Meditation, Polytheism or neither?

[Blake]

Now, Sara MAY be at 12 Commerce. It's either them or AC. Alternately, Sara could have been at 10 and hit Fishing last turn, rather than having been at 12 and hit Meditation. If I were Sara and I wanted a religion, I'd go Poly anyway for the Parthenon, particularly if I'd seen some Marble lying around. I assume that they'll be attempting a cultural win as the only Industrious civ in the game, so the more early Wonders the better. Nothing guarantees that they researched Myst or that they didn't blunder and go for Meditation, though. Either of those possibilities opens the Poly door wide open.

Wow. Most of your reasoning is great but that's just loopy.
AC is the industrious financial civ.
Banana is also industrious.

Cultural win in MP? Could that even work? Wouldn't everyone else kind of notice the culture going up.
I don't know, maybe it could work, especially with an overpowered UU in the right era... um Cossack or Redcoat. I'm not really seeing anyone else being able to pull off a culture win.

[Aginor]

Originally posted by Blake
AC is the industrious financial civ.

*sigh* That's why I post these things, move onto another post, then come back to re-read and edit - fact check the logic after I've had to think about something else for a while

As for working - sure, everyone notices...but if you land the right buildings at the right times, it piles on faster than anyone can actually do anything about it. I assume you'd sign an alliance with somebody and pretty much stack most of the 2 civs' units in the 3 cities in question, trading space for time with the rest of the units. If a couple of players are already gone by this point and nukes aren't in the game yet, that's game over.

Originally posted by Blake
Banana is also Industrious.

At the risk of being dismissive, I haven't been including the Bunch in any win-condition calculations. They may end up being a kingmaker, but I figure there's 6 teams with a legitimate chance to win.

[Hot Mustard]

Umm - I have a question. I know it's safest to assume that everyone is reading the demographics as closely as we are, but do we really expect everyone is? I'm just not certain that every team has the number freaks we seem to.

[notyoueither]

That might have been a game winning strat for GS in the PtW DG.

If any civ can finish off major competition soon enough on their land mass, and do it with three major industrial centres...

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by dejon
Umm - I have a question. I know it's safest to assume that everyone is reading the demographics as closely as we are, but do we really expect everyone is? I'm just not certain that every team has the number freaks we seem to.

How well did RP follow stats in the early game?

Have you seen what Poly people most here have never heard of do with stats in ISDGs?

[notyoueither]

Vox have Donegeal, McMeadows, and Panzer32. All of them are experienced and two of them know from ISDGs what can be done with stats.

The Horde have ormuzd. He is a stats maniac in the C3C ISDG.

I am not very familiar with most of the people on AC, but N35t0r was active in the C3C ISDG and might have picked up on the importance of watching early stats.

I'm drawing a blank on Banana.

Sarantum have several programers/ major contributors of the game, including the stats master/ corruption nazi himself. Need I say more?

The Mercs have several experienced demo gamers (Togas, UnO, Octavian) and can be expected to know that stats can lift a little of the darkness from the blanket.

Of course, any team requires commitment and excitement to get people actually doing things. Some of these teams may be very inactive after the long wait, but I would not advise planning based on that assumption.

Edit: A safe bet is that the contents of the strat forum are being read carefully by at least one person on every team we are up against.

I was a little... dismayed to read Blake's thread on pop rushing.

However, this is about learning, and sharing the knowledge is part of the reason for this site.

Just know that every member of every team who has read that thread has also seen Blake's name as the last poster in the C4 DG forum and might be expected to be capable of putting two and two together. [Blake is active. Blake is a slave master. Blake is on GS. GS have high food availability (from stats)]

[Aginor]

Originally posted by Blake
hmmm... question... can the other teams know that we aren't the +12? I mean other than the +12 themselves...

Sort of. Any 10 commerce team out there is staring down the barrel of the same gun we are, in terms of pinning that down firmly.

However, the fact that Sara and Vox beat us to the civvy punch has to come across as somewhat indicative. If we're 12 commerce, we went Ag, not Myst, based on completion date. So either we're 10 and in the religion game or 12 and not in it. GS being 12 and not being in the religion game fails the 'Which is more likely?' test - so I would think that any competent intelligence service would hang the 10 on us based on our completion of Myst in 3680.

I think we'll probably be pinned as wanters of poly... so we can get Organized religion in the longer run.

Honestly, I think we're a non-factor to any other religion competitor. Vox and the 12 are competing against one another; we're just trying to sneak in the back door. The question isn't "What does GS want?" here. For Vox it's "What do I want?" and for the 12 it's either "Can I leapfrog Vox to 15 commerce and burn them no matter what?" or "Which one does Vox want, so I can pursue the other one?"

[Aginor]

Originally posted by notyoueither
I am not very familiar with most of the people on AC, but N35t0r was active in the C3C ISDG and might have picked up on the importance of watching early stats.

binTravkin is extremely sharp; can't say I recognize any of the other names off the top of my head, but he's a player that I would expect to be a stats nut.

[Mudhut]

Originally posted by Aginor

Honestly, I think we're a non-factor to any other religion competitor.

I voted Hunting (only one so far!), and here is why: Aginor's logic (about who is on what commerce) looks faultless to me. We can't win the religion rate unless the others somehow both pick the same one.

We know that Vox, *who are on the same river system as us*, are going for a religion. They are most likely our closest competitor, and so they are the key civilization to consider in terms of what others are doing.

What is the correct counter to a Civ that is sacrificing food and hammers for an early religion? Surely the correct counter is a quick military response!

Why aren't we going hunting->archery, popping those Skirms out, and finding Vox ASAP? This should be pretty easy to do. I'm not saying we'll be able to take them out early (though that would be nice!). But at the very least, our skirm on hills/forests should restrict their growth massively, and allow us to take them down. If they are closest to us, they are our primary problem, and their decision to go religion in this manner should have a major effect on us.

I know that we could use religion to help us tangentially with an early attack (largely via a higher happy limit = more poprushing!) but it is a high risk maneuvre now. And I know that some of these techs will be ones we want long term anyway. But it just seems that because we had so many elaborate plans for religion and what to do with it, we're failing to reassess the situation correctly. I advocate that going straight for a military counter is the best counter to what Vox have pulled on us.

Happy to be overruled by the majority (many of whom play this game a lot better than I do, let's not forget!), but that's my take on it all.

[notyoueither]

Vox could be 15 tiles from us and have scouts.

That puts a bit of a damper on an early rush.

We do need to consider what would benefit us best for early development. A religion is no detriment, especially since they are going for one as well.

[Aginor]

Originally posted by Mudhut
What is the correct counter to a Civ that is sacrificing food and hammers for an early religion? Surely the correct counter is a quick military response!

Evilly brilliant counter strategy, as ganking their capital DOES have the nice side effect of guaranteeing us a religion. However, our friends up the river are maxing hammers right now (at 3) and most likely have some Gold handy, which means they're going to be mining that puppy soon. They're not going to be an easy target to knock over militarily.

If I wanted to take Vox out ASAP, I'd start with BW and Axemen. City busting promotions go a long way towards clearing out Archers, and we know that Vox isn't on a Plains hill (and probably isn't on a hill period), so they should be comparatively easy to knock over. I'd start buzzsawing forests left and right, forget about the inefficiency due to the nerf, and hit them HARD.

Hunting -> Archery would be my next tech move, giving us some cheap backup to the costly beatdown forces.

But it just seems that because we had so many elaborate plans for religion and what to do with it, we're failing to reassess the situation correctly.

Poly is a small-scale gamble - if it fails, we've lost basically the opportunity cost of the production from throwing a pasture on those Sheep for 10 turns. Which smarts, but isn't the end of the world. A war of aggression is a BIG gamble. If it works, we're in a dominating position - but that guarantees us some serious enemies. If it fails, we're in a big, big deal of trouble.

Part of it depends on what else Vox is up to over there. If I'm them, I'm slamming out a Warrior or two ASAP (they're totally undefended as a Hunting civ, remember) then tossing a Worker out there to mine that Gold/Silver tile since I'm sacrificing food right now anyway. Then I max food to get to size 3 to work that mine and still grow.

If you want to go Hunting -> Archery - the question is: Can we get enough Skirmishers on the ground to knock them over before they get to Archery themselves? It's a safe bet that their next move after Meditation is Archery; we'd only steal a march on them of about 5 turns, which isn't long enough to get a bunch of Skirmishers on the ground and take them out. If we know they're here, they know we're lurking as well, and will be forced to take steps.

Also realize that we've got a real intelligence problem vis-a-vis Vox if we get passive spread from their religion. It will be completely impossible to take them unawares if they get Buddhism/Hinduism and it spreads to our capital along the river. They don't have to have the shrine to have this effect; they just have to change their state religion and they'll know right where we are and anything we do in the capital or one space from it.

I'd say that if we want to roll Vox that Poly's still our best bet, just to keep their noses out of our capital and other cities.

[Blake]

I could probably make a detailed arguement against a skirmisher choke but distilled it would come down to "rushing is lame". Don't get me wrong, I'm all for punishing those who are careless, arrogant or offensive in their play, but well, I'm not comfortable with aggressively taking the moral low ground for no good reason.

to sum up my position even more succinctly: Screw Winning, I'm here to learn and have fun!


And in all honesty I think early aggression will be more likely to result in both teams losing. To a certain extent we should probably also do what is expected of us, like I'm sure everyone would be dissapointed if the horde decides to hold hands and sing Kumbaya because they had just such a nice start for peaceful building.

[Arrian]

Polytheism. Let's do it.

As for tech path, I'm now thinking:

Polytheism, Hunting, Archery, AH, Ag, Pottery, BW. I mean, isn't AH worth it considering our sheep? That's a long way to BW, though... ouch.

-Arrian

[Hot Mustard]

Originally posted by notyoueither

How well did RP follow stats in the early game?

The primary stat number cruncher in RP was roadcage, iirc. E_T helped, but was more interested in the domestic calculations. The start of that game was a *long* time ago, but I don't think we got into this level of detail.

[Mudhut]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Vox could be 15 tiles from us and have scouts.

I think 15 is the upper limit.

I base this on the fact that one of us has a complete path to the other at turn 7 (when the trade route showed up -> just posted in the KGB thread about this). So for them to be 15 tiles means their warrior walked 7 tiles away and popped a hut which showed them 8 tiles in the right direction.

Of course, if they know where we are [and this is not guaranteed, but pretty likely] then it means they will doubtless have pickets on the most direct route between our cities. Further reducing the chance of success of any early military action, I guess.