Locked Mansa, but not before Cairo took Gunpowder, which I think is the tech that makes me most nervous. I can only assume he'll take France next. Now we wait to see what Yuris takes. I really want to roll with the Vikings if Yuris leaves it up, but it's gut-check time if he takes Rocketry or whatever.
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[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle
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(June 29th, 2023, 09:44)scooter Wrote: Locked Mansa, but not before Cairo took Gunpowder, which I think is the tech that makes me most nervous. I can only assume he'll take France next. Now we wait to see what Yuris takes. I really want to roll with the Vikings if Yuris leaves it up, but it's gut-check time if he takes Rocketry or whatever. LOL he took Byz/Guilds. A third gauntlet thrown. 3/4 opponents have an early military option. Ok, let's take stock here. * Oxy went Communism and is no rush threat. His plan is straight-forward, expand and squeeze in Kremlin somewhere. I have to either out-expand him or hope one * Luddite is Artillery and Vicky. The good news is he didn't go Shaka or something, so his plan seems to not be pure blazing fast rush. It seems more like he wants to squeeze out 5-6 cities, then whip out a few Artillery and smack me or Oxy. He could build one as early as T35-40ish, but it slows him WAY down, so I’m skeptical he’ll do that. * Cairo is Gunpowder/France paired with Willem. Again, glad he didn't take Aggressive at least. The 2-mover angle here is especially scary. The good news is that a bunch of units trade fine against them. 2 Roman Praetorians kill 1 90% of the time, and 2 plain old horse archers do 75% of the time. The risk is if he’s close and goes pure rush, there may not be anything I can do. * Yuris is Pacal/Byz/Guilds with a weak start. This one is scary, but he is not a pure rush threat. He will need to tech both HBR and IW and hook both, and that will take awhile. My feeling is if Cairo is close to me AND he goes all-in on the rush I just die almost no matter what, but if he doesn’t rush, I can trade decently against Musketeers. So I’m inclined to not really worry about him too much. If he’s next to me, I think I can either accept my death or handle him fine if he waits. Yuris is also maybe the easiest to deal with pre-emptively. If he’s near me, I have quite a lot of time to come up with a plan as getting both necessary techs will take him awhile. Can I get a stack of horse archers on top of him before then? Probably? Finally, Luddite probably just needs to be rushed or choked. I guess the question is whether I need a rush tool to actually do this for Yuris or Luddite, or if I can do it with regular units. If I’m going to go the rush route, I think Holkans are the most appealing because I can build them as soon as I have BW rather than picking a UU and then hoping horse/copper are super quickly accessible. Mayan starting techs kinda suck though. Impi could be a nice choice too. Rome is there of course. My one concern with Praetorians is that if I’m near Luddite and he goes the Drill route, I definitely need horse archers for that instead. And if I feel Horse Archers are the play here, I’m not picking anyone for the UU. Overall I’m torn. Any strong feelings?
Are we expecting mostly to settle islands & separate ourselves from other empires by overland distance? Does that argue for Vikings?
Would it make sense to steal France & nerf Cairo at the expense of having a mostly blank civ? We should be able to get to gunpowder earlier than anyone but Cairo, we think? I tend to think distances are such that if we want to interfere with rivals we want a 2-mover or naval mobility to do it, and we aren’t expecting to have experienced enough troops to do it with guerrilla 1-mover units. (June 29th, 2023, 10:57)Zed-F Wrote: Are we expecting mostly to settle islands & separate ourselves from other empires by overland distance? Does that argue for Vikings? Yeah the case for Vikings here is I expect islands or water will feature heavily, especially looking at our capital. We have the most watery capital of anyone, which makes me think we’ll have island access. In fact, if there IS an isolated player, it’s most likely to be us. I could have city raider Berserkers attacking amphibiously off 3 move Galleys absurdly early if I really pushed for it, but I fear if I’m too close to someone by land, they just won’t let me get that far. I sort of feel like it’s worth the risk. I just generally dislike building a whole gameplan around rushing someone because the whole game is sunk if one of a million possible things goes wrong, and succeeding does not necessarily mean you just win. Sure, I could Impi rush Luddite, but does Yuris just show up with Cataphracts 25T later and capture it from me anyway, and then I’ve sunk enormous hammers that were supposed to be getting me ahead into cities I can’t hold? Someone talk me out of Vikings or else I’m taking them and praying the map/neighbor geography is kind to the pick. 
I've only read your thread so I'll comment. The pick that really calls to me here is Civil Service. This works so well with this start and Mansa locked in - Bureaucracy multiplies Financial working all the lake tiles, and Spiritual saves the anarchy to get into it. Then count on the civ pick for some kind of UU against rushes, I'd lean towards Rome if possible. If you do get rushed before you can get to that, then yeah you probably couldn't have done anything about it anyway without sacrificing the game anyway.
edit - oh, did everybody else pick a tech so Civil Service is yours anyway if you want it? Then yeah pick a civ now, though I'm not sure between Vikings or Rome. (June 29th, 2023, 11:29)T-hawk Wrote: I've only read your thread so I'll comment. The pick that really calls to me here is Civil Service. This works so well with this start and Mansa locked in - Bureaucracy multiplies Financial working all the lake tiles, and Spiritual saves the anarchy to get into it. Then count on the civ pick for some kind of UU against rushes, I'd lean towards Rome if possible. If you do get rushed before you can get to that, then yeah you probably couldn't have done anything about it anyway without sacrificing the game anyway. To be clear, I've already locked Civil Service. I probably should have pulled the draft into this thread so you didn't have to read the pick thread to follow this. I've got Civil Service and Mansa locked, and now I'm up for a Civ pick to end things now. Because Civil Service is locked, Vikings are appealing because 1) easy access to 3-move Galleys and 5-move Galleons are super powerful on water-heavy maps, and 2) easy access to super early Berserkers by either bulbing or Oracling Machinery, both of which are possible because Bureau-FIN-Lakes makes teching Metal Casting pretty painless. So that's the baseline. Rome is probably the safer but less exciting pick for sure.
I ctrl-F'd the entire thread and you never actually said you took Civil Service.
I have no experience with multiplayer or naval warfare so really have no idea how usable Vikings are. Up to you if you're willing to take the risk of being rushed out. I don't know if you could get to berserkers before an artillery or musketeer rush arrives. Rome may work just as a deterrent - this could be a "don't have to outrun the bear" situation, just make yourself a less appealing target. (June 29th, 2023, 11:55)T-hawk Wrote: I ctrl-F'd the entire thread and you never actually said you took Civil Service. I did say it here: (June 27th, 2023, 19:18)scooter Wrote: Yuris did indeed take Pacal of Start 4 as I suspected he might, so that simplified things. I wasn't prepared to take a Civ here. I still want to see just how aggressive the tech choices are before I decide which direction to go Civ-wise. Pacal was the leader I might have considered if it was still available, but he was taken, and none of the other leaders jump out as can't miss no brainers here, so let's lock in Civil Service. But I concede that this is definitely NOT super clear, especially as this is in a longer post. These first few pages have probably been a bit difficult to follow. (June 29th, 2023, 11:55)T-hawk Wrote: I have no experience with multiplayer or naval warfare so really have no idea how usable Vikings are. Up to you if you're willing to take the risk of being rushed out. I don't know if you could get to berserkers before an artillery or musketeer rush arrives. Rome may work just as a deterrent - this could be a "don't have to outrun the bear" situation, just make yourself a less appealing target. I think the issue I have with Rome as deterrent specifically is that 3/5 players have deterrents, and it's really just Oxy who is totally flying with pure eco. It definitely is the best hammer/power investment for defense, but even that advantage could melt away quickly with Drill artillery. FWIW on the MP rationale for Vikings, I got an absolute ton of mileage out of them in PB5 and PB13. The upshot is amphibious promotion, additional 10% city attack, and the ability to take city raider promos make them unstoppable coastal raiders off 3-move Galleys. In both cases too I was able to take my most veteran units with 2-3 city raider promos and upgrade them to Rifles and then you have amphibious city raider Rifles stepping off 5 move Galleons. If you can make it to that stage of the game in a power position, it's absolutely miserable to play against. Movement advantage in Galleons can also just generally be a decider as it lets you hit cities from the fog. You know what, I'm going to go ahead and take the Vikings. They're just so much fun on B&S, and I always default towards picking the most fun option. If the early game ends in disaster, well this game was always experimental.
Now that all the tech picks are in, regretting not taking Satellites for the Most Perfect Rush?
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