I was hoping that I got a decent seafood start, but obviously that wasn't the case, so I had to ditch the Fishing civs. I wasn't sure that I wanted to play Asoka, I think the game will likely be called by T120 and maybe earlier so I don't think the traits will have a chance to shine, so Asoka was out. That left Louis and Augustus, and I don't really see much to suggest either is a good choice: Augustus doesn't have a good second city site that I can see to rush out to, and with Louis I think would have to rush the Mids but I don't trust myself to get it. Without the ability to get to 4h/turn on T0 I'm not sure I really wanted to play an EXP leader, especially with toroidal, so I didn't want to play Sury.
That didn't leave much for me to pick. I then looked at Zara for the following reasons:
So I decided on Zara, risking someone else picking Justinian or Lincoln. If they do get picked, then I need to re-evaluate how to play out the start, but that is the gamble I've made and I think it's reasonably safe. I think out of the next 5 picks Sury might get taken by someone, at least 1 fishing civ will go that isn't Justinian, maybe someone takes Asoka.
FWIW, if the furs wasn't there I wouldn't have taken Zara, if there was a plain hill I'd likely have taken something else as well.
That didn't leave much for me to pick. I then looked at Zara for the following reasons:
- I still need to pick a CRE leader on RB.
- There are only 3 Myst civs, the other two being Justinian and Lincoln, so there is the chance I'm only the Myst civ.
- With the furs I can settle the starting location and get a size 7 capital working 5 grass hills, furs and corn and hence no need to build a granary to pump out settlers (17hpt, 1fpt and 17 commerce/turn).
- I could still get Agri within a turn of finishing the worker even if I went Meditation first, and the turns leeway means I can move the settler slightly further away from the corn without drastically affecting build times. The issue here is that all the forests really fuck up the scout moves.
- Hunting isn't entirely wasted because I need it to hook up the furs, which gives a decent commerce bonus to speed up future tech and I want it hooked to work at size 2 at the latest (I don't want to move the worker to a second food resource and then back again to the furs, it'l hook the corn then the furs then the second food resource if it exists).
- That means I'll have more time to get the second food tech which might be AH; if it is I'm going to have to get a settler out without slaving because I won't have any good tiles to work at size 4.
So I decided on Zara, risking someone else picking Justinian or Lincoln. If they do get picked, then I need to re-evaluate how to play out the start, but that is the gamble I've made and I think it's reasonably safe. I think out of the next 5 picks Sury might get taken by someone, at least 1 fishing civ will go that isn't Justinian, maybe someone takes Asoka.
FWIW, if the furs wasn't there I wouldn't have taken Zara, if there was a plain hill I'd likely have taken something else as well.