Epic8 – Potluck
Pregame Analysis:
Well this is a doozy of a game, and one I’ve been looking forward to taking part in since it was hinted a little while ago. For the three people reading this who have no idea of the uniqueness of the concept, I’ll briefly explain; There are eight Civilisations on a Pangea map and their starting locations have been fixed (i.e. Mali is always in the same spot in the North, Rome the same spot to the East, etc.), however each player will be assigned one of these starts at random (actual dice rolls) and so a player as Mali will compete against an AI Rome, while another player as Rome will compete against an AI Mali. Come reporting day then, we not only have a chance to compare our moves against others (dice-permitting), but also against the AI – under pressure from 7 different human controlled Civs … it’s the ultimate comparison!
Note: this is being written before playing any turns, so
I have not idea whether
So I get to work on Monday morning after a weekend away and open my inbox to find my start. Griselda’s e-mail contains an attachment: RBCiv_epic8_England_start.zip
Hmmm; not who I’d been hoping for, but we can definitely work with Elisabeth. I say “not who I’d been hoping for” here fairly lightly, because I’d been struck by something Sirian said in the info thread which had germinated an idea in my mind. Here’s the relevant line:
Scenario Goals: Play the hand you are dealt.
As I thought about this some more, I gradually started seeing it as “Play as the hand you are dealt” and decided that I would pursue a little added variant; taking on some of the characteristics of the Leader I was handed. I don’t mean “Play like an AI”, since half the point of this scenario is to compare the two, but I hoped to be able to pinpoint some of the key personality traits of the Leader and emphasise them in my play. For example; everyone who’s played the game knows that Mansa Musa is an inveterate Tech whore, willing to trade monopoly techs with anyone who has anything he needs – and often at fallen-off-the-back-of-a-lorry prices – at the other end of the scale, Tokugawa has a tendency to be somewhat xenophobic as far as inter-Civ relations are concerned and has much higher standards for his trading partners. As these are probably the easiest Leaders to quantify, I had been “hoping” for one of them.
So, how to pursue Elizabeth … well for a start she’s a Techer (though much more discerning with her trading than ‘ol MM); as far as religion goes, there’ll be no early religions, but she does often seem to get one of the second tier (Christianity, Confucianism, Taoism); foreign relations seem a little difficult to define, but as far as I can tell Elizabeth has a long memory for being slighted, tends to put a medium stock in shared religion and you really have to work to build up fair-trade bonuses. She is, however, enthusiastic about shared Favourite Civic - which we will, of course, be adopting as soon as available.
The Plan…
So my plan is to emphasise research technologies early, and while not exactly neglecting military, certainly not focus on it as a way to victory. I anticipate a peaceful game, but those who “Choose Unwisely” will certainly be hounded; I can see us being drawn into a war by a friend, and if one of the neighbours proves uppity then punitive raids may well be in order; focused expansion through conflict, however will not be on the cards. To determine friends and enemies I will try to quantify relations in much the same way as the AI, and also use that to guide my trading partners, etc.
As a short-term goal I plan to pursue the founding of
Christianity – probably lightbulbed by a Prophet
generated by
So what does the save have in store….