[SPOILER] Willem II of England

[Gaspar]

Hey figure I'd get this started. And since this needs to be blah blah blah to avoid accidental spoiler clickage, I thought I'd start my campaign to convince Nakor to follow a theme of Great Dutchmen in the EPL with the greatest of all time:



And another:



Fun starts after. :D

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[Gaspar]

Nakor/Gaspar: Willem(Fin/Cre)/England
Whosit/Ravus Sol: Suryavarman(Exp/Cre)/Maya
Malakai/Magil: Elizabeth(Phi/Fin)/Korea
Tredje/Sylon: Pacal(Fin/Exp)/Byzantium
Kyan/RefSteel: Peter(Exp/Phi)/India
GE1969*/Sandover: Shaka(Agg/Exp)/Inca

So I thought I'd draft up preliminary thoughts on the other Civs/players for the sake of discussion, and also because I'm bored and have nothing better to do at the moment.

Sury of Maya (Whosit/Ravus Sol):

Leader & Civ:
Sury is obviously one of if not the strongest REXer in the game. Maya is an interesting choice, because Pacal's uber traits are usually the reason one picks Maya, the UU and UB are both ok, while the Mysticism/Mining combo is middle of the road. The obvious play is to REX your ass off and rely on your resourceless UU to defend you, while building cheap Ball Courts to increase the happy cap. I suppose an early Holkan rush is possible, though rushing plays against Sury's strengths, who should be running the farmer's gambit hard.

Players:

I don't know much about Ravus Sol, but Whosit certainly has a reputation, both as a solid player and a bit of a loose cannon. I certainly expect lots of RP in the diplo. I know Nakor's played with him a few times, so I suspect he might have more to add to the situation.

Overall:

I have no desire to share a border with these guys, not just because of the REX'ing capacity, but because I feel like Whosit's one of the more likely players to rush his neighbor. If we do draw him, I'm going to wish we chose a Civ with an earlier UU.

Elizabeth of Korea (Malakai/Magil)

Leader & Civ:

Our first FIN leader besides us, Liz is the teching champion. The synergy with Korea is obvious in cheap Seowon's, and the Hwacha is a decent UU, it probably has the longest lifespan of any UU outside of Fast Workers, since Cat's are useful all the way to Industrial. I personally don't like Mysticism starts in MP, but that's just me I guess, since we have our second straight Mysticism, Mining start. I could see trying to leverage Mysticism into 'Henge into quick PHI prophets for religion, but the only Ancient/Classic wonder I'll risk REX for against Humans is the Lighthouse on a heavy water map. Doesn't mean its a bad play, just not my play.

Players:
Malakai has played quite capably in PBEM4, and what I can see of mackoti from PBEM9 looks solid, but they're definitely less a "known" quantity (says the guy in his first RB game!)

Overall:
Liz alone is strong enough to make this team a threat to win the game, but I can't say that I'd see them as one of the favorites.

Pacal II of Byzantium (Tredge/Sylon)

Leader & Civ:
Pacal is probably the best leader in the game, if Willem isn't. EXP/FIN combines what are probably the two strongest traits in the game, but you already knew that. Byzantium is one of the stronger Civs, but its our third Mysticism civ, and they pair that with wheel, meaning that any resource will require research to hook up. Much like us, they just took a strong leader. Unlike us, they paired with a first tier Civ, with an incredibly strong UU and a usable UB. Clearly the play is to grow vertically and horizontally, then leverage a solid start into a Cataphract beatdown. Unlike Praets, who are oft used as a deterrent, nobody takes Cataphract's w/o intending a Medieval beatdown.

Players:
If Tredge has played in one of the PBEMs, I haven't seen it. Sylon is RP'ing hard in PBEM9, though it doesn't seem like he's doing a bad job of playing at all, and if anything, his turn reports are excellent reads.

Overall:
No matter whose hands they're in, Pacal of Byzantium is going to be a threat. I'm not one for early rushes, but if their capital was undefended, I'd no doubt stroll into it. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

This post is approaching TL;DR levels, so I'll pause here and return with the rest of the opponents plus some thoughts on our choice. Stay tuned!

[Gaspar]

Continuing on with the opponent analysis...

Peter of India (Kyan/RefSteel)

Leader & Civ:

This Leader/Civ combo has been tried more than a few times, and why not, the synergy of cheap fast workers is borderline broken. India makes our fourth Civ with a Mysticism start, and third with Mining. I don't suspect early religion to be a play at all, because the priority would seem to be get worker techs quickly to leverage your awesome UU. Mausoleums typically come too late to matter, but PHI is a nice pairing for EXP as one of the best commerce traits. It might not be the strongest combo, but its certainly right there with them.

Players:

Kyan had been reluctant to take a dedlurker/partner, so I certainly expect him to do the driving here, and why not, he's shown he's a very strong Civ player, one of the more experienced of our game.

Overall:
I'd have to rate them as favorites for this game, between the strong pairing and equally strong playing skill.

Shaka of Inca (gingereagle1969/Sandover)

Leader & Civ:
An interesting choice, Quecha don't scare me, but Expansive Terraces do, Terraces already the most broken UB in the game, now half-price! As the only Civ to take a trait other than FIN, CRE, EXP or PHI, you'd certainly have to assume they might look to expand the old-fashioned way. I don't know that its the strongest play on the board, and it makes a clean sweep of our opponents in Mysticism as a starting tech! I'd have to assume at least one player will go for early religion and come up disappointed.

Players:
An interesting pairing, GE being a relative unknown and Sandover with quite the reputation as both a strong player and an absolute jerk in diplomacy. I sort of suspect that playing second fiddle might not appeal to him, and the play here will not look as Sandovarian as one might expect.

Overall:
I don't see this pair as favorites either, but they certainly should be competitive. I *definitely* don't want them as a neighbor, since I strongly forsee early war in this Civ/Leader choice.

I'll talk about our choice in my next post.

[Nakor]

Great job, Gaspar!
You know, I'm actually a Dutchman...
Bergkamp was a great player!

I'll look into your analysis later. Have to get the kids to school and myself to work first...

[Nakor]

Now let's see.... just some random thoughts...

We play Willem (who wouldn't) of England.
We decided to go for a Civ that can make a difference in the long run instead of the short. Should we get to a good position and be one of the first to Rifling we can make great use of drafted Redcoats. Banking is in that line as well, so Stock Exchanges will give us more money! Upgraded city raider redcoats!

So I guess that should be our gameplan. Play it safe, do some good diplomacy. Rex and tech like crazy to be the first to Rifling/Nat and then beat a few civs out of the game to try for a win.

Sounds great fun, doesn't it?

Unfortunately we have some interesting opponents.

Being Financial helps a lot in a NTT game, so we should be able to outtech some of the others. Going for early cottages is a strong opening in my opinion, but that depends in the land we get and the resources.

I'm not interesting in an early religion with all these civ's around. Let's skip that and focus on growth.

Thankfully there is no Rome in this game, so I'm not to worried about early rushes. Byz with Cath can be a problem later on, but hopefully we have Redcoats then...

[Gaspar]

Nakor summed up our thoughts on choosing probably the least obvious Civ of any of the players in the game pretty well. I'll just add that the fact that it's a road less traveled in MP games here had as much to do with the choice as anything, and while Fishing/Mining isn't the worlds greatest tech start, it opens up options if we have water near our capitals (though I strongly suspect that we won't, especially with 3 FIN civs, it'd be pretty unbalanced for the mapmaker to choose that option) and Fishing is at least a beaker savings on pottery if it serves no other early game purpose on this map. Certainly rather Fishing than to be one of 5 Civs starting with Mysticism. We'll get a pretty good pre-req discount whenever we do research it.

I guess the last comment to make before we know a little bit more about the settings/map/etc is what I think will happen in this game. My best guess is that early diplomacy will be even more important than normal. With no restrictions on Leaders in place, almost everyone took a strong REXer of one form or another. With everyone focused on land grab, any team that makes an early play for Religion or Wonders is going to fall behind the pack pretty quickly. Additionally, with everyone lined up for some form of farmers gambit, being aggressive early militarily could be a strong play. Obviously, that's not the RB way of things, but some "Sandover diplomacy" could be advantageous.

That said, that team won't be us. Everything about our Civ indicates a play for the Renaissance/early Industrial era, and leveraging our strengths implies cottage cheesing all over the place, building cheap libraries, and aiming for a tech advantage. Given that we're well placed for the later game, the best play for us is probably to be in 2nd-3rd place coming out of the land grab phase, with enough territory to base vertical growth, but also little enough that we can avoid being a target until we come into our own with mature towns and Redcoats. At which point

Should be fun!

[Nakor]

Good points, Gaspar!
I think scouting will be vital in this game with all the REX-ers. If we can seal of a nice chunk of land we can backfill later, we stand a good chance!
What do you think? Should we get some scouts out rather sooner then later to keep progress of everything and everyone?

[Gaspar]

Yeah, think that's a very good point. Early scouting tends to be more important than normal in MP because early might be your only chance to see some of the land, some players are very stingy with their maps. Also, I tend not to be a huge fan of early "settling rights" agreements, mostly they just lead to war. Given that, knowledge of the surroundings is pretty critical. While I don't know that we want to "Pink Dot" settle with all the ancient and classical UUs on the board here, I'd definitely think some moderately aggressive plants to seize borders would be the play. If you can get early cottages running, you can get to about 6 cities on Prince before your economy really crashes pre-courthouses. Of course a lot depends on how fertile the land is.

The other reason scouting is key - Anyone doing an MP map, and especially someone doing their first one is bound to have some sort of trick up their sleeve. In games like this the map is almost as much the opponent as the other players. For that reason, being first to figure out the tricks of the map is a huge advantage.

Of course, we could all be on small islands and this could be completely moot. But yes, I definitely echo your thoughts that early scouting will be key.

[Nakor]

Good to see we agree on that. To bad we start with a warrior and not a scout, but depending on the map, that can be helped pretty soon.

I wonder what the map will look like. I really enjoyed the Pitboss2 map with the Donut script. Me and DMOC were in an infertile corner compared to others, but there were very interesting option strategy wise. We rushed to a pink dot for copper without any early UU as well and managed to keep and grow it, so I'm not to worried about that. Once a golden opportunity arrives, you have to make use of it.

Then again, the map I play in PBEM 6 is less interesting since we all have exactly the same start and all must tech certain things before the game becomes more interesting. We'll have to see about that.

Gaspar, are you more of a warrior or more of a builder?

[Gaspar]

Yeah, a lot depends on the map. What would be really ideal is to have horse nearby and get a chariot or two out quickly. Of course a lot of that depends on our tech choices, which will have a lot to do with what our food bonuses are. But regardless of what units we end up using for it, definitely going to want to get a good lay of the land quickly as possible.

I suppose I'd say I'm more of a builder than a warrior, which I guess is the nature of anyone who plays mostly SP. The main thing for me, which the pace of one of these games helps me with, is I have a tendency to rush into things a little fast.

Yeah, I think the map for PB2 was great, lots of strategic options. Krill sort of rehashed it for a PBEM (can't remember which) and I thought it worked well there as well. The quality of land and character of neighbors has as much to do with success as actual skill here, though I don't love mirrored maps where everyone has the same start, etc. Its tough to balance these things though, so I don't think I'd volunteer to make one.

Anyway, lots to think about,