[SPOILERS] scooter's AW lunacy - De Gaulle of Native Americans

[scooter]

Screenshot please . Explanation of my stupid picks will come later.

I'll let insanity wolf introduce my pick...



Anyways, this game promises to be all kinds of wacky. Emp raging barbs... Always War... Mongolia, Native Americans, and Mali taken while Byz sits unpicked... Lincoln wasn't picked... That's right, LINCOLN wasn't picked for a format in which he was probably the strongest choice in a vacuum... And the best part, I get 3 cities. So since this promises to be a wacky game, my theme is pretty simple. One city for each of these guys to govern:



Yep, gonna be that kinda game.

[Commodore]

Screenshot please . Explanation of my stupid picks will come later.

Gimmie my PBEM 32 save and we'll talk.

[Commodore]

*relents*

Your start, enjoy all the choices!



All the usual caveats; management reserves the right to change things, etc, etc, apply.

[scooter]

I'm going to be honest - at first glance I have no clue what to do with that start. Well I have a couple clues but I'm not sure what's best at this point. Going to need to think it over a bit. I admit I've been expecting this to be almost entirely land-based so the presence (abundance?) of water is surprising. Also man - there's several food sources but aside from that Lighthouseable clam, they all suck.

Commodore - is circumnav available? Or is that one of those "figure it out yourself, moron" type questions?

[scooter]

Edited my first post with some nonsense. As an FYI to lurkers - I have yet to decide which order I'm going to name my cities... So I'll let you guys decide. Cities will be named Larry, Moe, and Curly... So if you have a favorite Stooge, feel free to vote for your choice of which one will get the capital named after him.

[scooter]

Before explaining my picks, I want to give a run down elimination-style of the traits available and explain how I got to De Gaulle. Krill's gchat comment to me when I made the pick went something like:

Krill: the **** is that pick?

Well, I believe he's wrong and things turned out pretty okay for me. So let's go through the traits and my thoughts on them. First, the "yeah no thanks I don't want any of these ever" traits:

Organized - LOL moving on.

Protective - Slightly less awful than usual, which is like saying a lightweight sumo wrestler is slightly less heavy than usual. Basically, he's still fat, and this trait still sucks.

Expansive - I guess you'd win first to 3 cities and yeah I guess that's cool if you're into that sorta thing. If you're into winning, nope, skip this.

Imperialistic - See "Expansive"

Financial - Also sucks. Not on the "wheee Organized" level of suck, more on the Expansive level of suck. Still - not touching it. Realistically you're not going to get more than 30-40 commerce out of this trait at best, which is a pretty laughably bad amount. So skip this junk.

Creative - Out of the "no way I'm touching this traits" this is the least awful. Again, not an accomplishment. The culture could be useful for giving your cities a defense buffer from irritating opponents and yeah I'm really grasping at straws for good uses here but I'm trying to stay positive. Anyways yes, I'm not interested in this trait.

----------

Ok, all the other traits are plausible but not equally good. To understand how to play this, I think you really have to think like it's an OCC with a slight variant of letting us plunk down a couple extra cities... Anyways, I'll go through them alphabetically:

1. Aggressive - my first impression is that this is kind of a sucker's choice UNLESS you pair it with Rome, in which case sure why not. Regardless, I was not interested in this trait.

2. Charasmatic - Now we're getting somewhere. From a sheer military point of view, this and aggressive are fairly equal IMO. Agg usually gets the choices because of cheap barracks, but when you're only building 3, that's less significant. Agg is still probably slightly better militarily, but Chm holds it's own. The real impact though is the happy cap. When you're dealing with just 3 cities, you want to grow them as high as you can, and obviously Chm helps you do that. Therefore, Chm was on my short list in terms of traits, but not at the top.

3. Industrious - Odd one, right? Well, kind of. In a vacuum, this is not THAT great... but in a 3CC like this, Pyramids for Representation is uber. My very first thought upon hearing the setup was "I want Pyramids." Thing is - so does everyone else. So Industrious is the way to virtually guarantee Pyramids unless someone else takes Industrious... So if you get the chance to pick first... well I'm getting ahead of myself . Anyways, in a vertical-oriented game, having first dibs on wonders is pretty big - much moreso than a normal game where building settlers/workers will frequently come out ahead of those wonders.

4. Philosophical - aaaaaand we have the uber trait here for this game. I'll be honest, I expected everyone else to take a Phi leader and was somewhat surprised when Dazed took Brennus. Great people will rule the day in this game as cottages are not a great option with so little land, so might as well farm it up and crank the great people. And yet, I didn't pick a Philosophical leader.

5. Spiritual - Spiritual is as Spiritual usually is - a fine choice that always be good and never be particularly exciting. Still though - I would be more than happy with Spiritual, but I can't fit it in as I really wanted a combo of Chm/Ind/Phi... so I scratched this one off shortly after scratching off Aggressive.


So yes, I ended up with De Gaulle (Chm/Ind). I'll try to explain more about that and my Civ pick in a future post, but I'm going to dump this for now and have more to say in a future post.

[scooter]

Ok - I'm sure Krill is sufficiently whining in his own thread because that's what he's good at, but I'll be honest - I'm not sure this map is really ideal for this kind of game. I'll be honest - I was completely expecting something like a "Green Team Battleground" kind of thing. And I really feel bad complaining because I love Commodore's maps (it's a big part of why I was quick to sign up for this game), but there's lots of problems here.

Removing the ability to boat someone solves one problem and creates another. We now are safe in 3 directions (north, south, west) and have only one direction to defend from. On a more "Team Battleground"-type thing (or even a green Highlands or whatever) you have to defend from all directions. That means Emp raging barbs is a huge deal. In this case they're realy not - just fogbust east and you're fine. The capital culture alone will prevent everything north/west/south. And again, once you eventually settle east, you can sit and leave your capital with one warrior defending while defending the other two - which seems kinda crazy for a game that's supposed to be AW + raging barbs.

Really - I was shocked to see water in the screenshot. I fully expected a 90%+ land game because that's the kind of game that provides the most tactical choices and threats. This makes me think build-fest. Now I don't know how far I have to go east to find somebody, but still, this just doesn't look nearly as fun as something predominantly land that would force you to defend yourself much more adamantly.

So that's my concern right now. Again, sincere apologies for complaining as I don't really like to do that, but to be completely honest - this game seemed less fun upon seeing this screenshot and I'm not sure what to do about it.

[Commodore]

It's well taken criticism, actually, no worries at all. I like the lighthouse utility for the start, but you can probably expect a lot more NS land. Looking for lurker review, of course. But yeah, one side safe is fine, but three is a bit much.

[scooter]

It's well taken criticism, actually, no worries at all. I like the lighthouse utility for the start, but you can probably expect a lot more NS land. Looking for lurker review, of course. But yeah, one side safe is fine, but three is a bit much.

Thanks. Sorry, I don't like to get whiny whiny and I also don't like to be unappreciative of the work it takes to make a map like this - but I also don't want to play out 6 months on a map that looked less than fun from Day0 if that makes sense.

[scooter]

Alright I'll explain my pick - though I certainly hinted at it in my trait explanations. So, for me obviously Phi/Ind would be my choice in a perfect world. So for me, I have to pick one of those traits. Phi is the uber trait here as great people are really important. However, for me, the strongest possible play is to lock down Pyramids. Representation will be massive. You get the happy bonus on all 3 cities. Normally this is only a nice bonus, but it's a bigger deal here. When you can only have 3 cities, you want to grow them as high as humanly possible. Representation helps with that.

More importantly though is the specialist bonus. Cottages aren't really a huge deal here because there's so few tiles. I'm better off farming everything, running as many specialists as possible, and settling a bunch of great people for the Rep bonus. Whoever lands the Pyramids will likely be the tech leader by a good bit, and I'd like that to be me. So for me, Pyramids is the "must get" wonder. How to guarantee that I get it? Take Industrious.

See the cool thing to about picking first and taking Industrious is I automatically made Industrious a bad pick for everyone else. Ind is only really worth it if you use it to guarantee Mids, and if someone else takes it, they're banking their game on a race to Pyramids. That's not a great option... So yes, I'm actually pretty convinced that taking Industrious was quite strong here despite some scorn that I got by chat shortly after taking it . I think it'll pay off and more than make up for the lack of Philosophical.

Also, Charasmatic. I thought about Ramesses for Spi/INd, but the happy bonus (plus the combat bonuses) for Chm is just too strong. Again - you want to grow really high. I can do that better than anyone else if I get Rep + Chm. No one can really touch that level of happiness... So yes - I really like Chm here.

So overall I'm super happy with pick. Civ was always going to be a reactionary choice. I am REALLY shocked that both Lincoln and Byz didn't get picked - and I know Cyneheard was thinking about taking it with his choice. Nevertheless, Agg Rome meant everyone was reacting. Krill took Mali which is alright, though I think there's a few civs that are better anti-Rome than that. Dazed took Mongolia which is ok anti-Rome, but I'm thinking he wanted the Ger more than anything which, yeah, more power to him. I would've loved to have taken Byz honestly. I really would've. However, if I end up next to Cyneheard and I've got Mids and a UU that will be a powerhouse later, he's definitely going after me and not Skirmishers or Mongolia. So I needed a deterrent so I can sit back and Mids my way into the lead - so Native Americans it is. This is a double-bonus here. First, Dogs are definitely the best really early anti-Praet unit. Also, them being resourceless is a bonus. I was mildly afraid I'd have to settle for copper, so this circumvents that problem. I can make a quick run at wonders and have a resourceless UU to protect me. The Totem Pole is not as important but it's a nice bonus - Totem Pole archers/longbows are a mess to get through and generally not attractive targets.

So that's my choice. Stonehenge is also most certainly tempting, but I'll have to see if I can fit that in before the Mids. I probably could actually as it's crazy for anyone else to try for it unless they can get stone or something. We'll see. Certainly have lots of options! So yes, De Gaulle may have seemed crazy on the surface, but hopefully I've explained the thinking sufficiently enough to prove I'm not insane here . I was chatting with Cyneheard and Krill when I made my pick. I mentioned to Cyneheard I was hesitant to take De Gaulle first (said this after I picked) because I figured he'd still be there at last pick so why not take civ. His reaction:

Um yeah he'd stil be there

Krill was of course less diplomatic:

the **** is that pick?

Yeah they're both wrong. Or I think I can prove it anyways.