RBTS6B - Finally Ready for Noble! (Team B)

[sunrise089]

Welcome to another succession game from the friendly folks over at Realms Beyond! As you may have noticed, Sullla is captaining a game on Noble difficulty with the simple-yet-extreme variant of No Tile Improvements.

Due to the overwhelming interest in Sullla game, and the fact that he's a big meanie who doesn't want to play with a roster of 9...well enter Team B:

-sunrise089
-Mostly Harmless
-Ozbenno
-Olodune
-Atlas

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Check back soon for the first turnset, but first we need to have some discussion on settings. I'd like to get the first turns up shortly, but there are a few possible considerations we need to address:

1) (Most importantly) Do we want to use Sullla's exact save, or do we want a different leader or any different settings.

2) If the answer is "no" then we will need to have a bit more discussion.

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Best of luck team, hopefully this will be a fun game (or at least a glorious defeat). Happy lurking Civfanatiics.

[Atlas]

Sullla's save is fine for me. But I don't really care. The only leader that would really play any better is Monty.

BTW I will be moving this month so I might need a skip or two.

As for strategy... that will have to wait until we decide on a save

[Olodune]

Sullla's save for me, though I won't be heartbroken if the team would prefer another.

I see three (non-exclusive) ways of dealing with the variant.

1) Super-specialist settled capital. It will get off the ground a little slowly, but by mid game should be quite powerful. A few early wonders (we can chop right?) would blend nicely.

2) Coastal city spam, preferably with the GLH. Settling on resources and researching sailing early would seem like a good plan.

3) Religious economy, focusing on "city fixed effects". I don't know if we'd have the early economy/production to pull this one off.

Fun times ahead

[mostly-harmless]

Sulllas save for me as well. I liked how we compared games in the four parallel cultural conquest SG.

o Super specialists need two excess food. I am not sure we have the means to feed more than one or two.
o Quick settling of a second city on the river, ideally not more than four tiles away from the capital. The trade along the river will mean two additional commerce. And I believe we do not need sailing if the river in between is completely within our cultural borders.
o City spam sounds good. I guess Noble will help with keeping the lid on maintenance costs and each additional city will help with its trade routes.
o With spamming cities rather than having big cities we can avoid the bottlenecks of having to settle on happiness or health resources to keep our cities content.
o We can build castles at double speed. We might consider going for them soonest, since the additional trade route helps a lot.

Am I too trade route crazy??? :-)

mh

[sunrise089]

No, I don't think you're too trade route crazy MH. However, I do have one tiny element of dissatisfaction as it pertains to using Sullla's save. I peaked at some of the early discussion in the thread (which I won't do again now that we've decided on a save) because I wanted to see what direction they were going, and whether or not we could deliberately try something different to make things more interesting.

Spoiler:

Their early thoughts rely heavily on landing the Pyramids and running Representation specialists. Now first of all I'm not sold this is a good startegy to begin with. Second however I think it would be stronger to run coastal cities with GL and maybe ToA if available. The problem we run into by using their save is loosing the terrific Financial synergy with those coastal cities. Loosing financial is like a 33% hit to our commerce potential right out the gate. That said, I'm still interested in the city spam strategy.

One other thing we're going to need to decide early is how important/in the spirit of the game settling on resources on rivers is. It looks like Team A plans to settle on resources and make it a point to have all of their cities linked by rivers. Doing this on Noble will largely eliminate happiness concerns, and linking strategic resources has obvious advantages. I leave it to the team to determine how closely we will follow this pattern. (I don't consider this part a spoiler since Sullla mentioned it in the RB thread.)

More importantly, we now have a majority for Sullla's save, so I'll at least post the start tonight. We will probably want to do some more specific discussion before we settle the capital.

[Olodune]

Originally Posted by mostly-harmless

o Super specialists need two excess food. I am not sure we have the means
mh

Specialists require food, settled GPs are free, sorry for the confusion. Getting enough GPPs for this to work may be a problem. That's why chopping out a few early wonders could be so attractive.

A trade route economy would be a different approach, I think it should work -- especially if we can find some seafood on the coast. With a lighthouse those would be 3/0/2 tiles, about as good are we're going to get I think this is very reliant on the GLH though.

@sunrise
I don't really see a need to metagame ourselves out of settling on river/coast resources. This should be plenty challenging enough, imo.

Edit: I assume using workboats is not allowed, correct?

[darrelljs]

The advantage of not using Sulla's save is I can read your thread .

Darrell

[mostly-harmless]

@ Sunrise: How are we loosing financial? By not having a different (a financial) leader?
@ Olodune: Oh, yes. GPs are free of course.

mh

[sunrise089]

Originally Posted by mostly-harmless

@ Sunrise: How are we loosing financial? By not having a different (a financial) leader?
@ Olodune: Oh, yes. GPs are free of course.

mh

Yes, sorry I was not more clear. I simply meant that binding ourselves to the leader in addition to the save forces us to give up synergy with a coastal city spam in favor of GP synergy.

@Olodune - Workboats are certainly allowed. Improving a fish, crabs, clam, whale, or offshore oil tile is certainly forbidden.

[LKendter]

Originally Posted by Olodune

A trade route economy would be a different approach, I think it should work -- especially if we can find some seafood on the coast. With a lighthouse those would be 3/0/2 tiles, about as good are we're going to get I think this is very reliant on the GLH though.

lurker's comment: Actually you can make it a 3/1/2 in your Moao city. A seafood heavy city will really be nice this game.

[mystyfly]

Lurker's comment:

Another interesting game to lurk there... after christmas things started rolling again Good to have you RB guys here

[darrelljs]

I would suggest you use the same map script, but with Huyana Capac. He's really the perfect leader for this game (says the go who hasn't figured out yet what Sulla has up his sleeve).

Darrell

[Ozbenno]

OK checking in. I'm going to get all my thoughts down (as difficult as it sounds ) and post them later today. I have thought about this a bit and a Representation/Pyramids approach is what I think would be best but I 'll post in more detail later.

[Olodune]

We could ask a generous soul to WB us Wang Kon if we want to go with coastal city spam. He is comparable to Sitting Bull in that he has protective combined with a strong economic trait.

The more I think about it, Sitting Bull's philo trait really makes me lean towards wonderspamming the start (as much as possible ).

Non special tiles that feed themselves, and have a surplus:

City Center (+2f +1h +1c)
Floodplains (+1f +1c)
Grass Forest (+1 h)
Coast (w/ Light) (+2c)
Ocean (w/ Light) (+1 c)
Riverside grass (+1 c)
Oasis (+1f +2c)
Freshwater Lake (+2c)
Lake (w/ Light) (+1f +2c)

Did I miss any? Really slim pickings, how can these compete with a handful of settled GPs?

[Sullla]

You guys are lucky that I always keep a copy of my 4000BC saves around, "just in case." I'll leave you to organize your own game on any terms you like, no more reading the thread until we finish our own effort.

[sunrise089]

Originally Posted by Olodune

We could ask a generous soul to WB us Wang Kon if we want to go with coastal city spam. He is comparable to Sitting Bull in that he has protective combined with a strong economic trait.

The more I think about it, Sitting Bull's philo trait really makes me lean towards wonderspamming the start (as much as possible ).

Non special tiles that feed themselves, and have a surplus:

City Center (+2f +1h +1c)
Floodplains (+1f +1c)
Grass Forest (+1 h)
Coast (w/ Light) (+2c)
Ocean (w/ Light) (+1 c)
Riverside grass (+1 c)
Oasis (+1f +2c)
Freshwater Lake (+2c)
Lake (w/ Light) (+1f +2c)

Did I miss any? Really slim pickings, how can these compete with a handful of settled GPs?

The real comparison is between coastal cities with +2 food from the city and perhaps +1 from a seafood resource (which will make such cities grow faster than most specialist cities) that generates 2 commerce from a lot of tiles (double ANY land tiles) and gets trade routes. Plus we have two relatively attainable wonders that help a lot - GL and Colossus.

The GP route relies on food that will rarely be sufficiently in excess, or building wonders that will get increasingly difficult to come by. I understand the Philo synergy though, so if we stick with Sitting Bull we may still want to head that way.

Since the consensus is to use Sullla's map at least, we need to decide whether to use his leader or not. I'll be sure to wait until everyone has a chance to post their thoughts, but I would like people to state their preference if possible. So far we've got nominations for Sitting Bull, Wang Kon, and Capac.

I lean towards the Koreans - they allow us to differentiate the financial city spam from the GP plan while keeping the second trait the same.

I'd probably be more inclined to support Sitting Bull than the Incans, since I'd rather not shoot for their same strategy and have a better leader for it.

[Ozbenno]

I'd vote for playing the exact same game as team a, similar to RB29. It would be a better comparison of how each team performed and what the better tactics were.

[·Imhotep·]

lurker's comment:

If you need someone WB'ing your save, I'll do it gladly. And no, it won't be one of my legendary hand-crafted maps ...

Imhotep

[Ozbenno]

OK here are the thoughts I have on the game...

Basically we need to use every advantage we can get in this game. So what are the advantages we have?

First we need to leverage the Philosophical trait (Protective is a wash). That means getting GP points. As we're unlikely to be able to run many specialists, that means wonders. If we snag Pyramids and use Representation, we should be looking at wonders that give you free specialists. Great Library (2 scientists), Temple of Artemis (Priest) are important wonders we should beeline. I also think we should have a crack at Oracle (but more on that later). In general, we should try and wonderspam as much as possible and employ as many specialists as we can. Chopping should come into play for important wonders.

[Thinking about chopping, as long as we don't overdo it, as we're not building improvements on the tiles, the forests can grow back for more chopping, we should identify squares we're unlikely to be able to work and chop them repeatably (as long as the forests keep growing back).]

Second, we need to get the most out of the Native Americans. The UU is somewhat useful as it is resourceless but the UB really grabs my fancy in this game. +3xp for archery (again resourceless) units. I reckon you could attempt a Feudalism slingshot from Oracle and be able to clear/capture the nearest AI, if we want to play an early agressive game. In any case archers and longbows are going to be important for defence. Stonehenge gives a free totem pole in every city, so if we want to be peaceful, build this.

So what are the techs we need to work towards from the start? Well we don't need any worker techs . Here are early techs I can see uses for, Masonry (Pyramids), Priesthood (Oracle), Sailing (trade on rivers), Alphabet (build research, spies), Code of Laws (courthouses), Currency (build wealth), Literature (Great Library). We then should work towards Banking for mercantilism I think.

How can we win this game? Actually most victory conditions seem to be in play. I'd rule Domination and Spae out as we will never have enough money to finance a large empire or the production to build the parts, I think. Leaves culture, diplo (UN or AP) and conquest. As its an Ice Age map, we'd need Astronomy and rifles for conquest I would think and Mass Media comes late in the game, so maybe culture and AP are the easy wins? Again, with the map type, we'd need Optics for AP, which isn't so onerous but the more I think about it, the more I think culture is the way to go. 9 cities only, found a couple of religions and wonder spam the culture. With Pyramids, we can use Universal Sufferage to buy the culture buildings. We'd be relying mainly on buildings, wonders and specialists and the ocasional GA for the culture but at Noble the AI isn't going to win the game until very late.

So there you go. No idea if any of this makes sense and it is very far from being a plan but that is my thoughts. What do we think?

[Atlas]

Listen, despite what people are saying the Native Americans are almost ideal for this challenge. We want to play the same game as Sullla's team. btw, i think we can beat their win time if we play it correctly.

Originally Posted by Ozbenno

First we need to leverage the Philosophical trait (Protective is a wash). That means getting GP points. As we're unlikely to be able to run many specialists, that means wonders. If we snag Pyramids and use Representation, we should be looking at wonders that give you free specialists. Great Library (2 scientists), Temple of Artemis (Priest) are important wonders we should beeline. I also think we should have a crack at Oracle (but more on that later). In general, we should try and wonderspam as much as possible and employ as many specialists as we can. Chopping should come into play for important wonders.

Agreed, but we really need some close coordination for what should be chopped and what should not be. If we go chopping everything in sight in the beginning for these early wonders we will be i trouble. I like the Great Library everything else (maybe Oracle) can wait. Here is the way I see the opening
-Oracle-> Metal Casting run a engineer specialist Rush the Great Library with the Engineer. Forget the rest of the wonders.

-The Alternative is chop the Pyramids and use the engineer to rush the Great Library

Do not plan on forests growing back. It just does not happen often enough to be part of a plan.

Originally Posted by Ozbenno

Second, we need to get the most out of the Native Americans. The UU is somewhat useful as it is resourceless but the UB really grabs my fancy in this game. +3xp for archery (again resourceless) units. I reckon you could attempt a Feudalism slingshot from Oracle and be able to clear/capture the nearest AI, if we want to play an early agressive game. In any case archers and longbows are going to be important for defence. Stonehenge gives a free totem pole in every city, so if we want to be peaceful, build this.

a Longbow attack is quite feasible, especially since we should have plenty of well promoted Longbows. Stonehenge is another story..

I think we need to rush our nearest neighbor with Dog Soldiers. They don't attack archers well, but a beeline should catch the AI with few or no archers. Depending on if our neighbor starts with Hunting or not.

Originally Posted by Ozbenno

How can we win this game? Actually most victory conditions seem to be in play. I'd rule Domination and Space out as we will never have enough money to finance a large empire or the production to build the parts, I think. Leaves culture, diplo (UN or AP) and conquest. As its an Ice Age map, we'd need Astronomy and rifles for conquest I would think and Mass Media comes late in the game, so maybe culture and AP are the easy wins? Again, with the map type, we'd need Optics for AP, which isn't so onerous but the more I think about it, the more I think culture is the way to go. 9 cities only, found a couple of religions and wonder spam the culture. With Pyramids, we can use Universal Sufferage to buy the culture buildings. We'd be relying mainly on buildings, wonders and specialists and the ocasional GA for the culture but at Noble the AI isn't going to win the game until very late.

Ozzzy we disagree here. I think Domination (or Conquest) are the way to go. I think the general plan should be.

Oracle ->Metal Casting-> Great Engineer-> Great Library-> Liberalism-> Nationalism-> tech Gunpowder

Then a MASSIVE drafting of Protective Muskets and just conquer everyone, let the Map dictate domination or conquest.

Basically the game is like this- in the beginning all civs have no tile improvements, but as the game goes on they get more and better tile improvements so we are at more of a disadvantage. Better to push for the earliest possible victory.