Tumbleweeds? Blow them all away!

[Blake]

Come on, the patch is out now .

On Leaders and Traits:

Um so yeah you've probably noticed that Financial got nerfed, then again I don't think we really picked a Financial leader for the cheap banks and like half the other leaders are Financial. Hypothetically speaking, if another team were to insist they wanted to change leaders? Would we?

Here are some things to consider:
Expansionist has been buffed, with +1 health.
Creative has been buffed due to chopping changes - it's harder to chop in culture, and forests outside cultural borders produce less hammers. So free culture is more useful than before, doubly so in the context of chopping. Cre may be the new power-trait.
Organized has been buffed sort of, with most the no-upkeep civics being changed to low upkeep (ignoring emperor+ upkeep changes, since that's of no consequence here.)
Industrial and Philosophical have been buffed sort of, since obsolete wonders continue to produce GPP. Small effect though, only really applicable to Stone Henge.

Aggressive and Spiritual are basically unchanged in effectiveness. At least I can't think of anything significant. Could be argued that Aggressive is slightly improved by the combat change - surviving fights with higher health is more of an advantage than in 1.52.

Financial has been nerfed, but the early strength is unchanged. Really for most intents and purposes the strength of Financial hasn't changed


Cyrus may be looking better than ever, but I think we can still be happy with Mr Mansa Musa.

On our Start and Bronze Working:
So yah, chopping has been nerfed, rather big time. Slavery has also been nerfed (no longer no upkeep). As a spiritual civ we can still justify the switch to slavery since it costs nothing to do, but it won’t be a free lunch.
Given that we have our Skirmishers I think we should lower Bronze Working in priority in favor of Archery and other useful techs.

We should put more weight on keeping our forests around for longer, maybe until Mathematics, maybe longer for the health benefits. We should assume that other teams will be less chop happy whether or not it is actually in their best interests to be. It's the "It's been nerfed! Not worth doing anymore!" reaction, or the "lets save it for mathematics!". This might reduce the probability of a strong early rush, while also possibly making early rushes more deadly as they are less expected.

Given that chop-in-culture is more difficult, especially in the absence of culture to push out borders, I think we should re-assess the possibility of a strong push for early religion. I have some game theory that suggests we can pick up the cheapest tech (hunting or fishing, but in our case hunting) without significantly reducing our changes of getting a religion.

edit: Oh yah I don't really expect much to happen until after easter, but whatever, doesn't hurt to start breathing life back into this place .

[notyoueither]

Good breath too.

You think we can do archery and still get a religion?

[notyoueither]

Reduced chops lend importance to settling on a plains hill, incidently.

[Aginor]

Edit: nye, Snoopy is looking for confirmation that we're a go in the main forum. Unclear if he PM'd leaders or not. Just so you are aware.

Some further observations, particularly with reference to how this impacts our start:

1) First question: Horizontal growth or vertical? At Prince you get 6 Happy citizens in any given city. Horizontal growth was dealt a MASSIVE blow by the chop nerf. Further, we've got what appears to be about as strong a vertical start as you can get with what appears to be 7 flood plains (hard to tell but we appear to have one more NE and two E of us in the fat cross), a river, and all those hills - near flawless Financial vertical start. (Only way it could be better would be with the addition of Gems/Gold/Silver). Also looks like we caught some free gold (most likely) with the hut within borders.

Add all that up and I'm thinking quick Pottery and a second order religion (Judaism preferably, Confucianism if necessary) may be the way to go out of this one. Probably grab Hunting/Archery after they've been researched by a few players for the bonuses (ie: after we go Fishing/Ag -> Pottery).

Then tech straight up to Judaism. Grab Writing and Priesthood if need be for techs up that side. Ignore BW until most players have researched and it's cheap...we can live without Copper or Iron for quite a while, unless we draw a Horse Archer rusher. Skirmishers should own anything that gets thrown at us, particularly if we're religious about founding on hills when possible.

A later religion will found where we want it in the long run (ie: border city) and grant us a missionary. OTOH, I have to concede that a shrine in this capital with Bureaucracy would be pretty hot.

No need to go on the offensive early out of this start, and those Skirmishers are a hell of a deterrent to would-be rushers. Idea is to build a tech lead early through quick cottages and never, ever, ever let go.

Two flies in the ointment: we've got to go Warrior/Worker to defend our Worker, and we're risking a pillage-happy neighbor in the first 40 turns or so. We'd also be delaying REX, which would be a bad thing.


2) On the other hand...another way to play this one is to realize that out of this start, and on Prince, rushing a Granary and then applying the whip mercilessly is going to yield a LOT, and I mean a LOT, of hammers.

Please note that while the upkeep on Slavery got nerfed, the real reason you run Slavery (hammers, baby) did not.

We could probably bury somebody in Skirmishers if we really wanted to. Infrastructure won't go up as efficiently as, say, a nice Genghis Axe rush out of this start, but it can be done. Basically find their Copper, turn it off, and level them. 8 Skirmishers should be enough in the extreme early game to waste someone who hasn't built Axes yet, and that should yield about 2 cities (8x25 = 100x2, plus you've got veteran survivors...good equation).

'Course, we'd probably take a diplo hit. OTOH, if it takes out AC or Sarantium, less so, plus we've reduced the number of serious threats in the game by one. If we take out the Horde we're probably world heroes

Here you'd go Ag, Pottery, BW, farm/mine/occasional chop, kill.


3) Classic religion start option: Mysticism -> Meditation. Main disadvantage is not getting a worker on the ground early...we'd probably have to build Warriors and explore, as Mining won't be that helpful until we hit size 3-4. Advantage, in turn, is a great deal of information and some huts. Might even snag a tech if our luck is really in.


4) Stay or move? If we pick one of the first two options, it'll pay off in the long run to move north. If we pick the third, that's not really an option due to time loss. We are *going* to have health problems if we settle on the hill, away from fresh water, so keep that in mind.

If you've got any other options that leap to mind, please toss them up here. I think I've covered what's immediately apparent. We discussed this at length previously without final resolution, and it's time to start making some decisions!

[Theseus]

Good summary, Aginor.

I concur with your advised #1 path.

I would note that we should keep #2 (i.e., whip a fast Skirmisher army) as an ongoing contingency plan... in a way, that's part of the power of SPI.

[Blake]

The primary advantage of religion (and really the only one worth considering for now) is Culture. Take stock, we aren't creative, and we are competing with a lot of creative civs. Chopping has been nerfed which makes it more expensive to rush in culture.

I think we should go for early religion, using this tech path:
Hunting -> Mysticism -> Meditation

I'm going to use some assumptions:
1) The creative leaders wont want early religion except maybe Bananas.
2) The industrial leaders will be more inclined to go for Polytheism since it has a wonder on it - an acceptable (possible) consolation prize for if they lose the religion race. A possible exception is if another team goes for the oracle via the shortest path - but most teams will probably consider fast oracle too risky/stupid (it is).
3) Sara is our main competition for Meditation, they don't have incentive to go for poly and are financial and start with fishing. If they have a lake (or any +2 comm tile) then they'll automatically beat us to Meditation (if they choose to go for it). Since Sara has fishing they are more likely to get a +3 commerce tile than us. This makes getting meditation look like a good idea for them, if they have such a +3 commerce start.
4) Sara automatically loses to us if we have equal commerce starts by virtue of player order. They don't know our start is only +1 commerce. This may deter them from trying at all esp if their start isn't wonderful.
5) The other teams will probably assess us as the most likely to pig-headidly go for religion, by virtue of our spiritual trait, since we are financial they wont be too keen on racing us.
6) Between us and Sara, both financial civs with incentive to go for medtiation, everyone else should be further deterred from going for Meditation. It is quite probable that buddhism will be uncontested.


Justifying getting hunting first:

The idea is to research hunting, then forge on to Meditation. If Buddhism gets FIDL then we abort. Researching hunting first means we sink less turns of research into religion in the event of failure.

Working on the assumption that Buddhism will be founded on turn 16 should another team have a good commerce start and goes for it. In case of popped myst it could be much earlier, as early as turn 10-12.

Tech times for us are: 6 hunting, 7 mysticism, 11 meditation.

Hunting First:
We spend 6 turns researching hunting, then 10 turns pursuing Buddhism until we see it FIDL and abort.

Straight to Religion:
We spend 16 turns pursuing Buddhism until we see it FIDL and abort.

Effectively it's lower risk - we have a lower chance of founding the religion, but sink significantly fewer turns of research into it in the event that it fails.

Now it's my belief that our chances are not significantly lowered by doing hunting first.

The thing is even if go full-tilt for religion we automatically lose out to anyone with a +2 commerce start, or who pops Myst. So religion is already a fairly big gamble. If WE had a +3 start I wouldn't advise hunting first because we would have such a good chance of getting it first, but we don't.

The main difference is by going hunting first we lose out to some teams with +1 commerce start (note: due to player order some would beat us regardless), and any team with a +0 commerce start - however teams with low commerce starts probably wont go for religion at all, and this is why the odds are not signifncantly effected by going hunting first - other teams are either going to beat us regardless, or not even try.

One other thing is moving the settler first - when going straight for religion moving the settler will reduce our chance of getting the religion, fairly significantly assuming there are other +1 commerce teams racing for the religion. However with the hunting then religion path moving the settler is safe - it will not reduce the odds of founding the religion unless another team happens to use an equally odd research path which is quite unlikely.

The REASON to get hunting first is it allows us to train a scout, this could easily lead our neighbour(s) to believe we are dedicated to early Skirmishers. And of course it does bring us closer to Skirmishers.

Hope this option is interesting .

[notyoueither]

I like the idea of hunting-myst-meditation, and can't see a problem with Blake's reasoning.

Free borders with a missionary for new cities is attractive, as is the idea of a shrine in a high comm capital.

Having hunting first gets us closer to the safety of skirmishers if something goes wrong, and allows us to build scouts early, which can be critical.

I say move the warrior 2 and then the settler 8 unless the warrior spots something really good, and maybe even whatever the warrior spots. An oasis 8 8 of the hill would be a massive early boost.

[Theseus]

I think we'll all prolly agree on Hunting, Settler 8, and Warrior 2.

I'm pretty torn about where to go from there... I'm not so sure about shooting for Meditation.

I do know this: Whether we go for an early religion or not, a massive capitol (with a granary), spammed cottages, and a roving bunch of mean-tempered Skirmishers chanting "Me-Want-Tank"... well, it's all good.

Add a library to that capitol, and we can pick whatever later religion we want (and yeah, it'd be suhhh-WEET to pull that off with only the one city).

[Aginor]

Blake, have to concur with your reasoning on Hunting first if we go for a first-tier religion. Meditation being useless in the short run if we miss Buddhism, losing only 3 turns or so to it and being able to switch gears with much lower cost would be helpful. Plus, we're going to have to spend some time in that scenario building stuff other than Workers, so the units we pop out might as well include a Scout or two. Finding the other teams before they find us and snagging huts would both be good things.

I still respectfully suggest that if it's culture you're concerned about, you'd rather have Judaism for the +5 in a border city rather than wasting it on the capital. However, if you're concerned about early defense/locating hostiles, your version of religion first is much stronger for early defense than the option #1 I propose (which unfortunately just screams 'pillage me!').

One long-run strategic thought crosses my mind: it may be best to build a strong economy but run a bit heavy on the cash early so as not to build a whopping tech lead and end up wearing a bullseye. Not that we'll have much use for the nest egg immediately, since we won't be throwing up Pyramids, but something to think about.

I like the hill better if I'm whipping heavily than if I'm not. Testing showed that we could only support 4 pop on that hill before health problems kicked in, right? That seems more consistent with whipping a Granary and staying around 4-5 pop. Trading multiple food units per turn for a hammer early on doesn't sound like a great trade in the long run, unless we're going to run at or near the health cap for a while. Any comments on how proponents of moving onto the hill plan to deal with the health issue in the long run?

[Blake]

I still respectfully suggest that if it's culture you're concerned about, you'd rather have Judaism for the +5 in a border city rather than wasting it on the capital. However, if you're concerned about early defense/locating hostiles, your version of religion first is much stronger for early defense than the option #1 I propose (which unfortunately just screams 'pillage me!').

True about Judaism, although it's also a LONG early tech path and I don't see a lot of incentive for getting masonary in the short run - although assuming we are going hunting first we can shift gears should marble or stone pop up.
There is also the Theology factor and if someone can come up with a good plan for getting that somewhat early then I would be quite open to a Monotheism tech. However unless we see Marble or Stone I don't think it is really feasible, since the only way to get Theo early would be to prophet it - we would pretty much need +5 gpp from the henge/oracle + temple priest in order to get the prophet early enough (I don't think Oracle'ing Theo would be wise, putting us much too deeply into the religion path, and oracle can only be considered if we have marble).

We ARE on a river, and it is likely we'll found our next cities on the river (it looks like a decent river), it is very likely that Buddhism will spread along the river. In the absence of that river then I would put more weight on religion in a fringe city.

At this point I think the Buddhism path looks solid. Uncovering Marble or Stone, or popping Myst or Masonry will open up other possibilities.

[Aginor]

Point well taken about the river, had not considered. Not having to build roads to spread religion is always a good thing.

No way we get Theo early on. Agree that we'd have to Prophet it, and that strikes me as unreliable at best and a waste of a Prophet at worst. Makes more sense as a gambit if you're Philo, and we're not.

So then, agreed on Hunting first. If we see Marble nearby, we stop to reconsider Pottery and teching up to Masonry and Mono. Else proceed with Myst -> Meditation. Build order is (I assume) Warrior -> Scout, take stock and decide what next.

Next question: hill. Move or not move?

With either of these possible tech paths I would advise that we NOT move, thus maximizing health in the long term. I appear to be in the minority on this one (Theseus and nye stand opposed). If we choose not to move, founding will reveal south and we may wish to reconsider what to do with the Warrior (though it's still probably a 2 unless there's a hill to the south for him to stand on.) Thoughts?

[Theseus]

I'm starting to mess around with Nico's scenario for the start:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=148697&perpage=30&pagenumber=4

A couple of things occur to me (nothing like playing versus just working through theory, for me at least).

1) I find it hard to believe that no one else is going to go for Meditation... and assuming a beeline, we lose.

2) Am I missing something about health? Each unhealthy point costs us one food, right? Big friggin' deal.

[Theseus]

BTW, just for the experience, try playing Nico's scenario... I know it's not nearly the same as against human teams, but still.

Monarch... Settler 8... Worker, Warrior, Scout, Scout, granary, Settler... Hunting, Pottery (got Agri from a hut), then tech up to Mono... irrigate one fp, cottage the rest.

It's sort of absurd.

[Edited for clairty]

[Aginor]

Originally posted by Theseus
2) Am I missing something about health? Each unhealthy point costs us one food, right? Big friggin' deal.

More problematic than you might think in the long run once we want to get mines working on those hills. 2 health = 1 pop point = 4 hammers off of one of the hills, which you otherwise couldn't work.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Aginor
Next question: hill. Move or not move?

With either of these possible tech paths I would advise that we NOT move, thus maximizing health in the long term. I appear to be in the minority on this one (Theseus and nye stand opposed). If we choose not to move, founding will reveal south and we may wish to reconsider what to do with the Warrior (though it's still probably a 2 unless there's a hill to the south for him to stand on.) Thoughts?

I want to move 8 on turn 1 so that we can found in the best possible spot. There may well be more trees to the N, or a health resource.

There are zero resources visible from where we stand. The way the starts are assigned there should to be some nearby.

Moving the W 2 and the settler 8 allow us to see what they are and to settle in the best place. It costs us ~16 f/c/h to find out. Cheap in my book.