[SPOILERS] Chevalier Mal Fet and Marcopolothefraud lead a Soviet Down Under

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

If Australia is taken by our pick, I think we should go with Norway, if available. If neither is, then Korea or Phoenicia (because someone will ahve Norway, we'll want biremes) and then we take either Korea or the best remaining naval/science civ with our 6th pick.

[marcopolothefraud]

Ah, I see. You think that Norway will be more competitive than the science civs, apart from Australia. I'm not experienced enough to predict other people's plans (and I'm not planning to cheat!), so I'll agree with you unless I can think of something.

[Kaiser]

After being quite detrimental to your game in PBEM18 (sorry for that, I believe it was the best play to get to a strong position by keeping you weak, sadly I badly fumbled my attack.) I want to dedlurk you guys this game.

Some insights:
- easier access to Harbor districts is highly important in my eyes, England or Phoenicia the highest priorities before going for a complimentary pick
- GA access
- Boosting science in classical/medieval GA
- trade routes

Between these two:
- RND has more 1 more base GA point and +1 movement for units build +2 if on a different continent, free naval unit when built
- Cothon 50% production for naval units and full healing inside the city borders for naval units
- Phoenicia is the better starter than England, due to its trade routes and settler production boost coming from the cothon
- England Victoria is the better snowball due to the free unit when conquering a city on a different continent.

Phoenicia also has the greatly increased mobility and sight for embarked Pheonician settlers which could be key in getting a head start in this game. I would recommend you guys going for one of the two first, preferably Phoenicia in my eyes.
You can then pick on the return a complimentary pick depending on the other players choices. I can see Phoenicia working well with Australia, Indonesia, Korea, Germany, Japan assuming that the other Harbor Civ, Norway and Netherlands are gone by then.
I personally dislike the drafter strategy for a team game as I think the true benefit is giving the Eurekas/Inspirations to the team and for that you want to branch out comparatively quick into different areas of the tree.

Will the Writing Eureka of Phoenicia be wasted as everybody already know their team mate or do you need to meet a competing civ?

[marcopolothefraud]

For all the benefits of Phoenicia, it strikes me as a civ that peaks early. Every settler provides diminishing returns, even if we stack the +50% production bonuses from Ancestral Hall, Cothon and the Colonization policy card. Even if it gets a classical Golden Age (which will be difficult bc this is a water map), it will struggle to get a Medieval Golden Age and keep that momentum. (It doesn't seem like Phoenicia can really benefit from Medieval Dark Age policies.)

Its okay to have a civ that peaks early, but it needs to be balanced by a civ that won't peak early. In particular, a Phoenicia-Norway team most likely won't do so well. I think we have the next pick in the organization thread, and as soon as CMF gives his final approval, I will announce Australia as our pick.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I gotta dash to work, but my plan period is in a couple of hours. I'll type off some responses then. Let's take our time, use some of our 2 day limit, and make certain of Australia. I'm like 90% certain that's what we wanna go with, but there's no rush.

[Kaiser]

Thrawn/TAD - Japan => strong all game combat bonus, decent terrain independence for districts and 100% production to HS, Encampment and Theatre
This looks like a play for an early religion with one of the better combat boni available. I remember thrawn asking for a builder game but I could see these two combining this with Norway for an early attack as well. It is a flexible and strong pick, especially ifr combined with one of the CS religions. If they pick another religion heavy CIV like Indonesia, they could try to go for Crusade and DOF. Thrawn is in this game in the beginner category, but I think PBEM19 showed that he should not belong there. He is a 1-game vet.

Australia is a decent CIV with a big defensive do not attack me sign on it. On this map the added housing for settling on coast is probably one of its best boni, especially early game.
It is somehwat dependant to find a 4 tile mountain adjacency spot for an amazing +7 Campus. Alternatively there are other good +3 or +5 Campus adjacencies (4 coast or reef + 3 coast), but none of these spots is guaranteed and without it is a relative plain CIV.

I personally think that Australia, Korea and Netherlands could fit well into the high science output category. Australia has the biggest snowball potential and the best defensive mechanism, Korea is a good alternative and Netherlands as well, but its dependancy on rivers might be an issue on the expected map type.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I think Norway and Australia are the two overall strongest water civs, yeah. They complement each other well, since Australia's biggest weakness - being coastally raided - is Norway's biggest strength. But there are more strong naval civs than there are coastal+science civs like Australia, so I think we should take Oz first since we can do any of Norway/Phoenicia/Indonesia with our second. I think one of the three should be available, if all are taken I might fall back on the Netherlands or something crazy like the Ottomans. 

The drafter strategy doesn't mean that Civ 2 totally ignores science - you still try to get variety and hit different eurekas than your partner. But one civ will be doing most of the heavy lifting, while the other one builds heavier military and commerce. Basically, instead of hitting eurekas 50/50, it's more 70/30. For example, Australia will be building things like water mills and aqueducts and growing towards pop 10 for the Civil Service bonus, while Norway would be hitting Shipbuilding and Exploration instead. It's about specialization, but not the exclusion of science. I made that mistake in PBEM7, before I fully grasped the game. 

As for Norway/Phoenicia's early biases, those are strengths. The earlier your power spike comes, the better off you are, because you ahve more a probability of getting to use your strengths. Phoenicia peaks in the Classical age, but the goal is to use that peak to maintain a stronger growth curve than the other civs, who are perpetually playing catch-up. Settlers are a VERY good return on investment through most of the game, because they straight up add more food, science, production, gold, etc. to the empire - just with a time delay. Nothing else can match that, ultimately. Dido's cheap settlers let her expand more, faster, which gives her more build queues, which means mroe districts, more ships, science, everything. The name of the game is expansion protected by military. Phoenicia's Cothon makes it good at BOTH things. With Australia leading the way in science, and Phoenicia protecting the coasts, the two civs go very well together. I'd be happy with Norway or Phoenicia with our second pick, though I expect Woden/ljub to take one and Sub/roland to take the other. 

Thrawn and Archduke - I'm not sure Japan was the strongest choice. It's a solid civ, but really dependent upon your city-planning abilities. The coastal combat benefit is marginal - it makes Japanese galleys the equals of Norway and Carthage, but without the speed bonuses or the ability to enter deep water, and without the production bonus. It smacks of a cute thrawn play, perhaps Crusade in mind, perhaps something else. Archduke would have just gone with the straightforwardly aggressive Norway, but I suspect he'll let thrawn's stream of chatter sway him. Their thread is going to be a long chain of thrawn's febrile imagination putting forth plans followed by Archduke grumpily saying "no, we should just kill someone." Really glad they passed on Norway, though, now there's no chance they'll get it. 

I think Australia is a really good get. It's straight up better than Japan, I feel, for everything except religion. I'm okay locking that in.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Kaiser, note that they can just declare war on me and avoid Australia's +100% processing. We'll need to liberate cities if we want double production.

[marcopolothefraud]

Suboptimal and Roland have taken Indonesia. Suboptimal strikes me as a somewhat mediocre builder with a good eye for war. Roland's been lurking for a while, but I don't know how good he is.

The new patch seems to mean that we won't be able to see the scores of other players until we've met them, which means we can't deduce their technologies or civics yet. However, Indonesia might be a special case because they're almost guaranteed to have the first pantheon and receive +2 era score from that. We can probably keep tabs on them from turn 13 onwards.

[Kaiser]

Oh, I assumed a war declaration worked on both of you and would trigger the bonus for Australia, if that is not the case then the defensive mechanism can be completely worked around. 

Australia's benefit for a water heavy map is the added housing on coastal settling and the adjacency based on appeal, right?
While the first is strong, it basically means you can delay building a Granary early game and have better growth potential later. A Granary is 65  and it forces you to settle costal, which you probably want but also makes you more vulnerable to naval attacks. Admittedly, this bonus is better than anything Korea or Netherlands (at least early, "the seven provinzien" looks like a nice unit and dikes are cute too) bring to a water map. 

Enough Anti-Australia talk from me, I see you picked it already
It is a good pick and combines nicely with Phoenicia, Victoria of England or Norway which we are basically guaranteed to get one of. Any preferences on your side?