[SPOILERS] PB1- Mardoc buys a can of paint for Thoth and Ellimist

[Mardoc]

So an elf, a dwarf, and a human walk into a bar...

[Mardoc]

First things first: if either of you has a better idea for a thread title, we can change those now! I just figured we could use a place to discuss.

I said most of what I want to in the e-mail, but I'll copy it over here so that lurkers can see it:

First, Ellimist, welcome to the 'all-star club' ™ ;-). Not that I
really believe that label, but I'll certainly be disappointed if we
can't win this.

It looks like it's actually going to happen, eventually, so we should
probably start planning.

Logistics: I'm almost always around and online for chat weekday
evenings (EST, which is GMT-4/5). During the work day, in between
actual work, I can't do chat, but can do e-mail and/or post in thread
. Weekends are tougher for me, and the most likely time I'd need one
of you to fill in for me.

Overall: Looking at PB6, PBEMX, and the Ljo-Basium partnership...we
really need to treat this as one civ with three specialized pieces,
not three civs who happen to be allied. Probably one REX civ, one
tech civ, and one war civ, if we're allowed to gift cities. All civs
do some of all, especially early game, but once we can specialize, we
do.

Although I'm decent at micromanagement, I'm certainly not good at it;
you can expect me to act on just about any suggestion you give. I do
better when you explain the rationale behind the suggestion. What I
think I'm strong at (and certainly the part I enjoy the most) is the
big picture, tech path and civ selection and such. I think the best
way to illustrate that: Beastmasters and the Baron were my idea.
Managing the logistics to invade Basium before you got the Towers
built was also my role. I'm working on my micro, but I don't expect
to catch up to you guys anytime soon.

Civ selection thinking: we definitely want to take advantage of at
least one of Kurios, Khazad, and Clan. Any civ whose main benefit is
compensated by something we can ignore is golden. For our primary war
civ, I'm inclined to something like the Amurites or the Vampires, but
we could get by just fine with a more generic civ and planning to rely
on generic units like chariots or religious units. Or...if not
banned, the Sidar make a pretty good war civ, too. It'd be a nice
bonus to concentrate three civs worth of XP onto their units .

I think my personal role should be either the tech civ or the REX civ;
micro mistakes that are annoying with workers become fatal with
armies. From what I've seen of your play, I'd tend to want to put
Thoth as the tech civ, and Ellimist as the war civ, but you two might
disagree. I just tend to think Thoth wins wars by having the best war
toys, while Ellimist wins wars by superior tactics - so put Thoth in
charge of acquiring the war toys and Ellimist in charge of using them.
So far I haven't won wars .

In a vacuum, I'd like to play the Kurios, and focus my play on
spamming settlers and teching for you two - if we choose Kurios, that
is. We might not have the option, of course, or value something else
higher. Limit me to 3-4 cities and a half dozen workers to manage,
and I predict better micro from me . And Expansive is a very
straightforward trait to use - just knock out settler after settler,
and put them where requested. I can keep myself plenty entertained by
plotting overall strategy from the stagnant backlines.

If we're going to have 12 civs in the game, with only 18 legal civs -
I'd be shocked if we can get three preferred choices. So we can't
plan too far in advance. But this seems a reasonable approach, once
the snake pick begins.

Anyway, I think I've babbled enough for one message. I'd be
interested to hear your thoughts.

In other news, while chatting with Thoth, he pointed out something very cool - apparently Elven PoL can Bloom their allies' lands on top of improvements. Which is a much better way to share the elven econ than trying to export lazy workers!

So I think we want an elf in the group, probably as our first pick. I like Ljo better, but either elf is powerful and likely to fall early.

Aside from that - there are 18 available civs, 19 if we unban the Illians. That doesn't give us a lot of room for getting our ideal civs, not with 12 players. I figure we'll just have to react as the snake pick goes.

[Thoth]

Drunken spambot checking in. :hat:

Thread title change was suggested in chat....but overall I think it's full of win. :hat:


As far as leaders/civs/palace mana combos/starting techs/civ traits go....a lot will depend on snake pick order and what map settings we wind up using.

We'll want an Exp Leader to fuel our early expansion, a Philo leader for GPP and Cheap Tech buildings, a Fin leader for extra gold to fuel the Philo leader's tech, Spiritual is always nice to have, Agg/Chrm/Raiders...nice.

Civs with abusable stuff:

Elfs (Ljos for traits or Svarts for Hero/uber Assassins): We want one or the other of these civs if we can grab them. (Palace mana: nature, Air, Water)

Lanun: The team starts with Seafaring and all members get the benefit of +1 water moves and Pearl visibility. (Palace mana: Air, Water, Chaos)

(more to come later once I firm up some more coherent thoughts on other subjects.....I'm getting a bit incoherent atm)

[Thoth]

OOOH! Nice thread title change. :hat:

[Mardoc]

So, chatting with Ellimist, he points out that in PBEM18, the Ljo weren't able to Bloom inside Mercurian borders. Kinda/mostly negates that bit of awesomeness. I haven't tested to confirm, but I'm not really sure I need to.

What are some civs that are really good in a teamer?

Expansive category:

Clan - Warrens! Exp/Spi goes well with warrens, too, for settler and temple spam. Can get around Barb/banned libraries by gifting gold to a tech teammate - get around maintenance by gifting cities. Awesome support civ for any plan - build the cities someone else uses. Assumes limited city gifting is allowed.

Kurios - Big fast, Exp for settler spam, Philo + Enclaves = mucho tech power. Sure, units aren't doubled, but city sizes are :neenernee. And Tailors/Jewelers put the icing on the cake, +2 happy to all allies. Their main limit is irrelevant, since the partners can own all the cities.

Less awesome in a team setting, but still good:
Thessa!: Expansive elf forests! Arcane to provide some contribution to war later.
Falamar: Extremely map-dependent, but Cove-powered Expansive is pretty awesome when it works.
Rhoanna: Again, make gold and cities, feed to someone else.
Mahala: Expansive, sure. What else does she bring to the table? Not a whole lot

War category:

Calabim - Governor's Manors are nice. Vamps are normally a bit nerfed by slow tech pace...well, that's what a good ally is for! Imagine a new Calabim city, founded by a Clan settler, immediately getting a Temple, some soldiers of Kilmorph into its Governor's Manor - it can grow very quickly into a Vamp producing powerhouse. Main downside: quirky tech path. Don't pick them with anyone who also cares about tech path.

Amurites: Yeah, I know you've done them already, by proxy. But Valledia can do insta-mages without even breathing hard! And Govannon can make all the Spiritual Priests into insta-mages too! There's an awful lot of power in the arcane tree, add in Govannon to make things really fun!

She'd go well with Druids, too....

Illians: Ice mana, baby. And Arcane/Cha. Ice elementals are awesome, Ice archmagi are even better. Granted, they don't have a lot of economic power, and they don't get along nicely with sharing BFC's.

Others...many. Most civs could be war civs, really, given the right backing.

Tech civs:

Amelanchier: Philo, Elf econ, what's not to like? Ok, Raiders is a bit 'meh', but you can't have everything. Millions of cottages, with super high city sizes and libraries and specialists out the wazoo.

Downside, he takes a while to really get going.

Einion: Phi/Cha is a nice early game tech civ. Corlindale is nice too. Might be able to build Warrens, depending on how exactly city gifting works with Tolerant.

Or, any civ with Phi. There's a lot of them. Or the Svarts.

Tech civ's job is simple: built cottages, work cottages, build Academies/Libraries/etc, dump all the commerce through the slider. That can be just about anybody.

Now, granted, these are first thoughts, and likely others will agree with me and take some from us.

But, assuming the elven econ doesn't share, [SIZE="4"]I'm now convinced we'd much rather grab our Expansive civ in the first round[/SIZE]. Which would be, well, probably [SIZE="4"]Jonas as #1, with Cardith as a close #2[/SIZE]. Jonas is just the consummate sprawler, Cardith is better at support. Both civs have extremely good points, balanced out in normal play by pieces that just don't matter in a teamer. We'll find our 3rd choice tech civ a lot closer to our 1st choice, than our 3rd choice Expansive buddy is to Jonas. And, well, war civ - I'm not convinced any is superior - what really matters is the production base and tech base we can put behind it. Which means we pick it last. Sure, we base our tech path around the war civ more than the others, but we can make all sorts of crazy things work out.

Err...assuming we can have one of Jonas or Cardith. I rate the rest of the Expansive leaders about par with each other.

[Ellimist]

I favor the Clan for several reasons:


[SIZE="4"]All settlers on sale! 75% off![/SIZE]

This is something that exponentially benefits the whole team. Once warrens are up, a typical Clan city will easily be able to produce a pair of settlers in less than 10 turns. Many cities can do it even faster, and the only thing that usually stops the Clan from filling up the map is maintenance costs. If we rely on the Clan to produce our settlers, the other two civs will be able to divert those hammers into other things while maintaining a strong horizontal growth rate.

[SIZE="4"]Infrastructure hammer egalitarianism[/SIZE]

Soldiers of Kilmorph and slaves can provide hammers to another civilization's cities. Warrens get around the 50% hammer efficiency penalty that SoK rushing has, and this is usually very helpful for the Clan to get new cities going faster by providing vital infrastructure. In a typical Clan game, this is mostly markets, warrens, and wonders. In a team game, this would be doubly useful because it would, for example, allow a food-rich/hammer-poor Calabim city to get a Governor's Manor much faster. In addition, Jonas can change religions frequently with no anarchy and produce enough priests to create temples for all three players.

[SIZE="4"]All other units on sale! 50% off![/SIZE]

This usually is what makes up for any technology disadvantage that the Clan has. Nobody else can build an army faster, whether we're talking about workers, ritualists, or assassins. Overwhelming numbers can often make up for a tech disadvantage, but in this game we're not likely to have such a disadvantage, because...

[SIZE="4"]Invisible barbarian science penalty[/SIZE]

Once we tech Currency, our Clan player will never need to produce another beaker. He can just do 100% gold, adopt civics like consumption, and give the gold to the other members of the team. They can run a higher slider and build libraries and academies to take advantage of it. It's not that difficult to get to Currency quickly because it's the #1 tech preference for a great merchant bulb. The only prerequisite we'd need would be Code of Laws, which we'd likely prioritize anyway.


Basically, the Clan is the perfect civ to provide support to other civs on a team. The warrens hammer advantage is one that can be exported, and the acceleration it provides to the other teams can dramatically improve their snowballs. The science penalty in the early game is significantly reduced, because 2/3 of the team won't be affected. The things that would normally penalize the Clan will be irrelevant or negated. In a team setting, the Clan becomes a top-tier economic civ in addition to its military advantages.

[Mardoc]

Now, I should play devil's advocate here I'm still pretty well sold on the Clan, but don't think they're perfect

Clan does have some disadvantages, too, even in a teamer

• No starting tech sets the whole team back a bit
  
• Barbarian and no libraries inhibit starting tech rate, too
  
• Those settler and unit sales - they come with a membership fee. Gotta tech Masonry and spend 120 hammers/city on a Warrens.
  
• It's hard to ICS for your friends, since you can only found cities outside their culture
  
• Slow workers
  
• Strong need to go to Kilmorph, which doesn't usually synergize with other civs nearly so well
  
• No good mounted units
  

Basically: Clan will slow down our start. We'll be teching slower, needing to pick up Masonry and Kilmorph, and pausing for 120 hammers/city in our settler-spam civ. They compensate by speeding up the midgame, but we've got to be on a big enough map/long enough game for that to catch up to an early snowball civ like Kurios, or those benefits don't much matter.

If the land grab is basically over by the time we get to Masonry + 120 hammers/city, for example, then Warrens don't help out nearly as much. If early tech speed becomes vital - say we need to fight off an axe rush or a hippus warcry, then the tech penalties still hurt. We should pay close attention to the map settings/mapmaker hints. If we end up on a map where early speed matters more than eventual power - then we want the Kurios instead.

Edit: An example. Compare to another Expansive civ, and take a hypothetical. Assume we've instantly/freely got all the tech we need.

Clan - first 120 hammers is a Warren. Say an Expansive settler costs in general 60-70 hammers.

Code:

Hammers  #ClanSettler   #OtherSettler
60             0              1
120            0              2
190            2              3
260            4              4
330            6              5

Basically - Clan only start to outproduce another expansive civ after a city has made about 300 hammers! And the other civ gets the first cities down earlier, as well.

[Mardoc]

Dangit, I lost a post with a lot of thoughts in it.

Well, here's a summary of my thoughts. Might be easier to read anyway .

One thing we need to decide, early, is what overall tech path we want. PBEMX taught me that even having two Palaces and old-style Financial does not make up for having economy of purpose.

Possibilities include:

• Religious
  
• Arcane
  
• Vampire
  
• Mundane (eg, Recon line, or Mithril)
  

Of course we'll mix in some of all, but the primary focus makes a huge difference. Personally - I want an Arcane focus. I've done the others. I think a well-played arcane game can be more powerful than the others, anyway. Good Arcane civs are the Amurites (duh!), Illians, Balseraphs, maybe Thessa of the Ljo, maybe Sheaim.

If you guys disagree, though, I can live with something else. So long as we don't try to simulaneously chase Vampires and every religion on the tree . That doesn't work.

[Mardoc]

Dang it, you guys, how dare you be busy with Real Life? I'm excited, and I'm talking to myself, and it's embarassing but I can't stop. [SIZE="1"]This must be what Regoarrarr feels like *all* *the* *time*[/SIZE]

Anyway, we need a naming scheme, or few. Maybe Shades of Paint would do?

Maybe names of Elves, Men, and Dwarves, one per civ? Bonus points if we name the elves after dwarves and the men after elves :neenernee

Maybe lurkers have a better idea? Preferably an idea that comes in a set of three?

[Mardoc]

Tell me you don't want the Elohim on our team after you watch this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5izF6nw-x...re=related