[PB56] NobleHelium Tells It Like It Is

[superdeath]

Oh, an older thread that still has screencaps, that's fun.  I was wondering what ever happened to Germanic Joey, but according to his profile he's still around.  More of the High Blood Pressure Gang ought to get involved in these games again, what with Gaspar being back.  Look at/for you, Boldly. 



Also, formally confirming for posterity that I'm ded-lurking this thread as well, for absolutely no other reason than to give Noble a cheap excuse to annoy Mjmd, were he so inclined.

Boldy played last in PB43 together with Mr. Cairo, if I remember correctly.

played for like.. 20t and then bounced. I think he came up with the naming scheme there

Okay team, while we wait let's discuss my favorite pregame topic which is the naming scheme!

Originally I was planning to go with Magic: The Gathering cards, of which there is a nearly limitless number and we can pick a suitable one for each city based upon its location and whatnot.  However if anyone has a burning idea of a naming scheme I'd love to hear it.

Also I assume many of you (wider lurker crowd included) have played MTG before so I'm happy to hear about your favorite card(s) that you want cities named after.  No promises that I'll actually use the card of course, I'm probably not going to use a card if I hate it. (Although there are very few cards that I truly hate.) My favorite cards are engine cards, cards that provide repeatable value.  As you might expect, I am fond of planeswalkers.  I am most at home playing decks that win by incremental advantage - which is usually a midrange deck but not always.  And not all midrange decks are incremental advantage decks.  I would say the most famous midrange deck, Jund Midrange, is attrition midrange rather than incremental advantage.  Midrange decks in say Sultai colors tend to be more about incremental advantage than ones in Jund colors.



Tireless Tracker is the prototypical midrange engine value card.  It turns your lands (which usually do not provide any value but are necessary so that you can play your cards) into clues that can be sacrificed for 2 mana for another card.  So in essence your lands draw more cards, which is great value.  It is also possibly my favorite card, although I have never actually cast it or had it under my control on the battlefield.

EDIT: I just realized that most (interesting) MTG card names are probably over 15 characters. So we might need a new naming scheme.  Not sure.

I play commander with my buddies, so my favorite/one of my favorite cards has to be


My commander for "Chaotic Norin"
https://deckstats.net/decks/164258/1784964-norin

We try and play low budget, so roughly 50$ not counting basic land. ( this deck IS in budget, alot of the sets that deckstats used are far more expensive versions than what id use )

[Charriu]

About that naming scheme. A wise man once told me.

Greetings.  I am interested in following a game of yours in the future, however I am dubious about that naming scheme of yours.  I'm giving it a C-.  Naming schemes where you need to smash words together to fit within the character limit are a no-no.

[NobleHelium]

OK.  So we picked China.




We need to tech AH for this start because the pig is the best tile. So Agriculture is a must because we have the rice as well. China lets us tech BW afterwards and finish right around the time the first settler finishes, which lets us settle for copper or horse. Or maybe both at the same time! But probably not.

Other than China we could have picked a variety of other Agriculture civilizations which I will go into later. They would all be worse than China, but if there were better leaders available we could have gone for one of them and taken the risk of not getting China and using one of our secondary or tertiary options. What leaders would we have picked over China? Stay tuned!

[NobleHelium]

Mjmd did not pick India! Shocking.

[Serdoa]

I'll start in a new private league in 1.5 hours Noble and won't be able to talk much before either (because my wife really believes that some housework has to be done and I should be a part of the group doing it). But I'd say go with our choices, I don't see any reason to change them.

[NobleHelium]

OK. I locked in Willem.

Victoria of England is the best combo in this game. FIN and IMP are both overpowered and need nerfs. I'll post more later.

[Charriu]

FIN and IMP are already on my watchlist.

[sunrise089]

Noble, is IMP just BtS Imp plus stable bonus?

[NobleHelium]

OK. So I said FIN is too good. I think this is evident from Charriu's tracking data as well as the fact that Mjmd was teching at a similar or better rate to Harry in the latter part of 52 despite having a much smaller empire. Maybe this ignores the fact that Harry had much more production though. Regardless, I think it's clear that the bank production bonus should be axed from FIN because it is certainly strong enough without it. Also keep in mind that PRO was substantially nerfed since 52 whereas FIN was not.

IMP probably requires more explanation. As I mentioned in the 55 pregame, I've now played the game enough to conclusively say that it is very hard to build settlers on normal speed without IMP. IMP means you can 2-whip settlers which makes a huge difference in the early game where you can't grow to 6. Whipping is better on normal speed because the unit is frontloaded and appears immediately. Let's imagine the scenario where you can grow a city and whip it for a unit every 10 turns. Alternatively you can work mines for 10 turns and also produce the unit that way. On normal speed, you get the unit 10 turns faster with the whip. On quick speed, you only get the unit 6-7 turns faster. A turn is worth more on quick, but the fact that you can have the settler 3 turns faster and it can start producing compounding value during that 3 turn difference means whips are better on normal and other slower speeds. Now I understand my imaginary scenario isn't an entirely realistic one because you never choose between growing a city for 10 turns or working mines for 10 turns. But I think the logic clearly follows that whips are better on normal speed because of the compounding value from getting the unit faster, despite each turn being worth less.

So because IMP makes such a big difference on settler production on the early game, it dwarfs all other expansion traits such as EXP. Previously we also had the worker bonus for EXP which works earlier and allows you to get compounding value from that. So I see no reason for IMP to keep its stable bonus because it does not need it and it simplifies the changelog. So that is the minimum nerf I would make to IMP and then balance the other traits around that baseline. EXP or CRE may or may not need buffs after the IMP nerf; I'm much less sure about that.

As a corollary to whips being better on normal speed, chops are also better. So one of the things I will be doing this game in regards to micro is to be more willing to use early game chops. That is one of the things I learned microing openings for PBEM78 and PB55.

[NobleHelium]

Okay, now about our pick.

Basically we were going to pick Victoria if she was available else we were picking China. Sadly we did not get enough luck on the snake pick roll and could not get Victoria. On the way back up the snake we debated whether we wanted Willem, Pacal, Hannibal or if we liked IMP enough that we were willing to abandon FIN. The other thing is that due to various factors I think we will end up with 10-11 tiles between capitals. That is VERY tight and could be the tightest map that is currently active. Another thing I learned from my recent gameplay is that monuments are ABSOLUTE SUCK on normal speed. Improvements only take 1-2 more turns to finish on normal speed. Border pops from monuments take 5t more. So you want your borders to pop faster relatively speaking so that you can start working on your second ring resources because your first ring resources are relatively faster to be improved. And you're not going to have a monument immediately when the city is founded.

So in the end, the combination of tight map + normal speed meant that Willem was better than any alternative, by my estimation. Also I have never actually played CRE and this is the best time to test it out. Believe it or not, I have probably played fewer than 20 complete games of Civilization 4. No doubt that is a smaller number than all the supposed greens in this game.