Chevalier and Incurian's Itsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny PBEM Reporting Thingy

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Eh, screw the two faith civs (basic idea: monumentality fueled expansion and massive faith income fueling science/culture). We'll keep those in the back pocket for a continental game if that ever happens again. 

Two out of (Norway/Indonesia/Phoenicia/Spain/Portugal) will be available, we'll just feckin' take whichever two. If more are available, Inc and I can discuss which two then.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

In a move about as obvious as the Chiefs crushing the Raiders by 4 touchdowns, thrawn takes Norway. Interesting.

No, not really interesting that he took what is militarily the #1 naval power in the game, one perfectly suited to aggressive tactics and creative raiding, exactly thrawn's wheelhouse, but rather the flurry of posts it set off in ljubljana and Archduke's thread. Now, the 'duke has been mostly sleeping, but ljubljana as we all saw was very excitedly batting around some idea with williams. Was ljub planning on taking Norway for his team with pick #2? It would suit the Archduke pretty well and he was discussing ways to better support Norway? That would explain both his post in the planning thread and the delay in choosing a civ now - if he'd taken #2 for a specific civ, that pick would certainly be locked in now unless it was no longer available - and the only civ that's not available is Norway. 

Interesting. I think I change my prediction from Portugal to the best Norwegian substitute available, Phoenicia (side order of Indonesia). The Cothon bonus and bireme both neatly counter Norway's strengths, and they're the best naval war civ after Norway so might be a creditable second-choice. Indonesia is less obvious but the faith purchase for ships (at x2 cost, ie, standard) makes them a decent shipbuilding runner up. Phoenicia and Indonesia/Portugal/Spain would be my ideal set of civs, but I'm starting to get worried the first three picks will go Norway->Phoenicia->Indonesia, leaving us with Spain/Portugal, which could be a MONSTROUS trading civ combo but also incredibly vulnerable to, uh, everyone else, and looking extra juicy to boot. 

Would probably take Portugal and pair them with either England or Japan in that case. Hm.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

How are ljub and williams chatting so much over thrawn's pick? Did they really not see that one coming and have to revamp their entire strategy? 

Actually...from what I've seen of ljub's thread in PBEM20 (I read the first few pages, but I stopped paying attention to PBEM20 during my honeymoon last October and couldn't bring myself to read the final months since Russia somehow lost, full disclosure) while he's perfectly mechanically sound his biggest weakness I think is the human element. He seems excitable and prone to overreaction - any good ideas he has are unstoppable, any good ideas he thinks his opponent has are, however, ALSO unstoppable and he's doomed. 

So maybe he thought he'd found an uncounterable Norway strategy (it's longboat spam, let's be honest, it's all Norway needs) and now is in despair because thrawn gets to do it instead of him. That would explain a lot, since he wouldn't have the same read of thrawn to pretty much instantly conclude that he would go straight for Norway. 

Anyway, I think the best answer to Norway is MAD. You can't beat them in a straight up fight, but you can ensure that if they attack you, they gain little and will lose while the other teams pull ahead. So we really want a strong naval civ like England (won in PBEM20), Japan, Indonesia, or Phoenicia (ideal) to pair with Portugal/Spain to provide cover from longships. 

Still considering picking Australia, too, since the +100% bonus will be 10 turns of doubled galley production if/when Norway attacks. Other teams won't want to pile on you to keep Norway from running away with the game. It's worth thinking about. Definitely prefer Phoenicia/Portugal (or Spain?) as our top two picks, though.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I forgot ljubljana does this thing where he agonizes over what should be pretty straightforward decisions and holds the "save" for hours.

how did a single pick throw him into such a tailspin?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I guess I should plan what to do to avoid the same thing. Right now my top choices are Phoenicia/Indonesia, with Portugal as a backup to either. If both go to Ljub/Woden, what do I do?

Well, England/Japan are the best remaining naval civs, I think. Japan has shallow water combat bonus and no real vulnerable traders like the Latin powers have, but by the same token doesn't have the massive Portugese gold or the Spanish trade economy. However, Japan does have a strong inland economy and could do well in any archipelago. 

England is a strong naval civ (obviously) with the killer RND and the Sea Dog unit for lategame paired with Letters of Marque, BUT I've played them twice already and am sick of them. I'd probably pair Japan/England with Portugal/Spain, depending. The main thing I'm thinking of is how to get a strong faith/production economy to outbuild everyone else and win with sheer weight of numbers. Russia+Work Ethic is out, but Japan can actually get good Industrial Districts and easy Campus/Holy Site adjacencies, so might be stronger economy pick. 

Hmmmm.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Oh, uh, neat. My top choices are still Indonesia/Phoenicia. 

Inc, do you have a preference which to play?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Sticking some old comments here for later:

[snip]




Indonesia (suboptimal) / China (roland)

I loved the Indonesia pick for this team and I think Indonesia and Phoenicia were the two best picks for this map. Pairing Indonesia with China on the second half of the draft was even better, with China able to handle economic development while Indonesia focused on dominating the seas. Or at least I thought that would be the plan; I've been underwhelmed by many of the decisions made by this team after the picking phase. Starting with Indonesia, Earth Goddess was the best pantheon choice and allowed suboptimal to amass faith without having to build Holy Site districts. But then suboptimal chose to build a Holy Site district anyway - what?! Indonesia doesn't need a religion, China will supply one for the team! Then he built ANOTHER Holy Site district at another city! That's a ton of production not going into more useful districts like Campuses or snowballing ahead with builders/settlers/units. Then there's suboptimal's city placements where he seems to have no desire to put them on the coast in a game that's all about naval power. Sure, he'll get Harbor districts eventually, but that requires expanding borders and building the district post-size 4, delaying everything for long turns on end. I worry that suboptimal is off doing his Single Player builder thing again, treating the game as a sandbox exercise without ever focusing on a key objective. This is a team that should be driving hard to exploit Indonesian jongs and I'm not seeing much of it right now.

As for roland, I did not like the belief choices that he took for his religion. Choral Music is great for civs that want to build a lot of Holy Site districts, but again, the whole point of China is that you don't want to build them! (Yes, I realize that this is why suboptimal was building his own Holy Site districts but the whole idea is a mistake.) China wants Divine Inspiration which will provide faith from wonders, thus allowing faith to accumulate without having to invest in those districts. Choral Music requires the generally crummy Holy Sites themselves, then the shrines/temples for culture. Slow, slow, slow! I think Sacred Places was a good choice though I think I would have preferred Tithe since it would apply to Indonesian cities as well. It's good on its own while also denying a useful belief to other teams (no one but China can use Sacred Places while Chevalier's Russia is making bank with Tithe right now). Roland has developed his cities quite nicely and each one of them is strong... but he only has four of them 80 turns into the game. That's simply not enough and he's going to start falling behind the pack without more expansion. Even for China some of these wonders have marginal value and the need to keep building Holy Site districts to make use of Choral Music has wasted a lot of precious production. (It isn't even working; Russia has as much culture as China largely from having far more total population and cranking out cheap monuments.).

I'm going to disagree a little bit with Sullla's analysis here, although 90% of it is spot on. I think you are underrating Holy Sites slightly, Sullla, since so many beliefs have been tweaked and altered since the release of the game. The biggest reason Russia was able to fight 4 civs at once in the last game was Work Ethic, BUT ALSO the reason we out-expanded everyone else was because we had such a booming faith economy - and that's been true of my games in other contexts as well. The faith Monumentality snowball is the single best way I know of to boost expansion and for that, you need a good faith income. As Indonesia, the faith isn't even wasted since it can translate into ships later. Depending on how much the districts cost, they'll recoup their costs in settlers and ships fairly soon, and add other benefits like culture or amenities on the side. Indonesia was an attractive choice to me because of its strong faith/naval mix, without the raw productive power of Phoenicia or Norway's warmaking ability (I wanted Phoenicia but Inc picked them, and they're more nooby friendly anyway). 

With Work Ethic banned, Choral Music MIGHT be my follower belief, but we'll have to evaluate the map later to really settle on those. 

[Phoenicia (Ljubljana) / Norway (Woden)

I loved the picks for this team and thought that they did great for having the fourth and fifth pick in the snake draft. These two teams have a lot of early game naval power so they would be hot out of the gate and needed to translate that into a longterm advantage, the Imperialistic equivalent for Civ6. They've been somewhat successful thus far, I'd say. I thought that Ljubljana did a good job of beelining to his unique district Cothons at an early date and then setting up for rapid expansion afterwards. Phoenicia has seven cities on the map (although one is the captured Akkad which will be stuck in the occupation penalty) and another settler on its way. All but one city is on the coast and Ljubljana prioritized Cothons along with early biremes. My biggest concern here is research: there are no Campus districts placed and Phoenicia's entire science is coming from Harbor adjacency bonuses via Golden Age dedication. That will time out down the road and then this team's research is going to collapse. So Phoenicia looks great for the moment but I'm concerned about the future.

After all, it's not like Woden has been building a lot of Campus districts as Norway. (He also emphasized Holy Site districts - so many Holy Sites across these teams!) Woden has mostly been training ships and he's done a nice job of claiming the city states in the immediate vicinity. Expansion has been good but internal development seems to be lacking, science/culture are lagging and there don't appear to be any Campuses on the entire Phoenicia/Noway island.

Here, basically we just have to make sure Incurian develops better than ljubljana did. The ONLY reason this team didn't fade into irrelevance was Archduke's catastrophically blundered attack - the Central Powers lost their entire navy without scratching the Raiders and let Woden pillage his way back to relevance. Thrawn is sadly probably going to make much better use of Norway, and I worry that one of the other two teams will let him. Oh, well - full disclosure:

I don't expect to win this game. Not against this field. But we'll try our best.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I don't even remember what Gaul does. Need to look them up.

Ljubljana will take either Japan or Australia to fend off thrawn. 

Eh. I lean Japan, he had a good Japanese SP game he was enamored with.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Huh. I don't see Gaul at all. I'll scratch my head over it.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Just to play thrawn's little game, I had a dark horse toying with Mali just to be goofy. 

Basic idea is to crazy with gold, the main limiter was Mali's incredible dependence upon terrain. 

But my thinking is a good faith or gold generating civ like Russia or Khmer (see my dark horses). Not gonna flip through all of NFP civs to figure out who the best candidate is, though.