[SPOILERS] Ghostpants buckles up for PB39

[Ghostpants]

password: totalwar
(password comes from my favourite game series as a kid)


If the map is already complete (huge thanks Erwin!), I suppose I should actually make this. I'll have to try to think of a clever title at some point. 

Not really anything to talk about yet, but for any lurkers interested, a little about myself. I found RB as a teenager several years ago now, after getting completely addicted to Sullla's Civ IV reports and devouring them in one weekend. I guess you could say I lived a pretty wild life.   I'll mention that this is my first pitboss and close-to first rtr game. As for my skill level, I'm very confident at emperor and a little sketchy at immortal, which seems on the low end here(?) but that might not be a guaranteed death blow in this game, as there's a couple of other new players. I'll try to keep my thread reasonably up-to-date, except in times of great real-life duress. Uni exams come to mind.   

With that said, if I ever say something ignorant of the multiplayer world, or just plain silly, feel free to come and correct me; in fact, please do! Above all else I figure this game is going to be a learning experience, and lurker interaction is always appreciated. Furthermore, if anyone has any questions about what I'm doing during the game, let loose! 

Some actual planning and thoughts when the leader/civ picks and start come out.

[Japper007]

 As for my skill level, I'm very confident at emperor and a little sketchy at immortal, which seems on the low end here(?) but that might not be a guaranteed death blow in this game, as there's a couple of other new players.

In Civ 4 Single Player difficulty isn't really representative of your multiplayer skill-level. Above Immortal you basically have to play an entirely different game, with all sorts of AI abuse and such, that obviously has no correlation to human opponents at all.

[Erwin]

Your start. Note that the corner tiles and fog will be changed.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

MP advice: Get there first with the most. This is not helpful advice, except that you usually need more units than you think you will. Good luck!

[Ghostpants]

 As for my skill level, I'm very confident at emperor and a little sketchy at immortal, which seems on the low end here(?) but that might not be a guaranteed death blow in this game, as there's a couple of other new players.

In Civ 4 Single Player difficulty isn't really representative of your multiplayer skill-level. Above Immortal you basically have to play an entirely different game, with all sorts of AI abuse and such, that obviously has no correlation to human opponents at all.

Yeah that's true, I think that's the main reason my interest sort of dropped off singleplayer after beating emperor to be honest.




Thanks Erwin! Will post thoughts on the start soon-ish.

[Ghostpants]

About to pick my civ, just to let people know I accidentally clicked on the map thread instead of spoiler thread. Saw Old Harry's name, got scared and left, didn't see anything. Am dumb. Need to be more careful.

[Ghostpants]

Ok this is the last time I have a few minutes to spare for the rest of this week, so I'll try to write a post with some half-baked ideas of what people are going for with their picks.
For any lurkers, what exactly do I need to do to get pitboss working other than what's contained in this thread: http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=7544 .

[Ghostpants]

Well, if anyone gets through this rambling mess, please feel free to tell me why it's all wrong. I'm sure there's plenty of misconceptions here. With that said, here we go.

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Ipecac as Genghis Khan (Agg/Imp) of Zulu: Wow this guy is really going balls to the wall. Hope I don't start next to him. Aggressive impis, imperialistic settlers for quick expansion, this is probably close to the worst neighbour possible. Although impis might not be too useful against protective skirmishers, especially with the nerf...

Wetbandit as Boudica (Agg/Cha) of Mongolia: Yikes. Basically the same thing goes for this guy, only he gets dangerous a little slower than Ipecac. Another highly aggressive combo, with slower expansion but even scarier units! Maybe a lot scarier for me too, since keshiks will eat skirmishers for breakfast regardless of how many promotions I can whack on them, while the same goes for my skirmishers against impis for the most part. With a toroidal map though, I'm guessing I'll have at least 3 neighbours, so a close start to one of these two might be fairly inevitable.

Yuris125 as Saladin (Spi/Pro) of India: Hmm, I really like protective in this mod (theoretically, I've only played one game) for the fast granaries, even though the promotions aren't great. Spiritual seems... fine? I guess. No anarchy is nice, but compared to some of the buffed traits, like aggressive and protective it seems a little lackluster.
As for India, the fast worker seems still very strong, even with the nerf, so that's nice, and to be honest I'm probably still underestimating it's power, since Yuris definitely didn't pick India for the mausoleum! All in all this seems pretty good, although I'm a little less scared by this combo than the first two.

Dark Savant as Churchill (Cha/Pro) of Inca: Aha! Another protective leader! This at least validates my own choice in my head   . So I think protective seems strong as far as expansion goes, and the promotions help a little to protect your gains. Charismatic seems similar to spiritual to me: the happiness is certainly nice to have and the exp boost is fine, it just doesn't really equate to the hammers of expansive/imperialistic or the combined eco/military strength of aggressive. I'm excited to be proven wrong though.      
With the Inca, quechas still seem like a spooky UU, and skirmishers won't be great against them so I need to keep that in mind, but terraces seem like they lose a lot of their power in a game where barracks give culture (and starting with mysticism, Dark Savant seems likely to found a religion) I wonder how similar this will be to his last game... All in all, I'm only a little less intimidated by this than the first two, and quechas make me REALLY not want to have Dark Savant as a neighbour.

Ghostpants as Mao Zedong (Exp/Pro) of Mali: Hey, it's me! So my thinking with picking me leader was that expansive seems an extremely strong trait in rtr, between better worker production (which in the long term equates to better everything production), even with the building discounts being pretty unimpressive (besides maybe the market). So having decided on expansive, I wanted either aggressive or protective to try with it, since they both seem A LOT better in rtr, and the most different (thus the most interesting) to try. Well, Charriu picked Shaka before I could, so that made the decision easy really. These traits should ideally be fantastic at expanding out onto the map, hopefully good enough to cover for my relative inexperience.  
Regarding Mali, the starting techs are really nice (although I'm locked into agriculture first), skirmishers are fantastic for protecting the early expansions (and hopefully make the protective promotions not nearly-worthless), and the nice-to-have mints are fine as well. I'm not sure this is the best I could have picked, but I'm pretty happy with it overall for my goals this game, which will hopefully be elaborated on in a later post.

Charriu as Shaka (Agg/Exp) of Khmer: Shaka was the other leader I was eyeing up, so in a sense it was almost nice to have the decision made for me! I think protective probably edges aggressive out with skirmishers anyway, but I'm not really sure. So, obviously I think Shaka's a great choice for leader.
The Khmer was also an interesting choice, barays are nice but do you really want to be building slightly-better aqueducts when every hammer counts? I'm not so sure. Ballista elephants seem strong though, even with the elphant nerf in rtr. I feel like I must be missing something here, since Khmer was third pick, and to me they seem average in this field at best.

JR4 as Tokugawa (Agg/Pro) of China: Well Toku, you did it. You're not a useless leader anymore!    Actually, you're kinda scary...
I've mostly already covered why I think aggressive and protective are good, so I won't go into that again. With China, I remember Cho-ku-nus being pretty busted in singleplayer where the AI can't handle them, and the pavilion seems pretty not interesting, so I assume cho-ku-nus are the reason to pick China. Well, that and the amazing starting techs. So yeah, I'm scared of CKN's, and don;t want to fight JR4 midgame. 

Lastly, Superdeath as Kublai Khan (Cre/Cha) of Egypt: Kublai seems... weird as a first pick, to say the least. Creative is in line with spiritual and charismatic, fine but not top tier, and so a creative/charismatic leader just seems like a bit of a waste for the first pick. Am I missing something here?  
Egypt is nice though, if just for war chariots that can stomp most anything except a determined spear rush. Monuments seem pretty garbage unless you build stonehenge now that barracks give culture, so I'm guessing superdeath is gonna make a play for that. Starting techs are nice though, like mostly all civs here. It's amazing how much that tiny advantage can give you really. This seems one of the worst combos to me. 

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Alrighty then, that's it! Once I have more time again, I'll try to make another post detailing my personal goals for this game. Might even include some pictures next time 

[Ghostpants]

So, my hopes for this game.
Well, as people can maybe tell from my extremely defensive pick, I'm not particularly planning to win this game (although I won't complain if it happens!). Rather, for my first ever pitboss and second ever RTR game, I just want to survive until the end. Protective and skirmishers both work towards that goal with fairly obvious synergy, and expansive also helps my spread out to actually have something to defend.

I'm playing a VERY early game civ/leader combination, and that suits my goal perfectly. Doubly so, in fact, because between ipecac, superdeath, Dark Savant AND wetbandit's UU's, I'm pretty confident that this game is gonna involve a lot of early bloodshed. Ideally, protective skirmishers will make me a less appealing target than other neighbours of these three (even more ideally they tear into three of the other players and bring everybody down) but worst case scenario, I should be able to mount a fairly competent defense if necessary. Honestly, in a game with only 8 players, I doubt a huge percentage of people will even die, maybe 4 at a high maximum.

So, in order to survive until the end, what exactly do I need to do? Well, step one is expand enough to keep up with the big dogs (I'm primarily thinking of ipecac here; his comments in PB38 and high post count make me expecially scared of him as a player. I look forward to reading his thread and seeing if that paranoia was warranted. As mentioned, my civ leader combo work towards that, and I'm carefully watching OH, THH and Fintourists thread in PB38 to watch how to handle during-expansion aggression if it does come my way.
Step two seems like building a big enough military to make me a non-juicy target, while not building one to big to cripple me with support costs. This is something I always struggled with in singleplayer, so it's especially important for me to make sure I don't go full farmers gambit.
Step three is trying to keep a handle of things diplomatically. One of the things that really interests me about this is the AI Diplo; that is, I'm really curious to see how much people can gain diplomatically this game, or if it really does just all come down to bloodshed. If I can do things like pick wars at the right time, or correctly assess the diplomatic situation between two others and use that to my advantage, I reckon that'll gain a huge advantage. Whether I can actually do it remains to be seen.



The other goal is mostly just to learn. I doubt this is the last pitboss I play, even if it goes REALLY badly, so the more I can get out of this one, the less green I'll be for the next.

So, with all that said, I'm ready for the game!

[WilliamLP]

I'm carefully watching OH, THH and Fintourists thread in PB38 to watch how to handle during-expansion aggression if it does come my way.

Me too! Haha, kidding of course. 

I like your analysis, reading your thoughts reminds me a bit of my first game here (PB11). I'll ded-lurk you from here on out, if you keep up regular posting, but I'm very lightly spoiled. I've seen the other starts but haven't seen the map and have no idea about the shape or character of it. To be safe I won't give any opinionated thoughts about the opening game. (I'm not sure they'd be helpful anyway, lol.)

This lineup makes me wish I'd played this game and chose Industrious!

I like your first-game choice of Mao of Mali, to make sure you will be competitive in early game and also near guaranteeing you won't be someone's early rush choice. And hopefully having two early game accelerators will make up for a lack of late game advantages.

Any consideration to the Skirmisher as an offensive unit?

Are you sure thinking in terms of not losing this (vs what it would take to win vs this field) is your best path to doing well / having fun?

Other than Agri first, any thoughts on your tech order in this one? Are you going to sim this?