[SPOILERS]PB46: (In Search of) Fine Foreign Dining, by Hannibal of England

[Krill]

Hey Joey, how much of PB42 did you read? Any of it? Because I have been scarred by that game.

That was the first game I’ve run into both the vertical and horizontal growth limits at the same time. I had 2 pre-calendar happy resources, one 10 tiles north (tundra furs, settled with the 7th city), the second 11 tiles south (jungle gems with a barb city present, which was captured). I had no real choice other than to use two libraries and 4 scientists to eke the way to Alphabet and then use research builds to get to Currency. There was Mids fail gold as well. But the damage was done: because growth was bottlenecked, after that point I was stuck playing catch up and I never managed to get any real control in the game through tech (and I didn’t bulb Astro, that was another mistake).

I view PB42 is an abomination of a game, in terms of the decisions I made after turn 120. But I don’t think I misplayed before then. I saw what happens if you don’t have the ability to grow, and you hit those limits: I have been reconsidering the definitions of early game, because I think we can do better. I have come up with two definitions, which can be helpful (to me) to understand why we should choose a specific trait or civ. There are:

• The limit of horizontal expansion being (defined as increasing) the costs from new cities limiting a players ability to research the necessary techs to continue to defend themselves.
  
  
• The limit of vertical growth being the lack of available sources of happiness and food to grow new population, and the resources to ensure that the population have profitable tiles (or spec slots) to work.

We’ve looked at EXP, IMP, PRO and CRE (in the distant past) and labelled them “early game traits”, but really they just let us hit these caps earlier. Sometimes we want that speed, but I don’t think it’s always a good thing. EXP gives us a quicker worker, IMP gives us a cheaper settler, so we can grab land and settle cities before we have time to get the techs we need. PRO gives us a cheaper granary, which allows quicker vertical growth, but we turn that into horizontal expansion through the wonders of slavery. CRE doesn’t actually do any of this but hey, we used to think it was an early game trait 10 years ago.

I don’t think we need to be so concerned about reaching those limits. I think we need to focus on how we can push against those limits. AGG gives that 25% city maintenance discount. CHM gives us those extra 2 happy in each city, which together can be 100% more population in the early game compared to what other leaders can put out before coming bankrupt. And as costs would not be as high each step of the way to bankruptcy, Boudicca can actually reach a decent teching position in the Classical era IMO. FIN will give higher output so helps to keep on settling more cities so growth doesn’t stagnate. ORG doesn’t kick in, but can open up cheap commerce tiles and then the courthouse boost comes in. But Zulu, Persia, Germany, all these gives more easily accessible city maintenance reduction as well, and HRE gives a good whack later on but requires a specific beeline.

Some civs give a happy boost in the early game: Byz and India, and others give a bit more later on: Maya. But there is no real way other than CHM to get early happy without making in game decisions such as risking religion or the map providing happy. There are more opportunities for limits on horizontal expansion to be relaxed.

I am not interested in picking CRE, EXP, IMP, PRO, PHI, more on why later. I’m not bothered by IND, SPI or ORG. I am interested in AGG, CHM and FIN. But for each of these choices, I am interested in how they will combine with a variety of civs and how we can play them, which is why I would pick IND, SPI and ORG if it worked with a civ for some reason.

We aren't going to get screenshots or a pick order until Monday, so I do hope to go through the available picks before then, but right now a couple of things shout out to me. Is there anything you want to see played or discussed?

[GermanJoey]

responding haphazardly to various things you said, for which I am too lazy to individually quote:

arabia doesn't need to chase religion just cause you have priest slots on your library. your library is still cheaper and has extra culture. and really, it's those March Knights that are so tempting to me...

aztecs are always a solid pick. i feel like they'd be a bit of a waste with Boudica though... with the SA, you don't really need the extra happiness from Cha or their cheap Colosseum so much, and vice-versa. i'd rather see them with someone like genghis or monty.

i'm down with picking a leader first for first-5.

[GermanJoey]

for native america... let's see. with trackers creating totem poles you have mini-cre, allowing you to grow wide and tall fast. and you don't need a super medic so you can pour all of your GG's into a ToZ/HE super military pump, or you can attach them all to get lots of high XP units early. uber-strong longbows let you safely invade a neighbor in the knight-era. so, it's like they get mini-aspects of Imp, Cre, and Pro. you could pick someone like e.g. charley to emphasize the aspects of Imp and Pro, or you could pick something more complementary, e.g. ind/cha de gaulle, who benefit from some early oomph in the era from before their traits come online.

thinking about it more, cha stands out as a good match for NA. the extra happy-cap lets you whip a tracker with just 1h in bin (or hell, even dry-whipping) without much waste, and cha helps you get the most out of your extra GG. (since you won't need to "waste" one on a super medic, since your trackers will have W3)

[GermanJoey]

I didn't read much of PB42... IIRC I followed it a bit at the beginning, but I've just been way too busy over the last couple of years to keep up with anything online.

I think that describing traits on how they affect various limits is an interesting way to look at it. Riffing on it a bit... put that way, a trait that essentially lets you hit a wall faster does not do you any good at all. Thus, if you know a wall exists somewhere in your civ's growth (or, as often is the case with civ, are able to speculate on its existence) a trait's speed boost is only useful if you're able to transform it into something else. E.g. transform those extra early hammers that you would have spent on settlers or granaries or whatever into Stonehenge, or maybe working extra early cottages, or building extra libraries, etc. Or maybe it's thinking that I know I'm going to crash my economy for now and that's ok; I'm willing to put myself behind in the near future because I think these extra few cities will be worth it for whatever reason.

[GermanJoey]

At any rate, of the traits you listed, Cha is most interesting/appealing to me. Agg can be a bit of a strange trait to work with... other than the 25% city maintenance (which doesn't obviate the need for courthouses by itself), the other real advantage of the trait is that it greatly eases the logistics of waging war in the late-classical and early-medieval eras; I wrote about this at length in my PB22 thread at some point, IIRC. Fin... I'm still not super convinced as to how good Fin is in RtR. I've always kinda though of it as the worst RtR trait... or, at the very least, the one most vulnerable to the map setup. I'd be nervous about pairing with Cha, which is the second most-vulnerable of the traits to map setup. (Ind and Exp would be 3rd and 4th). I guess Fin now also has that +35% library boost? Have there been any successful Fin games lately?

[Krill]

responding haphazardly to various things you said, for which I am too lazy to individually quote:

arabia doesn't need to chase religion just cause you have priest slots on your library. your library is still cheaper and has extra culture. and really, it's those March Knights that are so tempting to me...

aztecs are always a solid pick. i feel like they'd be a bit of a waste with Boudica though... with the SA, you don't really need the extra happiness from Cha or their cheap Colosseum so much, and vice-versa. i'd rather see them with someone like genghis or monty.

i'm down with picking a leader first for first-5.

Replying post by post. Spam is good.

Arabia, libraries and CHM/FIN/CRE bonuses are a little weird. Normally a library costs 40 hammers to get it to a double whip. Get one of the +35% production traits and you only need to find 23 hammers, but grab two of the traits (Willem, Hannibal or Kublai) and you only need to put in 5 hammers to make complete with a double whip.

Arabia with Madrassas works about the same as a bonus from a single trait: Only need to find 20 hammers if Arabia and no production trait, or 3 hammers if you have Arabia and one production trait. Arabia and two production traits just gives you overflow to the next building (like a base BtS CRE library whip).

Hannibal has a really interesting point where once you get a city to size 4 you can double whip the library and not rely on any other method of popping borders, which is only matched by Arabia with one of the traits. Arabia pops borders in 3 turns though because of 4 culture from the Madrassa, but it is interesting none the less. The other two leaders that get +70% library production are CRE so don't care. tl;dr if you can force in a granary at size 1 then double whipping (or one pop whipping with a further forest chop) is a legit way to pop borders.

I’m not convinced of how important Camel Archers will be in this game, but again that is scarring from having no coastal production cities and a horrible, split, two separate fronts across two separate isthmi around a small inland sea against OH and Hitru in PB42. But I could see us picking Arabia if we went leader first and other choices had fallen.


Aztecs I just think are religion rush civ primarily. The whip effect is flavour and has no power unless you pick IMP because it’s really difficult to drop the hammers into anything other than HA, swords, cats and WE, and it can’t really be used to help economically: you can't get the buildings in any faster as it's governed by food surplus and base hammers anyway. You pick Aztecs to rush to Monotheism and grab cheap court houses when you need them, religion and a shrine. It’s the civ you take with Joao or Charly, you take it with a civ that is going to crash into those horizontal expansion limits really fast (so the court house helps manage the horizontal limit) and needs to channel the saved resources into something else (grabbing religion, and for Joao a Mids rush once the third city is down). Genghis, definitely, Monty, not so much.

[Krill]

for native america... let's see. with trackers creating totem poles you have mini-cre, allowing you to grow wide and tall fast. and you don't need a super medic so you can pour all of your GG's into a ToZ/HE super military pump, or you can attach them all to get lots of high XP units early. uber-strong longbows let you safely invade a neighbor in the knight-era. so, it's like they get mini-aspects of Imp, Cre, and Pro. you could pick someone like e.g. charley to emphasize the aspects of Imp and Pro, or you could pick something more complementary, e.g. ind/cha de gaulle, who benefit from some early oomph in the era from before their traits come online.

thinking about it more, cha stands out as a good match for NA. the extra happy-cap lets you whip a tracker with just 1h in bin (or hell, even dry-whipping) without much waste, and cha helps you get the most out of your extra GG. (since you won't need to "waste" one on a super medic, since your trackers will have W3)

Native America are baller but brittle. I agree with what you said, but you do need to research Myst before you can make the Totem Poles. I don’t think they necessarily help an awful lot in terms of speed of expansion, but they will let you settle wider for the late game, and being able to use larger cities. There is also a hammer efficiency if you can use trackers to fogbust, and as you move settlers forward dump in the immediate totem poles, but I don't think that is always viable. I fully agree that they fit with CHM best, but there is also a flimsiness to them. I would kinda want to pair them with something like Churchill (blow through the happy cap ceiling every other civ has and uber crossbows) or a FIN leader that has something to help early on like Pacal or Vicky.

I think NA are going to be a very fickle civ to play.

[Krill]

At any rate, of the traits you listed, Cha is most interesting/appealing to me. Agg can be a bit of a strange trait to work with... other than the 25% city maintenance (which doesn't obviate the need for courthouses by itself), the other real advantage of the trait is that it greatly eases the logistics of waging war in the late-classical and early-medieval eras; I wrote about this at length in my PB22 thread at some point, IIRC. Fin... I'm still not super convinced as to how good Fin is in RtR. I've always kinda though of it as the worst RtR trait... or, at the very least, the one most vulnerable to the map setup. I'd be nervous about pairing with Cha, which is the second most-vulnerable of the traits to map setup. (Ind and Exp would be 3rd and 4th). I guess Fin now also has that +35% library boost? Have there been any successful Fin games lately?

I don’t think anyone has really picked FIN. It has been massively shunned since PBEM20 IMO. I think I understand why, but I don’t think I agree with that any more. The saved hammers on the library, and then on a market matter IMO. This is what I wrote in the mod discussion thread:

That brings us to FIN. Between FIN and ORG it used to be relatively balanced, but FIN has fallen by the wayside for a while now. It picked up the cheap lib bonus, but FIN doesn't really pick up until a player gets hamlets on none riverside tiles. Otherwise the bonus only works on coast, which is it's own opportunity cost compared to working other tiles. Is it playable? On a random leader/civ pair, yeah, but is it pickable? Can a player bring themselves to pick FIN against ORG, SPI, AGG or CHM? FIN has to grow pop and work tiles to benefit from the extra commerce, but AGG and ORG just get cheaper stuff for free. CHM has the higher happy cap so is not as limited to grow the pop needed to work tiles anyway, in a straight comparison CHM can pretty much always just "work more cottages" compared to FIN. Of course CHM has to pay for the population, but the real benefit from CHM is the easier promotions when you come to fight, the happy isn't even the majority of the CHM trait power compared to what defines FIN.

FIN has to have that bit more in the Classical era. Giving it slightly cheaper markets gives FIN what it needs: the opportunity to grow to work the tiles it needs to, either from the extra happy (up to +4 happiness in a single city) and the gold to afford more cities. It gives it a bit of a boost, but to be clear: It saves fewer than 37 hammers on a single market. It's objectively not a huge boon, but those saved hammers are what will make the market whippable without stupid amounts of pop (double whip is 67 hammers, triple whip is 94 hammers). This isn't a major change really, but just pushes FIN up a bit and makes it pickable now IMO.

I stand by this, and this is also why I think FIN/CHM actually pairs well if the civ supports what you are trying to achieve. You will always have the happy cap to work a bunch of cottages and still whip in every city, and that means you will always have an out to deal with horizontal expansion issues. I agree with your exact point about the map affecting the value of the trait, but I don’t think it is as bad in this version of the mod as it used to be. Pair FIN with India (cheap granary, +1 happy), or Inca (Cheap granary, no popping borders issue but still have to settle for first ring food), works for all of these IMO. Hannibal just wants to whip libraries to pop borders anyway.

This is why I think you can go either leader or civ first: if you get a shot at India, then you know you can use that to cover a lot of deficiencies in the leaders that might get bogged down in expansion, and managing all of the costs of expansion without leaving a rush opportunity for someone else. Same with Inca and Babylon. Or if you go, say, Ragnar first, you can pick India or Babylon, England, Rome or even Persia.

[Krill]

Two other points: CHM no longer matters for naval combat: I've rebuilt the system so that CHM only has an effect in cities that don't have Moai/West Point/SoZ/settled GG once dry docks exist. And even then, that effect is just that 4 promo boats are available without XP civics, which gives flexibility rather than straight power.

The other point is that I'm not certain how to value late game traits, traits that give a greater yield per pop (like Financial) or other unreproducible effects (like ORG civic costs savings) because of the change to Emancipation. It used to be that some cottaging occurred and then everything else gets workshopped. But now Emancipation is available on Constitution, and does not cost anarchy to revolt into, there is a new window in the renaissance era to cottage cities. Cities which have already built infrastructure with workshops and other hammer tiles, and allow older, mature cottage cities to explode in pop. This gives players an opportunity, or multiple opportunities, to close a post T150 bpt deficit, but it also gives FIN an opportunity to go with a true cottage spam late game.

Combine this with the test cost scaling implementation which has lower Renaissance era tech costs and I can see this game going all the way to space and culture.

[GermanJoey]

responding haphazardly to various things you said, for which I am too lazy to individually quote:

arabia doesn't need to chase religion just cause you have priest slots on your library. your library is still cheaper and has extra culture. and really, it's those March Knights that are so tempting to me...

aztecs are always a solid pick. i feel like they'd be a bit of a waste with Boudica though... with the SA, you don't really need the extra happiness from Cha or their cheap Colosseum so much, and vice-versa. i'd rather see them with someone like genghis or monty.

i'm down with picking a leader first for first-5.

Replying post by post. Spam is good.

Arabia, libraries and CHM/FIN/CRE bonuses are a little weird. Normally a library costs 40 hammers to get it to a double whip. Get one of the +35% production traits and you only need to find 23 hammers, but grab two of the traits (Willem, Hannibal or Kublai) and you only need to put in 5 hammers to make complete with a double whip.

Arabia with Madrassas works about the same as a bonus from a single trait: Only need to find 20 hammers if Arabia and no production trait, or 3 hammers if you have Arabia and one production trait. Arabia and two production traits just gives you overflow to the next building (like a base BtS CRE library whip).

Hannibal has a really interesting point where once you get a city to size 4 you can double whip the library and not rely on any other method of popping borders, which is only matched by Arabia with one of the traits. Arabia pops borders in 3 turns though because of 4 culture from the Madrassa, but it is interesting none the less. The other two leaders that get +70% library production are CRE so don't care. tl;dr if you can force in a granary at size 1 then double whipping (or one pop whipping with a further forest chop) is a legit way to pop borders.

I’m not convinced of how important Camel Archers will be in this game, but again that is scarring from having no coastal production cities and a horrible, split, two separate fronts across two separate isthmi around a small inland sea against OH and Hitru in PB42. But I could see us picking Arabia if we went leader first and other choices had fallen.


Aztecs I just think are religion rush civ primarily. The whip effect is flavour and has no power unless you pick IMP because it’s really difficult to drop the hammers into anything other than HA, swords, cats and WE, and it can’t really be used to help economically: you can't get the buildings in any faster as it's governed by food surplus and base hammers anyway. You pick Aztecs to rush to Monotheism and grab cheap court houses when you need them, religion and a shrine. It’s the civ you take with Joao or Charly, you take it with a civ that is going to crash into those horizontal expansion limits really fast (so the court house helps manage the horizontal limit) and needs to channel the saved resources into something else (grabbing religion, and for Joao a Mids rush once the third city is down). Genghis, definitely, Monty, not so much.

I tried for about 30 seconds to break this quote into quotes per-paragraph and couldn't figure it out, so I'm just gonna do it one at a time.

Re: Madrassa. True, but an important thing to remember is that Madrassa + 2 boosts gives you 42h libraries, which is actually *better* than the old Cre +100% libraries. You can single whip one with just 12 hammers in the bank. That makes it a hell of a lot faster to get double-scientists up and running.

Re: Camel Archers. Hmmm, true... I suppose it depends on how players are distributed. If players are all on their own island to start, then Camel Archers aren't worth much. If you've got a few players per continent though...

Re: Sac Altar. Man, if you think the whip effect is just flavor, you ain't playing them right. A garbage size 4 city making 4fpt and 6hpt (a wet rice, a grass hill mine, and two grass forests) can make 3 catapults every 10 turns if you don't need to worry about unhappiness. That's pretty great!