COTM 05 Pre-Game Discussion

ainwood · Sep 23, 2004

OK - Thank-you all for the feedback in the "planning games in advance" thread. I've distilled down the responses into a format that I hope will keep at least a few of you happy. We will not post civs and difficulties months in advance but we will:

Post most of the relevent details in the first post (As a minimum, screenshot, civ and difficulty). Other stuff will be posted too (world setup etc), but the class bonuses might be a bit later, 'cause I don't tend to set them until a day or two before release).
Oscillate difficulties, trying to keep the COTM and the Classic games out-of-sync.

So:

Conquest 05: INCA

Difficulty: Regent.
Map size: Standard.
World Age: 3 billion years.
Climate: Wet and temperate (IIRC).
barbs: Restless.
Land form: Pangaea.

Class Bonuses / Handicaps:
Conquest class: Start with a second scout (normal, not chasqui). They also get an extra 50 gold.

Predator class: AI Unit support increased to Monarch level, All AI Start with 4 defensive units and 2 offensive ones.

Starting Screenshot:

Minimap:

solenoozerec · Sep 23, 2004

First move: Scout goes to the hills. If he doesn't see anything very attractive, worker goes E. If worker doesn't see anything interesting, settle where we are.

Roland Ehnström · Sep 23, 2004

Wow, Pangaea at Regent - will the winner's game end before 0 AD? :crazyeye:

I agree with solenoozerec's opening moves. Just remember that we are agricultural, so again we need just a single wheat or cattle to have a 4-turn settler factory, given that we stay on the river. So if I don't see any such bonus after moving the scout and the worker, I will fog-gaze a little longer than usual before settling in place.

What's that white stuff NW of the hill? Tundra? If so, perhaps scouting south is a better idea?

And with this nice start-position at Regent, I wonder what "surprises" Ainwood has come up with this time... :dubious:

-- Roland

danman · Sep 23, 2004

I believe that "white stuff" is sugar... it adds +1 gold I think.... in any case it would be nice to have it in the city radius.

bed_head7 · Sep 23, 2004

Looks like sugar NW of the hill. And furs where we are standing. So unless the scout sees something strange or exciting from the hill, or the worker sees something of that nature in the east, I will probably settle to the north.

King Of America · Sep 23, 2004

Interesting trade-off; stay on the river and waste either a BG or a forest tile OR move to the grassland (settling brings regular grassland to its max despotism value) but lose river benefits (extra food; commerce; and settler-factory advantage of being able to grow to 7 without Aqueduct).

I'm leaning towards staying on the river--actually if one of the squares two towards the NE are regular grassland, it might be worth it to spend 2 moves to get one--that would give us 3 BG + the starting spot's furs on expnasion. Playing Regent, we can afford to "waste" a couple tuns for a really good site.

Let's see if ainwood earns the :evil:

he tried for last time...(Never bet against the game master---at least not till he Middle Ages).

samildanach · Sep 23, 2004

I haven't played the Incans before. What are their traits? Is one of them agricultural?

solenoozerec · Sep 23, 2004

bed_head7 said:
Looks like sugar NW of the hill. And furs where we are standing. So unless the scout sees something strange or exciting from the hill, or the worker sees something of that nature in the east, I will probably settle to the north.

Sugar is more than +1 gold. It is +1 food, so if mined, it will be a very strong spot (2.2.1) even under despotism. I agree moving north makes sense based on what we see right now.

bed_head7 · Sep 23, 2004

samildanach said:
I haven't played the Incans before. What are their traits? Is one of them agricultural?

Expanionistic, Agricultural.

King of America, in my opinion the advantages of settling on the river outweigh almost any advantage of settling off a river, and it certainly appears to be so on this map. We have tons of forest tiles in the start, wasting one won't matter I would think. Especially with all those furs. This start has me salivating.

Jason Fliegel · Sep 23, 2004

This start seems to good to be true. Maybe all the iron is sitting under the other civs' starting positions.

Do the Incas start with a regular scout or a Chasqui scoiut?

bed_head7 · Sep 23, 2004

Jason Fliegel said:
This start seems to good to be true. Maybe all the iron is sitting under the other civs' starting positions.

Do the Incas start with a regular scout or a Chasqui scoiut?

Regular scout

solenoozerec · Sep 23, 2004

Jason Fliegel said:
This start seems to good to be true.

Does it? Without food bonus resources it cannot guarantee us fast growth. From the terms of shield production it is indeed a good position. It also gives large amount of gold, but what we are going to do with gold on regent under despotism?

I think we need to build several scouts first to explore more. On regent, we will need to do all the research by ourselves, which means that we should use expansionists trait as much as possible.

Denniz · Sep 23, 2004

bed_head7 said:
Looks like sugar NW of the hill. And furs where we are standing. So unless the scout sees something strange or exciting from the hill, or the worker sees something of that nature in the east, I will probably settle to the north.

I am assuming you want the worker to look east because it lookd like plains north and west. I wish there were a way to look west. Moving north towards the sugar sounds good they usually come in bunches. There could be another one adjacent to the one we can see.

I am not too excited about the Incan UU:
Att. Def. Moves Shield Cost
Standard Scout 0 0 2 10
Chasqui Scout 1 1 2 20

It is twice as expensive as either a scout or a warrior and the same as an archer but upgrades to explorer.

Usually I build two scouts at the start and never again. It will take twice as long to get our second scout. I don't think I will build a third until later, if at all. It may be better to just build warriors.

Ag and Exp, so we get Pottery and Masonry to start.

With Pangea map and CSC having contacts & map trading in the MA, we are going to have to explore aggressively to contact all the other civs quickly. It may be worth setting up of a coast city for an Curragh an early priority.

dmanakho · Sep 23, 2004

Incan UU is quite lousy indeed, but I will build at least 2 or 3 to make sure I am the one who reaches all the goody huts.
If i have a neigbor AI close by i will try to implement early archer rush.

Regent level on a single landmass just asking for ultra fast victory.

solenoozerec · Sep 23, 2004

dvandenberg said:
Usually I build two scouts at the start and never again. It will take twice as long to get our second scout. I don't think I will build a third until later, if at all. It may be better to just build warriors.

why do you need to build any chasqui scout?
Build just normal ones (I hope we can, don't we? :confused:

), they are less expensive and they will not trigger GA in case of early military conflict.

Denniz · Sep 23, 2004

solenoozerec said:
why do you need to build any chasqui scout?
Build just normal ones (I hope we can, don't we? ), they are less expensive and they will not trigger GA in case of early military conflict.

We only get the one regular scout at the start. The Chasqui replace the regular one. It Chasqui or nothing.

dmanakho · Sep 23, 2004

solenoozerec said:
why do you need to build any chasqui scout?
Build just normal ones (I hope we can, don't we? ), they are less expensive and they will not trigger GA in case of early military conflict.

Nope, that's the problem, Incas can't build normal scouts.... :sad:

Denniz · Sep 23, 2004

dmanakho said:
Incan UU is quite lousy indeed, but I will build at least 2 or 3 to make sure I am the one who reaches all the goody huts.

You can build 4-6 warriors in the same time for the same cost. If you get a settler it might pay back but if you don't you will have slowed down your expansion. Not to mention the risk of any early GA, because those will be your only units, if you build them right from the start.

solenoozerec · Sep 23, 2004

O, my

...too bad. then it is probably the worst UU ever. In GOTM34 the situation was simmilar, I didn't build any single impi. But here it is much more worse. Kinda have to buid it

Randy · Sep 23, 2004

The UU is just an over priced "Jaguar Warrior". I will settle in place to get a warrior out fast. Hopefully I will find the closest AI fast and just attack as soon as I get next to his worker.

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