Your Start

[Krill]

So why not try to be the team handing them their heads?

Archer Skirmisher Rush...

[Harovan]

Originally posted by notyoueither
I think any team trying these Oracle starts is going to be found guilty of 'playing against AI' and have their heads handed to them.

I share this feeling.

Let's do a solid horizontal buildup. No slingshots - they'd leave us vulnerable in any respect except the pushed. Remain rock solid - build a good economy and have a decent military from the start. And don't neglect those diplomatic contacts.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Krill
So why not try to be the team handing them their heads?

Archer Skirmisher Rush...

Originally posted by Sir Ralph

I share this feeling.

Let's do a solid horizontal buildup. No slingshots - they'd leave us vulnerable in any respect except the pushed. Remain rock solid - build a good economy and have a decent military from the start. And don't neglect those diplomatic contacts.

I agree with both. We need balance if we are to get through the long haul.

We should react rapidly to the situation, of course. Alone with one other civ might lead to some early wonder building. However, we have to get those explorers out to determine what the situation is, and we have to prepare for being in the middle of 4.

Radically different games call for flexibility. Perhaps grab a religion, but don't neglect the food, shields or commerce early.

Fancy stuff will come, but once we know the lay of our land and our neighbours.

[alva]

Um, As stated, the Oracle will go fast. 2000 BC, if not before.

Other teams face the same problems as we do, I don't anyone will risk/bet everything to get it this quick. Again, there's no restarts possible.

I'm with NYE and Sir Ralph(and others) on this one.
Build a solid empire...

[NicodaMax]

Well, after some pixel by pixel analysis of our starting location, I believe that:
66 is not a fp, but a grassland (gl)
23 is a gl/forest (f)
plus a few more ph up north...
This means we have a 5 pop limit due to health limitations (+3 from forests)

Research was Myst(3760)>Med(3440)>Prie(3200)>BW(2760)>Wri(2360)
Pop up to 5
Built warrior then worker then oracle
Chop 2 trees
outside city radius (2x25h) -> Oracle in 2200
Inside city radius (2x30h) -> Oracle in 2280 (-1 health)
If we were beat to med can get CoL (Confucianism)
or we can get Alph or Monarchy if we already have Budhism

Aginor, I tried the pottery/cottages first approach and it wasn't much better. Oracle in 1920...
Oracle in 2040 doing a Worker first strategy...very risky

Enough with the Oracle push, I think.

[NicodaMax]

Forgot. The new scenario...

[Aginor]

Originally posted by NicodaMax
Aginor, I tried the pottery/cottages first approach and it wasn't much better. Oracle in 1920...
Oracle in 2040 doing a Worker first strategy...very risky

About what I expected - better commerce at cost of no infrastructure, roughly same completion time...that's what I was coming up with as well.

Enough with the Oracle push, I think.

Concur...don't get enough benefit out of it even IF we get it. Not Philo, so no strong GPP from the Oracle. Culture in capital isn't a huge deal in the long run. One tech isn't worth 150 hammers unless we can do something unbalancing with it, which we won't have the time to set up before someone else takes the Oracle.

OK, early empire approach. Question becomes: religion first, Pottery first, Hunting (and Scouts) first? Agree with many others that BW just isn't the first tech here (though it is something we'll likely want to turn our attention to early...this start was made for poprush).

How to best maximize the early game here?

[Blake]

I agree with no oracle. We are financial and floodplains, this says that cottages are what we need. And with cottages we don't need the oracles free tech.
However a religion push is worth considering.

I really like the idea of hunting first, then a scout or two. The scouts will lead our neighbours to believe that we are serious about skirmishers.

After hunting we could immediately go for a religion (I think meditation). I think that other teams will consider religion first too big a gamble, and will go for bronze working, archery, or worker techs. One possible exception is Banana, in this situation Louie is a good leader to go for religion - creative for improved defense, industrious to build stonehenge or oracle. It makes sense for them.

In any event, our start isn't good enough to make religion a non-gamble, with a previewed map I think it's unlikely that any team will have a 0 commerce start, some might have +2 commerce starts. So I think in any event going for religion is a big enough gamble that picking up hunting first doesn't make it much more of a gamble, if anything it could let us abort or switch research with less "sunk" research.

[NicodaMax]

Originally posted by Blake
...
However a religion push is worth considering.

I really like the idea of hunting first, then a scout or two. The scouts will lead our neighbours to believe that we are serious about skirmishers.

After hunting we could immediately go for a religion (I think meditation). I think that other teams will consider religion first too big a gamble, and will go for bronze working, archery, or worker techs....

I believe that in order to get that early religion we'd have to go mystisism-meditation right off the bat, and even that isn't a sure bet. If you wanna do hunting first I'd bet on winning the race to CoL with cottage powered research and getting Confusianism (or even Taoism later on)

[Arrian]

I think we might want to consider ditching early religion in favor of basic empire-building (including lotsa cottages on those floodplains) and a run at a later religion.

-Arrian

[NicodaMax]

Originally posted by Arrian
I think we might want to consider ditching early religion in favor of basic empire-building (including lotsa cottages on those floodplains) and a run at a later religion.

-Arrian

unless we find some gold producing goodie under the fow, which is still a possibility. Should be prepared for both scenarios.

[Metaliturtle]

I did like the idea of a skirmisher rush, can we make that at least a semi-top priority, maybe hunting, then tech to pottery, start building cottages while making a barracks and researching archery, build skirmishers, dominate

[Hot Mustard]

I've been a fly-on-the-wall in this thread. Many good points/ideas have been mentioned, but at the end of the day, while the posted shot is great, it doesn't totally rule out many options - we'll have to wait and see what else we can see before making any grand decisions.

Add my voice to the "don't settle on the health-restricting plains/hills" group.

[Cort Haus]

I too think we should not start with religion. If we start with hunting & scouts, we'll know sooner who's around and what we'll need to do about it. We may not need Skirms if there are sufficiently few neighbours, and showing scouts to any neighbours may be enough to encourage peaceful diplomacy at the start.

[Arrian]

I think we're gonna need a poll on where to settle (in place or on the plains hill). Opinion seems pretty split.

-Arrian