[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Old Harry]

I think together with Harry we can promise to you and other potential (ded-)lurkers that a constant reporting will be performed even if we experience some miserable Mortius-type of early exit or some kind of crippling rush.

Yeah, my crippling OCD means I can't actually move a scout without documenting every option. Some people consider this boring but this is a website about 1 food = 1.6 production = 2 2/3 commerce so they can get over it.

I think it'll be a couple of months before things get complex and turnplaying becomes a chore. Even then I think my current games will have finished by then so happy to take responsibility for playing until you've got time.

I agree that full C&D would be pointless and we should concentrate on getting the micro as good as possible, but RBmod means you don't know what techs your neighbours have until paper. I'd like to try to track roughly where our closest rivals are on tech until then - graphs is probably the best way to do it, combined with score increases. I'm all for ignoring score from pop and land, but lets flag it whenever anyone gets a soldier-tech so we know when that big stack of catapults is coming our way...

Leader choice

PHI sort of cries out for pyramids and/or great library, but in a game this size you're right we shouldn't be aiming for wonders.
CHA I think might be a better RBmod trait then you first imagine just because slavery isn't as strong and we want to grow cities bigger earlier. To be honest since I realised the power of slavery I've probably overdone the whipping so I'm looking to cut down anyway. I mean, I can stop any time I want to...

Of the other options out there, Seven made this handy list:

Financial: +1 commerce on all non-river tiles that have 2+ commerce. +100% production of Bank.

Expansive: +2 health per city. +35% production of Worker, Work Boat. +100% production of Market, Aqueduct, Grocer, Harbor.

Creative: +2 culture per city. +100% production of Theatre, Colloseum, Observatory.

Charismatic: +2 happiness. +1 happiness from Broadcast Tower. -25% XP needed for promotions.

Protective: Free CG1 promo for archery and gunpowder units. +100 production of Granary, Walls.

Imperialistic: +100% Great General emergence. +60% production of Settler. +100% production of Custom House

Aggressive: Free C1 promo for melee and gunpowder units. -25% city maintenance [Not shown in trait description. Bonus not shown in interface. Bonus is multiplicative with other maintenance modifiers. Final displayed city maintenance value is correct and includes this bonus.] +100% production of Barracks, Stable, Drydock.

Organized, Industrious, Philosophical, Spiritual: No change from BtS

Based on my very limited experience, rumour and hearsay:

The ones I'd like are FIN, PRO, ORG, SPI
The ones I'd settle for are CRE, IMP, PHI, AGG, CHA
The ones I'd hate are IND, EXP

I'm not really sure how to value AGG or IMP, so those could change. I think the only reason to go for IND would be if we think everyone else in the game is avoiding it, but how do we know they haven't thought of this too? CRE is nerfed by Barracks giving culture and losing cheap libraries, so it's position in the middle tier isn't exactly safe...

So with each re-roll our chances are roughly 4/11 that we'll get something I don't want and 8/11 that we'll get something I do want. Except that a bunch of leaders got picked already, who will presumably have good traits, so those odds will skewed against us by an unknown amount.

Civ choice
I like Mali well enough
- Skirmishers are exactly the sort of early UU that we want to deter aggression and perhaps use to annoy our neighbours until we're ready to go conquering.
- The Mint is rubbish
- Mining/Wheel are both decent starting techs, but if we have a couple of different food-types I think our start will be slow.

Conclusion
I wouldn't be totally upset if we were stuck with this combo, but the odds of rolling something from my likes trait list and getting slightly better starting techs mean I'm happy to re-roll if you want to.