The Pen vs The Sword (Gandhi of NA)

[The Black Sword]

Keep!

Password is 'Pen'.

[The Black Sword]

Well, seems goal number one for the game will be keeping this thread on the first page. That could be a difficult one!

Anyway, I have to complement Commodore on his dice-rolling, I love my pick. Spi and Phi are two traits I haven't had a chance to play with yet and look like some really fun ones to boot. Probably not top tier, but very close to it. I would have liked to try out pretty much any trait combo I haven't already used though. The only one I think I'd have considered re-using is Org, which is the strongest trait in RB mod IMO.

I think I rate Phi a bit higher than normal for RB and then I double-checked the changelog and Krill has given me 150% Gpp! I'm going to have to get my bulb hat on. It should also finally be a game where I value Oxford.

Spi is another really fun trait that will require even more planning than Phi probably, and it's also gotten better in RB mod with the re-balanced civics. The pairing probably loses some of it's synergy though, since running Caste over Slavery is often a good choice in RBmod.

It's not all plain sailing though, because Spi likes religions, which could be tricky to land in a game this size and I'd love to try out the Monk economy, which suffers from the same problem. I am the only Phi/Spi civ though, so perhaps a Philosophy bulb might work? Or a math bulb to give me the advantage to CoL? Probably thinking far too ahead here.

The civ is Native America, which is nothing special but should work fine. Fishing and Agriculture for starting techs, are solid, covers most of the food bases. If the map is like PB13 then starting with fishing could be important. Just hope against AH resources so I can push for early BW and pottery. Not set up for the early religion shots anyway. Dog Soldier is an alright UU, at least I should be able to defend against Agg axes this time. Totem pole is likewise uninspiring but might prove useful. In particular, Totem Pole+Barracks+Vassalage+Theo = 10xp Longbow for HE if it comes to it. Spi makes that idea possible too.

[Ceiliazul]

yeah, nice traits for power-gaming. I've been impressed with your threads so far, i'll be rooting for you in the lurker thread!

[Lewwyn]

I really dislike PHI, but if I have to play PHI having SPI is a good match.

[The Black Sword]

I like Phi because I like fantasizing about possible bulb paths and the like. Guess I'll find out this game whether it can be actually as useful as I imagine.

Thanks for the support Ceil, here's more random musings on my traits to lift me off the second page. Still too early for any of this to matter really.

Spi and a religion
The main benefit of founding is obviously the shrine, otherwise I might as well just adopt someone else's religion. But I need to get that shrine in a reasonable time frame, I can't let my Phi trait sit useless for ages as I get out 1 GP. That's really hard to do when you assume I can't get any of the early wonders. 15t if I'm just running a single priest and that's just the first GP. What are the scenarios where I could improve on that?

1. Neighbour founds and spreads an early religion, allowing me access to 2 temples.
2. AP + temple.
3. Angkor Wat - seems quite expensive.
4. Early stone or marble.
5. Check out Cathedrals

Phi
First access to specialists is obviously scientists from the library. Those can be useful for bulbing Maths or an Academy in the early game. We will want to build up a good Bureau-Oxford-Academy capital. Then I get access to Caste system at CoL where I can really use my specialists. Can run scientists to bulb Philo -> Edu -> Lib, but that's possibly not my immediate goal after CoL. I have access to merchants that have a couple of good bulb points: Currency, Metal Casing(though this might be a bit cheap to bulb now?) and CS(clear the above +Alphabet, Monarchy, fine those are good techs). GMs can also run trade missions which are also very good. We have access to Artists as well. Doesn't look like great bulb options here though. We could Bulb Music for a second Great Artists if we clear both Drama and Lit. We're popping borders with artists though, not build culture, so hard to tell if the rest of music will be helpful. GAs can also culture bomb, should keep in mind, or golden age. That's a fair number of options, so we could try a golden age + bulbing spree as soon as we hit CoL.

What other early game GP options do we have? The cheap new MC for a forge engineer. Interesting strategy, though I'm not sure I'd use MC for anything else besides that for a long time. Bulbing Machinery does not seem all that useful unless I really want a knight rush. Rush the Pyramids would be great at that stage. They could quite possibly be gone though. In which case, go Calendar +MoM, Lit + TGL or even slicker Theo +AP, use AP+temple for the prophet. I imagine tech would be the chokepoint on these though. Might also be sacrificing a bit much for the Monk economy. In all cases I could probably figure out how to chop out the wonder in 1t without the engineer too.

[The Black Sword]

I was going to do a ranking but 33 players is a lot. So, I'll just list my top contenders to start with some top of my head predictions.

Tier 1
Plako - Louis of France : First player to wipe out a civ. Leader is a bit weak IMO, so no. 2 favourite.

Krice - Willem of Babylon : This ranking presupposes they don't spend 10t wandering, decide they would prefer cylindrical to toroidal and let Babylon lapse into the sands of time on T10. Otherwise they're top players with a very good leader.

Tier 2
Old Tourist - Victoria of the Aztecs: With the Pindicooter dream team broken up and Commodore retiring to Canada, they look unstoppable in the post count war. Pretty good at the game too.

dtay - Mao of Ethiopia: My neighbour, obviously. Peaceful co-existence doubtful .

Oxy - Catherine of Greece: Maybe a bit of a surprise inclusion in the list but I've been impressed with his recent games. Highest land area come T100, though the traits are below average overall IMO.

Darreljs/Ichabod - Joao of HRE : I know these guys have been around for a while but I haven't really followed many of their games. They'll win the most lurker awards

TBS - Ghandi of NA : Hey, I'm a self confident guy!

Scooter - Shaka of the Ottomans : Too invested in PB13, will under perform.

Pindicator - Qin of China: On the other hand, got out of PB13 just in time. Has the micro to turn Ind into some wonders and a good position, even with this saturated field. Pro gives a good early game to help with that.

[The Black Sword]

Food feels pretty bad, but at least I start with a plains hill. It was hard to see moving improving things, I decided to check out the wine tile, though I'd probably need something really good because 1gpt does not pay back the turn moving and I've moved away from all the food sources. I didn't feel like checking out West because even if I found another food source, I doubt that's worth the plains hill.

So, I guess we'll settle in place. The one great thing about the food is that it matches up perfectly with our initial techs!



And wow are they expensive. I'm reconsidering a religion run now that I don't need any food techs but it's still pretty unlikely if everything is this expensive. The more likely scenario to consider is WB vs worker first. My gut says the worker wins, with the lack of a 3h tile and 4 yield crab vs 6 yield wheat, but I'll check it out.

Lots of rivers in the fog look nice, might give me an opportunity to move my capital later. This looks plenty good to build up for the start though, 5 river grass and 1 river plains.

[The Black Sword]

I founded the city to get some extra information for planning, there's a hut 3W1S of my capital to pop. No new food showed up over there either, so founding in place was the right call. After a few tests it became clear that worker first is much superior to WB first too. So, fishing isn't a great tech for me. Still, if I had to rank techs for this start I'd go Agri -> Wheel -> Mining -> Fishing -> Myst -> Hunting. So starting with techs 1 and 4 isn't too bad.

Myst is definitely ranked low btw because the tech costs on this map are really insane. There's no way I'm going for an early religion here until I've picked up BW and Pottery at least. No point founding a religion just for my neighbours. There is one positive point about the tech costs though; I can start getting full value from my bulbs earlier.

Anyway, I'm going to go worker first and provisional plan for Mining -> BW. Getting the Wheel first could be a worthwhile play, because it will save me some worker turns but I need to know that the 'free' roads are worth the delay in BW and for that I need some more information about my second city location. So, I'll use the first 4 turns to do some scouting and make the decision then.

I did consider going Wheel -> Pottery really fast with both pre-reqs but I don't think it's worth it. My capital won't get much use out of a Granary until BW is in anyway. And I have 4 good tiles for my capital to work; 2 crab, wheat, wine mine, so I won't be able to work too many cottages immediately. All those tiles give commerce too so I won't be lacking in early commerce.

I've been thinking about my mistakes in previous games as well, and what I could improve on:

1. Be more conservative, be prepared for the worst case scenarios. See PB13 and both fights with dtay. Should have been better prepared for Azza's counter-attack in 53 too. Transport my FFH paranoia over to BTS.

2.Scout better. Both with the initial scout and putting more investment into other scouting units earlier. I'd like to know the location of my neighbours and contested city sites as soon as possible.

3. Build more workers. In both 53 and 13 I've managed to skate by on a rather tiny number of workers and relying on careful micro to ensure I have good tiles to work. I think that worked well enough but there were sacrifices. Most obviously the choice of Serfdom in 13 to bail me out of trouble. In 53 there are some good tiles that should have been improved and worked a lot sooner, in particular the river around Anubis, though that was influenced by the Azza war too. I think I'm pretty good in the expansion phase at getting worker support for new cities but I underestimate how many workers I need when my cities grow vertical.

[The Black Sword]

Take 3.

[The Black Sword]

Interesting possibilities for second city sites in the west. Settling on one of the plains hills looks juicy but more resources is very tempting. That hut in the east . The clams is salt water, so I'm afraid I can't loop around it to get back, so I'm going to have the go back through this rough terrain. I do want to see what those rivers look like as well though.

Also need to decide is it worth a 2t settler delay to get 2 warriors out.

Password is 'Pen', I'll put it in the first post in case it's necessary.