Civ Choice

[Krill]

[q=DeepO]If there's none, we'll have to adapt[/q]

true enough. I'm sure we can, it is just that I would hate to pick a civ that relies on extra commerce that we can't plan for, to get an early religion.

CoL is the last of the early religions, as it is quite easy to reach, and is on one of the other paths away from the 3 others. CoL is a very good goal, but I would hate to reach it unexpectedly: either we plan for it from the get go, or we try something else... After failing to reach the first 3, going for CoL is most of the times not so good as going for e.g. Christianity.

well, that is one of the reasons I love Mansa so much, I suppose. 2 techs away from pottery, and FIN. Maximal use of cottages means you will a good commerce producer. After throwing out a settler, build a lib, and you can get those 2 scientists for the academy to further speed research. And because you have not got a religion (yet...) you only need 100 GS points to get the academy, so it is cheaper. After researching pottery you can fill up on a few techs, like archery, AH, BW etc, then press on to writing, and then straight to preisthood. By now those 3 techs should only take 6 or so turns for all of them, worst case scenario.

Now pick that apart please. I know I will have made a few mistakes, or maybe played it a little risky...

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Krill
well, that is one of the reasons I love Mansa so much, I suppose. 2 techs away from pottery, and FIN. Maximal use of cottages means you will a good commerce producer. After throwing out a settler, build a lib, and you can get those 2 scientists for the academy to further speed research. And because you have not got a religion (yet...) you only need 100 GS points to get the academy, so it is cheaper. After researching pottery you can fill up on a few techs, like archery, AH, BW etc, then press on to writing, and then straight to preisthood. By now those 3 techs should only take 6 or so turns for all of them, worst case scenario.

Now pick that apart please. I know I will have made a few mistakes, or maybe played it a little risky...

Too risky for my taste: I would have put AH or archery in there before going for CoL. Or BW, and hope for copper... poprushing or chopping to get a lib faster.

That will complicate things a little as it will be not so easy to get the prereqs for CoL, but basically it's the same path... and a good one, I think.

DeepO

[Krill]

Oh, of course, it would likely be sonething along the lines of:

Agri if grain/otherwise Fishing > pottery > AH/BW/Hunting+Archery > Writting > (Myst through Preisthood) > CoL

[Krill]

The Key, of course, is in the early cottages. The problem is then shifted to production; the best way around this is forest chopping, or going for a big capital, and this means it is better suited to lower levels, Prince at the highest really.

[DeepO]

Other path (depending on location, and level):

Mysticism first. Once reached, start for 2-3 turns on Meditation... if it falls in the mean time, switch to BW. If not, continue, and get Budhism first.

Second goal, BW. If bronze: good. Otherwise, continue on Meditation, next Priesthood. Build a worker in the mean time.

Once Priesthood completes, chop the Oracle together. If no bronze, go for archery. Use the Oracle's tech to get writing. Normally, the Oracle before a settler is not something people will do, and the least someone wants in return is alphabet or MC. So, we get writing for free.

settler, then lib, or lib then settler depending on what we can rush most efficiently... meanwhile we gather GPrP. We should finish the lib before the GPr if we don't have a PHI leader, but there's a good chance we get a GPr even if we add scientists the moment the lib completes.

At any rate, it should be possible to get a second GP next, to build an academy. We might reach CoL before that time, though, but normally we should be looking for worker techs, or more defense.

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Using the Oracle 'too soon' can be very good denial trick: more teams will work on it for sure, and we don't want to give e.g. MC to an IND civ if we can get writing for free.

DeepO

[DeepO]

BTW, using the Oracle on IW might be a very good alternative if we get Budhism.

DeepO

[Krill]

[q=DeepO]Mysticism first. Once reached, start for 2-3 turns on Meditation... if it falls in the mean time, switch to BW. If not, continue, and get Budhism first.

Second goal, BW. If bronze: good. Otherwise, continue on Meditation, next Priesthood. Build a worker in the mean time.

Once Priesthood completes, chop the Oracle together. If no bronze, go for archery. Use the Oracle's tech to get writing. Normally, the Oracle before a settler is not something people will do, and the least someone wants in return is alphabet or MC. So, we get writing for free.

settler, then lib, or lib then settler depending on what we can rush most efficiently... meanwhile we gather GPrP. We should finish the lib before the GPr if we don't have a PHI leader, but there's a good chance we get a GPr even if we add scientists the moment the lib completes.

At any rate, it should be possible to get a second GP next, to build an academy. We might reach CoL before that time, though, but normally we should be looking for worker techs, or more defense.

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Using the Oracle 'too soon' can be very good denial trick: more teams will work on it for sure, and we don't want to give e.g. MC to an IND civ if we can get writing for free.[/q]

If we have a lot of "spare" forests, I can see that happening. excess Commerce as well would be help here.

I especially would like the wonder denial, I have to admit to that...

[DeepO]

For it to work, we'll have to sacrifice 3 forests/pop, preferably 1 or 2 more for the lib and settler. It's a lot, but not terribly much... and big sacrifices are going to be needed if we want to get an edge somewhere. This would require running a one-city empire for longer than ideal, but at least we're not forgetting about defense: we should have all the room we need to fit in defenders and defensive techs.

I'm sure there are other possibilities, though. What I think would be good to draw out, are some distinct plans on where to go for: make a list of e.g. 10 different goals. (one of them being CoL, another MC, another one of the 3 religions, etc). This way, once the first turn arrives, we can look at our terrain, and decide which path to follow. The first turn is critical... before the second turn arrives, we can have a basic plan drawn out for the next 30-50 turns, but we don't have that luxury on the first turn. Better to do as much preparation beforehand as possible...

PHI would give us other options... Fried mentioned one of his tricks, where Stonehenge in city #2, and a lib in the capital gives a GA around turn 50, a rush follows soon after. While I never tried it that extreme, I can see us doing things like that as well.

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Let's take a look at starting techs: which are more important than others?

I think there are 2 key techs: mysticism, and mining. You need at least mysticism or mining for a certain religion (mining because BW gives you the possibility to rush Stonehenge or Oracle). Without one of the two, it will be more difficult. I think we should try to have one of those two present.

OTOH, hunting is excellent as well: a scout, and the ability to build another scout fast might give us the tech we want from huts.

The rest are filler techs... agri and fishing are situational, while the wheel is great to give your workers something to do and speed settling along, but in no way critical at first.

DeepO

[asleepathewheel]

1. Elizabeth
2. Qin
3. Mansa

Once we know the order of play, it will be pretty easy to predict if we can land one of the first two religions-that actually plays a big role in me picking a civ.

I'm not concerned with a lack of resources, at least up until coal. A proper defese can be manufactured with non-resource units.

to the current Jag Warrior. IMHO, needs to be 6-1 rather than 5-1. just not that great a unit. And I've played a ton of SP games using the Aztecs.





I thought battle of the bobs was in the public patch-I'm pretty sure that I used a completely clean install of 1.5whatever.

[notyoueither]

2nd post updated with voting for civ leader.

Current Voting for Civ Leader:

Mansa Musa 20: Arrian 3, dejon 2, DeepO 1, Krill 3, Aro 2, Dominae 3, Theseus 3, Solomwi 2, asleepathewheel 1
Saladin 14: dejon 3, DeepO 3, Aro 3, Dominae 1, Theseus 1, Solomwi 3
Qin Shi Huang 8: Arrian 2, Krill 2, Dominae 2, asleepathewheel 2
Montezuma 4: DeepO 2, Theseus 2
Elizabeth 4: Arrian 1, asleepathewheel 3
Isabella 2: Krill 1, Aro 1
Asoka 1: dejon 1
Alexander 1: Solomwi 1

--

Arrian: 1. Mansa Musa, 2. Qin, 3. Elizabeth
dejon: 1) Saladin, 2) Mansa Musa, 3) Asoka
DeepO: 1. Saladin, 2. Montezuma, 3. Mansa Musa
Krill: 1. Mansa Musa, 2. Qin, 3. Izzy
Aro: 1. Saladin, 2. Mansa Musa, 3. Isabella
Dominae: 1. Mansa, 2. Qin, 3. Saladin
Theseus: 1. Mansa Musa, 2. Montezuma, 3. Saladin
Solomwi: 1. Saladin, 2. Mansa Musa, 3. Alexander
asleepathewheel: 1. Elizabeth, 2. Qin, 3. Mansa

Edit: Fixed.

[Arrian]

NYE - You've got Elizabeth on their twice (once w/3 pts, once with 1)... she should be tied for fourth with Monty.

...

I'd definitely make early BW a priority if we end up with Mansa Musa (subject to change if our start is forest-poor, of course). Chop rushing the Oracle for, say, CoL would be nice. But even if we don't go that route, we can chop other things... not to mention the advantage of seeing copper (or the lack thereof). If we have copper, yay, IW can wait a little bit. If not... perhaps we prioritize IW a little more.

We would also want hunting relatively early, both b/c it leads to archery for the Skirmisher but also Animal Husbandry for pastures & seeing horses (or lack thereof). I typically get to writing via Animal Hus, by the way.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
to the current Jag Warrior. IMHO, needs to be 6-1 rather than 5-1. just not that great a unit. And I've played a ton of SP games using the Aztecs.

I like it, but it's not special. And SP it will probably have more uses than in MP because of the predictability...

One thing to keep in mind here, is that there are as much reports of the Praets being overpowered, as the Jags being underpowered... I wouldn't be surprised if by the time we could build them, they have been tweaked upwards.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Arrian
I typically get to writing via Animal Hus, by the way.

Me too, but that's SP... and without cottages it can be tough to expand your territory early on.

Even if we would go for writing from a superearly Oracle, we could go for AH before going towards CoL or alphabet. But at least we've got the choice: if we discover bronze before that, and have no cows/pigs around, delaying AH is not that bad... we'll pick it up fast enough. An academy is very powerful, and multiple teams will go the AH route: we don't have to be there first, so we can maximally take advantage of the bonus we get when researching an 'old' tech. AH might just be 3 or 4 turns later on...

DeepO

[Krill]

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=147338

Bollocks I say. Mods, don't try to pull a gerrymander here. simply have a run off poll if it is a tie, to decide between the two.

[Dominae]

Our starting location will dictate what our options are with respect to our opening strategy.

The Religion question we can sort decide on in advance, though: if we prioritize it, we have a good shot at founding one, it's just a question of what we are willing to give up to get it.

I'm not sure it's such a great idea to depend on the Oracle so much. Almost every team will want it, and at least half of them will try for it. I actually think that going for one of the three early Religions (even without Mysticism) is safer than expecting to get Confucianism via Code of Laws. In other words, if we think getting a Religion is important, we should not depend on the Oracle to deliver it to us.

Early Cottages and a Financial civ are great, true, but there are definitely associated costs: Cottage tiles do not help produce Settlers/Workers faster, nor do they help in building up an adequate defense (or building that Wonder!). Setting up your capital as a research instead of a production powerhouse is a risk in MP.

Regarding Skirmishers, would we be willing to use them to harass a neighbor early on, as Krill suggests? Traditionally we have been more cautious diplomatically, trying to make friends with everyone and hoping that our superior (or so we think!) empire-building skills would prevail. In this, we treat our opponents much like we do the AI. Would we be willing to take a "reputation hit" from leveraging our Skirmishers to weaken an opponent before they get properly set up?

Effective harassment is something that needs to be planned for almost from turn one. Rather, from the point when we first start chopping: do we want a Library, or a bunch of Skirmishers? We seem to be leaning toward the former, but there's definitely something to be said for the latter.

I voted for a Normal-size map (which would have us a bit crowded) just to make sure the early-game is not a build-fest, which would probably be to our advantage (or so I think!) but also a bit boring.