Suboptimal IV: Indonesian Insanity

[suboptimal]

Ah yes….another PBEM to engage in some serious lurker frustration.  At some point you guys might realize that’s why I do these things. (I kid...or do I…).

Opponents

The Archduke: A very good field general though perhaps a bit too eager to go full military at the expense of everything else.  This cost him in PBEM 11 but I don’t know that he had other options.  Based on his civ choices I expect Robert the Bruce as he was intrigued by them in PBEM 8.  

Alhazard: I’m not going to spoil PBEM 13 but don’t know much else about him.  His civ choices here are interesting but no stand outs.  Harald for early naval control or maybe Seondeok for an early science push.

Rowain: gave me a little bit of panic in PBEM 3, he got run over by the hordes in PBEM 8 and seemed to have trouble with rho21 and Rome in PBEM 11.  Interesting civ choices….Peter because Russia or perhaps Australia, though with how naval power has worked in these games that might be a bad idea.

Woden: Seems to prefer building more than fighting, considered by the lurkerati in PBEM 4 to be susceptible to “one...more….build”-itis.   I’m not sure what he’d take here, perhaps Alexander for conquest….

Me: Two disasters and one win that was forced by stalemating rho21 after taking over half the map and not having a follow-up plan.

Objectives

1) Continue improving military competency.
2) Be better than PBEM 10 at planning & obtaining boosts
3) Try to stay more aware of the big picture and try to set/achieve specific objectives that are further out than the next 10 turns.

The Map

Continents, two players on one and three on the other.  This map type presents an interesting conundrum in multiplayer games – how to balance land & naval power while not getting conquered and/or stranded on your starting land mass?  I think regardless of how the game starts out the players that are left after the initial round of conquest need to focus on something that’s not a domination victory.  The ones that position themselves best for that eventual outcome early may wind up better off.

My initial expectation is to see a similar progression to PBEM 11.  One of the civs on the 3-player continent will get picked off early, the only thing to see is whether it’s because they start slow & weak or because they represent an out-of-the-gate existential threat to the whole continent.  On the two civ continent I expect a battle for supremacy as soon as one side sees weakness in the other, followed by getting stuck on the continent because of a lack of navy.

Civilization Choices

India/Gandhi

A religiously themed civilization with a good improvement for population growth and faith generation.  The downside is that getting a religion up and running can be quite an investment in production and time.  Gandhi’s double war weariness ability could make protracted wars costly for an opponent.  The Varu is intriguing as a unit to stave off early occupation.  

Indonesia/Gitarja

Great Nusantara: Coast & lake tiles provide minor adjacency bonuses (+0.5 yield) for Holy Sites, Campuses, Industrial Zones and Theater Squares, along with +1 amenity for Entertainment Complexes.  
Jong: Frigate replacement, has +1 movement and gains +5 combat strength when in formation with another unit.  The unit(s) in formation gain the Jong’s movement rate.
Kampung:+1, +1 housing, +1 for every adjacent fishing boat, must be built on coasts or lakes, unlocked with Shipbuilding
Gitarja: Can purchase naval units with faith.  Religious units pay no movement cost to embark/disembark.  +2 to City Centers adjacent to coast or lake tiles.

Mapuche/Lautoro

Toqui: +25% XP bonus to units trained in a city with a governor.  +10 combat strength against units from a civ in a golden age.
Malon Raider: +5 combat strength within 4 tiles of friendly territory.  Pillaging costs 1 movement point.  Unlocks at gunpowder but like many unique units is not something that can be upgraded into.
Chemamull: Must be built on a tile with an Appeal of Breathtaking (4 or higher).  Provides culture equal to 75% of its tile’s appeal.  Unlocks at Craftsmanship.  
Lautoro: Deafeating an enemy unit within the borders of an enemy city causes that city to lose 20 loyalty.  Pillaging a tile within the borders of an enemy city causes that city to lose 5 loyalty.

Dutch/Wilhelmina

Grote Rivieren: Rivers provide major adjacency for Campus, Theater Square and Industrial Zone districts.  Completed Harbors trigger a culture bomb.  
De Zeven Provencien: Frigate replacement that gets +5 combat strength and +7 vs. defensible districts (city centers and Encampments).
Polder: +1, +1 for every adjacent Polder, +1, +0.5 housing, increases movement cost of tile to 3.  Must be built on coast or lake tiles.  Available at Guilds.
Wilhelmina: Internal trade routes generate +1 Loyalty per turn for the starting city.  Foreign trade routes provide +1 to the Netherlands.

Mongolia/Genghis Khan:

Örtöö: Trade routes instantly create a trading post in the destination city, giving +3 combat strength against that civ’s units and one increased level of diplomatic visibility.  
Keshig: Increased movement rate and shares movement with units it is in formation with.  Not a replacement so must be scratch-built.
Ordu: Replaces the stable and grants +1 movement to all cavalry units trained in the city.
Genghis Khan: All cavalry class units gain +3 combat strength and a chance to capture defeated cavalry units.

Initial Thoughts

Stampeding through the countryside as Mongolia would be fun.  I enjoyed it playing the Aztecs in PBEM 10.  However, the most likely result of that endeavour is to get double-teamed and eliminated early (a la Pindicator in PBEM 11) or conquer the land and be isolated by the ocean (Archduke, same game).   

India holds no interest for me because the religious game takes too much away from everything else and they have no advantage at establishing one.  The Dutch also don’t provide me with much interest...just seems better suited to an archipelago start than a continents one.  

The Mapuche are intriguing.  The Malon Raider probably would never see the light of day.  However, Lautoro’s ability would make city assaults a little easier – kill units to flip a city to free status and then use the AI’s ineptitude to more easily take the city.  Of course, holding it against the loyalty mechanic would be problematic but I wouldn’t need to deal with the occupation penalty.  The Chemamull could also provide an early boost if my start were to be coastal.  The combat bonus against Golden Age civilizations could also cause problems for the neighbors.

What about Indonesia?  This is another interesting choice.  Gitarja’s bonuses could be used to shoot for an early pantheon.  Goddess of the Harvest and Magnus could build up an early faith reserve for naval replenishment later.  Kampung provide good bang for the buck provided they can be defended against pillaging.  The Jong is a reasonable frigate replacement.  The question would be whether or not to work for a mid-game religion (or push for Stonehenge) and attempt to convert other civilizations using Church Property or Pilgrimage.  
Initial Thoughts

I think there are two approaches that could be taken to this game:

1) Seek to achieve land supremacy on my starting continent while building everything inland and then turtle and tech for nukes while not very vulnerable to naval bombardment/assault.  This approach pretty much dictates playing Mongolia in order to stomp people early.  It also represents the highest risk from a dogpile if I get the “wrong” start position.

2) Seek to achieve stalemate on land while building up naval power to wage war at sea. The Dutch or Indonesian civ would be the better choices here.

I think playing Indonesia in the second scenario would be an interesting ride.  Gitarja’s abilities would allow me to use Goddess of the Harvest to chop faith early with Magnus and supplement my navy later on.  Likewise a coastal or lakeside start would allow me to get an early pantheon without needing God King or a religious city-state nearby.  Toss in the kampung’s extra production and housing and the coastal district bonuses and that might actually work.  

I'll have to do some testing over the weekend.....

Cornflakes, what are your thoughts on these civs?

[Cornflakes]

Crunched for time so this will be quick. Nothing really spectacular stands out in your civ options. I agree with your assessment for the most part about Indonesia. Definitely will need to focus on the basics though and playing a solid game since there is no obvious win condition. I think that a Religious victory might be on the table with the no-embark-penalty for religious units, combined with the Jong that shares its movement with escorted units. Jong unlocked on the Civics tree means that you can focus on culture and neglect science somewhat (or focus science on the bottom or center of the tree). The early pantheon from settling the capital on coast/lake might be the biggest asset of the package so it would be sad if you ended up with a totally inland start.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Jongs are fun to chain move settlers around the map. Just a goofy thing I want someone to do in an MP game sometime.

[suboptimal]

Yeah, getting an inland start would be a problem, but not insurmountable. That will be something that I need to plan for just in case. Despite having a coastal focus Indonesia does not have a coastal start bias, which is a little odd.

Time for a test game or two to get familiar with Indonesia and refamiliarize with the R&F mechanics.

[suboptimal]

Played many starts through about 20 turns to get familiar with the Continents maps. The start generator has a sense of humor - most of my starts were 2-3 turns of movement off the coast and those that were on the coast were either 1) in the jungle 2) barren plains with no forests anywhere 3) bordering tundra. Going to try a few games into the 40s/50s today and then give my formal pick to CMF.

[Cornflakes]

Re-posting these take-aways from my PBEM 11 game since I think they were largely responsible for the developmental lead I achieved earlier on:

(!) Early warriors instead of slingers. Warrior as the first build allowed me to handle the barb camp that sprang up immediately to the southwest without delaying founding of my 2nd city Pinochle. Warriors allowed me to avoid maintenance on Archers, or conversely allowed me to run Discipline for much of the early game instead of Conscription. I was thus able to easily deal with barbs as they repeatedly popped up around my empire. About T45 I had 2 horse camps spawn almost simultaneously within 4 tiles of my capital!! But was able to easily contain these barb insurrections.

(!) Focus on production yield over all else in the early game. It seems to be widely known now that production is the strongest yield and I was building upon the experience of those who have gon before here. But I think I executed this well. I spent a turn moving to a plains hill plant, and worked the 1/3 tile at the start of the game. I was the last to grow my capital to size 2 by a number of turns, but by turn 25 was already starting to show the benefits of the early production focus as my city count and population caught up and soon surpassed the rest of the field. I intentionally located 2nd & 3rd cities on plains hills, and prioritized Apprenticeship and mine improvements early.

I would advocate strongly for warrior as first build, and potentially even ignore slinger builds entirely. The warrior builds allowed me to easily handle the multiple barb camps which sprang up around, as well as harvest a decent amount of plunder from the camps. The gold to production ratio on slinger > archer upgrades is not great since archer production is easily boosted by Agoge AND the upgrades would occur well before Professional Army is unlocked. In PBEM 11 I skipped the Archery eureka entirely, but was able to delay unlocking Archery to the point where that eureka was an insignificant amount of by that time.

[suboptimal]

Yeah, I've actaully been re-reading your thread there to see how you started, particularly in the tech order. I'm trying to figure out when Sailing should be researched in comparison to the three "starting" techs and Bronze Working. Part of the decision, I think, comes down to whether or not I get a fresh water coastal start. If I don't, then the issue becomes finding a good location for City #2 or City #3 that's coastal.

Did you feel that not going scout-first impaired your ability to scout out the land around you in that game? I've been thinking about going Scout -> Warrior -> Settler or Warrior -> Settler -> Builder out of the capital with the second city going builder-first.

[Cornflakes]

I feel like scouting was adequate with the scout coming later (4th build I think after warrior > builder > settler). With the 2 warriors I was able to uncover enough tiles by the time the settler was complete.

I’m trying to figure out if the calculus on districts has changed significantly with R&F. The biggest change as I see it is trade routes delayed until market/lighthouse. That basically makes those districts worthless until a lot later when you can spare the extra production for the buildings (and when you need to achieve the 2 markets boost). I’m wondering if it even makes sense in R&F to try and achieve the district discount early on. Better might be to place down the districts early to lock in cost without the discount but not build any until way later, focusing exclusively on settlers and builders early game.

[Cornflakes]

Since I was rolling the base maps for CMF to edit I decided to get R&F expansion last weekend so that the new resources and natural wonders from R&F would be included in the map. I've been exploring the expansion some today. What do you normally chose for the first governors/promotions? I was looking at the list just now and first impressions:

• Liang - All builders +1 charge looks great early, probably better before Magnus since chops scale up. Looks like good candidate for first recruit.
  
• Amani - Her 2 envoys would allow early Suzerainty of a city state when combined with either first-to-meet or quest envoy. Depending on the nearby CS this might be good early
  
• Magnus - Great ability through boosted chops, but need builders first. Plus chops scale so this would be as useful later, or more so since waiting will allow God of the Harvest faith yields to scale up as well.
  

I saw 2 governor titles available per era on the civics tree, except Renaissance which didn't have any. This means that by about the time PBEM 11 ended in the late Renaissance we will have a total of 6 titles, maybe 8 if we get into the Industrial era. That is not many considering that a fully-promoted governor requires 6 titles. Therefore we will need to chose carefully which governors we want to recruit and promote.

[suboptimal]

Rise & Fall changed "the math" on a number of mechanics, two of which are districts & envoys. For starters, with shifting the trade routes to the tier 1 buildings (lighthouse or market) it means that a trader is effectively that much more expensive in terms of production. That makes gold-generating improvements and resources a bit more important even though camps still remain a bit...underwhelming...in that regard. Envoys, too, become a matter of production investment vs. payoff. The bonuses for 3 and 6 envoys apply to the Tier 1 and Tier 2 buildings. That means a scientific civ will require a library (which you're probably building anyway) but is a market + 2 envoys worth the extra 8 gpt (4 from the building and 4 from the city-state envoys) and the trader that results? I don't know.

With district discounts I think it depends on how you value the commercial hub and harbor buildings. If you don't value them highly then you shouldn't be worried about district discounting (IMHO). Maybe in the beginning with Campus, Encampments and maybe Holy Sites it's worth the hoop jumping but later on I don't know. I guess we'll find out.

Regarding the governors I think the jury is out between Liang or Magnus first. Liang would be good if chain-building builders out of a high-production city with Ilkum. Magnus, OTOH, is the more powerful option with proper planning (getting civics and builds lined up for a quick chop series). The question with Magnus is do you just use his 50% bonus on every chop or do you try to time it so that every chop also overflows with a civic boost as well?