[SPOILERS] SevenSpirits and The Black Sword - Baguettes and Circuses

[SevenSpirits]

Tracker: rbpbem63@gmail.com
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The game (summary):
ToW mod 1.3
Quick Speed
Monarch/Standard
Always war
Barbs ON
Tech Cost Scaling ON
36x36 map
Toroidal wrap


The players:
Dreylin: Catherine (CRE/IMP) of Greece (FISH/HUNT)
Mackoti: Huayna (FIN/IND) of Vikings (FISH/HUNT)
SS/TBS: Boudica (AGR/CHA) of France (AGRI/WHEE)
Yuris125: Charlemagne (IMP/PRO) of England (FISH/MINE
Ichabod: Pacal (EXP/FIN) of Inca (AGRI/MYST)

Our password:
hax

[The Black Sword]

It's better than the others at least. Though I'm still trying to figure out what URA stands for.

Do you have anything you're interested in playing, or do you still want to act as a control set? I'd like to try out at least one of Ind/Cha/Agr/Pro since they'd all be a pretty new experience for me.

[SevenSpirits]

I'm not really attached to anything. I still haven't played as Agr or Pro so one of those sounds nice to me too.

Edit: URA is leaving me stumped as well.

[plako]

Screenshot

[SevenSpirits]

... proper food we can't afford

and the title is prophetic!

[The Black Sword]

Thanks Plako.

Initial thoughts:

Need 1 of Agri or Hunting to improve the resources in time. Preferably not both since they're so cheap.

Don't want Fishing obviously.

I don't think we want Mysticsm, despite it's high cost, since it's pretty useless until the second city.

Looks like if we want to start chopping after improving the 2 resources we need to start with Mining. Might be handy to chop the middle forest to easily move from either side too. The Wheel is the more expensive tech though and improving the flood plains is important.

Regarding traits, I was leaning Agr over Pro before I saw the start, a bit more now. Pro gives up some commerce to give the bonus hammer and we have 4 strong tiles to work, so we might trigger that first Agr bonus quicker. I'm not sure what to pair it with, toying with Exp for a little bit of synergy.

[SevenSpirits]

Pretty much agree.

Yup, we need one of hunting or agriculture. (Well, if we are india, the worker is delayed 2t anyway which lines up with tech, technically...) Hunting makes our scout better while agriculture leads to pottery, which we need for the FPs. Due to needing AH and pottery I am generally expecting to not go for an early religion.

The cow is the better first resource to improve in a vacuum - it has higher yield and gets us to the critical size 2 at the same time the sheep does. Meanwhile it puts out hammers for a warrior - this works out well on quick speed as you grow exactly to 2 while finishing a warrior with 2 overflow. In this particular start, the sheep is worth considering improving first if for no other reason than that we might want to cottage the FPs after improving both resources, and the cow is next to the FPs.

The two calendar resources at the capital say we want calendar fairly early. That's a small argument against CHA, which can afford to skip calendar, and against SPI, which might prefer to mess around with OR and monarchy.

It's not clear at first glance if we want pottery right after AH, or rather BW.

I'm interested in trying out AGR.

[SevenSpirits]

Oh, I will also throw out there specifically that one obvious opening is worker, improve cow + warrior + size 2, worker + improve sheep, grow to 4 + 2 warriors + cottage 2 FPs, settler.

Also:
* Is it possible to start with one of agri/hunting and research the other one before AH to get the double prereq bonus? Not really - it comes in one turn too late.

* Starting with both Agriculture and Hunting instead of just one of them gives +10 beakers due to the prereq bonus. That's nominally 1b more efficient than starting with e.g. Hunting/Mining. (Mining and Fishing cost 9b more than Agri/Hunting.)

* PRO saves 1t on the worker and costs us 5 beakers in exchange.

[SevenSpirits]

We're up to pick with Pacal and England gone. Interesting. Pacal is the early Compass guy, with both wharves and harbors being good builds. England is just a good civ, but it confirms that starting resources aren't mirrored, in case there was any doubt. To me, this means even more definitively that planning for Hinduism/Buddhism in the pick phase is a bad idea.

We are up next, so I will post some options I favor in a few hours - have to work now though.

[SevenSpirits]

Any of the following tech combos let us get AH-pottery without missing a beat in worker turns.
Agri/Wheel
Agri/Hunting
Hunting/Wheel

Agri/Anything works too with some very mild constraints, as does Hunting/Fishing.

I think agri/wheel is the best. For our start, hunting is a nonessential tech that delays bronze working. So I would pick one of:
France
Ottomans
Egypt
Babylon

(Sumeria is Agri/Myst in the mod.)

We have a lot of options though. Maybe pick leader first? I'm fine with Agr/Exp if that appeals to you. I think I only want to avoid creative and philosophical since I'm already playing those in PB20. Some other good options might be Agr/Cha, Agr/Org, Agr/Fin, or Agr/Ind (but our capital has bare minimum hammer potential). Or, we don't have to go with Agr at all.

Edit: here is a hasty sandbox. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1116...dSwordSave