RBtS1b - The Thief Economy

Swiss Pauli

Emperor
Joined
Jul 29, 2006
Messages
1,805
Following in the wake of the brave souls crewing RBtS1a is the B-team. We're taking on the same start, but Aggressive AI is turned off and we're allowed to use the Great Spy bomb. The research restrictions still apply, of course.

Rivals: 6
Difficulty: Emperor
Map: Fractal
Mapsize: Standard, Cylindrical
Climate: Temperate
Water level: Normal
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Epic
Victory Conditions: Space only
Variant
* All techs with the exception of Ancient Era techs unlocking Worker actions, Writing, and Alphabet (necessary to build spies) must be stolen.

Leader: Pacal II of Maya
UU: Holkan - no-metal Spearman
UB: Ball Court - Colosseum with +2 happiness



Roster

Kodii
pindicator
sunrise089
Swiss Pauli
ungy
 
Lurkers comment

Just to wish good luck ( like I did to the other team :p ). Make a game supported in a feature not well tested is a bold move...
I would advice settling in place and Hunting-> AH ->Mining? ( can't remember if Mayan start with it ) ->BW -> Masonry, to chop GW ( in first place that forest hill... ) -> Wheel and Agri
Note that you have a coastal tile near ( 2 S of the warrior ).

Ok, good luck! :goodjob:
 
lurker's comment: Lurker checking-in! :thumbsup:

There's a lot of forest to chop in here! :eek:

Please, let me know if I can ramble some random thoughts here now and then... :mischief:
 
I was running a few test games, and Pacal always seems to get plenty of forest in the capital's BFC.

@ Feedback - of course you may!
 
Opening moves - settle in place, methinks. As religion is verboten, Hunting => AH seems the obvious play. Build wise, I don't see anything for a worker to do
until AH, so warrior (interruptus?) then worker?

Opening Strategy - Great Wall rules out a rush: on a test game at normal speed Henge 1800, Wall 1200, and Oracle 975 were all BIFAL. Seems a fairly normal timeline to me. I guess the question is whether or not to build a second city before the Wall. I think we probably don't want to risk doing this, but we shouldn't rule it out yet.

Long term strategy - as we can only steal techs, we need to find the juiciest target for our spy bomb, and we need to make the most out of that civ while we can. I can see us needing a lot of commerce friendly land when the returns from the bomb start to diminish, so war will come onto the agenda, I'm sure. As such, we might not want to bomb the nearest civ, seeing as we might need its land in fairly short order. In the end, I can see us wanting to reduce our opponents to one civ, in order to focus all our espionage efforts there.
 
I guess I'll be playing the initial 20-30 turns.

If I am not mistaken, this might be one of those starts where all tiles within the BFC are forest tiles except for tiles with resources. That would mean that we have a resource 2E and 2S of the start. I see no reason to move.

The worker will probably be finished before AH, so I agree that we should begin with an interrupted warrior first.

Hunting -> AH -> BW (?) -> Masonry (?)

We already have the prerequisites for Masonry. BW should come first so that the worker can chop chop chop!

I'll hope for some more comments and then play later today.
 
Checking in.

Agree with settle in place, as well as Kodii's tech path.

I don't know if I agree with Wall before City Two. It depends on how "fair" we want the game to be. If we will give up the SG if we miss the Wall, then we need to build it before the settler. If on the other hand we would simply start over if we miss the Wall then we can do whatever we want.

By the way - when (if?) we win this game, either us as a group, or a single player should replay the start and build the supposedly required three walls before the Great Wall. A beta tester confirmed to me that the overpowered early Great Spy was specifically discussed, and it was decided that the requirement to build several walls made the tradeoff in slower early expansion make the Spy not so powerful. Of course that feature is broken, so here we are....
 
If on the other hand we would simply start over if we miss the Wall then we can do whatever we want.
I don't think we should take chances to lose the Wall. It doesn't make sense to start over, especially when we're using the same map.
 
T0 4000BC - Mutal founded

T3 3925BC - We meet Hatty from the south (Thebes is very close)

T4 3900BC - We meet Darius I from the west (Persepolis is very close)

T9 3775BC - Hunting in

T10 3750BC - We meet Shaka from the west

T11 3725BC - Buddhism FIADL

T29 3275BC - AH in, worker finished; We have horses

Our land is certainly not pretty. There are river-deserts, not floodplains. I guess what we have here is the opposite of isolated. :lol:

Our initial warrior was killed by a panther. Our second warrior is scouting our east. The worker is building a pasture at the cows. Mutal is producing another warrior. BW is due in 23.





http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/96336/RBtS1b_BC-3250.CivBeyondSwordSave
 
Okay, I'm out for a fairwell party for a friend tonight, so I will play my turns tomorrow.

I've been thinking about our Spy use in this game -- since lightbulbing is out of the question, we are going to want to get as many Great pies as possible. And once the Spy Bomb gets less powerful as the game goes one, Scotland Yard seems the best thing to do with those Spies. +100% EP in a city will be better than any settling of a Spy could do, especially since we'll esentially be replacing our beaker slider with our EP slider.

In fact, it seems like Spy specialists and Great Spies in particular are just going to jump in place of Scientist specialists and Great Scientists for purposes of this game. We're just swapping beakers for EPs, after all.

Early candidate for Spy Bomb seems to be Hatty. She always seems to tech along at a nice clip. Still too early to be certain, but remember that the farther away the civ is, the larger the penalty in EPs used.
 
Annoying about those desert riverside tiles. Darius has a super commerce start, he will surely be a tech monster: 2 FPs and a Gold in FIN AI capital :crazyeye: . This would ordinarily make him tempting to rush, but he could be a better target than Hatty for the Pie Bomb (as it shall henceforth be known). Glad that both have powerful UUs that are countered by our own :)

As we're safe from Barbs, we could pause BW to pick up the Wheel, as our worker might be idling if we go straight to BW, but I'll check th save to confirm this.
 
Having checked the save, the worker will idle for fewer turns if we go direct to BW (assuming we start to mine the forest hills) than if we divert to the Wheel.

Here's some possible cities (I really like the one on the gold):

 
I keep forgetting what the #2 slot plays for turns. 20? 25?

Switch technology to the Wheel right away seems best. Wheel will let us get some Chariots out, so it seems like the commonsense move anyway. Then we go BW => Masonry. That's like 51 turns of research at current tech rate, so as we grow it'll go closer to 40.

So a build order then would be Warrior, Worker (pop 2), Chariot, Settler (pop 3)? Time the settler to when Bronze Working finishes, or shortly thereafter.

Or maybe we skip BW, and just go Wheel -> Masonry in tech. Instead of Worker #2 we would build a Settler at pop 2.

Either way I am pretty sure we can fit in a settler before the wall.
 
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