TheArchduke in a critical Role as Scotland

[TheArchduke]

Players beware!

[TheArchduke]

TheArchduke	Alhazard	Rowain	Woden	Suboptimal
Gorgo	Poundmaker	Peter	Victoria	Gandhi
Cleopatra	Shaka	Chandragupta	Montezuma	Gitarja
Robert the Bruce	Catherine	Theodore Roosevelt	Alexander	Lautoro
Hojo	Seondeok	Gilgamesh	Jadwiga	Wilhemina
Pericles	Harald	John Curtin	Pedro	Genghis Khan

 
 
My choice this time, is once again very limited. I only got one! R&F leader In quotes is my PBEM 11 analysis.

   

Cleopatra for Egypt.

Egypt has a very, very strong UU which is seriously hampered by the fact of its (still) ridiculous production cost. It still costs double the amount of a chariot and has no melee strength. I mused about doing a horseman – maryannu chariot archer attack, or even a warrior (oligarchy) supported maryannu push.
Anything else? A river specific district and wonder bonus which is alright, if you got the rivers and a boost to trade routes which gives maybe +4 gold per trade route, the idea here is that others want to trade with you for food and you get gold. Because that is gonna happen.
The Sphinx is a faith build for a civ which has no incentive to go for religion.
 
True variant play if you ask me. The bonuses are all over the place and the Maryannu archer is just way to expensive. The right play in CIV VI is always build cheap units or chop them out and upgrade them.

So, is my analysis changed in any way from my PBEM 11 self? I am not seeing it. Chopping has been nerfed but that does not make Cleopatra significantly better, only a bit.
But the Maryannu is still an overpriced piece of equipment. It is an ancient war machine (No GG, if Egypt could ever get one.) It boast 25 melee/35 ranged to a crossbow 30 melee/40 ranged. It is very powerful. But at its production cost you can build 2 archers (same upkeep, more units). It is however quick.
So the Maryannu is not gonna save Cleopatra. +15% production to Wonders and Districts is way more important thanks to chopoverflows being gone.  Sphinx is a faith build, and you can use faith more useful stuff then a religion. Think Golden Age Monumentality. Trade Routes are also a thing, +4 gold is substantial and money becomes more and more the apparent problem in later wars.
Without chop overflows crunching military earlier then later becomes even more of a given. I dunno. I could do Egypt for the novelty factor and hit myself for choosing it.

   

Gorgo of Greece

With a special district on the weakest district (cultural) the boost make the districts viable and thus a strong incentive to go culture heavy, augmented by the ability to drink culture from the corpses of your enemies. The wildcard policy is the cherry on the top, a very strong choice. The hoplite has become bearable from useless thanks to the agoge useable on them.
 
A very strong choice and I have to redeem myself with Greece for my terrible PBEM #2 performance.

Greece has it all, a culture bonus for combat, a wildcard slot for more flexibility and a discounted district (The Acropolis) which arguably is less useful than other ones. The Hoplite is underwhelming as melee units are boosted against him as he is a anti-cavalry unit. The combat bonus just equalizes this. With Agoge in place you can produce them but they are an ancient unit, so no boost by a GG. I fail to see how Greece can do an early expansion war. What is surprisingly strong is the added envoy for an finished Acropolis, something which enabled a firm lock on Geneva in a past PBEM, which is also worth something. Gorgo is in consideration.

   

Pericles of Greece
The weaker cousin of Gorgo. Viable if you land him and not Gorgo on a civ pick. Else, take Gorgo. 

Nothing to add here. Pick Gorgo. You want frontloaded boosts, not something passive and longterm especially as CS are mostly roadkill or heavily contested. A true SP leader in my humble opinion.

   

Hojo Tokimune of Japan

Despite the strong performance by Oledavy in PBEM #4 Japan is actually okish?
The Meiji Restoration adjacency bonus is really not enough to write home about, where Japan shines is half cost Holy Sites, Encampments and Theater Squares, basically enabling you to shoot for an early GG, Religion like Greece. With enough water, your shores are strengthed by +5 CS. The Samurai? Worthless, you can not upgrade into it. Electronics Factory, I have yet to see an industrial/modern era stuff be worthwhile.
 
Quite appealing with more water. Better choices in a snake pick abound.

So, where are we with Hojo. The district boosts and the chops that are gone mean Hojo has become vastly stronger compared to before. The bonus to coast and shallow water fights are more meaningful on a water map. On a continents map this will support amphibious landings, which we never had. It was however a decisive edge on an Archipelago map.
The Electronics factory? Bah, most games are over until it comes. Also who knows what Firaxis is doing with energy in the late game.
The Samurai is not on an upgrade path and thus totally useless. And I mean totally. You can not crunch out that much production for a semi-decent unit on a tech which is already in a bad part of the tree.

   

Robert the Bruce of Scotland 

First off you can declare a War of Liberation. This is actually a useful trait as there is no clear upside to an Always War Dow that Persia, Australia or Chandragupta´s India invite.
If you are the target of a War of Liberation you have to see it coming. So this could actually see some use, but is highly situational and nothing to rely upon.

The Highlander although strong on paper is an upgrade to the scout of all things. A Ranger class unit you do not have the excellent promotions of War Cry or Tortoise available which shine in any player vs player war. Whilst the idea of a mass cheap scout build upgraded to a Range appeals to me that is something I would have tried on dry land. (Once again blame the PBEM #8 draft for not seeing a Highlander attack on another player)

No the strength here lies in +1 and freaking +2 GS (which really push your science ahead) and the same bonus on GE that happy and ecstatic cities get.
This is a really strong bonus. Divine Spark pushes that so your ecstatic cities produce +4 Great Scientists points which is insane! [img=15x15]file:///C:/Users/THMITT~1/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.gif[/img] 

In any case, you basically lock down the game´s GS for your civ, with the GEs as a quiet but nice bonus by going with fewer cities that you can keep happy, making entertainment districts, the Temple of Artemis and the Collosseum much more worth it. And not overexpanding.

Complemented by the golf course, which unlocks not too late in the game to matter.

Given that I have played aggressively enough, Scotland would be a lockin on a land-based map.

So, is Scotland still a lockin? Well, the GS advantage is freaking huge. Happy is a city with +1 amenity. This is easily doable, especially if you opt for fewer cities. This is the only civ where a tall, space race play style is really encouraged and something I could try to pull off in MP.
Great Engineers are not that all great and situational, but still given that you are getting them way quicker than the rest, they could prove more useful.
The golf course is useful and ties into keeping your cities happy.
Scotland would lend itself to a tall playstyle, where a Temple of Artemis or a Collosseum could very, very valuable indeed. The Highlander is underwhelming. It comes in way too late and I would need to establish a scout storage somewhere to take advantage of it. Or build zounds of them quickly.
The thing is I need to defend my tall empire and outbuild the other players, something which honestly, everyone else seems to be better at.

[TheArchduke]

So. Now that we reviewed our options I rank them in the following way:

1.) Robert (Novelty and Builder)
2.) Gorgo (Just good)
3.) Cleopatra (Could be fun to take them for a serious spin)
4.) Hojo (Water is needed to really shine imo)
5.) ...
6.) Pericles

And now, the other players:

Alhazrad

I can quickly rule out Harald and Catherine because his other choices are very strong. He is spoilt for choice.

Shaka for an aggressive GG supported playstyle, although his bonuses are actually not that good. (Mongolia and Macedonia are better in that regard imo)
Seondeok for an awesome science game which would clash with my Scotland game if I choose Robert.
Poundmaker is decent. He can be strong, but Seondeok is much better.

Seondeok is most likely.


Rowain

Very difficult to read Rowain is. Not that many posts to work on, but leaderwise wow, what awesome choices:

Chandragupta, aggressive India, war of territorial expansion with Military Training and Varus. If Rowain was an aggressive player which judging from his games and Sumeria performance he is not, this would be the prime choice.
Hell it would be my prime choice.
Peter is awesome, but Vanilla and Russia has been played often by now.
Theodore can not do anything better then the others. Gilgamesh Rowain did and did not use him properly at all. John Curtin is the builders option.

John Curtin is most likely, with Chandragupta closely following.


Woden

Woden is a builder at heart. I think I can rule out Montezuma and Alexander that way. So the question is Jadwiga, Victoria and Pedro. Woden is as me not spoiled for choice. Victoria I would take on a seabased map but she is a valid choice nontheless. Monty and Alex are awesome for me, but not Woden. Pedro has underwhelming bonuses and MGs just come in too late to matter, just as. Oh I just noticed, Woden did Brazil before. Jadwiga or Victoria, with an unlikely Monty. Personally I think Jadwiga is totally underwhelming as is any religious civ which has no bonus to getting a freaking religion.

Victoria, with Jadwiga closely followed.


Suboptimal

Suboptimal has a win under his belt and has been on the receiving end of a nasty war. He is a lot more experienced by now and a highly analytical player. Dangerous indeed. His warfare still needs polishing so he will play to his strengths by buildering. So. Ghandi is an option, Gitarja without a water map, hmm. Wilhelmina can be strong, but has a boat UU as well. I think the choice is between Lautoro and Genghis Khan. I am not seeing Suboptimal going Mongol Horde and Lautaro is a monster.
+10 CS against Golden Age Civ is DotF in reverse on the offensive and defensive. A culture building early on to boost your culture. And threatening the loyalty of others. My absolute choice if I had gotten it.

Lautoro, absolutely.

[TheArchduke]

So now if we check over:

We will most likely play against

Korea, Australia, England and Mapuche.

2 super builders, a semi builder and an aggressive civ.

Does this change or inform what we want to do. My strength definetly does not lie in building but aggression, but I have no really aggressive civ, except Gorgo.
All those choices are not religious which could make Cleopatra interesting but with a premade map, floodplains to use are unlikely. If I can snatch Divine Spark I could run a monster Robert. Hmmm.

I am heavily leaning towards Scotland and finally get my inner builder on. This is the game to do it. Or do a very brave Cleopatra game.

[Ituralde]

Love your analysis.

My last R&F game was with Robert and I found him to be much more powerful than I expected.
Would love to see what you do with him. Either way I wish you good luck and an awesome game!

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Echoing Ituralde, Robert basically monopolizes great people. I've seen even the AI get absurd science numbers with him. Stacking Divine Spark on top of that? Woof!

[TheArchduke]

2 very quick notes for Robert.

Yeah, I would probably regret not taking him, again.

I will take Robert the Bruce. Egypt is too risky and I played Greece before.

Scotland for me.

[TheArchduke]

As my gameplay has been rather lazy in PBEM 11 and

after a strong start I sort off let infrastructure slide in PBEM 12 (which will probably will bite me in the ass as well).

Not again, or so I hope. So some random thoughts:

Districts discounts and chopping

With the expansion coming around February, chop overflows will be gone, for good.
This means that the overpriced districts which plague CIV VI will be even more costly. This also means I need to brush up on the district discount formula.
Cornflakes has put it very nicely in his post off PBEM 11: http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...#pid674731
The gist of it we want to lay down districts ASAP. Every tech and civic we have before we put down a campus makes it more expensive. There are ways to get districts down without chopoverflow which involve Magnus, Reyna or other useful ideas and I will get to them later.

Scout, Slinger or Warrior first

Funnily enough, I agree with Cornflakes in PBEM 11 as well. Warrior first seems just straight up better. There are no goody huts to choose from. Scouting needs open terrain to be truly effective and you can keep barbarians at bay and escort a quick settler or ravage a CS that much faster. The slinger is a weak unit, especially at the start and the one eureka can be safely ignored and is most of the time a damn pain to achieve.

Score tracking and staring

I am doing a woeful job of keeping appraised of the happenings in the game and the amount of information that Rho, Cornflakes and others are able to gleam from the scoreboard are bluntly told, scary to behold. I need to do better here.

Early war on my CS

No amount of goodies from a CS is worth the amount of early game boost that you can get from a quick murder of a CS. This has been shown consistently and my warrior first strategy comes into this. We want to milk the CS early and murder it. Exceptions? Geneva or Stockholm.

How to get districts

Well, there seems to be only the hard way to do districts by now. No chop overflows means that the district discount formula and the early districts became MUCH more attractive. Rayna has an option to buy them and I will push hard for that option after a doubledip in Magnus. Still from playtesting this week it is rather expensive (800-1000 gold) Still quicker then building it especially if I am peaceful.

Early tech

   

To take advantage of Scotland´s strengths I will bumrush Pottery->Writing->Currency->Apprenticeship at the expense of anything else and lay down Campuses, Commercial Hubs and Industrial Zones in my early cities.
AH, Mining, Irrigation will be done only if necessary for an important resource. Let´s hope I do not need the early improvement. For defensive purposes we will do chariots or Horseback Riding and Horseman if 2 horses are available. Else a mass of archers. No Bronze Working, no Astrology, no Celeastial Navigation and no Cultural Districts for as long as possible.

Early expansion

My early expansion will be extremely limited until I can get apprenticeship. I want at most 3 cities, maybe one even a conquered CS and try to reach size 7 as quickly as possible. I will ignore a possible gov district as long as possible and try to get it at size 10.

Happiness

I will need either Temple of Artemis or Colosseum to really take advantage of Scotland. ToA will be easier to do with some good Magnus choppage, Colosseum is a fallback if I do not have a camp.

Peace not War

No aggression whatsoever till we hit our stride, this game should and will be used to try to build my way to victory. War will be only used as a last resort.
As the lurkers will probably find this unrealistic, I resolved to write this down 100 times so I manage this.

Make Peace, not War. Make Peace, not War. Make Peace, not War. Make Peace, not War. Make Peace, not War.....

Well, you get the idea.

[TheArchduke]

So now if we check over:

We will most likely play against

Korea, Australia, England and Mapuche.

2 super builders, a semi builder and an aggressive civ.

Does this change or inform what we want to do. My strength definetly does not lie in building but aggression, but I have no really aggressive civ, except Gorgo.
All those choices are not religious which could make Cleopatra interesting but with a premade map, floodplains to use are unlikely. If I can snatch Divine Spark I could run a monster Robert. Hmmm.

I am heavily leaning towards Scotland and finally get my inner builder on. This is the game to do it. Or do a very brave Cleopatra game.

Well,

Alhazrad is playing Korea. Expected.
Rowain took Australia. Predicted.
Suboptimal actually took Indonesia. I think not taking Lautaro is a mistake. His +10 CS is rather nasty, but it seems Suboptimal took the builder choice of his draft. For that I would have gone Wilhelmina.
But oh boy:
Woden took Macedonia. If Woden would have taken Victoria or Jadwiga we would have a builderfest. This is out of the window. Only Australia has the easy way out with its +100% defense. No Greece, Poland or Jadwiga to spoil him his GGs. Which means I can kiss my buildergame goodbye if Woden is my neighbour. This reinforces that cities need to be in defensive positions.

If Macedonia is next to me, well this would be interesting. I think a couple of people would be more then happy to see me stave off an attack by Macedonia after PBEM 6. I am excited.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Your start:

Just kidding, here's the real one.