The Random Rangers Ride Again

Sir Bugsy

Civ.D.
Joined
Jun 20, 2003
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Location
Berkshires
Here is the initial team:

Bugs
Mighty Dwarf
Wloff
Vadalaz

Batting order to be determined later.
 
And finally we can be Poles near the desert:

 
Very interesting choices!

The Celtic start is probably the one I'd be most tempted to play in SP. It's a pretty amazing city spot - coast, river, mountain, quite insane amounts of food with granary and lighthouse, and tons of production too. Here I'd go for a super-tall mega-capital with Tradition and either turtle for a science or culture win, or rush frigates and go for naval domination (since it kind of has the looks of anisland-ish map). That's my most natural play style, but it might honestly be a bit boring for a succession game, and I guess you guys played Celts too quite recently in another game.

The Moroccan start looks pretty fun to me as well - it's not amazing but not horrible either, and Morocco of course is the best for actually getting some use out of all that blank desert (it might be fun, I don't think I've ever actually gotten the chance to go for a big Kasbah spam). And if we were entertaining the idea of going for massive gold income and a diplo win, Morocco is obviously a great choice for that. I think this might be my favorite start just for the chance of trying something I've never really tried before.

In the Greek start I'd actually be tempted to possibly wander a little bit in the hopes of finding a better city spot close to the mountains, as this one is quite resoundingly "meh, it's okay I guess". I'd be interested in seeing just how that plays out, and the Greeks would obviously be quite a good diplo win choice as well. I like playing Greece, and I somehow wickedly like how the start is not amazingly good, so I'm liking this as well.

The Poland start must be my least favorite one of the bunch. It's a pretty poor start and it doesn't even have anything interesting going for it. Again, wandering closer to the hills for some better production and maybe better resources might be worth a go and interesting in its own right, but I dunno - this start just doesn't sing to me at all.

All in all, I think my order of preference is:

Morocco
Celts
Greece
Poland
 
Going with my Tradition instincts I would say Celts yeah and Greeks Noooo. With Morocco and Poles somewhere equally in the middle just based on the start spots. But depends what our goals are? If we just want a generic strong start Celts would be my fave.
 
Here are some thoughts.

Poles: I would first move the warrior to the elephant. If that is coast to the north, then moving twice to get a coastal spot next to a river and a mountain may be worth it.

Celts: I agree it is an insanely good start - hill settling spot next to a river and a mountain. five food tiles and a gem hill for $$$. I typically don't go for tradition, but Wloff is correct, that would be a great spot to grow tall. It also completely ignores the Celts' unique ability with the forests.

Morocco: I agree it would be fun to play with kasbahs (Rock the kasbah, Rock the kasbah!)

Greeks: There is some nice forest to chop. I would be tempted to move off the hill to get a spot closer to the mountain, but settling on a hill is a very nice production boost early on.

I need to sleep on which choice I would make.
 
Celts: double wheat is excellent early on, Gems are one of the best luxuries in the game, sea resources are some of the best tiles in the game, and cargo ships are extremely powerful. Points to consider: Celts were played last time; no forest to make use of UA; too easy?

Greece: the start doesn't look great, but there's potential for some bananas nearby. Jungle cities with observatories can be quite powerful in the late game, I'd seriously consider moving towards one of those mountains. Early game is most likely going to be painful though.

Morocco: flat desert tiles are awful, I'd probably move the warrior on the grassland hill to see if there's anything better to the north. If not, try to get Petra and spam Kasbahs to turn those 0-yield tiles into something good. Marble helps with Petra and consequent wonderspam.

Poland: fantastic civ on what appears to be a really mediocre start with calendar and trapping luxuries. There seems to be tundra, coast and mountain to the north. The desert hill makes me want to see if that's a potential Petra capital to the south. Plus the hills would help with settler production.

My order of preference: Morocco, Greece, Celts, Poland.
 
Having mulled it over I can see that the Celts start is possibly too good to be enough of a challenge, and if you guys have recently used them in another game I can understand not wanting to repeat.

Morrocco start looks ok'ish certainly some potential with Desert Folklore for religion, coastal for trade and possibly Petra and Colossus.

Poland definitely looks like coast to the north (can see on the mini map the river looking like it is opening up into a sea). My only concern with this is that Poland are a bit overpowered with their UA and UU being one of the best in the game IMO.

Greece start just doesn't tick off any of my usual preferences, not coastal, little nearby scope for food but maybe a good thing to persist when I would normally just re roll if playing SP. I agree with Vadalaz that jungle tiles can be productive from mid game onwards with universities, trading posts and the rationalism policy tree giving a chance to regain ground on runaway rivals.

If I had to order them would be Morocco, Poland, Greece, Celts (too good to be a challenge). But I would be happy with any to be honest.
 
That's kind of my line of thinking with the Celtic start as well: it's really almost too good to make for an interesting game. Also, the lack of a start forest, plus the fact that it does kinda look like an archipelago start (meaning Pictish warriors would get little to no use) means that we'd pretty much be playing a "generic" civ with zero unique benefit, which is somewhat boring as well.

(I wouldn't mind having the save to play on my own though, if we do end up skipping that start :))
 
I would be happen to send any of the starts along if we don't play.

So let me throw this option out there - should I roll a few more starts?
 
So let me throw this option out there - should I roll a few more starts?

Does this suggest you're not happy with any of the starts?

Morocco does have top voting for 3 players.

IMO the more options the less likely hood of a consensus. I think we should give the Morocco start a go.
 
OK, the Morocco start is it.

I have attached the save file. Who would like to lead us off? I probably won't be able to play until Thursday so it isn't me.
 

Attachments

  • RSG - Morocco Initial_0000 BC-4000.Civ5Save
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My Two pence on early moves.

The only worthwhile move for the warrior on T0 is to the south or the East to me, going any other way would not reveal much if anything we dont already know. Unless he reveals something unexpected I can't see any reason not to settle in place. The only issue I have with this site is lack of early prodcution tiles, but I guess you cant have everything.

With all the desert and FP tiles nearby are we going to attempt to land Desert Folklore pantheon? If we get it we should be able to land our choice of beliefs from finding a religion. If so we should research Pottery first.

I would normally always build monument first for push for first few social policies but I know a lot of people prefer scouts first.

I don't think we are likely to be able to get the Great Library built in time prob around turn 45 for Immortal level so I dont think it is wise to push for this.
 
I'd probably move the warrior SE-SW to check if that other flood plains coastal spot is any good. If not, perhaps move our settler NE to see if there's anything good to the north? Worst case scenario, we settle in the original spot on turn 1.
 
I think the Moroccan start will be an interesting challenge :goodjob:

I might like to take a peek over the grass hill before settling, like vadalaz mentioned above: there could be something that persuades us to move on to that hill instead of settling in place. I'm not too enthusiastic about the idea of abandoning the coast, but there is another flood plains coast in the south: it's too close to settle if we settle in place, but if we do end up moving, we can still access the fish from over there. To persuade me to not settle in place, I think I'd optimally love to see multiple food resources: early food is what I'm most concerned about for our capital. Flood plains are nice and all, but they won't do much until Civil Service, and currently the only real food source is the single fish. (We might want to open Sailing early-ish for a work boat and trade route).

I love culture more than most civ-vers, but I'd 100% build a scout first here. The starting position is not stellar, and we really want to know what's in the vicinity, and fast.

An early shrine in an attempt to get DF (meaning Pottery first), as well as some kind of an attempt for Petra, is almost mandatory with this start, I feel. It wouldn't be the most amazing Petra city in history, but together with Kasbahs it could turn a mediocre capital into a better-than-average one.

The big question for me is whether to go Tradition of Liberty. Early scouting should play a big part in this decision (how much nice land to settle we see), but my early thoughts on the matter are:

- Liberty is my first instinct here, even though I'm generally a Tradition guy: our capital, as it stands, will not be great, and we'll have a pretty slow start in there, so the early bonuses would be very welcome; and expanding quick and going wide is the natural choice when your capital isn't anything to write home about. We can also maybe use the Liberty finisher to get Petra.

This seems like the obvious choice for early strategy, and probably the one we should go for, assuming there's a decent amount of good land to settle around us. I'd love to do some scouting before committing to it, though.

- The argument for Tradition, then, would be that if we get Petra, we will actually want to grow the capital quite a bit and make it the hub for our trade routes: with 2 gold from each desert tile (Petra + Kasbah), the capital should produce quite a bit of gold, and all the usual cool stuff from Tradition (Monarchy + Landed elite + the finisher) would definitely help getting the most out of its potential. We do also have the marble, which is obviously nice to combo with Aristocracy for some early wonders.

It would be slower, riskier, and possibly simply worse, than Liberty though.

In fact: if we do want to go Tradition, I think we might actually want to go all-in, balls to the wall, screw the risks, and force our capital to become good. I'm talking getting Aristocracy, beelining Currency, and rushing Hanging Gardens before we go for Petra. With HG we'd be able to work all those hills instead of the crappy food tiles and have a pretty nice production powerhouse, which would turn into a pretty amazing sea trade route hub later on.

It's a risky as heck strategy, and it can backfire really badly, but it could be fun... and I'm a bit of a sucker for risky all-in strategies. :mischief: It's also something I've never tried before. Which might mean it's not really any good, obviously.

That said... just going Liberty, doing some fast expansion and going really wide might well be simply the better choice. It'd be safer for sure.

--

By the way, do we have a victory condition we're aiming at, or do we just play it by ear for now? With Morocco, a relatively peaceful economy-first approach (with trade routes going to as many civs as possible) is the most natural one, but it can be converted to a number of victory conditions - and there's obviously nothing wrong with some good old warmongering either. :hammer: :hammer: :hammer:
 
If we dont settle capital on the coast I think it is a given to forego Tradition in favour of Liberty due to not being able to send internal food sea routes.

If we do settle on coast it is probably hard to judge at this point as with whats on view there are arguments for/against both viewpoints I think we will need more of an idea of our immediate area before being able to decide for sure.
 
Agreed on building a scout first. I wouldn't plan too far ahead yet, we need to start the game and explore the surroundings first and see what's nearby. Could be Shaka, could be Fountain of Youth. :)

So, who goes first and how many turns do we play per session? Any additional rules, e.g. are worker steals okay or do we choose to play nice?
 
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