Role Play Challenge: Brennus, A Simple Man

Welcome to my next installment of a RPC game. These game I play are meant to be fun with an educational play-style. I tend not to follow historical accuracy but have some fun with our beloved AIs in expected or unexpected situations.

This game is Brennus, a Simple Man. Brennus is a man everyone loves. Women flock to him, and men aspire to be like him. He is generally a peaceful guy who always looks at the best in everyone and never holds a grudge. He can play a peaceful player and if involved in war never takes offense, in fact he sees as nothing more than a game of competition!

Also our beloved bohemouth is as dumb as a stump. His Celtic people love him, but say he has a KISS approach to leadership, Keep It Simple Stupid!!! Yes, Brennus knows how to make mines, he knows how to make Farms, and he know how to develope resources. That's about it. He believes in assigning specialists to certain tasks, but not an unusually overabundance of then. He also does not believe in competing for world wonders, he prefers his simple national wonders.

So here are the Ruels and guidleines for our beloved, if intelectually challenged leader

Rules (unbreakable)

1) He cannot build cottages, watermills, workshops, lumbermills, forrest preserves etc... Farms/mines/resources! He may build roads and railraods normally. He must also pillage these improvements if captured from an AI.
2) He cannot adopt Caste system. Otherwise he can run specialists as he sees fit. Thuis we are not running a classic SE game, it's a Food/production game.
3) He cannot build World Wonders, although he may capture them. He can build national wonders
4) He can build shrines, academies, scotland yard, but he cannot found corps.

Guidleines
1) He is friendly and must try to open borders with anyone ASAP. Even after a war.
2) Although he prefers to live peacefully, he is allowed his urges to have a good combat competition with other Ais. Meaning, he can declare war at will but should generally try to play nice.
3) Being a good Celtic he "should" try and settle cities on a hill. Based on the random start I reverted this to a guidleine as this may be broken on the capital placement.

Game Parameters

Marathon Speed
Monarch difficulty
Rocky Fractal Map (sorry guys, no highlands for me)
Medium sea level.
All Victory conditions are in play

Our Beloved leader



And the Statrt!!



Well that sort of sucks.

My guess is that the plains to the west have a hidden resource. I say move the scout and see what we have.

Brennus starts with Hunting and Mysticism. If he's got a commerce tile I like going early religion, then perhaps archery/mining/food. Slow start but that's par for a Celtic start.

Good thing Brennus has s=dynamite traits in Charismatic and Spiritual.

I'd consider settling on the plains hill 2E, but that would depend on the scout's reveal.

In general we are going to have LOTS of production

Commerce is
Luxuries
Trade routes
Rivers
Water

So
Coastal Settling,
Code of Laws to cut costs for a large empire,
and lots of REX (peaceful and otherwise) to get that large empire and use that production

"Well that sort of sucks"

Awesome LOL

Anyway..depending on the scouts finds, I'd settle somewhere along the coast, preferably 1N of the scouts current position. If we can't build cottages, We need all the help we can get >.<

Finally, your next RPC.

But this aint gonna be easy for me without cottages, as im highly addicted to them

Surely there must be more to this start? There must be some nice things hiding in the uncovered squares, atleast I hope there is! I'd be tempted to send the scout to 1S of the settler as there appears to be some gaps in the forest which might have some goodies.

Well it's too bad you can't cottage, I have a feeling that moving 1 NW into that forest square near the river would net you some good cottaging land.
I advocate moving the scout 1S, then deciding the rest from there.

That's one of the worst starts i've ever seen.



Why are you so against highlands maps?

BalbanesBeoulve said:

That's one of the worst starts i've ever seen.



Why are you so against highlands maps?

Click to expand...

For a few reasons.

I prefer maps that are from the standard Pangea/Continents/Acheopolego/fractal/Big-little mold.

Unless I am mistaking, Highlands is a flat map, without the circumnavigation aspect.

Highlands seams to play into this game TOO well. I want to see if we can actually play a game with only farms/mines and win. The Highlands gives us an edge. No edges for RPCs, only diusadnvantages

I tried explaining the concept to Brennus, but he didn't get it. You try talking to a guy who stares at stone boulders all day for fun.

this is certainly going to be interesting, and probably quite educational if you do well (knowing how addicted to cottages alot of people are)

you're almost guaranteed a hidden resource of some sort (possibly multiple) given the otherwise horrible start, the question is what/where is it. This is one of those situations where marathon is going to pay off quite heavily, taking a turn or two to scout the surroundings a bit better before deciding where to plop down the capital wont cost as heavily and may pay dividends in the long run. As it stands, with what we can see, settling on either that plains hill off to the east, or that hill 1 to the north of the scout may both be good spots, but you almost certainly need to see more of whats around either to make a solid choice either way.

madscientist said:

For a few reasons.

I prefer maps that are from the standard Pangea/Continents/Acheopolego/fractal/Big-little mold.

Unless I am mistaking, Highlands is a flat map, without the circumnavigation aspect.

Highlands seams to play into this game TOO well. I want to see if we can actually play a game with only farms/mines and win. The Highlands gives us an edge. No edges for RPCs, only diusadnvantages

I tried explaining the concept to Brennus, but he didn't get it. You try talking to a guy who stares at stone boulders all day for fun.

Click to expand...

Well there's actually 2 different highland scripts. One is flat, but there's also one called global highlands that's the same as fractal, except more hills and mountains. The world wraps to the left and right, and the top and bottom are ice. I've seen it generate pangaes, or multiple large islands/minicontinents or even pretty big continents. Global highlands you'd like, i think.

As for the advantage, well, you're going to need it. You've put yourself at a massive disadvantage here. Your capital looks like it won't be able to work much than farmed plains. Yuck.

I've played out the first 50 turns or so, you may want to check back at this when you get there...

Scenario for this map (download, unzip to the WorldBuilder folder, start Civ, load your favourite mod, then go to the scenario menu or create a custom scenario).

Only Brennus is selectable as a playable civ, so you don't see what other civs are on the map before you actually meet them.

@ madscientist

What is the rule on projects? Can Brennus build those?

I would move the scout 1 NE to hopefully see the tiles to the north of the settler in the BFC before deciding to settle-or reroll a start. Unless there is corn or wheat to the south of the settler, this is the most food poor start I have seen.

nbcman said:

@ madscientist

What is the rule on projects? Can Brennus build those?

I would move the scout 1 NE to hopefully see the tiles to the north of the settler in the BFC before deciding to settle-or reroll a start. Unless there is corn or wheat to the south of the settler, this is the most food poor start I have seen.

Click to expand...

Good question. Any item that is a race to build is out, otherwise it's OK. Example, the internet is out but Apollo and Spaceship parts are in.

One suggestion: since Brennus is such a, um .. 'basic' kinda guy ... how about he always gives female AI leaders whatever they want.

Interesting. Hammer Economy without the hammers and Specialist Economy without the use of CS specialists. If I tried a shadow of this game, early alphabet and building 'Research' would be my main building in this game I think.

On the plus side you needn't be worried about being pillaged.

Looking forward to the game.

slobberinbear said:

One suggestion: since Brennus is such a, um .. 'basic' kinda guy ... how about he always gives female AI leaders whatever they want.

Click to expand...

Now recall Brennus's BIG Celtic Sister . That's how Brennus learned his combative/competitive skills! He would only look at war with the ladies as a fun "roll in the hay".

As far as giving the ladies what they want, well I think since Brennus is such a hunk, they should be donning him with gifts!!!!

I did play that once with washington, and I am still sore from getting my chain yanks by the ladies in this game!

The plains hill to the east has fresh water and an extra hammer, and would definitely be within the spirit of the RPC.

You certainly don't have to settle it if the resources turn out to suck or anything but... how much worse can it be?

Solon70 said:

The plains hill to the east has fresh water and an extra hammer, and would definitely be within the spirit of the RPC.

You certainly don't have to settle it if the resources turn out to suck or anything but... how much worse can it be?

Click to expand...

That was what I first thought but 2 problems, neither of which stops us from doing that

1) We forgo founding an early religion

2) losing a hidden resource to the east.


The scout will determine what we do. If there are grains or livestock to the west or south we settle in place. If it's more plains I think we settle on the hill.

Let's just keep it simple for our big Friend

Food, good, settle.

No food, bad, move.

Sound reasonable!!

Yup
..............