[spoilers] Commodore's Advanced Wars

[superdeath]

I picked the start because I think grabbing the hunting start more or less guarantees me Native Americans. We are going to try again to not research agriculture for at least the first hundred turns or so.

more or less out of shits and or giggles? I vote no archery till t150

[Commodore]

Okay, perfection...Thothrill are going to be my "not neighbors". This actually relaxes me a little bit, but I still like NA for naval play.

[Commodore]

Picks are in, and the game will be started soon. I do not expect this to last nearly as long as PB50, with all the aggressive picks and the much smaller map. Little sad to not be with a teammate in this one, everyone else is here with a buddy. Let’s go into player order and analyze this:

Team Sweetness and Light: Miguelito (cheery, optimistic) and Amicalola (bright, nervous)

Stalin (Agg/Ind) of Japan (Fishing/Wheel, Samurai, Tatara) in the Southeast
Player Skill:   
Combo Synergy: 
Warmongitude: 
Peacenik Parity:  (: (: (:
Wining Odds: 32%
This is one of the two teams that want development, albeit not on an enormous timeline. There’s an obvious plan here, just sacrifice everything you can to get Metal Casing, probably via Oracle. If you want to get extremely greedy you can try to bulb Machinery but that’s risky. Because they’re on the Oracle path, they’re going to rely on holy cities for culture, reasonably. Stalin is perfectly happy to brawl with shock axes while the development continues, they’re just going to be a little slow but I think the plan is to just get “their” 4 cities and then out-produce a grinding cat/axe/eventually samurai stack to win.

Team Rusty Tunnel: Yuris (rusty, cautious) and Nowgerfrauger (narrativist, dramatic)

Pericles (Cre/Phi) of Babylon (Agriculture/Wheel, Bowman, Garden) in the Northwest
Player Skill: 
Combo Synergy: 
Warmongitude:   
Peacenik Parity: 
Wining Odds: 4%
This is the extremely development-focused team here, sitting on a strong city-defender. Unlike the laser-focused Migucalola plan, this is a more broad and general setup for Yuris, he wants an Academy and beyond that he’s just wanting to attack the middle of the tech tree for development. Creative makes him suck to border, and bowmans just hurt to shift outside of horse archers, but I’m overall not terribly concerned. He’s going to have not problem holding on to his cities but this combo is going to lose tile improvements hand over fist.

Team Psychopath Warmonger: Thoth (rusty, aggressive) and Krill (aggressive, aggressive)

Kublai Khan (Cre/Agg) of Rome (Fishing/Mining, Praetorian, Forum) in the Southwest
Player Skill: 
Combo Synergy: 
Warmongitude: 
Peacenik Parity: 
Wining Odds: 32%
Heyo, it’s the aggro-focused team. There’s a real chance that Thorill just goes Bronze Working -> Iron Working -> Praetorian double-whip off of just the fish, the oasis, and the forest banana. I haven’t worked the math, but there’s a chance they shift to settling on the banana for the gold, capital horse, and closer iron. Whatever the setup is, I know they’re going to be extremely aggressive. There’s nothing that says these two can’t run a good economy, but if they can manage to make nothing in this game but praetorians, then they may well do just that.

Solo Protagonist: Commodore (casual, fighty)

Boadicea (Chm/Agg) of Native Americans (Hunting/Fishing, Dog Soldier, Totem Pole)
Player Skill: 
Combo Synergy: 
Warmongitude: 
Peacenik Parity: 
Wining Odds: 32%
I’m going to be honest as say my combo is on the aggro side here. I’m prizing flexibility with this though, so it’s not as rush-focused as Team Psychopath. Cheap totem poles and cheap barracks get me C1 melee units with two promotions (amphibious, formation, etc), Archery monuments mean I can ignore religious-line techs, and the initial start with three 4-foodhammer tiles means I can do the crazy thing and just go workboat-> archer-> settler to actually win the first settler race...those furs need speed. Should be fun...

[Tarkeel]

Do I sense an appreciation for the juiced-but-not-overpowered starts? I think the starts w/surrounding terrain all have their upsides and downsides. Very interested to see what you bunch of madmen can do with this.

[pindicator]

Picks are in, and the game will be started soon. I do not expect this to last nearly as long as PB50, with all the aggressive picks and the much smaller map. Little sad to not be with a teammate in this one, everyone else is here with a buddy.

I'm not spoiled if you really want someone to pester you about the game.

[Charriu]

the initial start with three 4-foodhammer tiles means I can do the crazy thing and just go workboat-> archer-> settler to actually win the first settler race...those furs need speed. Should be fun...

Looking forward to this and someone showing the might of the Native Americans.

[Commodore]

Do I sense an appreciation for the juiced-but-not-overpowered starts? I think the starts w/surrounding terrain all have their upsides and downsides. Very interested to see what you bunch of madmen can do with this.

It's a surprisingly subtle map. Still seeing stuff, like Thorill being able to make inner sea fleets from their capital.

Looks like we're going WB, archer, settler, archer, worker for the start. Can get five cities instead of four pretty fast, which is cool.

[Commodore]

My two main concerns this game are:
-Thorill makes a quick conquest of a neighbor with Praetorians and snowballs from there.
-Migucalola manages good wonder coverage and gets into Police State/mass Tatara for out-producing everyone else.

I suppose Yurifrogger could be nasty teching really high, but I just don't see them having the security to reach those lofty heights. I think we want to grab furs from Yuri and otherwise focus on getting on a strong line against Miguelito, to crack him once we can get amphibious strikers. Although if Yuri looks to be collapsing to Thoth, then we need to capture half of that at least.

[Commodore]

Turn 0:

[pindicator]

So when Commodore mentioned he wanted to go WB > Archer > settler opening, I immediately started wondering if we could get to BW and whip out the first settler to speed it along that way. Turns out we can thanks to the oasis tile:




Start by working the banana and then the grass deer on growth to 2. As soon as the fish is hooked up, work the Fish & banana. Grow to 3 end of t12, on t13 add the grass deer for one turn, but then on t14 switch that to the oasis. Need a turn of the grass deer to get enough hammers for the archer to finish and then need the commerce from the oasis to get BW in time.

Archer then finishes timed with growth to size 4 (t16), and start the settler straight away.

With tech, Archery finishes end of t6, then Mining (12), and finally BW (21). Settler will be at 60/100 at this point, so swap to Anarchy on t22 and then double whip on t23. This gives 30h of overflow to one-turn the next archer.

After that, I would suggest just whipping the next worker out right away. The new city is going to be best served by whipping out its own work boat, and I think the worker will be needed here to camp the grass deer and connect the cities.