[PB65 - Cornflakes] Rising from the Ashes

[Commodore]

Oh, definitely don't foggaze for anything solid; that may well change.

[Cornflakes]

Oh, definitely don't foggaze for anything solid; that may well change.

yep, I know the drill. But what else is there to do when I'm in 3 of the 4 active games. At least I end up with a list of assumptions to follow up on when I get to log in. At the very least when things change I then get to theory craft on why they changed

[Cornflakes]

Picks are posted! Most popular trait is PRO, earliest UU is Inca, scariest UU is Zulu (no Maya thankfully), 1 other Creative, no IND, maybe Superdeath will stay out of an ancient/classical war since he has a medieval UU and strong economic traits (), America is in the game but not as PHI.

[Cornflakes]

I just realized that out of 6 players, 4 start with Mysticism any bets on who will get tempted into snagging a religion ahead of essential worker techs?

[Cornflakes]

Pick analysis:

1. Superdeath - Darius (FIN/ORG) of Byzantium (Cataphract/Hippodrome)
The synergy here is commerce oriented traits in order to reach the "overpowered" UU at Guilds quicker. Will Superdeath finally look beyond the classical era rush and play for the later toys? The combo certainly says yes, but I don't think Superdeath has the patience for this combo, nor the desire to micro development through the early game without expansion traits.

2. Pindicator Charlemagne - (PRO/IMP) of America (Carnegie Public Library/Minuteman)
I'm pleased that Pindicator took America, and I hope he does better after the disappointment of the early exit last game. Unfortunately he didn't have much choice in PHI leaders and ended up passing on Frederick (PHI/ORG). The IMP bonus is approximately equivalent in magnitude to CRE, and PRO will help power through the early tech until the UU can start contributing to bulbs. Pindicator certainly has the experience to turn this combo into a solid game. Overall though I think that America is rather "meh" without PHI, and part of the allure of America for me is my belief the PHI is currently a tier above the other traits and the CPL just synergizes so well with that.

3. Mjmd Gilgamesh - (CRE/PRO) of Zulu (Impi/Ikhanda)
Yada yada, solid pick, flexible, don't want to be neighbors early game, better food elsewhere on the menu. This combo says "leave me alone while I get out to an early tech lead". I would be content with this combo and would play it for the flexibility. Be ready to pounce on neighbor weakness, but also able to play the longer game and squeeze like a boa constrictor if an opening doesn't materialize early. MJMD is a solid enough player that he may possible be the first victim of Early Leader Syndrome with this combo. He tends to expand with a strong farmers gambit and this combo may make that strategy look to be in an overly dominant position by the classical era.

4. Bing - Wang Kon (FIN/PRO) of Inca (Quechua/Terrace)
The Troll King now gets "all the commerce" ... that's Wang Kon I'm speaking of, for those new timers who may have missed AI Survivor. Bing on the other hand is not a troll, and in fact seems to be a solid player with a few games under his belt for experience. The Quechua's C1 bonus may make barb defense easier, and the cheaper Terrace is a mini-EXP trait. At 45h, the Terrace can easily be 1-whipped in a size 2 city without needing a chop, and in a food-poor map can be chopped while working a hammer tile without needing to burn a pop with the whip. I'll give this combo a "decent enough" rating, although uninspiring.

5. Sucks at Civ - Mehmed (EXP/ORG) of India (Fast Worker/Mausoleum)
The Fast Worker tempts the newb! I know India has been picked many times in CtH, but I just don’t see enough value in the Mobility promotion. I guess when compared to later era traits a little early is better than more later. I also may under-rate EXP because I find that chop + 1-whip is adequate to get granaries in new cities, and prefer to play with the toys available on other traits.

6. Cornflakes - Pericles (CRE/PHI) of Arabia (Camel Archer/Madrasa)
As Sucksatciv posted in the tech thread, my neighbors may find themselves under severe culture pressure in the mid game. I have a tendency to get fixated on an idea and pursue it with excellent execution … only to find that I may have missed a better opportunity that popped up along the way. So my aim for this game is to remain flexible and be ready to act. The long game with PHI bulbs and squeezing extra territory out with culture is solid, but I want to remain open to earlier opportunities rather than fixating on a deep bulb line. I haven’t said anything yet about the Camel Archer, but March promotion is a sneakily boring-sounding buff. But especially when paired with a supermedic could really accelerate a conquest. The ability to push forward immediately with 2-movers after breaking the border fortress could make the difference between striking the production centers before they have time to regroup and pull together defenders.

[Miguelito]

supermedic

Omg I hadn't even thought of that yet.  looking much forward to seeing them in action .

[Ginger()]

You can also treat them like Zerkers and build them for the promo, then upgrade them to become March Cuirs, which is a possibility to consider as PHI with a Mil Trad Lib.

[Cornflakes]

I started with Mysticism/Mining instead of Mysticism/Wheel

[Cornflakes]

We're finally rolling!

   

Found a cluster of resources to the north. Gold! Lets hope for another food resource up there so that we actually have enough food to work the gold. This terrain has excellent production capacity. Windmills may be the way to go with all those brown hills. That Stone makes Pyramids look appealing, especially with all these forests around us. With a Math bulb + stone each chop is worth 45 hammers. However I have to assume that everyone else will have similar access to stone as well.

My 3rd ring border pop will come at T25 and reveal an extra band immediately around the capital. I marked those two 3rd ring mountains with the fog that they will push back. My initial thought was that this would be a huge bonus to fogbusting barbs ... then when double checking the setting in game I realized that we are playing with no barbs That's a big catch there, no need to end scout turns on rough terrain, less protection needed for early settlers, more farmers gambiting from rivals. Hmmm ... I may even build a 2nd scout instead of two warriors before the settler. Knowledge is power, after all. And this map is fairly big. Counting tiles with "go-to" I'm getting 52 tiles wide and 36 tiles tall for 312 total tiles per player. Back-calculating land tiles from the victory screen I'm getting something like 145/player. Commodore made a comment in the setup thread about the map hitting the spec'ed 110 tiles/player as useable tiles implying that about 25% of land tiles are mountains. I think the typical map is somewhere in the 5% range for mountains, and even in the few tiles we've revealed so far we have a lot of mountains visible.

With CRE border pops and no barbs and I'm planning to scout a little deeper than typical at the start. With this in mind, I chose my scouting path based on trying to move the scout twice each turn. Also moving on the diagonal reveals more map than moving horizontally or vertically. Probably scout NW-N from here to investigate further around the gold.

[Cornflakes]

Back so soon for another scouting update, you say? Why yes, it’s T3 and we get creative border pop! But that’s not the biggest news of the turn:

   

Those are pale yellow borders sticking out of the fog. And if there was any doubt in their identity, the 2nd ring borders confirm that it can only be MJMD’s CRE/PRO Zulu. Of all the neighbors, this is the one I wanted least the two creative civs are best located on opposite sides of the map to push their comparative culture advantage against the rest of the world, not to bounce creative culture off of each other.

The Zulu are also a scary neighbor considering that the Hunting > AH path puts me farther away from the Impi’s counter unit. This could spell trouble. In PB47? I settled my 2nd city on copper and still barely had an axe in time to ward off an Impi rush from DZ. Chariots from horses at AH won’t help. I also highlighted in the screenshot an aggressive fortified border city location. That is 6 tiles from my capital, 5 tiles from his. But it invalidates all other city locations between us except the flat grassland 2N of my scout. It is a hill location behind a river. It would surely trigger righteous indignation from MJMD.

But it’s one of those locations where “might makes right” and “the early bird gets the worm”. It’s also what I meant by requesting no resource rich Uber sites between players. Shall we break out the pink dot, and gun for that location? We would need Archery to hold it against Impi. And what would MJMD’s response be? Would he throw his game immediately and choke it with Impi/axes? Even if we could hold the city with archers, he could prevent us from improving it.

Let’s pan back to the capital border pop and see what else we have to work with:

   

A few more riverside grass tiles are nice, but that ocean there squeezes our expansion in that direction. That is clearly backlines territory. And we won’t pick up any new land-based food settling that river valley, only clams which need fishing

The green tile highlighted with sign mode is coastal, while the tile 1S is fresh water. So ocean is close in the southwest as well. A mountain range restricts expansion in the northeast. It feels like everything is funneling me northwest

   

And finally the overview shot. The scout will bounce W-SW without contacting MJMD. No point in alerting him of our proximity on T4.