[SPOILERS] Suboptimal Goes Waltzing Matilda

[suboptimal]

The Pregame Show

It's time to try another PBEM, hopefully with a better showing than my current endeavours in PBEM 3.    And with that the references to PBEM 3 in this thread have ended.

This game is set up for Inland Sea and the DLC's are in play.  This will be interesting.  My civ choices:

- Greece/Gorgo
- America
- Khmer
- Australia

Greece/Gorgo is out – didn't want to play that one for PBEM 3 and am ded-lurking Krill as Gorgo in PBEM 5.  As for America, well, it's DLC time in PBEM Land.  That leaves Khmer and Australia.

Khmer

- +3 and +1 Amenity from Aqueducts
- Farms are +2 if adjacent to an Aqueduct
- Monastaries of the King: Holy Sites provide +2 and +1 Housing if placed on a river and trigger a culture bomb
- Domrey: siege unit that can move and fire and also exerts a Zone of Control, available at Military Engineering
- Prasat: temple replacement, provides +2 relic slots and gives all missionaries the Martyr promotion

While this looks like it'd be interesting to play all of the civ's abilities rely on building two different districts (with no bonuses to building them) which don't have much utility in an MP setting.  Might be fun in a builder-oriented RV/CV.  That leaves...

Australia

- +3 Housing in coastal cities
- Pastures trigger a culture bomb
- Campuses, Commercial Hubs, Theater Districts and Holy Sites get +1 yield if built on tiles with Charming appeal and +3 yield if built on tiles with Breathtaking appeal.
- Citadel of Civilization: +100% if either received a declaration of war within the last ten turns or liberated a city within the last 20 turns.  
- Outback Station: available at Guilds, +1, +1 and +½ Housing. +1 per adjacent Pasture. Additional and for adjacent Outback Stations once Steam Power and Rapid Deployment are researched.
Digger: Strength 72 Infantry unit that gains +10 on coastal tiles and +5 outside Australian territory.  

This is a bit of a builder-focused civ with a unique unit that comes relatively late in the game.  On an Inland Sea map the +3 coastal housing can be an advantage for city site selection (more on that in a bit).  In test games I've also determined that the appeal-based district bonus is treated like an adjacency bonus and is doubled by policy cards.  The additional production in the event of war will allow the fast raising of reinforcements.  It should be noted that this production bonus applies to everything.

The Map

It's a tiny-sized Inland Sea with the coastline roughened up by Commodore to make it more interesting.  The typical map at this size has the following characteristics:

- Northern & Southern lands are about 12 tiles high with the poleward 4-6 tiles being tundra.
- Eastern and Western lands are about 15 tiles wide
- There is usually a rainforest belt that is 5-6 tiles north to south that is positioned at the ends of the sea.
- Plenty of room in the corners.
- Land-based natural wonders tend to be dispersed to the outside edges of the map.  There will be three total.
- Rivers seem to be short in length and most cities more than 3 tiles from the coast will be relying on lakes for fresh water.

It might just be coincidence but it also seemed that the northern coast was mostly plains and the southern coast mostly grasslands, with desert scattered throughout.  I've been using the Summer patch version of AssignStartingPlots.lua but even that has been generating starts where a couple civs are clustered and city-states are tucked into nooks and crannies.  I'm going to assume that Commodore will space things out a bit more evenly – the question is whether we'll get corner starts or be located on the coast and what sorts of city-states will be around.

The question here is whether or not a navy will be required.  On the one hand the tendency of rivers to be close to the coast may put a lot of cities right on the sea, so naval power could make quick work of the opposition.  On the other hand, there's enough room and fresh water off the coast so that one could insulate themselves against a naval invasion.  For Australia the coast has quite a bit of potential – higher appeal tiles are usually found on the coast or along mountains.   The housing bonus also means that cities can be placed in coastal locations that otherwise lack fresh water.  

The Opponents

Emperor K: Given his civ choices I'd expect him to go with Poland.  Encampments provide culture bombs and their Great General points will make things interesting.  Having the military policy slot changed to a wildcard slot will give him an interesting early-game decision – will he run for Strategos early, but at the cost of Agoge.   He's also a ded-lurker for Krill in PBEM 5...this could get awkward .

Alhambram: His DLC picks are Nubia and Persia.  Nubia can crank out lots or ranged units and has a higher-strength archer as their unique.  Persia has immortals, gets +2 movement when declaring a surprise war and gets +2 and +1 from internal trade routes.  The positive here is that we won't be facing both of these civs in a game.  The downside is that whoever has Alhambram as a neighbor is likely looking at an early rush.  

The Archduke: We've all seen PBEM 1, 2 and 4.  He's a very strong player and after the diplomatic hot mess in PBEM 4 may be looking to assert his dominance in a cleaner diplo environment.  His DLCs are Indonesia and Macedonia.  Indonesia is focused around a naval and coastal/lake resources.   If TA is looking for another naval game he might go with this civ.  However, Macedonia has two unique units (the Hetairoi and the Hypaspist) giving two strong no-resource Classical units.  The Hetairoi is especially potent – additional +5 combat strength when near a Great General, +5 GG points with each unit kill and starts with a free promotion.  Whoever has Archduke as a neighbor should be ready to see both of these units in an early rush.

Best case scenario if my predictions are accurate – Alhambram and Archduke wind up on one side of the sea beating each other up and Emperor K and myself are on the other, taking a bit more time to build up defenses for the inevitable onslaught.

Edit: Went 3/3 on guessing which civs were picked. I smell blood in the water.

Strategy

I've been experimenting in SP with Pottery → Writing for early Campus placements (building them out a little later on) and going Scout → Settler → Builder for initial builds.  I think there's enough room on the map to allow this to work in an MP environment and may give that a try. Outside of that The Plan is to go with the flow of the game – no pre-set long term plans, no extensive pre-game theorycrafting (beyond what I've already done here) and a significant reduction in .

[Cornflakes]

Starting save attached.

[suboptimal]

Starting save attached.

Thanks for putting the map together!

[suboptimal]

And So It Begins – Turn 1



Looks like I’ve started in the southeast corner of the map.  I have no idea what Cornflakes has decided to do with start placements, but if I had to guess then everyone else is spread out in the corners.  That makes the closest opponent north.  Hmmm...what to do?  I move the warrior west onto the forest hill to take a look around:



Open terrain in that direction.  No coastline on Settlervision, either, though I expect it to be a couple of hexes NW of what the warrior can see in that direction.  Also nothing to pasture at present, so that’s a slight bummer.  So, what to do with the settler?

I decide to move 1 tile to the west and found there.  My reasoning is as follows:

- it puts a second 2 /2 forest grassland hill tile and the stone in the first ring
- it puts the spices, wheat and rice into the second ring.  The spice tile will be especially strong once a plantation goes down.
- it opens the hex 1E of the 1 /3 tile to the SE as a valid city site that can grab the citrus

I move the settler 1W and found Irukandji.  Since I’m Australia I figured a good naming theme would be “things in Australia that can kill you”.  The city is set to build a scout and I’ll follow that with a settler (after putting one turn of production into a builder).  My initial research is set to Pottery.  I’ll follow that with half of writing, mining and half of irrigation.  The first builder out will look to farm the rice, quarry the stone and plantation the spices.  I expect having to buy whichever of the rice or spice tile the city doesn’t expand to naturally.

I’m going to send the warrior west for a bit as I expect that path to be more open than going north.  It will return to Irukandji in time to escort the settler out. The scout, once completed, will head north to find the rainforest belt and what should be my nearest neighbor north of there.  I expect the rainforest to start at or just north of those mountains that are visible in the fog.  Being in the corner is also a good thing for the Foreign Trade inspiration – in the several maps I looked at there are two continents and the divide always ran NW/SE.  If the warrior doesn’t hit it the scout most certainly will.



This is a lens that is going to get quite a bit of use this game, given Australia’s district bonuses for tile appeal.  The good news is that the two Breathtaking tiles in Irukandji’s two inner rings are nothing special so I won’t hesitate to build right over them.  The tile NW of the city center would be a good spot for a Campus, as that’s +3 with no buildings.  The Charming tile just east of the city center would be a good spot for a Commercial Hub as it would be +2 for the river and +1 for the tile appeal.  Looking at this view also teaches me a “pain free” lesson – I should be checking tile appeal before choosing a city site, not after, as it could have a significant impact on district placement.

By the way, if anyone is wondering why that “tundra” hill tile is a 2 /2 tile it’s because it’s actually a grassland tile with a poor graphical transition.

Now for a look at the Great People for those who may be curious:

[rho21]

Since I’m Australia I figured a good naming theme would be “things in Australia that can kill you”.

Isn't that the same as "things in Australia"?

[Ituralde]

Since I’m Australia I figured a good naming theme would be “things in Australia that can kill you”.

Isn't that the same as "things in Australia"?

You beat me to it. I wanted to say the same thing, after reading this.

Thanks for the report and I hope this one goes better for you than PBEM3.

[suboptimal]

Since I’m Australia I figured a good naming theme would be “things in Australia that can kill you”.

Isn't that the same as "things in Australia"?

More like "Australia".

[suboptimal]

Thanks for the report and I hope this one goes better for you than PBEM3.

Thanks!  Lessons have been learned, time to see if they are applied.

[suboptimal]

Turn 2

The warrior moves W-NW to start going up the river:



According to Settlervision the coastline pretty much runs along the map fog north of the warrior, starting with the plains hills NW of the warrior and going around to the river.  The plains hill on the east bank of the river is red but it doesn't appear to be coastal - it looks like there's a land tile NW of there. 

I got a bit lucky here – moving my initial settler didn’t lock me out of a second city up here.  The 1/1 tile on the west bank of the river is coastal, puts the wheat in the first ring and the 1/3 plains hill and the jade into the second ring.  Tentatively that will be the location for Blue-Ringed Octopus unless the warrior or scout find something better. (Edit: not moving would have let me put a city on the warrior's current tile, which would have been a very good spot with good food and production potential)

From here the warrior will turn west to look for city-states and other coastal city locations before coming back for sentry & barbarian duty.  I don’t need to see what resources, if any, are in the sea (inland sea doesn’t typically have any water-based luxury resources) and I’ll leave the northern side of the river for the scout.

[suboptimal]

Turn 3

The warrior moves west one hex, sees a horse, moves a second hex west and sees another horse, wheat and two 1 /3 forested plains hill tiles. A look on Settlervision:



There’s a city-state 3 hexes SE of the western horse. Time to investigate. Anything but religious would be nice.

This area is now target #1 for settling and will let me get out horsemen without Encampments. The only question here is what hex to settle on. The wheat and western horse tiles are Breathtaking while the other coastal & reousrce tiles are Charming. Nothing open for districts yet but I can't see the western side of the river.

I took a look at the scores for the past two turns (looked back at my EOT Turn 2 save). Alhabram moved his settler on Turn 1 and settled on Turn 2. Everyone else settled on Turn 1.