[SPOILERS] PB50: scooter's Big Cat Adventure

[scooter]

Starting locations for reference:

[scooter]

My thoughts are still pretty scattered, but I’ll try to organize them a bit here. I’ve been chatting a bit with Commodore about this here and there, and I’m starting to narrow in on what I want here. Here’s a basic list of things I’m starting to feel confident about.

• Creative is a must-pick. The culture is seriously important on Australia, and anyone who goes without will feel the squeeze early and often. The +2 culture puts you way ahead early, and the cheap libraries and theaters allows you to more easily pile it on later.
  
• Civilization is probably the least important of the 3 choices. I haven’t gone through the RtR changelog for civ just yet, so I may change my mind, but my feeling so far is we can make a lot of these work, whereas the leader and starting choices are more scarce.
  
• Philosophical sounds like a good possible trait pairing for Creative. That allows us a blazing fast Academy and easy bulbs, which would make Pericles the easy early tech leader. Charismatic is another strong interest of mine because our capitals are likely to grow as tall as possible, plus the promotion bonus is obviously nice.
  
• Financial and Industrious are interesting, but seem less so. Financial is pretty much because we’ll be working a lot of coast, and therefore we get commerce that way. PHI-fueled Great person bulbs sounds straight up better than on a raw science basis though. Industrious just gets a boost due to the culture and therefore map control.
  
• I’m starting to lean towards Starting Location 4 (Southwest, brown). I think it’s nearly as good as the Southeast spot, but with better expansion prospects. The northern capitals are weaker, but they have better island prospects. I’m having a hard time convincing myself that that’s a good tradeoff. I think the vast majority of output in this game will come from Bureaucaps, so pick a good one and worry about the rest later. Not totally certain I’m correct, but that’s where I’m leaning.
  
• 4th in turn order means we’re less likely to win settling races. That needs to be considered. I think that also weakens the northern spots, because the middle fish is the most obvious settling race on the map.
  

I've got a lot more thinking to do, and I'm still pretty torn between locking in a leader vs location with first choice. Generally leaning towards picking a starting spot first.

[Commodore]

[*]I’m starting to lean towards Starting Location 4 (Southwest, brown). I think it’s nearly as good as the Southeast spot, but with better expansion prospects. The northern capitals are weaker, but they have better island prospects. I’m having a hard time convincing myself that that’s a good tradeoff. I think the vast majority of output in this game will come from Bureaucaps, so pick a good one and worry about the rest later. Not totally certain I’m correct, but that’s where I’m leaning.
[*]4th in turn order means we’re less likely to win settling races. That needs to be considered. I think that also weakens the northern spots, because the middle fish is the most obvious settling race on the map.


I've got a lot more thinking to do, and I'm still pretty torn between locking in a leader vs location with first choice. Generally leaning towards picking a starting spot first.

[*]
For reference:

Having no way to win settling races hurts, but those are at least three viable *backline* cities.

Um, unless that lack of horse is on purpose?

[Hollybombay]

I assume the clams island, one for the fish, and the double whales island?

[scooter]

So I ended up changing plans and going leader first, snagging Pericles. The main reason is Pericles seems incredibly strong to me. I think there are two huge constraints in this game. How do you generate science past the early phase, and how do you get happiness?


Commerce is an issue because I think cottages are really bad here, and for coastal commerce to be good enough, you’re going to have to go FIN, which I’m not sure is worth it (and/or Colossus). My concern with cottages is the map is so tight (much moreso than PBEM34), that pillaging cottages will be very easy. Therefore, the name of the game is specialists and bulbing. This pushes me strongly towards the Pyramids, and I don’t think actually building it is viable thanks to RtR’s changes to stone and IND. Plus, there’s no Stone on this map anyway. So, Forge -> Engineer -> Rush Pyramids? As happy is also an issue, Representation seriously helps that too.


So what if someone takes Gandhi or something and tries to race me? They would probably in theory win that race, assuming they could keep from dying in the process. I don’t think that’s worth losing Creative, but maybe it is, I don’t know. The good news is I have pivots available to me. I could use the engineer to rush Great Library, which would then give me an Academy shortly after that, and race off tech-wise that way. A happy-providing Civ would be important in that case. Basically, if nobody else takes Philosophical, I think Pyramids is just free.


All in all, it feels like the best choice, because I think early Representation is basically a win condition here. I feel better about making different starting spots work than I do going without either Creative or Philosophical, so here we are. I will likely take a starting location next and accept last Civ pick, but that could possibly change if people snap up the starting spots during this first round. Picking Civ last is not the worst either as I could pick something tailored to slow down the most threatening opponent UU.

[scooter]

I assume the clams island, one for the fish, and the double whales island?

Yep. All of those are pretty safe and would not require racing anyone.

[scooter]

So we have some developments.




Yuris picked this location with the second overall pick. It’s interesting that he picked this location over the second one directly east. I felt the two northern starts were very similar, and I slightly preferred Start 2 between those as it gives good access to the most islands. Also, starts 1-2 are going to be racing to the fish spot between them, and Start 2 is going to have turn order advantage thanks to Cornflakes picking it, which we’ll get to in a second. This was a big hesitance of mine in taking either of these spots - I felt going last I likely couldn’t win the Fish race, which downgrades both of these locations for me. All in all, I don’t blame him at all for taking a location over a leader, but I’m not wild about this spot overall.





I think Cornflakes agrees with me on Start 1 vs Start 2, because he locked in this spot immediately. I think only like 10 minutes went by, so that suggests to me his plan was to snap this spot up immediately if it happened to fall to him. I would bet he feels fortunate to have it from pick 3.

The trick for Cornflakes here is going to be to get some commerce going. $1 says he priorities Oracle -> MC -> Colossus. I think he can win the Fish race, and he has the best island access of anyone. Personally, I don’t think this trade is worthwhile, because I’m still of the belief that the capital is way more important than fishing villages in this kind of game, but his production overall will be excellent which makes him dangerous. Overall, I like this choice better than Yuris’ choice, and in his spot in the turn order, I would have seriously considered the same choice at his spot in the draft.


I’m still waiting for superdeath to make his selection, but I have two schools of thought I’m grappling with here. I suspect he will take a leader, but I could be wrong. Here’s the two ways of looking at it:

1. Perhaps I should pick a location regardless of what superdeath does, because that allows me to Civ counterpick. My gameplan here is to lean heavily on my leader to win economically, so survival is my top priority from a Civ. I’ll have two immediate neighbors (the diagonals I don’t think will touch each other much), and I can target a Civ whose UU helps with handling my most dangerous neighbor.
2. Pick a power Civ now, as I don’t think there’s a huge gap between Starts 3 and 4. Start 3 is a better capital, Start 4 is similar with better expansion prospects, particularly for 4th in turn order. So with that in mind, accept last choice of start, and pick a Civ I really want. There are a couple that come to mind…


I’m slightly leaning towards door number 2.

[sunrise089]

Do you think Spot 1 won’t have commerce challenges but Spot 2 will? Or were you just only focused on Spot 2 above since it was such a rapid pick?

Also meta question since I’ve not lurked a ‘modern’ RB pitboss - do commerce tiles get pillaged a lot, or do you think it’s unusually likely this game because how close everyone is?

[Miguelito]

Regarding pillaging cottages, just wanted to make sure you're aware of the mod change that makes towns (and villages I think) immune.

[naufragar]

Regarding pillaging cottages, just wanted to make sure you're aware of the mod change that makes towns (and villages I think) immune.

Other way around. Villages are unpillageable but towns can be degraded to villages. (Although don't trust my memory!)

I like your plan, Scooter. In my opinion, RtR still hasn't solved 'mids, and Phi's the only way to nab them. We need Krill to come back to debate it.