[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle

[scooter]

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

Probably. Realistically if there’s going to be a sequel to this at any point, it should be once the takeaways from this game are more clear.

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).

Not quite sure what this means. How does one get eliminated during the placing phase of advanced start?

[Krill]

Basically in MP advanced start everyone joined the game and does the set up phase at the same time. But each player ends their own individual set up phase and then plays their first turn. This game had two city elimination set as a game option

So Player A joins the game and settles two cities. Player B sees this, places some random stuff like his cities, buys the necessary tech and some horse archers with the starting points, finishes his set up phase and then razes both of the Player A cities whilst Player A is still in set up, eliminating Player A from the game.

I was in the game but I wasn't either player A or B here. I think the player that got eliminated was a Firaxis employee.

[scooter]

Basically in MP advanced start everyone joined the game and does the set up phase at the same time. But each player ends their own individual set up phase and then plays their first turn. This game had two city elimination set as a game option

So Player A joins the game and settles two cities. Player B sees this, places some random stuff like his cities, buys the necessary tech and some horse archers with the starting points, finishes his set up phase and then razes both of the Player A cities whilst Player A is still in set up, eliminating Player A from the game.

I was in the game but I wasn't either player A or B here. I think the player that got eliminated was a Firaxis employee.

Was it a super tight map I guess which allowed Horse Archers to be placed on the edge of your build zone and reach the other player? That's hilarious either way.

[Krill]

IIRC it was a TBG map, and either a 4v4 or 5v5 game, which was standard at the time. I think there may have been roads or workers involved, not some super complicated matter but a little bit of effort was needed.

Essentially, between this game, and a future era game that led to the settler cost changes for late era starts...well, I think we can see since 2007 MP has not been high on the list of priorities for Firaxis.

[Zed-F]

If you want things to talk about, I played around in a sandbox. Here’s what I observed so far, maybe you see things similarly/differently?

1. Capital whips are really big. 2-pop settler whips still seem like the way to go for happy reasons but we will have a bunch of overflow. We may need to put a worker behind the a settler planned to be whipped (possibly with a turn previously invested?) because I’d rather whip foodhammer units and chop hammer-only things so I have at least some time to regrow after whipping.

2. I started with Wheel - Mining - BW - Agriculture - Pottery - Animal Handling and this seemed to work well enough. I’m assuming that learning where strat resources are will be a priority. After that I played around continuing with sailing / masonry / mysticism but we might prefer an early horseback riding instead. Still there’s no point in getting that until we have horses hooked so we can probably fit something between animal handling and horseback riding, but this will all depend on what we find & where we find it.

3. I tried adding a seafood next to 3S as suggested previously, and if so this does seem like a good spot for city 3 or possibly city 4 because of lower needs for workers and potential to help our capital grow a cottage or 3; we just also need more time to build up our worker force so we can start using worker teams of 2 for cities that aren’t sharing capital food. In this scenario, cities 4&5 (or 3&5) are probably for strat resources, but are likely to need extra worker help because it’s less likely we will be able to share capital food if the cap is potentially sharing a fish and a deer.

I’ll probably experiment a bit more, possibly with horseback riding and possibly with some of the other starts, and see what I can learn. I don’t imagine my micro is overwhelming (most of my Civ experience is Civ 3) so I didn’t intend to share specific build micro — there’s probably not too much point until we explore more anyway.

[scooter]

If you want things to talk about, I played around in a sandbox. Here’s what I observed so far, maybe you see things similarly/differently?

1. Capital whips are really big. 2-pop settler whips still seem like the way to go for happy reasons but we will have a bunch of overflow. We may need to put a worker behind the a settler planned to be whipped (possibly with a turn previously invested?) because I’d rather whip foodhammer units and chop hammer-only things so I have at least some time to regrow after whipping.

2. I started with Wheel - Mining - BW - Agriculture - Pottery - Animal Handling and this seemed to work well enough. I’m assuming that learning where strat resources are will be a priority. After that I played around continuing with sailing / masonry / mysticism but we might prefer an early horseback riding instead. Still there’s no point in getting that until we have horses hooked so we can probably fit something between animal handling and horseback riding, but this will all depend on what we find & where we find it.

3. I tried adding a seafood next to 3S as suggested previously, and if so this does seem like a good spot for city 3 or possibly city 4 because of lower needs for workers and potential to help our capital grow a cottage or 3; we just also need more time to build up our worker force so we can start using worker teams of 2 for cities that aren’t sharing capital food. In this scenario, cities 4&5 (or 3&5) are probably for strat resources, but are likely to need extra worker help because it’s less likely we will be able to share capital food if the cap is potentially sharing a fish and a deer.

I’ll probably experiment a bit more, possibly with horseback riding and possibly with some of the other starts, and see what I can learn. I don’t imagine my micro is overwhelming (most of my Civ experience is Civ 3) so I didn’t intend to share specific build micro — there’s probably not too much point until we explore more anyway.

Here's a try I took that felt solid. Basic play was Mining-BW-Wheel-Agriculture. Worker first, WB second while growing. Grow to size 4 or 5 (5 felt better), then double whip a settler, overflow into a 2T worker, and we're ready to roll.




It's not perfectly efficient I don't think, but it lines up pretty well. The Work Boat looks a little awkward, and it is, but I do want to get a scouting WB out really early to have a shot at circumnavigation, so I slipped it into the queue when I needed to grow. Uppsala here takes the Fish immediately (which syncs nicely with Nidaros at lower population), and then hands it back once the Corn is farmed. Actually, it can keep it if Nidaros goes settler next. Speaking of:





Nidaros could 5-turn another settler from here if wanted or 3-turn another worker, or I can grow it to 4+ first. It might be hard to pass up second settler out EoT29 and 3 cities by T31. I didn't take it further because so much will depend on scouting, but I think this is a good general plan. I didn't see exact plan you followed - did you do it differently?


I tried WB first, but it proved awkward because the need to grow on the Fish and build a worker on hammers clashed. I tried building the settler at size 4 and whipping, but that sped up Uppsala at the cost of slowing down second worker and third settler. I also tried slow-building the first settler and then whipping the second one, but slowing down the first city further felt pointless when it had such a good tile available from the start. Another thing I'd like to try is rather than overflowing into a 2T worker, just build another settler immediately and have 3 cities by T28-ish. This is totally viable if 3S looks like a good spot, and it might work east as well with a Fish share? Something to keep in mind.

[Zed-F]

I didn't send details 'cause I know my micro won't be very good -- like I said I don't normally play Civ, I just lurk & ask questions

If I look back at the save I can see that I didn't whip as aggressively as you and got a slower start as a result. Instead slow built the first settler and a worker, then when pottery came in, built a granary with a chop, then whipped the second settler, getting the 3rd city by T34 with a granary in the capital.

[Zed-F]

I took another crack at it and I seem to have the most success in the first 25-50 turns when I focus on capital growth and capital whips, often at the expense of letting the 2nd and 3rd cities grow a bit more slowly. Probably stands to reason since whipping gets the most hammers per unit time and our capital is the one with the big hammer multiplier. So long as the other cities have a couple good tiles they can use, and can occasionally borrow food when the capital is building settlers/workers, they’ll do well enough I suppose.

[scooter]

And we're off. Lots of water south of us. I'm gonna peep the coastline and then semi-circle counter-clockwise in an attempt to scout north where I'm most likely to meet someone. At some point I may ask to get my sign removed as I can't delete the "Start 3" unfortunately.





9 hammers on T0 is really something.

[Tarkeel]

At some point I may ask to get my sign removed as I can't delete the "Start 3" unfortunately.

My bad, I forgot to remove them in the final map version. You can't remove it as it's not owned by you, but player -1, which is how the game handles landmarks that are visible to everyone.

Have asked Ramk to remove them, as they're potential spoiler-ish. (Not that much though, since start areas were publically available)