[SPOILERS] Charriu, chumchu, and Magic Science in Pitboss 45

[Hollybombay]

Got a tier list for the lurkers?

[Charriu]

I would have one, but I was holding back to let Magic have the honor. Also I am more concerned with getting the game started right now. :D

[Magic Science]

I assume your trip is in July, correct? Shouldn't be a problem, especially because the game hasn't started.

I can cover as well if it becomes necessary.

Thanks to both of you.  And yes, the trip is in July. I suppose I should have mentioned that.

I am still tinkering with the microplan for the turns up to and slightly beyond the completion of the first settler, but I do not think that the game will get past Turn 11 before I return, and the plan up to that point is set in stone. The plan is:

Check the settings to make sure everything is as it should be. Settle the capital in place. Work the cows and build a worker. Research Hunting, then Mining. Take a screenshot of the demographics every turn, and note who played that turn before us and who still needs to play after us.

As for scouting, well, I obviously can’t plan that out in advance with much precision, so you will be left mostly to your own devices. However, before knowing anything about what lies in the fog, I think that it would be best to scout out the floodplains region to the east of our capital, starting in the north and moving south, first, so that we can find a second city site over there. Then the scout should move in a clockwise ring around the capital (a wide ring, since our third ring borders on Turn 25 will reveal a lot of tiles, and there is no need to have our scout reveal many of those) unless something else comes up.

Got a tier list for the lurkers?

I have one in the works, but it will be a little while before I finish it.

Charriu, feel free to post your thoughts before me and whet the appetites of the lurkers.

[Charriu]

So now that the technical problems are resolved, I have some more time to do the promised player analysis. So here we go:

Naufragar with Rusten (Phi/Agg, Japan) Past PBs: 38, 41

Naufragar is not a total Newbie anymore, but still has a way to go to the Top. He showed improvements during his past two PBs. On water maps like PB41 he showed some weakness, but in time he will adjust to it. He has a great dedlurker in Rusten and will learn a lot from him. Another nice thing about Naufragar, he will report regularly, which is nice for after the game.
The Combo of Phi/Agg with Japan is a bit strange. There's no immediate synergy and it's lacking any solid early game bonus. His moment to shine will be in the midgame: Agg, Samurai and the new harbor from japan. It's very likely that he started on the water, because he did not go for any one of the following starting techs: Agriculture, Hunting or Mining. Also noteworthy, although his UB is a harbor, he does not have any advantages around water.
Danger rating: 4/10
Builder rating: 9/10

Boak with GeneralKillCavalry (Ind/Exp, Viking) Past PBs: None

Boak is a total mystery to me, so I can't really say anything about him. His dedlurker, GeneralKillCavalry, is also new to RB and the RtR mod, therefore won't be as much of a help as a veteran like Rusten is to Naufragar. Their combo has no direct synergies just like Naufragar's and just like him, their moment to shine will be in the midgame with berserkers. But more importantly they start stronger and earlier on the water thanks to the UB and the have a stronger early trait in Exp. Also noteworthy is that they are the only Ind player in this game, so I suspect some early wonders like Stonehenge, Pyramids and/or the Great Lighthouse. I would bet they go for Stonehenge for the culture and the Great Lighthouse due to the synergy to their UB.
Danger rating: 5/10
Builder rating: 5/10

Superdeath (Cre/Exp, Korea) Past PBs: All of them, since 38

Superdeath certainly earned himself a reputation by now. We all know that he can be super aggressive and likes to rush people. He said so himself in PB38 and this mentality of his hasn't changed. He can be very dangerous when he's on the war path and can be a stalwart defender. But there are some weaknesses of his. He still performance better on land maps then water maps, but his main weakness is a sometimes lacking economy. He really should pause for one game and dedlurk one of the veterans to improve his game. He can't expect awesome performances if he plays multiple games at once.
I know I'm running the danger of repeating myself, but once again we have a combo with no synergy. The good thing this time though is that the combo is also an anti-synergy with the player, because there's no immediate rush potential in the combo. Still he has some early bonuses which will give him a head start. It will be interesting to see how the new UU will perform. Also noteworthy, no direct water bonuses.
Danger rating: 7/10
Builder rating: 2/10

Borsche (Org/Exp, Carthage) Past PBs: 25, 27, 28, 29, 34

Here we have one of the "older" players here on RB. He hasn't played for a longer time, so we'll have to see how it goes for him. I found a summary by Commodore about him in one of the older PBs, which is quite interesting:

I'm not really sure what this guy's actual skill level is, because he's evidently spread across several hundred games at once. He's generally apathetic, though, which saps vigor from his micro. He's a stubborn defender and never a good target, but can definitely goof on the offense.

He runs a solid combo though, which I also like to run in SP games. There's the obvious synergy with Exp and the UB. Mix in the "watermap" trait Org and a good UU and we have a dangerous combo here. We need to be wary of him for the long game.
Danger rating: 6/10
Builder rating: 6/10

Mr. Cairo (Cre/Fin, China) Past PBs: 42, 43

I would say that with Mr. Cairo, we are looking at the top player of this game. He knows the recent version of the mod good enough and played/plays some solid games. I don't want to get into any detail about him in PB43 as it's still running. In PB42 he started an interesting naval offensive against Superdeath and was all around a solid player in there. Fin is somewhat underrated by some people here, but on a watermap with enough coastal cities, it's a great trait. He also has some nice synergy with Cre and the UB, although the UB is not the most important feature of China. This of course is the UU, which will play a mayor role on this kind of map. Just look at Old Harry in PB42 and you know why.
Danger rating: 8/10
Builder rating: 8/10


Us (Cre/Cha, Babylon)

We already discussed our settings in the previous post, so I only want to show some interesting comparisons to the overall player field:

• We are the only Cha player in this and therefore have the biggest military advantage on the water. The only other player with a good advantage on the water is Boak, when it comes to ship vs ship fights. Of course this does not mean that we should forget about Mr. Cairo, but Chu Ko Nus can't do anything if we sink their vessels before they land.
  
• Almost all other civs are focused more around the (early) midgame. Our civ is the only truly early game civ. This means if we are not alone on our island/continent, we should see to conquer it sooner then later.
  

[Magic Science]

Now for my opponent analysis, to add to Charriu’s excellent work:

naufragar and Rusten are the Japanese led by Alexander

If I had to sum up naufragar as a Civilization IV player in one word, that word would be “proactive”. He seems to have a strong tendency to…. do things. Examples of naufragar doing things in Pitboss 38 include his skirmishes with AdrienIer over the little island between them and his voluntary war with mackoti. Examples of naufragar doing things in Pitboss 41 include pursuing the Great Artist at Music and fighting Rusten and Hitru over their cities in the south of his home continent. What those examples, and other actions by naufragar like them, indicate to me is that if naufragar has two choices of what to do, he is more likely to choose the riskier one that involves him doing something instead of the safer one that involves him sitting tight. This means that we should always have an eye out for potential attacks from Japan, even if it seems to us that we have the advantage. If any of our cities are settled on landmasses other than the one our core is on, then we should pay especially close attention, because it is easier to launch limited attacks to take just a few cities, like the attacks on AdrienIer and Rusten/Hitru used as examples above were, when the target cities are isolated.

I’m not sure what to say about Rusten except that he is a very good player, and naufragar should be glad to have him as a partner. Rusten’s active participation makes me classify this team as the number one threat to win.

I agree that they likely started on the coast, but we don’t need to guess on this matter for much longer. On Turn 3, clock and dagger work should inform us exactly how many of naufragar and Rusten’s starting nine tiles are land.

boak and GeneralKillCavalry are the Vikings led by Bismarck

boak took over for Krill back in Pitboss 27, and I know that he has played some games on another site, so he is only mostly new to Realms Beyond multiplayer Civ IV, not multiplayer Civ IV itself.

Their civilization is notable for being the only other one in this game that has an Ancient Era unique thing, but I feel that it is misleading to characterize the trading post as an early helper. Now that it gives a production bonus to help you build more ships instead of a promotion bonus to help you build better ships, the trading post only comes into its own once you start investing a lot of production in naval units, and, even on a Big and Small map, how many galleys and triremes do you really need? I don’t think that it is very many, so all the trading post does in the Ancient and Classical Eras is to save a few hammers on the few ships you do build.

I do think trading posts are quite good later on, though, probably better than our Charismatic bonus to naval units. Imagine a scenario in which the Vikings have 25% more ships than we do, but all of our ships are better promoted. Who has the advantage? I think that it is the Vikings. Even if the fleets were evenly matched in a straight fight, more ships can absorb collateral better and split up to do many different tasks better. Also, I doubt that our ships will have enough extra promotions to be 25% stronger at fighting. Don’t take me wrong, I still like Charismatic as a naval combat advantage, but I think the Vikings have us beaten in that area in a vacuum.

superdeath is Suryavarman of Korea

To provide some evidence for Charriu’s claim, which I agree with, that superdeath likes to be aggressive and rush, I looked back over all five of his completed games, Pitbosses 38 through 42. superdeath rushed early in Pitbosses 38 and 40 (), but he did not rush early in Pitbosses 39, 41, and 42. However, he did not have the chance to rush early in either of those last two. In 41, he himself was rushed, and in 42, he was alone on his own island at the beginning. Therefore, the final tally is that superdeath has rushed in 2 out of the 3 games that he could have done so in, which is an incredible rate. If we find ourselves anywhere near him in the Ancient Era, then we must be very careful. If we can last through that time without incident, then we should be able to outbuild him because, as Charriu said, superdeath has not shown himself to be very good at developing an economy. Perhaps this will be the game when superdeath improves in that area, but I don’t think so. He is occupied with two other games and does not have a teammate, so why will this game be different than all the previous ones?

However, superdeath is not really an Always Chaotic Evil orc who bathes in blood and spits on science. That was a joke. In fact, evidence shows that he is fairly reasonable about deciding who to attack and when in the later stages of the game, and he seems to like building wonders.

About Korea: I agree that Korea will not help with an early rush (except maybe if its starting techs launch him to a fast start? That seems like a stretch to me, though), but I think that the new and improved hwacha encourages Classical Era war pretty strongly. Catapults, and therefore hwachas, retain relevance for a long time after the Classical Era, but hwachas’ unique abilities grow weak quickly as time passes. Their ability to kill things only matters when the units they attack are low enough in base strength for them to have a decent chance to win against, and their bonus against melee units only matter when there are melee units on the field to fight. By the time the world reaches musketmen and knights, hwachas might as well be normal catapults, so to get any use out of their abilities, you need to go to war before then.

Borsche is the Carthaginians led by Mehmed

Thanks for mentioning all of those games that Borsche has played in previously. I had no idea about any of those.

I agree that we need to be “wary for the long game”. I think that Borsche’s civilization/leader pair is the most economically threatening of the five pairs we face, especially since starts to help at about the same time that ours starts to be less helpful (Classical Era). As you mentioned, Organized is better on a watery map, and Expansive Cothons should be pretty good on a map like Big and Small, with lots of different landmasses to supply valuable intercontinental trade routes for every city. At least the military part of this (just Numidian cavalry units) doesn’t seem too bad. I am sure that Borsche would like to find a use for his Numidians, but I think that, with all of the other cheap, good things for him to build about the same time that they would be useful, he might be alright with letting their time come and go without going to war.

Mr. Cairo is Willem of China

You said that you would put Mr. Cairo as the top player for this game, and while I said I would put Rustgar ahead of him, I would comfortably put Mr. Cairo in the second most threatening spot.

In regards to the leader/civilization pairing, I put it in the same “economically threatening” category as Mehmed/Carthage for Financial alone. The difference is that it has more going for it in the early game in the form of Creative, and I think that its military component is more dangerous. Cho-ko-nus’ threat isn’t contained to any particular time, either, because collateral is always good.

Overall Thoughts

Two of our opponents have Creative leaders, which on one hand makes me feel more confident that choosing Creative was a good idea, but on the other hand is annoying. Part of the value of Creative is being able to easily win most early culture wars, but that value does not exist if you are in a culture war with someone who also has Creative.

Despite the fact that there are three Expansive leaders in the field and we are not one of them, I think that we have the most of our strength concentrated in the early game out of all the combos in Pitboss 45. Expansive may start offering an advantage sooner than Creative with its worker production bonus, but when we reach the midgame, Expansive players still have all of those cheap buildings to benefit from, and Creative does not have much more to offer. We should keep that in mind when judging how well we are doing relative to the rest of the field. Falling behind a bit in the very, very early stages that we are playing right now will not be surprising, but we should expect to be doing quite well at about the time when Currency comes around. If we are not, then it might be hard to catch up.

[Magic Science]

Turns 0, 1 and 2 – 4000 through 3920 BC
“herewegoagain” – that’s the password for our civilization, excluding the quotes.
   
Here is what our world looks like after the first three turns. The plan is for the scout to explore east, then south, so we have enough information about the geography of the floodplains region to settle our second city over there without causing any dotmap problems in the future.

[Charriu]

Mh that looks like an island in the north. To bad there aren't more resources at the flood plain coast.

[Magic Science]

What is the meaningful difference between the terrain of the two islands depicted in the screenshots below?
   
   
If you answered “there isn’t one”, then you were, for a bizarre reason, wrong. The difference is that in the first screenshot, the worker can move southeast and then back northwest with one movement point (i.e., he can use the roads), but the worker in the second screenshot consumes one movement point to move southeast and then uses up the other to go back northwest (i.e., the roads don’t work). Why? Because of the order the lake and river were placed! If the river is placed first, then the roads work, but if the lake was placed before the rivers were placed, then the roads don’t work.

   
That is relevant because, as you may notice, our capital has the exact same configuration with the lake and the river. There is no visual sign to tell rather or not the road will work by. You just have to build it and see, and I’m not going to risk guessing that it will work and being proven wrong in the actual game, which sadly kills one of the better openings I was working on.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled report…

Turns 3 and 4
   
This is what the last two turns of exploration have revealed.

Mh that looks like an island in the north. To bad there aren't more resources at the flood plain coast.

You are right, there definitely is one. Fog gazing indicates that it is an iceball. though.

[Charriu]

Despite the fact that there are three Expansive leaders in the field and we are not one of them, I think that we have the most of our strength concentrated in the early game out of all the combos in Pitboss 45. Expansive may start offering an advantage sooner than Creative with its worker production bonus, but when we reach the midgame, Expansive players still have all of those cheap buildings to benefit from, and Creative does not have much more to offer. We should keep that in mind when judging how well we are doing relative to the rest of the field. Falling behind a bit in the very, very early stages that we are playing right now will not be surprising, but we should expect to be doing quite well at about the time when Currency comes around. If we are not, then it might be hard to catch up.

To add to that observation. Yes they have the advantage, but that advantage is smaller with fewer trees, which may happen on this map.
And yes Exp has all those buildings, but some of them are less important like the aqueduct and we also have faster libraries, which we should take advantage of.

What is the meaningful difference between the terrain of the two islands depicted in the screenshots below?


If you answered “there isn’t one”, then you were, for a bizarre reason, wrong. The difference is that in the first screenshot, the worker can move southeast and then back northwest with one movement point (i.e., he can use the roads), but the worker in the second screenshot consumes one movement point to move southeast and then uses up the other to go back northwest (i.e., the roads don’t work). Why? Because of the order the lake and river were placed! If the river is placed first, then the roads work, but if the lake was placed before the rivers were placed, then the roads don’t work.

Very interesting observation. I will add it to my map-making thread in time.

This is what the last two turns of exploration have revealed.

Mh that looks like an island in the north. To bad there aren't more resources at the flood plain coast.

You are right, there definitely is one. Fog gazing indicates that it is an iceball. though.

Wuhu I see gold. Now if only the land around it wouldn't suck.

[Magic Science]

Turns 5, 6 and 7
The first round of clock and dagger work is complete. Here is what we know:

Out of the nine tiles in their culture on Turn 0, six of nausten’s were land, seven of Borsche’s were land, and eight of boaKill’s were land. Of those three, one has fourteen land tiles in their full BFC, and the number of land tiles in the BFCs of the other two add up to 32 (so its fourteen and eighteen tiles, fifteen and seventeen tiles, or sixteen and sixteen tiles). Mr. Cairo and superdeath both had eight land tiles in their borders on Turn 0. One of them, I can’t tell which one, has seventeen land tiles in their capital BFC and the other has eighteen land tiles.

I think we can safely conclude that most, if not all, of our opponents have coastal capitals. Eventually, coastal capitals will be weaker and more vulnerable than ours. However, in the nearer term, I think it’s an advantage to have one, since an inland capital like ours cannot build water wonders or contribute naval units to colonize other islands. One of our early cities should probably be a good port to close that gap somewhat.

Mr. Cairo, nausten, and boaKill all got technologies at the end of Turn 5. Those technologies must be first column ones, and they add up to 4000 soldiers all together on the demographics screen, but beyond that, I am not sure what they are. I will have to wait and try to figure out what happened after some of those three get Bronze Working, which should be unmistakable. superdeath and Borsche did not get technologies on Turn 5, which could be explained by them not having a three foodhammer riverside tile to work, but then they didn’t get technologies by Turn 7 either, so they must be going for something more expensive than a first column tech, probably Bronze Working.

Lastly, Borsche seems to have started with a workboat, not a worker, since rival best crop yield is now seven.

   
PIG! PIG! PIG! That’s the first six foodhammer tile outside of the capital we have seen so far. The plan is for our scout (who still needs a name, any suggestions?) to go around the mountain along the coast to see the whole area the pig is in. Then, when he runs into the jungle belt, he will move back west to see the whole area the wheat is in. That should give us enough information to decide between the second city location candidates.

Wuhu I see gold. Now if only the land around it wouldn't suck.

It’s at times like these that I’m happy to be Creative. We can settle by the floodplains and still get the gold nice and early.