Transition Economy Space Race (TESR) Planning Thread

[Snaaty]

@ Future:

Emperor should be pretty well possible, when team moves one direction... ...but the last open game in the strat forum showed, that with lots of builders and techdealer AI´s around, emperor can be pretty ruff techwise

When team doesn´t coordinate, we wont make it I think

...

Overal strat:

We MUST play save... ...no gambling, no polluting of GP pool etc... ...this are the misktakes that would kill us.

...

Wonders an SE should have:

GL, since we wont play phil. All other wonders are just nice to have. And GL we will get garantied when beelining lit.

...

Something to think about.

Althoug I play heave SE, I usually build 3-5 cottages around capital VERY early, cut every forest down pre 2000 BC, avoid any wonders in capital to work these cottages right from start

I also try to generate a GS around 800 AD (=early lib chopped and 2 scientists in 2nd city) in my games to build an early adacemy (can do wonders for reserach)

Better to build wonders (GL) in another town where we have lots of forrests (and to squeeze in math for better chopping) and can just continue with the NE (or was it HE again???)

Early bureau with cottaged capital and pure FE for all other cities no emperor AI´s should be able to keep up

A switch to caste for the lib race and 4 scientiest (+2 GL) combined with pacifism will do the rest

EDIT:

good leadertraits for higer levels:

org (maybe strongest trait in game for higer levels... ...cheap expansion and 2 pop whips for courthouse)
char (+1 happy right from start & +1 for obelisk... ...well, what to say more)
phil, financ I wouldn´t take, because the bias game to strong into one direction
spirit I dont find that strong (but can be personal opinion, I wont object)


My vote goes for Brennus (org/char)

 

[futurehermit]

^^^Couple mistakes in your post that I will correct Snaaty, if that is ok. I think you meant 800 BC not 800 AD for the academy, in which case I would agree that is a good use for the 1st GS. Cottaging the capital for bureaucracy makes complete sense to me. I definitely want to see us run caste system + pacificism. However, I also want us to get the pyramids and run representation. I know it is not "essential", but it makes things extraordinarily more powerful and I would really like to show that off. Parthenon can help with more gpp if we go industrious to nab the pyramids.

org and char are both decent traits, although my heart is really leaning toward industrious and pyramids. spiritual also is compelling given the civic changes we will be making. however, i am less attached to spiritual if the group more strongly favours another trait. in other words, i would argue harder for industrious than for spiritual.

brennus is spir/char not org/char. Napoleon is org/char. Nappy is a fine leader, with nice starting techs. I would certainly not be opposed to going with him, although like I said I would really like to see us nab the pyramids and not going with industrious means reliance on stone, which is a rarity in my experience (also seems to be positioned in bad places).

So far I am leaning toward this potential roster:

Futurehermit
Snaaty
Johnny Rico
Lasombra
Pigswill

Possibly another person, depending on what the group thinks. A couple have graciously withdrawn. I like vra, but am honestly a bit concerned about some rogue decisions made in our emperor domination game.

with these settings: Emperor/Continents/Normal/Standard/Default

leader: still being negotiated. hopefully we can come to some consensus so we can roll a start.

 

[pigswill]

Futurehermit (is there an acceptable abbreviation?) I understand that you're keen on industrious trait and building pyramids in particular. These would certainly power the early/mid SE.
However I recall from earlier threads on SE that there has been a criticism levelled that pyramids overpower SE and that without pyramids SE is not so strong.
If we're looking for a general strategy then there may be an argument not to rely on wonders to defuse comments about a strategy being wonder-dependent.
If that were the case then the argument in favour of industrious isn't quite so compelling.
In view of these comments you may not be surprised to learn that I've not been building wonders in my own games (but seem to get by without them).Obviously this is one view among several but i thought I may as well say it now before we get too detailed on strategy.

 

[futurehermit]

hermit, future, fh, etc. are all fine by me and have been used by different people on different forums. whatever suits your fancy

you make a good point. i guess the decision is between whether we are trying to *maximize* the strategy or trying to *generalize* the strategy.

i was thinking in terms of maximizing, but perhaps generalizing is in fact the way to go (i would be interested in what the rest of the team thinks).

maybe maximizing would mean playing as liz and building the pyramids (maybe even WBing in stone to provide a best-case scenario).

but then, of what good is this for the community? if we go more the generalizing route, then it can be a nice baseline that people can add onto with industrious-pyramids or philosophical or financial or whichever way they like to play...

we already seem to have at least near-consensus regarding avoiding philosophical and financial.

then perhaps we should go the generalizing route and avoid industrious as well (to avoid people saying our strategy is "wonder dependent" like you say, i agree it's a good point).

people generally seem to think that organized is underpowered compared to other traits (although some, like Snaaty, highly favour it ). so, maybe that is a good one to go with. expansive isn't seen as highly powerful, so maybe Mehmed is a candidate leader?

i love charismatic to death and think it's a superb trait. however, i think it lends itself more to militaristic victories. not that we won't be warmongering, of course...so Nappy is a candidate as well.

washington possibly?

i'd love to get a start rolled up, so hopefully we can come to some consensus on a leader.

before we play, we will have to discuss our opening strategy and mid term goals, but that is helped imo by looking at a start.

 

[Snaaty]

@ Future:

Thanks for correcting some of my mistakes (you live, you learn... ...so I´ve proven again that it´s not so clever doing 2 things parallel)

Yes, I meant 800 BC and mixed Nappy and Brennus... ...Nappy is great & the org + char combo really gives a SE a huge headstart by allowing to settle/conquer early 6+ cities and grow them up to size 6 without any strat resources (= easy GS generation early). This also gives a big advantage for wonders (may even rival ind), because 2 more tiles can be worked

With a decent (foodrich start) we could even go settlerspamming after growing capital to size 5/6

...

But in fact, I don´t really mind which leader we play, just my 2 cents

 

[futurehermit]

I'm a big fan of Nappy and if we are going to avoid philosophical, financial, and industrious then I think he is a leading candidate. Hopefully others will chime in with their thoughts as well.

 

[pindicator]

lurker's comment:
You may want to try a creative leader for cheap libraries. Hatty seems like a good choice for this type of game.

 

[sunrise089]

I still like Industrious/Spiritual, since IMHO it allows you to apply the "general" strategy label by substituting stone for Industrious. Now if you had BOTH I would say it wouldn't be that applicable.

Is cottaging the capital normally part of the SE strategy? Because cotteges and a beeline for Beaurocracy and an early academy seems alfully like things one would do in a CE.

 

[Snaaty]

Is cottaging the capital normally part of the SE strategy? Because cotteges and a beeline for Beaurocracy and an early academy seems alfully like things one would do in a CE.

There have been huge discussions where the difference betwenn SE CE hybrid etc. is in the strat forum...

I wouldn´t stick that much to the "what is an SE CE" really discussion but to try to max. out techspeed (what is the main purpos of his threat/game if I got it right). And for this, and SE with some cottages around capital (not many, 3-5 are enough) and early bureau + academy is best in my opinion

 

[druidravi]

Lurker' comment

Have you considered Montezuma , spiritual aggressive . SE main strength early game is warfare and unit production through whipping. Aggressive helps early and late game warring and UB sacrificial altar helps whipping. Spiritual is always good . He is neither philosophical or financial.

 

[pigswill]

Just added this comment to the strategy article on 'GP production: one city or many' :

It's also worth considering that it takes time and resources to create a good GP Farm; relevant techs have to be discovered, wonders have to be built, the city has to produce food and grow to support specialists (and it can't run as many specialists while growing), once GP farm reaches health/happy caps buildings/wonders have to be built to raise caps (or additional units shipped in while running HR).

Therefore while the maths indicate a GP farm running eg 40gppt will outpace five cities running eg 10gppt you need to work out how long it will take your GP Farm to create that kind of output and whether its better to be running multiple GP producers in the meantime.

Whilist I'm not clever (or keen) enough to do the maths this suggests to me that early game (before GP farm matures) it will be stronger to run multiple GP producers (aka specialist economy), late game (with mature GP farm) its better to run single GP producer (and cottage over the rest of the cities) and somewhere in the middle it will become very confusing.
__________________

 

[Snaaty]

@ Pigswill:

That´s why I love the charism. trait that much for SE in the beginning...

It helps bringing up your happy cap to 7/8 easily. Then, with a city that has 2 food resources you can support 4 specialists quite early. If it´t the city with the GL and NE (or was it HE again) whipped/chopped and running pacifism/caste you get 60+ GPP´s around 100 AD

The first 2 specialists are better produced somwhere else (1 for academy, 1 for bulbing Phil) to allow GP-farm to build GL & NE. After that, no more wonders are needed up to lib. I have no exact numbers (math...) but thats my experience

Once lib hits home, I usually fire all specialists, because effect of bulbing wears off quite fast around that point of the game

 

[pigswill]

sunrise089: I' think that nearly all games are hybrid to an extent. I don't have a problem (practically or conceptually) with having a cottaged capital (three cheers for the academy) and a mil city in an SE in the same way I don't have a problem with a GP Farm and mil city in a CE.

In terms of leader/civ I'm a fan of spiritual because I find that if I've just played a spiritual leader then the next game I play without spiritual I really miss the anarchy-free civic/religion swops (and I can't say that I miss another trait to the same extent).

Monte sounds good at the beginning (and its difficult to underestimate the importance of a good start) but I'm not sure that aggressive is that powerful later in the game.

Brennus also sounds good at the beginning (see Snaaty's post above); charismatic will probably wear better than aggressive later in the game.

Ramses sounds good if we're looking at wonders and has a nice early UU.

Having said that I also like organised; its a subtle trait but a jolly useful one so I'd definitely have a soft spot for Asoka (ageing hippies rule the world). Fast workers are the only UU that don't obselete.

So my preferences for leader are first Asoka, joint second Brennus/Ramses, third Napoleon.

 

[lasombra]

I really do like spiritual but it's not a must...

concerning the industrious trait. I would rather skip it because it looks like some of us (hermit ) are getting a little wonder happy. we don't need them all. there is better stuff to do than building wonders. as snaaty said, GL is important and easy to get so...

I would be fine with nappy. haven't played with him a lot so it's time to learn something and the traits fit perfectly to our scheme

so my recommendations:

Nappy

normal speed
continents (or we could do terra (the one where you can discover "america" later) to add some spice)

getting a decent number of cottages running in the capital early helps a lot. what snaaty suggested (cottages in capital, scientists in 2nd city) is so powerful. it really speeds up the game and makes teching so easy... all we have to do is survive

yeah, so roll a start with nappy and we can talk about tech priorities...

oh, don't care about asoka but if you guys want him that's fine with me.

Snaaty: why don't you value spiritual that high. I know your playstyle is a little different, but I really learned to enjoy switching civics quite alot in the midgame (around liberalism). in and out of pacisfisms for some GP or some drafting with XP...

 

[lasombra]

so that almost makes three votes for Nappy

 

[futurehermit]

Ok, Nappy it is then. Not using any of philosophical, financial, industrious, and spiritual will probably gain us significant credibility in making a case for a transition economy. These traits would only make it stronger imo and, arguably, when you don't have any of these traits, perhaps a transition economy really is the best way to go if planning on space race.

I will roll a start later today and make a game thread. We still need some discussion.

P.S., as for being "wonder happy" with industrious I regularly get those wonders and the combination of them are extremely powerful. the thing is, parthenon is often available long into the ADs, so you can really get it at your leisure. GL you can get no problem as long as you beeline it. the only one that is a bit tricky is the pyramids, but as long as you get started on it early with a high production center with a few chops, it is no problem as well. you start off with less production of other stuff, but economically you can only support a few cities early on anyways and with the pyramids you rapidly catch up what you lost out on.

 

[ungy]

I had expressed interest earlier and I'm happy to play or sit out if there is excess demand. I am an emp/low imm player looking to kick the CE habit.

I'd be looking to learn from this, and the only way to do that is to have constuctive discussions about team strategy before the sets are played. Then the active player executes the agreed upon strat--but my primary interest is in the discussions.

 

[Snaaty]

go nappy go

 

[futurehermit]

Hi Ungy, since you are an emp/imm player, I will include you in the roster to make 6. I also like that you are really interested in the discussion.

 

[lasombra]

this looks to be fun!

about the wonders: yeah, let's see what bonuses we have. in my opinion it also depends on our production capacities. one of the best games I have had lately was where I only build the GL and that was it. I rather build troops and infrastructure. but I like wonders, too so let's see what we need and can get.