[SPOILERS] enough is ENOUGH! scooter opens some windows and finishes first!

[scooter]

This is the part where I'm supposed to have something funny for the mouseover text, but... I've got nothing. So instead here's some stupid things that have made me laugh recently, and they will do the same for you if you're sufficiently tired or sufficiently immature.

First, my greatest fear in life:



What I plan to do before I die:



What is this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QLSRMoKKS0

And a remix of the above video is of course a necessity:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjFOE8alUWE

And some XKCD:



Oh yeah and yadda yadda always war yadda opening analysis blah blah. That'll come eventually. Until then, drop a link of the funniest youtube video you've seen and I'll be the judge of the winner. The winner gets 0 prizes, but you'll have the joy of knowing you won a pointless internet competition. And really, that's the only reason you were going to do it.

Pretty detailed analysis will maybe probably come once we know the actual bonuses.

[scooter]

On a semi-serious note, I am SICK of finishing 2nd or tied for 1st. I'd like to finally win a game outright.

[scooter]

All we know thus far:

I have a couple ideas I want to try out for a game (with me making the map, not playing), and I'm curious if anyone is interested. Settings would be thus:

* Similar to the pbem 25 map, but noticeably bigger (40x40 instead of 30x30), with some saltwater, and standard size / noble difficulty. Very close to, or completely, mirrored.
* Quick speed. Barbs, huts, and events all OFF.
* Always war. No communication between players is allowed.
* Only bans are:
- Spy missions to change civics, change religion, and steal technology.
- Great spy infiltration ability
- Nukes
- All UN/AP resolutions if AW doesn't automatically disable them.
* Setup will be very unusual. I will show starting position screenshots with your capitals settled and announce a bonus for each trait and for each possible starting tech; based on the leader/civ you choose, you will receive the corresponding four bonuses. For example, maybe Protective starts you with a worker, Charismatic starts you with a granary, Financial starts you with 10 gold, Expansive starts you with a bunch of extra tiles revealed, Aggressive starts you with a Town on a grassland next to your capital, Organized starts you with a Forge, starting with Hunting starts you with an EXTRA scout, starting with Mysticism causes there to be a prebuilt mine on your nearest copper... The exact awards are not yet decided.

I'll have to check out PBEM25. 40x40 sounds like a pretty good size for 5 players. Expansion will matter here. I am curious how much of an impact something like a free granary would be. I mean, it sounds pretty strong, I'm just curious how long it would take Expansive trait to "catch up" to a capital starting with a free granary. I'd guess it still would catch up, but a T0 granary... That's a ton of food saved getting you a quick start. Similar deal with a forge. I may need to run a test for that.

[oledavy]

On a semi-serious note, I am SICK of finishing 2nd or tied for 1st. I'd like to finally win a game outright.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAlTOfl9F...re=related

Joking aside, best of luck in this game. After reading your PBEM3 and PBEM14 Threads, I would love to see you pull out a win here.

[Cyneheard]

On a semi-serious note, I am SICK of finishing 2nd or tied for 1st. I'd like to finally win a game outright.

Aren't we all.

[scooter]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAlTOfl9F...re=related

GET OUT OF MY THREAD!

Joking aside, best of luck in this game. After reading your PBEM3 and PBEM14 Threads, I would love to see you pull out a win here.

Er nevermind, you can stay.

Aren't we all.

Yeah you have the 2nd-place finisher curse too, and unless you are closer than I think, you're going to continue it in pbem22. At least I'll break tradition there for once and finish 3rd.

[scooter]

I'm going to do some studying of PBEM25 and possibly do some analysis here of it. I'm obviously going to look at the map and lurker threads, but if I want to read one particular thread that would give me some valuable lessons on the map and general layout, does anyone have a recommendation? I haven't followed the game at all, so if anyone could narrow down which thread is best for this kind of thing it would be wonderful.

Edit: based on post/pageviews I'm guessing Plako's thread would be the place to go?

[dazedroyalty]

I haven't read PBEM25 either so no help there. I'm really glad to see the Scooter pre/early game analysis machine revving up to full life again. Let's keep that up all game and no doubt we'll break your 2nd place rut!

Fair warning, I do have high expectations that you will have guessed the entire map script and all the details by no later than t25!

[scooter]

Pictures? Pictures. I'm not sure if this is something that is still considered spoiler material for the PBEM25 folks, so I'm going to spoiler it just in case. If everyone pretty much knows the map, let me know and I'll remove the tags.

The area around each starting person:



Each person got the same start - on a hill with freshwater fish. No saltwater anywhere on the map - just a bunch of freshwater lakes. Full view:



It's Toroidal. This map is 30x30, but ours will be 40x40 apparently. Notice the mirroring. Pick out a couple lakes and you'll notice it appears 5 times. So everyone is working with the same land. Seven's comments:

As you can see this map is pretty mirrored. In fact there are only a few non-mirrored things - the luxuries. Every player's "area" has two copies each of two luxes. There is a third copy of each luxury on the opposite side of the map. (Due to the toroidal nature of the map, being opposite a player means being equidistant to the other four players.) The pairings are:

Desert hill gold / grass jungle silk
Grass hill gems / grass jungle spice
Plains hill silver / grass wine
Grass hill forest furs / grass jungle sugar
Grass ivory / grass jungle dyes

Additionally (to compensate for being crappier - not doubled by forge, and eventually obsolete) the furs/elephants players have a single desert incense replacing a grass forest. And on the far side of the world from each of them is another desert incense replacing an oasis.

It's all pretty interesting for sure. Then my favorite picture:



Aaaaaahhhh

[scooter]

Okay I've been busy thinking this over and sifting through PBEM25. So I have some thoughts based off that game, as well as miscellaneous stuff floating around in my head about all this. Here goes.

1. PBEM25 is different in that it's not always war, therefore it played out different. However, it is notable to see how cramped it is. Here's a screenshot 49 turns in: [pbem25 spoilers]

Notice the borders NW and NE. The size 4 city is the capital so he's pushed north, but the point is that he had a very narrow amount of breathing room.

At 40x40 we can expect a couple extra rings of safety, but it's balanced by the fact that anything coming out of the fog will automatically be an enemy. Expansion will be priority #1 here, and being able to defend those cities will be hugely important.

2. A picture I meant to include in the last post is probably a pretty accurate look at how we will be spaced out in this one too:

Seven's comments:

Here's a diagram of the map layout. I've added copies of everything to make it clearer how the toroidal scrolling works out. Letters are 12x12 squares centered on the player, the smaller boxes are 6x6 squares opposite the players.

3. Maintenance was a massive issue for this game. They played Toroidal + Emperor, which meant every city was pretty expensive. We'll be doing Toroidal again, but it'll be Noble and larger size. This means cities will be much cheaper, so stuff that sounded nice in the last game (Organized) is not so much true now. This is before any potential bonuses of course, but I think it'll be important to mentally rank all traits before the bonuses, and then look at the bonuses and see what changes need to be made. Getting too suckered into "yay free stuff" could be killer if I get stuck with two sucky traits as a result. I'd start doing this now, but I'd like to not give the balancing team any ideas :neenernee.

My gut feeling is to go with one of the elite traits regardless of how sucky the bonus is, and then pair it with a upper-low or mid-tier trait that I feel has a stronger-than-necessary bonus. All speculation at this point. For example, pairing Expansive with a meh trait that has a free worker as hinted at could be quite powerful.

4. I'm also thinking from a meta perspective here. I've never played an AW game here before, but it feels to me you want a strong long-term position with a short-term position that looks good but not intimidating. Obviously teams cannot organize a dogpile, but picking two lousy long-term traits that get me silly starts could get me out to a noticeable lead that 1) is unsustainable and 2) could attract a dogpile. Example: SevenSpirits theorized Protective giving a granary and Charasmatic giving a worker. Taking those two together would give you a ridiculous start, but if someone ever got nervous and knocked you down a peg, you're done, because you aren't going to be able to keep pace long-term with that guy quietly teching away with Financial unless the initial lead you grab is completely unbreakable.

5. In light of #4, I'm kinda not wanting to pick first at all. I'd almost prefer to react to others. I am hoping to at least get a choices dump soon from the powers that be so I can start sifting through all my options. Since we've never done anything like this before, this type of analysis should be more interesting than the usual "well he took Fin/Exp and these traits are good because duh so let me write 2 paragraphs about it and pretend like you don't know that they are good traits." This will be the most interesting pre-game setup in a long time, so I'm going to be pretty slow and deliberate at considering all my options here.