4, but I may have missed your point.)

Also, I grinned at the footnote chains.*

*I admit I was hoping you would go into more detail in one of the last two footnotes about why/when rushing someone who pink dots you is sometimes-but-not-always a good idea, but the joke was appreciated nonetheless.

[dtay]

Nah not a map-maker thing (and hell, I haven't unfogged half the surrounding terrain so who knows).

I think really the more fundamental point, is the first 40-60 turns of any civ game are pretty straightforward unless you decide to do something unusual, and maybe this setup is 1z more straightforward than normal. While you can certainly play more or less optimally, the differences aren't THAT big between "reasonable" and "best" most of the time. It is I think nearly inevitable that the game only really gets interesting after that, when you start having to make tall vs wide tradeoffs, pick which classical tech path you want to follow, have to at least devote some attention to interacting with other players, etc. So my comment is really mostly reducible to "my start is not easily amenable to one of the gambit plays". Shrug.

Re: pink dots, I think basically there are ish 4 things I would think about when deciding whether to challenge a pink dot:

1) How much does it hurt you vs the field, as opposed to vs the specific player. Losing a tactical advantage against 1 guy is whatever. Annoying, but you'll live (well, maybe). Letting someone found a city that means your equilibrium civ-quality 80 turns in will be meaningfully worse than the field is far less acceptable. So for example - if someone steals "your" land, but you can in turn just send your settler aggressively in a different direction and "steal" someone else's land, then the pink dot is less of a big deal. But if their settlement pins you in, you basically have to fight it to be relevant in the game, and one of the better times to fight it is probably immediately.

2) Strat resource disparity - obvious, though probably less important than commonly thought (archers it turns out defend pretty well, and archery is cheap in RtR).

3) How much it hurts the other guy - basically hurting them a moderate amount is the worst. You either want to fight wars where both sides can call it off while still maintaining a theory of victory (e.g. - take some islands off someone), or fight wars where the other guy will be left dead / a rump state (e.g. take everything EXCEPT some islands off someone).

4) Opponent Quality - if someone is good I'm more likely to call it, due to combination of (a) higher probability I think they'll be rational about it and not just throw away their game to spite (b) lower probability I could just out develop them and take their whole civ anyway at HA or knights or w/e.

[RefSteel]

That makes a lot of sense - thanks very much for the detailed explanations!

[BRickAstley]

Nah not a map-maker thing (and hell, I haven't unfogged half the surrounding terrain so who knows).

I think really the more fundamental point, is the first 40-60 turns of any civ game are pretty straightforward unless you decide to do something unusual, and maybe this setup is 1z more straightforward than normal. While you can certainly play more or less optimally, the differences aren't THAT big between "reasonable" and "best" most of the time. It is I think nearly inevitable that the game only really gets interesting after that, when you start having to make tall vs wide tradeoffs, pick which classical tech path you want to follow, have to at least devote some attention to interacting with other players, etc. So my comment is really mostly reducible to "my start is not easily amenable to one of the gambit plays". Shrug.

Obviously there's two solutions to this:

1. Find a way to skip/mass-sim the first 50 turns of a game
   
2. Rebalance/mod the game to have good tradeoffs from turn 1
   

[Krill]

Or play classical era start.

[scooter]

Or play classical era start.

This. I'm genuinely surprised ancient start is still the norm around here after how great some of the later era start games have been. They're considerably more fun.

[Krill]

I even changed the starting units for classical in line with a rough idea of trait balance. I thought others would give it a go by now. It just cuts the first 45 turns off the game.

[BRickAstley]

should'a pushed it harder during game creation process.

I have some ideas for a total conversion mod (probably for 6) with a goal of a game with a (functionally) later era start, and an estimate lifecycle of game being ~100 turns. Just need the time to coalesce and plan and start coding.....

Dtay sorry for the thread derail