[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle

[scooter]

I like these comprehensive previews.

Glad they've been good! Let's do the last one now.


Yuris - Pacal of Byzantium (Mysticism, Wheel), Guilds




Byzantium/Guilds was definitely one of the ones I thought might happen. The upside versus Gunpowder/France is the units are just much stronger. The downside is you basically cannot rush, and there's no defensive bonuses. I think the combo of the two is enough of a downside that I prefer the French route. Of course, Cataphracts rule because they're super powerful for ages, and then they're useful for even longer. I predict this game will be over long before they cease being relevant. They're really quite scary, and Yuris will have a massive window during which he has Cataphracts before anyone has Pikes or longbows.

However, this all comes at a cost. This is SLOW. I made comments about Luddite's start being slow, but this is probably worse. Byzantium means their famously awful starting techs that are so bad that even in a normal game they're debatably a bit of a trap pick. They're so bad that I remember arguing at some point that some of our balance mods shouldn't nerf Cataphracts. I really wonder if Arabia would have been better? Yuris has Expansive, but the only way to get a bonus hammer on his worker is to settle 2N for a capital that is weaker longterm, and with what looks like a peak in the fog, maaaaybe orphans the fish? It at least delays accessing it for ages. He probably will have to do it, especially since he's not going to have AH/Hunting anytime soon for the Pigs/Furs anyway, so he may as well move 2N, tech Agriculture, and see where it gets him. Where it gets him is a 10T worker, 3T slower than ours, but really it's 4T because he also has to move. Then he'll be able to farm the Wheat/Corn, but then he has to find his way to AH for pigs/horse, Hunting for the Fur, Mining-BW to whip/chop, and then trek to IW to find Iron to unlock Phracts. And if there's seafood north, well he'll need Fishing too. And moving away from the Fur will slow all that down as the Fur is his only source of commerce to tech all this. Pacal is a saving grace here of course. Expansive will help him get cities online (but then, Pottery is yet another early tech he needs to get ASAP), and Financial will help... eventually. It'll at least open up coast as a good tile which allows you to grow without worker labor.

Anyway, my larger point here is Yuris has a really challenging start to play. If I'm near Yuris, this is the saving grace. I'll be presented with two choices. Either one, I can overwhelm him with a huge production edge before he can build any Cataphracts, or two I can push expansion hard and try to get to double his city count and then dare him to try to outproduce me. For example, can I get Berserkers online by the time he gets Cataphracts? Not quite, but maybe close? They're not really a hammer-efficient trade with Phracts directly, but what they can serve as is the proverbial knife to the throat off boats to get him to back down. (Early access to Machinery also has the pleasant side effect of speeding up access to Engineering/Pikes.) As a result of all this, I think I'm less worried about neighboring Yuris than I am Cairo or even Luddite. Do NOT read that as me saying I don't think Cataphracts will be a problem. They will be. What I am saying is I feel like I have the most answers to Yuris compared to the other two. I'd still prefer Oxy as the neighbor, but this would be my second choice.

Yuris as a player is easier to discuss than the others because he's played in a ton of games that I've played in or watched. He's not the strongest player by any means, but I think some folks know that and assume that means he's a punching bag. That is not correct. Yuris is consistently sunny which allows him to keep morale and attention high even if the game is not going well. I can't say much here, but I've been impressed with his handling of a tough situation in an ongoing game. He does not quit and absolutely can and will punish mistakes. That said, he's also not the type of player to identify a small edge and snowball it to death either. I think picking Byzantium and Start 4 is a really high difficulty start that requires really clean execution to pay off, and I wonder if he can do it. I definitely think he can get the broad strokes correct, but balancing expansion, all the techs he needs, and growing the population up enough to have something there to whip once Cataphracts are buildable is a really tough needle to thread. Compare it to the margin of error for Cairo who can just build a Musketeer whenever he wants and can totally ignore stuff like IW or HBR for ages as a result. Same with Luddite - he can save hundreds of beakers by ignoring certain military techs. That makes it difficult for me to see a path to victory for Yuris, although I can definitely see him causing some havoc before this thing is done.

[Zed-F]

Based on the amount of N/S coastline in the start pics, I don't think there are a lot of east-west neighbors by land. Oxy, Yuris, and Cairo all seem to be in the global north, based on terrain clues, and they *all* have an eastern coastline that runs the length of their screenshot. How do you make that work with east-west land neighbors on a big & small map without significant editing? I don't think you do. I think maybe neighbors by land are more N/S or NE/SW and NW/SE, and E-W neighbors are by sea.

We seem to be in the global south, as is luddite. If the above is correct, then we may not be direct neighbors by land either.

[Tarkeel]

I like these comprehensive previews.

Glad they've been good! Let's do the last one now.

Yeah, let me second that. I tried to not read them too closely before the map was done though.

[scooter]

Based on the amount of N/S coastline in the start pics, I don't think there are a lot of east-west neighbors by land. Oxy, Yuris, and Cairo all seem to be in the global north, based on terrain clues, and they *all* have an eastern coastline that runs the length of their screenshot. How do you make that work with east-west land neighbors on a big & small map without significant editing? I don't think you do. I think maybe neighbors by land are more N/S or NE/SW and NW/SE, and E-W neighbors are by sea.

We seem to be in the global south, as is luddite. If the above is correct, then we may not be direct neighbors by land either.

This is a really interesting catch. I had noticed the vertical coast lines, but I hadn't thought about its implications much. I’ll point out though that our start and Luddite’s are not necessarily incompatible and even sort of look like they go together:

We have land to our east and southeast, and Luddite has land to his northwest. Of course, like you pointed out that only works if some of the northern players are together.


I guess staring at it more, I’ll also note that you can see land across the east coast for both Yuris and Cairo. Cairo’s in particular looks like it could be the same land mass and it goes up to something that looks vaguely parallel:

I think it’s plausible that Cairo is on the same mass as Yuris or Oxy and the mass just has a weird finger-like bay down the middle of it? Yuris and Oxy being on the same mass feels much harder to imagine. I’m not sure what to conclude here just yet other than some very weird land shapes have been generated here.

[scooter]

I’ll point out though that our start and Luddite’s are not necessarily incompatible and even sort of look like they go together:

and Luddite has land to his northwest

Bzzt, incorrect. I had to fog gaze more closely.




Look 1W of the Wheat and 1W of the plains hill up in the northwest of this screenshot. Those are water tiles. Looks like Luddite’s west is coast. So, I think Zed-F is correct about neighbor config. Luddite and I are on different masses and have northern neighbors. One of us has Yuris, the other Cairo as those are hardest to imagine being together. I have no idea where Oxy is, but good chance he’s on the Yuris continent northeast of that vertical bay at Yuris’ start? Ok, that’s my official prediction. Continent 1: Yuris + Oxy + (myself OR Luddite), Continent 2: Cairo + (myself OR Luddite).

Rooting to be on Continent 1 for sure.

[Qgqqqqq]

It is possible that the fog could be deceptive.

[scooter]

It is possible that the fog could be deceptive.

Maybe, but honestly I’m just scrounging for things to think about before this game launches . Speaking of, here’s another one.

One thing I realized I haven’t gone back and considered is whether there’s any interesting bulb implications of the techs chosen. Mostly there’s not. There is one that jumped out at me though. Yuris could bulb Banking really easily. Banking requires Guilds and Currency. The former he has at T0, and the latter is on the way. Build a Market, run a couple merchants, bulb it, and get into Mercantilism really early. I’m not sure it fits with his selections super well, but it sounds potentially useful. I wonder if he’ll consider it?


There’s nothing SUPER appealing for us that I’ve noticed. I’ve joked about Oracling Paper, but if I go the Oracle route it would be because I think I could snag Machinery, not as much to open up map trades or Sankore or just maximize raw beakers. Getting Paper early-ish would open up an Education bulb, but with no PHI or IND, early Oxford is really expensive, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Paper itself is bulbable, but again that’s low upside compared to something like Mercantilism.

[Commodore]

If nothing else, this exercise really shows how elegantly designed Civ4 is with the growth curve. Even having access to Industrial-era tech like Artillery isn't an automatic I-win button, because the units unlocked by the tech are designed to be build by mature size-10 cities with forges and factories. The Steam Power Dutch speculation is fun, but it's not like a capital Dike happens anytime soon. Very interesting stuff.

[scooter]

If nothing else, this exercise really shows how elegantly designed Civ4 is with the growth curve. Even having access to Industrial-era tech like Artillery isn't an automatic I-win button, because the units unlocked by the tech are designed to be build by mature size-10 cities with forges and factories. The Steam Power Dutch speculation is fun, but it's not like a capital Dike happens anytime soon. Very interesting stuff.

The tech tree itself is a marvel of design and not something any other iteration of Civ has ever achieved IMO. The way that the "arrow" requirements and the additional tech prerequisites interact with bulb priorities and free tech bursts (Oracle/Liberalism) and power spike beelines is all really fascinating. It adds a depth and skill ceiling to the game that is really not obvious at all initially. I played this game for years (pre-RB) before I even understood that bulbing was ever a good idea.

And yes, it was really remarkable to me that I could pick anything in the whole game, and yet after looking at it, I came away with the conclusion that "just give me a bunch of hammers and beakers" was the best call. Maybe I'm wrong, so it's ultimately TBD, but I spent a lot of time thinking about it and concluded snowball > all, and that says something. Anyway, I think this concept has more to dig into, personally. Would love to watch a sequel with the 5 selected techs banned, for example. Or instead allow each player to ban a tech prior to picks. OR descend further into madness and let people choose two techs. There's a lot of doable things. They might be bad ideas just like this game might be a bad idea, but bad ideas are entertaining all the time.

[Krill]

The extension of this thought experiment leads to advance start, so I'd posit that at some point the entertainment breaks down into madness.

Although I doubt I will ever fail to chuckle at the member of a player, during a test game prior to BtS release, getting eliminated whilst still in the set up of an advanced start game (and choosing techs and placing units etc).

Another idea: Play the game where every player gets all of the techs chosen in the snake pick, not just the one they picked.

You get an Arty! You get an Arty! Everybody gets an arty! /Oprah