[SPOILER] - Suboptimal finds trees, still seeks forest

[suboptimal]

Map Specs for PYDT:
All DLCs and Expansions
Standard Size
Standard Speed
Other/Custom Map Type
7 Players
15 City States
Disaster Level: 4

Play Order/Civs:
TheArchduke: Russia
Alhambram: Australia
TheBlackSword: Cree
Kaiser: Greece/Gorgo
suboptimal: Nubia
pindicator: Khmer
Cormflakes: Rome

Let me know if something is wrong (such as play order). I can create the save tonight and PM it to TheArchduke. Good luck all!

Picks are in, map type is set. Nothing really suprising in these picks except perhaps the Cree and Khmer. With TBS I'd expect either an attempt to rush with the Okihtcitaw (basically a mobile warrior) with the recon XP policy slotted or to sit back and try to build out a snowball, perhaps taking a couple of city-states in the process. Khmer? If he's feeling violent it's all about the domreys, though you can't upgrade into them and you can't upgrade out of them so...??? The other angle is perhaps a cultural victory from the get-go using Prasats and spreading his religion.

With 15 city-states that's probably two per player "nearby" and the extra one in the middle of the continent with four players. A reasonable "map-blind" objective for the first 60 turns is 4 or 5 cities with Political Philosophy completing around the same time. That should get things going even if the city-states are a bit crippled from the lack of fresh water until Aqueducts.

An early pantheon is out of the question unless we hit a religious city-state (or two) first. The question is whether God of the Forge will still be around when ours comes in.

[Banzailizard]

Cree is defiantly an odd choice, one of their main abilities relates to alliances which probably are not going to happen here. I suppose extra tiles from an early trader (which you get for free, extra food and production are nice) are pretty valuable though. Also the Mekewap is a good tile improvement, housing production and some gold? Sure pretty good. Still not a great civ.

For Khmer I guess Pin liked going tall with Inca? Khmer are encouraged to build aqueducts which gives housing, pairing well with extra food from the farm adjacency. Their holy sites get housing and food too for being next to rivers. I don't think they are a very strong civ, but they are one with a lot of synergy which counts for something. Might actually work to his advantage that Russia is in the game since there might be some actual religious combat that way. Still means he is getting the second religion.

[suboptimal]

In thinking about it some more, the Cree approach might be to use the Mekewap and trade routes to build up while making a beeline for Stirrups.

Khmer has the potential to be a mid-game cultural generation machine given the bonuses to the Prasat, especially if he manages to pick up Choral Music. He could then try to use that as a springboard to Theocracy and start faith purchasing military. He'd also probably try (along with Archduke) to get a Classical Golden Age and take Monumentality and expand outwards.

Our approach is going to most likely be to get archers up and out as fast as possible, along with a few warriors. In test games I keep going back and forth between hard-researching Craftsmanship (for Agoge) or stopping at inspiration + 1 turn to allow city-state improvements to get the inspiration. The former gets more archers out quickly but can delay PP to Turn 65 or 70 unless there's a cultural city-state or resource around. The latter delays Agoge, which isn't too bad, but also relies on the AI getting out builders to make improvements, which isn't a guarantee. I usually haven't gotten a builder out until Turn 40 or so, preferring to get out the archers & warriors for conquest.

[CFCJesterFool]

God of the Forge will be of marginal benefit. The main bottleneck is most likely going to be gold and with the production boost to ranged units, better to build Pitati archers and upgrade melee units. Producing an early slinger for the Archery eureka is a priority obviously but early production might be better spent on a monument and fast expansion (waiting for Agoge before focusing on military.) Imo, better to take the free builder pantheon (if still around) or the +1 culture from pastures pantheon (assuming there are pastures in the area that you want to settle.) In short, focus on a pantheon that helps mitigate a weakness rather than further buffing a strength.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

In thinking about it some more, the Cree approach might be to use the Mekewap and trade routes to build up while making a beeline for Stirrups.

Khmer has the potential to be a mid-game cultural generation machine given the bonuses to the Prasat, especially if he manages to pick up Choral Music.  He could then try to use that as a springboard to Theocracy and start faith purchasing military.  He'd also probably try (along with Archduke) to get a Classical Golden Age and take Monumentality and expand outwards.

Our approach is going to most likely be to get archers up and out as fast as possible, along with a few warriors.  In test games I keep going back and forth between hard-researching Craftsmanship (for Agoge) or stopping at inspiration + 1 turn to allow city-state improvements to get the inspiration.  The former gets more archers out quickly but can delay PP to Turn 65 or 70 unless there's a cultural city-state or resource around.  The latter delays Agoge, which isn't too bad, but also relies on the AI getting out builders to make improvements, which isn't a guarantee.  I usually haven't gotten a builder out until Turn 40 or so, preferring to get out the archers & warriors for conquest.

I think you both are underrating Cree somewhat. I thought that Cree and Dutch were both about equally likely choices for TBS. We've seen pretty strong Dutch games from Alhambram and from Archduke - the bonus adjacencies are easy to use, and the trade route bonuses are nice to have. But a big part of the Dutch strength is in the 7 Provinces, which only matter on a watery map which this may not be.

By contrast, the Cree's main weakness is the UU, which I still think is weak (mostly due to the higher production cost. You're basically paying a lot extra for only getting a scout that can defend itself from barbs, and other civs' scouts can just run away when they need to in most cases. You still need to build warriors or something else for defense, because proper military units can be upgraded to keep up with tech. I haven't used skirmishers enough to know if they'll actually work as a defensive force but I rather doubt it). Otherwise, though, they're quite good, I think. Yes, the bonii from alliances is going to be hit & miss, but with 7 players it's not out of the question that TBS will benefit from it. I wouldn't advise allying with him simply because his civ skills are so strong, but he might be able to tempt someone (pindicator likes to build, doesn't he?). The real benefit, though, is that almost all of his bonuses come online early: An extra trade route at pottery is basically instant, the mekewap is a very early improvement that goes great on otherwise useless flatland tiles, and the tile-pick up, while gimmicky, will speed up tile acquisition at two cities and might be able to grab a key resource or two (which can save ~100 gold every time you don't have to buy a tile). Early bonuses means a rapid early snowball. Cree is TBS's fastest starting civ, and he can use them to try to build a lead early. 

Khmer is harder to explain. Dhomreys won't surprise anyone, and I don't think siege weapons are all that effective in general. The Prasat doesn't seem that powerful - turning your missionaries into Relic-spawners, something that has literally never come up in a game before. Unless pin has some crazy new idea (always possible), he must be thinking of leveraging Khmer's other advantages.

So, he's going to build lots of aqueducts, and lots of holy sites. He'll want to build next to rivers to trigger his ability, the culture bombs are similar to the Cree tile grab, and his aqueducts are actually quite strong - mini-Entertainment/Holy Site hybrids, and they boost farms to help him grow tall. I bet he'll have his eye on the River Goddess pantheon Archduke took in PBEM16 - +2 amenities +2 housing from riverside holy sites stacks with his leader ability to mean every Holy Site by a river generates +3 housing, +2 amenities, and +1 food. So pin is going to turtle and go for insanely tall cities with a buttload of faith, and we all should know by now what a good currency faith has. I don't think it's as effective a combination as Korea would have been, but it should be interesting. Maybe he can make it work. 

God of the Forge will be of marginal benefit. The main bottleneck is most likely going to be gold and with the production boost to ranged units, better to build Pitati archers and upgrade melee units. Producing an early slinger for the Archery eureka is a priority obviously but early production might be better spent on a monument and fast expansion (waiting for Agoge before focusing on military.) Imo, better to take the free builder pantheon (if still around) or the +1 culture from pastures pantheon (assuming there are pastures in the area that you want to settle.) In short, focus on a pantheon that helps mitigate a weakness rather than further buffing a strength.

The issue with pantheons is looking at the list, we're almost certainly going to be choosing outside of the top 5. Russia, Khmer, Rome, and Greece should all pick before us (I trust for obvious reasons), so we'll be mostly racing with Cree and Australia. Khmer's NBD since he'll take River Goddess almost certainly. Cornflakes...hm, I need to go back to his old threads and review his pantheon choices - I don't know if he'll try to maximize culture generation with GOTOS or something, or try to cover one of his other bases (EG for faith?). Archduke will almost certainly go for culture, though, and I've no idea what Kaiser will take. 

So we'll need a long list of pantheons to pick from. Culture or faith generations are good standbyes. 

For Nubia in particular, I wonder how much benefit we'd derive from God of Craftsmen? +1 faith/+1 production stacks with Amanitore's ability so that every mine is +3 production/+1 faith BEFORE Apprenticeship, and pastures will be a bit of extra faith and production too. My main hesitation, though, is that you typically only have 1 or 2 copies of each strategic resource within your empire, so on the whole we're looking at ~+10 production/faith empire wide, and it feels intuitively like God of the Forge would beat that most of the time. 

I'm not good at micro, but let's do some math here. Stacking GotF would give us either +75% or +66% production towards ranged units before Agoge - I think it's multiplicative, so call it +66%. Another +50% from Agoge gets the bonus all the way to 93%, or almost doubled production speed on archers. Ugh, no, that feels wrong. If the cap has 10 production, normally it'll need 7 turns to spit out a Pitati. With Nubia's ability, that becomes 15 h/t, so the time drops to 5 turns. Adding Agoge - again, I assume it's multiplicative, not additive, so we're not getting 200% production but rather 225%. So now we're getting 22.5 h/t, meaning we just need 4 turns. Stacking GotF means production = 10 x 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.25, or 28.125 h/t, which means we'd be spitting out 2 pitatis every 5 turns from a 10 production city. Without GotF, we're looking at 2 every 7. So yeah, that probably is a marginal benefit, and we'd do better from extra faith or culture elsewhere.*

I've actually kind of soured on the free builder pantheon. It's a good snowball, and maybe a way to get around the Craftsmanship eureka, but that's all it does for us. Not to be sneezed at, but I feel like we could get more benefit elsewhere. 

*UNLESS you want to go full ham, hit like ~4 self-founded cities + city states and then just steamroll people with never-ending waves of ranged units with a few melees in there for last hits. Sieges won't matter when we can choke everyone's economy to death. Just archers-archers-archers all the time. This'd require total commitment - ie basically no infrastructure until we've eaten a neighbor (or even two!).

[suboptimal]

For Nubia in particular, I wonder how much benefit we'd derive from God of Craftsmen? +1 faith/+1 production stacks with Amanitore's ability so that every mine is +3 production/+1 faith BEFORE Apprenticeship, and pastures will be a bit of extra faith and production too. My main hesitation, though, is that you typically only have 1 or 2 copies of each strategic resource within your empire, so on the whole we're looking at ~+10 production/faith empire wide, and it feels intuitively like God of the Forge would beat that most of the time. 

I'm not good at micro, but let's do some math here. Stacking GotF would give us either +75% or +66% production towards ranged units before Agoge - I think it's multiplicative, so call it +66%. Another +50% from Agoge gets the bonus all the way to 93%, or almost doubled production speed on archers. Ugh, no, that feels wrong. If the cap has 10 production, normally it'll need 7 turns to spit out a Pitati. With Nubia's ability, that becomes 15 h/t, so the time drops to 5 turns. Adding Agoge - again, I assume it's multiplicative, not additive, so we're not getting 200% production but rather 225%. So now we're getting 22.5 h/t, meaning we just need 4 turns. Stacking GotF means production = 10 x 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.25, or 28.125 h/t, which means we'd be spitting out 2 pitatis every 5 turns from a 10 production city. Without GotF, we're looking at 2 every 7. So yeah, that probably is a marginal benefit, and we'd do better from extra faith or culture elsewhere.*

Using a recent SP game as an example, I took two city-states and settled two cities beyond the capital (so, five).  I had four strategic resources, two each of horses and iron, with only the horses being within the city's rings.  God of the Craftsman would not be of much use in this situation.

Regarding your micro, the bonuses are multiplicative and it is roughly correct, though with the new mechanics we lose most or all of the production overflow in most cases.  In a city producing 10.5 per turn:
- Nothing: 10.5 x 1.5 = 15.75, one archer every 5 turns, less than 1 overflow
- Agoge: 10.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 = 23.63, one archer every 3 turns, little to no overflow (or it's lost)
- GotF: 10.5 x 1.5 x 1.25 = 19.69, one archer every 4 turns, lose the overflow
- Agoge + GotF: 10.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.25 = 29.53, one archer every 3 turns, lose the overflow

If the new overflow mechanics didn't exist then Agoge + GotF would be the way to go as the overflow is quite large (almost 25) and could be directed into other production items while the other situations only yield about 5 overflow from the bonuses.  If I had looked at the numbers before I'd probably have completely reconsidered the God of the Forge idea as there doesn't seem to be much benefit after seeing them.  As a result of this I did run the numbers on City Patron Goddess - combined with Nubia's base bonus it results in a 50% production bonus for the first district in a city, rising to a 68% bonus for the first district if a nubian pyramid is placed next to the city.  

The main limiting factor in all of my test games has actually been .  If there are no resources that take camps or mines and no commercial city-states around then getting out piles of archers doesn't work until State Workforce is complete. In the early game there's enough intrinsic gold to build & upgrade two slingers (makes getting the Archery eureka easy), scratch build two archers and a warrior and take a city-state by Turn 35.  In most of my games I've gone slinger x 2 -> settler -> archer x 2 -> warrior -> builder in the capital.  The initial warrior and 3-4 archers take out the first city-state and the warrior, if not needed for rear guard, joins in for the second city-state.  Half of the time I complete Craftsmanship just after taking the city-state as it has three improvements complete before I get my own builder out. 

Regarding the faith generating pantheons, while we've seen how useful faith can be is a pantheon, by itself, sufficient to generate enough faith to be sustainably usable?  In the case of Earth Goddess, absolutely.  Under the right map circumstances I suppose Religious Idols or Stone Circles is also reasonable, though stone might wind up getting harvested.  I don't see God of Craftsmen getting it done by itself, ditto for Fire Goddess.  Edit: CMF, while you're not a fan of the free builder pantheon and it likely won't be around when ours comes in I think that Agoge multiplying with Nubia's ability is a large enough benefit to give it consideration

Regarding the ham approach of an archer flood that might actually be workable if we're on the three civ continent, provided there's rough terrain to take advantage of the hills (move and shoot) and legions/swords/hoplites can be successfully avoided.  One scenario I've considered is if someone attempts to eat a city-state that I'm also going after - in that case I'd likely want to declare on the player (and the city-state), wipe out as much of the invading army as possible, pause to take out the city-state and then go civ hunting.

[Banzailizard]

Reposing from The Archduke's PBEM16 thread

   I think I will hold off on my analysis of this game until PBEM #17 is done because a lot of what went wrong this game feeds into the next.

   Hungary may be a bit overpowered if you can get an envoy machine going.

   Things I did right:

   - Maybe the defense against Cornflakes, but nothing really. I had a decent and quick start but fell off.

   Things I did soso:

   - Decent scouting at the start (met 2-3 CS first), fell off quickly. I need to build more then 1 scout again. Or use the warrior more.

   Things I screwed up:

   - Culture is more important then it was back before GS
   - My city placement is still very SP optimized and not MP optimized. Gotta change.

Emphasis mine.  I expect he will pick up a culture pantheon (Opens Sky suits Russia well since they want horses for Cossacks), DoF and Choral Music for religion.  He might even try to use all those great writers Russia gets.  Not saying much that hasn't been said by CMF but just confirming it with TAD's own words is nice.

Between Russia and Rome there is going to be a lot of culture this game.

[Woden]

Here is your start...
   

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Thank you for the map and helping set up, Woden! Pre-emptive apologies for whenever I inevitably rage at "whatever that lunatic who made THIS unbalanced garbage was clearly smoking when he built it," since you know I don't mean it. :

This looks like a clear SIP to me. You have rice and deer first ring for a really quick start, plus a bunch of PFHs nearby. Sea turtles and clams second ring. No Nubian pyramid locations, but to get that we'd have to move south towards the desert which seems to give up a lot. Moving off the river is clearly insane. Moving to coast a)gives us a coastal capital, ew, b)pushes the deer to 2nd ring for no good reason, and c)pushes some of those PFHs out of the city entirely, all to gain crappy coastal tiles. Moving east - well, depends on the fog. Our warrior is in a bit of an unfortunate spot, trapped on the coast, so we'd have to move blindly, and i doubt there's anything much stronger than the 1st ring rice we'd have. Same arguments apply for moving NE onto the rice and NW onto the deer. SO, I vote SIP.

[Banzailizard]

I second the SIP. The rush early CS plan depends on getting things up and running ASAP and this spot is gorgeous. Incidentally, I wouldn't bother prioritizing the boost Agoge with a start like this. Other than the culture saved from the boost, there is not much you need to develop for now. On the other hand, since this give you so much production, maybe you will have some to spare for a builder and it could be worth it.