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

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Gaul

• Mines gain +1  , grant a +0.5 adjacency bonus for districts and trigger a Culture Bomb when built, claiming surrounding unowned tiles. Specialty districts do not receive adjacency bonuses from other districts and cannot be built next to the City Center.
  
• Receives  equal to 20% of the Production Production cost after training a non-civilian unit. Melee, ranged and anti-cavalry units receive +2 Strength Combat Strength for each adjacent military unit.
  
• Gesetae: +10 Combat Strength when fighting units with a higher base Strength Combat Strength. +5 Combat Strength when fighting against District defenses. 60 production vs. 40
  
• Oppidum: Lower cost (27 vs. 54)
  Acquires Outer Defenses and Ranged Strike along with the City Center once Walls have been built
  Unlocks Apprenticeship when the first Oppidum is built
  Major bonus (+2  ) for each adjacent Quarry or Strategic Resource
  

So, what's Woden got going on here? The unique warrior seems dismissable - you can get two of them for every sword, which they fight on equal terms with, but by the time you're invading another island in force we're probably near Apprenticeship. Now, he does get early Apprenticeship and ergo early Men at Arms, but that's still going to need a powerful navy to put early MaA onto an enemy island. Definitely a bonus but a minor one compared, to say, Incurians +50% ships or my faith income. 

He'll do decently in culture and that will pair well with England's science, I think (Woden always likes high culture). He'll need lots of hills, again, to make it work. 

The Oppidum is hte major draw, like a better Hansa, mostly because it comes online so early. Usually the amount of production invested into Industrial Zones is rarely worth it, but at half cost it just might be. Of course, they still don't stack late game, but it'll be a nice little boost. On the whole, it's not a bad civ, I think, and Woden will have some things working for him, unlike playing Canada ever, but I do think it's a variant choice and there were better options that would synergize with England (Spain, for example, would have paired very well, albeit making the team utterly dependent upon Kaiser to give them a solid map).

[incurian]

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

Inc, do you have a preference which to play?

Phoenicia works for me!

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Japan makes sense. Nearly equal development potential to Australia and a bit more defensive in the early years. I also really like the potential faith game available to them. 

Now we just need to know thrawn's last pick, which per his cryptic comments in the tech thread will be something unconventional to pair with Norway's pillage game. What civ would best profit from absorbing the mass amounts of gold generated by the longship deathball?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

? 

I thought Sumeria was on the ban list - "the usual suspects," eg Hungary, Scythia, Sumeria, Gran Colombia, etc... 

I guess I should have been more explicit.

[Tarkeel]

IMHO, that's a point worth raising in the org thread.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I dunno. Like, *I* thought Sumeria was banned but thrawn and clearly Woden didn't, and I wasn't really explicit in the 'spreadsheet' because I was busy and distracted (still am!) all through setup. So, like, I didn't bother to go through and list the entire old ban list. If I say I thought Sumeria was still banned, thrawn will reasonably point out that we never agreed on it. 

And further, he's clearly invested a ton of effort - like the last day - to testing out things about Sumeria and theorycrafting (although let's be honest, how much theory does it take to make a gigantic deathball of longships juiced by Sumeria's alliance abilities?) and I hate to be the stick in the mud. So, if everyone else is kosher with it, then I'll suck it up and remember to not take anything for granted next time. 

However, on the other hand, how much for the rest of us will this game be to just get beat up by an alliance of two uber-civs, one fairly taken as the first pick and one taken because the rest of us thought it was off-limits? After all the setup, to just get steamrolled at civ selection over a misunderstanding feels very anti-climactic, especially if this is going to be one of the last games.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I banned Sumer on non-crafted maps because they can spawn within six hexes of you. War cart far too strong. Someone tried a War cart attack on a reasonable map in one of these games. It wasn't very effective.

The +5 is very nasty and probably would have caused me to ban them in team games though. Just get a buddy with a +5 UU and your up to +10. GG.

It's probably too late to ban them but you can complain that you would have picked them if you thought they weren't banned. From your perspective this handed thrawn+krill two uber-civs instead of just one.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I banned Sumer on non-crafted maps because they can spawn within six hexes of you. War cart far too strong. Someone tried a War cart attack on a reasonable map in one of these games. It wasn't very effective.

The +5 is very nasty and probably would have caused me to ban them in team games though. Just get a buddy with a +5 UU and your up to +10. GG.

It's probably too late to ban them but you can complain that you would have picked them if you thought they weren't banned. From your perspective this handed thrawn+krill two uber-civs instead of just one.

The only time I know of is when Rowain took Sumeria in PBEM8 - which I forgot about until this was mentioned - and didn't do anything with them. Meanwhile Archduke DID do a chariot rush, of Emperor K's Georgia, at the same time. 

Otherwise I don't know of when they've been picked, which is probably why I thought they were still banned. 

I mean, I guess I should have been more explicit, so it's entirely on me, but now it feels like the game is going to be an unfun slog due to this miscommunication. It's not decided, but, like, a longship deathball is going to be incredibly dull to play against and to spectate. At the same time, I feel like I can hardly mention something in the tech thread, since everyone else apparently was on the same page.

[incurian]

I banned Sumer on non-crafted maps because they can spawn within six hexes of you. War cart far too strong. Someone tried a War cart attack on a reasonable map in one of these games. It wasn't very effective.

The +5 is very nasty and probably would have caused me to ban them in team games though. Just get a buddy with a +5 UU and your up to +10. GG.

It's probably too late to ban them but you can complain that you would have picked them if you thought they weren't banned. From your perspective this handed thrawn+krill two uber-civs instead of just one.

The only time I know of is when Rowain took Sumeria in PBEM8 - which I forgot about until this was mentioned - and didn't do anything with them. Meanwhile Archduke DID do a chariot rush, of Emperor K's Georgia, at the same time. 

Otherwise I don't know of when they've been picked, which is probably why I thought they were still banned. 

I mean, I guess I should have been more explicit, so it's entirely on me, but now it feels like the game is going to be an unfun slog due to this miscommunication. It's not decided, but, like, a longship deathball is going to be incredibly dull to play against and to spectate. At the same time, I feel like I can hardly mention something in the tech thread, since everyone else apparently was on the same page.

So we're gonna gang up with the other 2 teams against them, right?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Yep, no choice.

It's going to be a slog, no mistake. If I had gotten first pick, I was pretty keen on Norway (I wanted them in PBEM20, too, but I had marco take Australia first since I thought "there's lots of naval civs, people seem to be underrating Norway," and didn't expect the run on naval civs that saw all 3 come off the board in the 4 picks between us). I wouldn't play them like Woden did at first (although he eventually figured it out) - as a conventional civ with some beefed-up exploration galleys. Instead I'd be aggressive right from the start. You can spam the little fuckers out even better than Russian Work Ethic galleys, and a single pair can easily capture any city-state they run across in the early game. So thrawn can get out to 3 or even just 2 cities and then just beeline shipbuilding to get embarkation for his guys, while sending roving wolf-packs of galleys to capture city-states and blockade his neighbors.

The pillage is manageable, although if let to run unopposed it can quickly spiral into doom (PBEM20), but the real issue is the blockades. The key to victory is controlling the seas and thrawn can float extremely tough galleys off all our coasts by 40 turns into the game - and we can't kill the buggers because they'll withdraw into the ocean to heal. So we're looking at a classic choke situation (see thrawn's PBEM19), where Norway does its best to strangle us with an unlimited swarm of (free maintenance!) galleys and Sumeria expands conventionally in peace, then hits Civil Service, triggers all the alliance boni (and a lead in development due to Norway's choking), then runs over a civ with frigates and longships, pillages it to death, and repeats from there.

So like I said, a long, hard slog, as it was always going to be against Norway, but I knew that was the risk and it was exactly what I loosely had in mind. Our best bet is to unite with the other two teams right way. Norway can fight any two civs one on one, for sure - but can it fight all 6 others? We need to somehow balance building a navy capable of reaching Norse shores with developing ourselves and keeping an eye on the other two teams. It's possible but very, very difficult, so I rate the field as about 70% of a Norse win, 25% one of the other two teams pulls it out, and about 5% us. But I'll do my best to try and make it entertaining for the lurkers. Been noodling over some thoughts on how to manage that, will post later.

(no, it does not involve a jong timing attack, jongs are overrated [think I put the blueprint to beating them on paper in the last game] and not why I took Indonesia)