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[SPOILERS]PB46: (In Search of) Fine Foreign Dining, by Hannibal of England
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September 19th, 2019, 16:26
(This post was last modified: September 20th, 2019, 15:53 by Krill.)
I'm trying to write the player reports when I have time, and release a couple every day. I'll intersperse them with bits about the mod. Right now, this post is the last one I have stored, so I may not be able to write anything else until the weekend, but They will all be done by next week. With any luck, the game can be hosted tomorrow or Saturday and we start playing so there will be more updates.
Anyway, next player! Gavagai: Stalin [AGG/IND] (23rd pick) of Germany (10th pick) Germany was always going to get picked because it's new. Hunting/Mining fits a worker first>pasture opening fine, two pastures allows BW first. It's common. It paragraphed the IND pick, but Stalin was never going to get pickked except for shenanigans (such as fucking up the Stalin of Germany pick specifically), for example Rusten could have done it and Stalin of India would work. But who wants to pick Stalin? This is from post 7 of this thread: Quote:Stalin of Germany and go balls deep for Collosus and maintenance reducing forges to ignore Caste, and use Feudalism to open all the spec slots. There are so many options and I don't think there are that many truly stupid options anymore. AGG plus WerkStatt is around 45% off city maintenance. It's close enough to a normal leader building a court house. It is unlike any other civ combination other than AGG Zulu, which is now nerfed to not have the AGG production bonus and has extra steps. (It is worth noting that Genghis has -35% city maintenance from the combination of -10% from IMP and -25% from AGG, but even when combined with a Rathaus, as it is multiplicative between the trait bonus and building bonus,it reaches an 84% reduction. In other words, trying to eliminate city maintenance entire is a wasted effort). What I am trying to say, is that after AGG is combined with werkstatt, the court house is worth building, because it will cost a maximum of 96 hammers and probably pay back 2EP/t and between 3-5gpt (with further savings from Inflation), so it's equivalent to saving on future wealth builds. Courthouses aren't necessary to allow horizontal expansion by any means for Stalin of Germany. Germany by itself doesn't do this (the proof is that AGG doesn't allow you to ignore courthouses either), so you would still have to focus on getting Code of Laws and still building courthouses. But Stalin of Germany is almost unique in this (IMP or AGG Zulu, Hammurabi with generic courthouse is another version of vanilla, Shaka of Persia are other variations). Oracle. Gavagai has the issue that Bismark of Mali exists and he has to decide if he wants to compete for Oracle>MC, or if he just wants to grab Henge and get there eventually, possibly saving forests with a plan to one turn Colossus if he can. I doubt that Henge appeals to an AGG leader, and I doubt he wants to build the GLH. Gav probably micromanages everything to grab Oracle, and then grabs Colossus, and...does what, precisely? Metal Casting is 514 adjusted beakers in PB46. Myst, [Meditation or Polytheism] and Priesthood cost 270 adjusted beakers or so. Seems risky, but who am I to judge. And both Gav and DS might end up competing with some random player who rushes religion and then decides to Oracle HBR or Monarchy. But none of that really matters to Gav. Part of me wonders if he won't just decide to rush Oracle to grab Monarchy, then trusts AGG to get him to MC before DS can reach there, before going back to grab Feudalism and uses the GP from Oracle to trigger a GA, get into Serfdom for spec slots and rely on minimal workers. Then head back and fill in whatever techs he needs, sitting behind early longbows and cheap 60 hammer Werkstatts. It's a defensive play, but then Stalin somewhat needs a defensive play and this could still give him Colossus, Oracle and an early HR to manage happiness. I'm very interested to see how Gav plays this, because once we start reaching the end of the Medieval era, Gav hits production bonuses on Banks, Universities, has easy route to amphibious units which he can upgrade to his over strength UU that is at the end of the push towards Steel and his cheap drydocks. And as there are no PHI leaders, he might decide to push through Education for Oxford, if he has also been able to figure a route to the GL. And then there is always the beaker value in grabbing Schwedagon Paya to cut out Monotheism through Theocracy and keep open an easier Astro bulb if he does go for Oracle. Lots of flexibility and he also has an end product to batter someone with. OTOH, TBW or Borsche might just rush him.
Oh, I agree that you're right in that "Lone Phi != guaranteed Mids". Sorry for being hyperbolic. Ind stealing it via a GE from a dirty GPP pool is the most likely scenario where Phi loses the Mids. OTOH, I don't think your Joao plan sounds realistic at all. 10hpt by T40 is only achievable by your capital even with Joao, and then you're reliant on your 2nd and 3rd cities to handle everything for 40 turns. That sounds impossible to make work, considering that barbarians will start appearing around then. Even that requires 5 forest chops in addition, and you're not likely to have the workers to spare for this scenario. We've certainly never seen anyone try anything like that, ever. The Masonry -> Math beeline plan sounds a lot more realistic, but the cost is enormous - 500h is probably 50% of your entire civ's total hammer output by T75. Thinking of past games, when Ind got a multiplier and Stone was available, the Mids would typically fall around T90-T100 or so; late 80s at the earliest. (the one notable exception I can think of being PB27, where Commodore and Plako both tied for it on T73, but that was with the ultra-cheap ancient-era costs and shitloads of early commerce tiles available for every civ. Note that Plako was Phi and used a GE to rush the Mids!).
You putting some numbers to the tech timing makes me realize that I was being a little too aggressive there. Only a little bit though... I'm assuming that planting cottages would be possible, and the likelihood of at least one commerce tile being available (e.g. gold, gems, silver, etc). MC by T60-T65 doesn't seem bad, giving you Mids around T82-T87 or whatever. The important part of the Phi GE bulb plan is that the cost to the civ is *extremely* minimal: 1. If you see an Ind player land the Oracle early, you just switch away from MC, no big deal. 2. Having an early forge isn't exactly a bad thing. 3. An engineer specialist is barely a productivity cost at all. In total, it'll cost you 20f and 20h compared to working a grasshill mine. Compare that to 500h!! For the most part, you would play out your civ exactly the same as if you weren't going 4. If, by some miracle, someone beats your timing... YOU STILL HAVE YOUR GREAT ENGINEER!!! No shitty failgold! Just save it for the MoM or TGL or whatever. 5. There's a huge deterrent factor - why would a civ want to cripple themselves just to win the race to Mids before Phi? The Mids isn't even that useful unless you have a big empire and lots of support infrastructure.
I wonder if there's another way to rebalance the Mids in order to reduce its hammer cost. There's not really anything you can tune about the effect. However, you could reduce the GPP, or change its type. Or maybe you could have it cost a fixed amount of upkeep? E.g. the mids could produce -5gpt or something. Some kind of fixed cost that would be trivial later in the game, but significant early in the game.
I know the João plan seems bizarre. I ran a few quick tests to T50ish to see what it was like with a few starts. Not going to deny, it is start dependent, but that 10hpt is an average over the construction time of the Mids. The hammer output is more dependent on happy cap and available hills than anything else. My opinion is it is just a variant of TBS' play in...PB17 where he got Henge as João. João can push out a second settler by T35 if most recent double land food starts anyway.
To be honest, I was hoping to try and make that work in this game but our start is bad for that due to low food output on land tiles and needing to hook the fish. I don't think it's fair to do those sort of changes to Mids though.
I remember TBS's awesome Henge start in PB17. It seems really tough to scale that sorta thing an extra 380h though; IIRC his capital/workers were only tied up for 5-6 turns.
Why isn't it fair to make those sorts of changes to the Mids? You already effectively increased the cost by 167h for most players, and 117h-167h for Ind.
Pindicator: Pacal [EXP/FIN] (9th pick) of Arabia (24th pick)
Pin was the first player to break the trend of civ first. No idea why he made that decision, but I think he got a great choice. It's a very similar pick to what we have, but he will be faster to expand and will need to find happy resources. Theoretically he could go religion first if he has a grain resource, but I think he picked Arabia as the last civ because he can use Madrassa to pop borders and just accepts the UU for whatever value it turns out to be. Pins entire plan seems to be based around just picking for economy, but he was the first player to pick FIN, and with EXP he is just planning to not be slow and leave early opportunities. There is one weird little point though: he somewhat wants OR for when he builds forges and courthouses, but beyond that, does he really care for OR? Barracks will go down when he needs them, Stables in a few cities, but he won't build colosseums. He gets 40 hammer harbours, 50-ish hammer libraries, 65 hammer markets(?!), OR would help with granary chops...but he has Madrassa. Pin could build some weird little bulb plan based around bulbing Theology (17 turns for the GP), shrining Christianity (a further 17 turns if he runs two cities on two priests from the same time) and then using the 300 point GP for a golden age (which can take as little as a further 9 turns beyond the second GP generated because Pin could run 4 specs in the city that generated hte first GP). Pin could just sit in Theocracy for most of the game if he wanted (maybe use the GA and OR to shove down what he wanted in his cities). Combine this sort of plan with FIN and it's easy to see how the Arabia pick has the opportunity to give him a later game boost to his economy when there are so many FIN leaders picked. The main problem Pin has, looking at the later leader picks, is that he is actually caught in the middle. There are some players that will expand a hell of a lot faster than he can. There are others that have a better late game economically, there are those that will be able to get in his face and fight him with better units. This is probably a downside in terms of hedging with his leader pick and not going for something slightly...stronger late game like Mansa (but then, Mansa would get eaten alive without a good civ and I'm not sure what decent civs were left that fit Mansa). Maybe he shouldn't have gone leader first, and picked something like India that would have enabled the Mansa (or Darius, Hannibal or Ragnar) picks. Maybe he should have given up on Arabia and just gone for Russia? In this respect Arabia is starting to look a bit poorer, but if he uses the Madrassa to eke out and edge and then cut someone up with that edge, more power to him. Some of the FIN leaders are going to fall down as well. My concern, if I were playing Pacal of Arabia, is that Aztecs exist and probably run all the way to Monotheism before I could get there. So I might go for T0 religion, but I don't know if I'd want to do that if I think I can take Theology and I like that plan (or I could just keep open the option of an Academy). But grab an early religion that did not require a bulb, and I know I could get both the Shrine and Academy, and I would wonder how greedy I would want to be, with 7 EXP leaders and only Rusten the other EXP leader with Myst (Going through the list: OH and HItru have Inca so will not rush religion. GCK has Aztecs so wants Monotheism, he will not rush it. BeardBeard is an unknown but has PRO/IMP and might go mad and rush religion, and that's it. So maybe early religion is actually Pin's reason for picking Arabia?) All in all, a decent pick for a big game, but he will need to win through applying pressure at the right time.
September 21st, 2019, 12:49
(This post was last modified: September 21st, 2019, 12:50 by Krill.)
Elkad: Churchill [CHM/PRO] (25th pick) of Native America (8th pick)
This is probably my favourite combination in the entire snake pick. Double promo gunpowder and archery units without civics, triple promotions with civics (just Vassalage or Theocracy for archery units), add in Colosseum, just 2 XP from quadruple promotions for archery units. The Xbow is now a collateral unit, and it starts with Drill 1 and 3 (for 3 first strike chances), and every single one can get Amphibious with Medieval era techs. And Xbows are buildable until a player has both Military Science and Rifling. The combination of true cheap granaries speeding growth to the happy cap with Charismatic giving the higher vertical growth limit. 15 hammer super healers, as good as a medic 3 unit for a mere 4XP from barracks and an XP civic that you will never complain about having lying around because they will always be capable of dropping in the UB into a newly captured city and don't obsolete until Gunpowder. The easy opportunity to drop into Emancipation if there is a need to catch up in breakeven bpt without sacrificing naval promotions, or into drafting if there is a need to overwhelm an opponent. The major bonus of CRE, for that same 15 hammer cost (oh yes, it also takes 5 further turns to pop border...but the library production bonus is gained from CHM so basically Elkad has CRE without the Observatory bonus, as no one cares about theatres). It's beautiful. It just has the downside that it's not actually that fast to expand with, it has only the CHM library production to help with tech, and it lacks the late game ecoomic output that 5 FIN players have. But they are insignificant if you can drop the hammer on an opponent at the right time. Elkad is probably uninvadable. If he starts on an island somewhere and manages to take control over the whole island, he probably lives until Infantry (or, if I could build a tech lead, amphibious red coats came knocking). He could get rushed, if he settles his cities too wide to grab land and try for the late game CRE strategy (see spoiler below) and another player can use the tech cost scaling effect to get to HBR on a true beeline (hello Commodore). What Elkad needs to do, IMO, is to just play this game straight. Nothing fancy, no wonders, no religion. Find his second and third city sites, get warriors into place to defend, get BW and Pottery, get cities settled, then grab Myst to use trackers to look at popping borders (Trackers can't make Totem Poles without Myst, this is not a bug, this is actually the standard implementation: GG can't make the Military Academy until you have Mil SCi, this is the same mechanic). Get some cottages down, get Archery, ignore barracks, just focus on demographics and holding his borders, and then play as if he was CRE after this point, with a tracker ready on turn of founding for every future city. HE needs to prepare to defend a rush, but can't ignore cottage growth, and he has the happy cap to make sure he does that. And a bonus: Why CRE is almost impossible to play perfectly, and what Elkad has opted into: (September 19th, 2019, 17:14)GermanJoey Wrote: I remember TBS's awesome Henge start in PB17. It seems really tough to scale that sorta thing an extra 380h though; IIRC his capital/workers were only tied up for 5-6 turns. The point is it scales exactly the same: All a player has to do is leave the city working the same tiles for however long it takes, and eventually send some workers to chop whichever forests you intend to chop at the end. The city just sits there slow accumulating hammers. The cost is the amount of turns the city exists doing nothing but saving those hammers as either a giant pile of rocks or a giant pile of gold to solve Classical era tech issues. What is the cost? Ignoring unit movement other than that cost of moving onto hills, the theoretical "Joao building Mids from scratch plan" requires 1 food resource and 4-6 hills (the last two hill dependent on happy resources). That's 25 worker turns into tile improvements by T50-ish (remember, to complete by T85 it's around 10-11 hpt average plus chops to finish). I'm not saying any leader can do this, but Joao specifically can afford these sorts of figures. And whatever is Joao going to put these hammers into? |
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As a French person I feel like it's my duty to explain strikes to you. - AdrienIer |
