[SPOILERS] Mardoc gets back on the horse

[Mardoc]

So, I haven't had a whole lot of luck with my games so far. That's because I haven't had a whole lot of skill... But I enjoy myself, usually, so I figure it's worth trying again.

Main lessons:

• Don't try to conquer in the ancient era
  
• Don't convince your neighbor to try to conquer you in the ancient era
  
• Don't use Knights as 1-movers
  
• Don't start a fight without siege
  
• Don't push onward when you know you're running ragged
  
• Don't expect you can make a perfect war
  
• Don't skimp on the early turns
  
• Don't skimp on the middle turns
  
• Don't skimp on the late turns
  
• Don't leave your valuable cities unguarded when your rival sails a force nearby
  

Plus, of course, likely a number of things I could have learned from my failures as well, if only I'd been paying attention .

Basically: I need to spend time, consistently, on each and every turn, for best results. I need to swallow my pride, and ignore aggressive moves, and focus on growing - while maintaining enough army to deter. War will happen, will have to happen - but there's no point in starting one unless I can get a miltech and/or production advantage, first. Or, even better, until I can be the second one piling in to an already going war, and get the lion's share of the spoils.

Fortunately the proposed map should make ancient era war unlikely. That way, I can discover new and exciting failure modes!

All that said, I still rate my chances of winning this somewhere around 25% . I'm better than I was, and we've got some newbs, and still I'm probably not better enough. Plus luck can always matter.

Who do I want to play? Well, with Fin and GLH banned, and a probably smallish lush map, I'm torn between two routes. I'm pretty sure I want Expansive, as the best unbanned trait, but there's a lot of variance in the other trait. And in overall gameplan.

Route 1 is Mids! Take Bismarck (Exp/Ind), or Isabella, and race for the mids. Use that for a tech lead, turn tech lead into land lead, win. Pro: Mids is extremely hard to compete with when there's no Fin. I want to play a specialist-heavy game anyway, after reading some analysis elsewhere. Only three competitors! Cons: Spend too much too early, or worse - fail by a turn - and I'll be too far behind on land grab and growth. Then the Mids becomes the tool my conqueror uses to win

Route 2 is balance. Take Peter (Exp/Phi IIRC), Sury (Exp/Cre), Isabella (Exp/Spi), something like that, and just go for the best conventional game I can play. Heavy growth, grab more than my share of land, sit back and grow it tall, wait for opportunities. Pro: Straightforward, not luck-dependent. Con: It hasn't worked for me before. Hard to get motivated for those early turns without a tangible goal. Depending on the initial island size, tech might limit growth more than production.

Civ? Probably will be chosen strictly for starting techs; the really good ones are already banned, after all. So either that'll have to wait on a starting screenshot, or it'll be one of the always seen civs like China if we don't use screenies.

Flugauto, you around? Any opinions?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Thread title: "Mardoc settles on the deer, like Brick".

Good luck this round. Is Azza playing in this game? You've basically covered his early playbook from pb18.

[Mardoc]

Good luck this round.

Thanks. I'll try to be entertaining at least!

Is Azza playing in this game?

Not unless he's smurfing. And as much as I dislike his play style, I can't see him smurfing.

You've basically covered his early playbook from pb18.

That'd be one of these two:

Don't try to conquer in the ancient era
Don't convince your neighbor to try to conquer you in the ancient era

All the rest are mistakes of mine from other games! If I can just figure out all the ways not to play, then I'm bound to win a game sooner or later

[flugauto]

I dedlurk, therefore I exist.

[Commodore]

This, or a rotation of this, is your start. Avunt!

Fog reading bad, mkay?

[Mardoc]

Thank you, Commodore. That deer is taunting me, saying 'leave the plains hill, you don't really need that hammer'. Pretty sure that'd actually be a mistake, but that's what he says.

In fact, if we don't move, we can get 4 hpt at the beginning to make use of an Exp bonus. And plains hill deer is not realistically a food tile anyway, it's the same as plains cow - hammers that don't cost too much. So if anything, settle in place with Expansive seems even better.

It does appear that Agriculture is a vital tech. Corn, floodplains (if not cottage), and en route to Animal Husbandry. That pretty well counts for all the food we need. The second tech is more flexible.

Fishing is a no. We'll need it for Sailing and escaping the initial island, but should have time for that without making it a starting tech.
Mysticism is...surprisingly, an option. Religion is always handy, we'll need culture eventually. But, I think it's weaker than the other choices. I don't want to go for religion immediately; with only four players I should have a reasonable shot at religion somehow or other. Fortunately, it appears this is only Inca, which is banned.
Hunting would be both useful for the deer in a 2nd city and as a prereq for the nearly-mandatory AH. No immediate use in itself, though. Persia, Zulu
Wheel gets us closer to Pottery, and is useful in its own right. And is a bit more beakers. Egypt, Ottomans, France, Sumeria, Babylon
Mining never seems urgent to me, although logically it is. Three mines possible, and it'll be a while before the capital could use more than three mines anyway. Wines will actually be a bonus here, giving some bonus commerce instead of merely waiting on Monarchy, even though eventually we'll have to replace the mine. Plus it's en route to Bronze, which is basically mandatory. China only.

I'm pretty sure I want to research Animal Husbandry either first or second - need to sim it to find out how early the worker will be available for the sheep. Also need Pottery, Bronze, and Sailing (once initial land runs out)

Anyway, more later. Maybe I'll rethink something.

[Mardoc]

So I get to wait a while to pick, and then I get to have synergy (maybe). Most of the civs I'm considering don't really have anything interesting that could be synergy. Unless I go for Mehmed and Org, then Sumeria is always tempting. Or, heck, Bismarck/Sumeria is arguably synergy, since Priesthood is better if you can grab the oracle/oracle is better with half-price forges. I could see an argument for Colossus/Sumeria being as strong as Mids.

I need to make myself a sandbox. I want to test if I can afford to skip Agri and still get to AH by sheep-time. It'd also be good to know just how comparable the techs are. Maybe Wheel/Mining aren't actually equivalent, etc.

[Ichabod]

As far as I can understand from reading your thread, the map will have a lot of water. Is that correct? With no FIN, I'd value ORG a lot in such a condition. It's free hammers (on a building you'll want everywhere) and commerce, hard to beat.

EXP is probably the best of the other traits avaiable, but even if you can't get EXP/ORG, I think I'd go for ORG.

It seems like a hard start, since you need AH and you always want BW and pottery. At least you have unforested hills, if you want to skip BW for a bit. I'd try some sims to see what works, because I don't think going by gut is advisable (as it seems there's no obvious right path). Ah, if you don't start with hunting, I'd probably not tech it before AH.

[Ichabod]

I'm commenting in retep style, it seems.

[GermanJoey]

Any idea on how big this map is? Early hunting is valuable on tight maps but a liability on spacious maps, IMHO...