Why Sury II of Byzantium?
I figured it was high time I write a bit down as to why I suggested our team pick Sury (Exp/Cre) as our first pick, then Byzantium (Hippodrome, Cataphract, Myst/Wheel) as our second pick. As you all know, we had the sixth leader pick in the game, and the first five were possibly the best ones picked. Thus, I tried to explore other trait combinations that wouldn't force us to pair up Financial with a non-top tier secondary trait. Since Creative and Expansive are among the best other traits, it made sense for me to combine them together. Add in the fact that in this game (1) expansion and (2) economy will be the key, and I figured this was a straightforward leader selection. We have excellent traits for early and fast expansion, so the plan is to leverage that into working more commerce-heavy tiles and thus bolster our economy. I also have experience playing as Sury, and enjoy his traits.
Then, with the fifth civilization selection, I suggested Byzantium. If you'll recall, the Incans, the Indians, the Sumerians, and the Romans were all gone (in that order) by the time we were back up. Inca and India are by far my top two favorite civilizations, so there's a clear gap between them and the rest of the "top-tier" ones. Still, I think Byzantium is a solid pick here. The main benefit here is the strong Unique Unit. I'm hoping that there's going to be enough distance between capitals that teams will avoid ancient-era and classical-era warfare, which plays directly into the strengths of Byzantium! Once the civilizations get established, we can potentially beeline towards Guilds and wreak havoc on our neighbors with a buffed 2-move unit! In addition, we have a theatre replacement -- the Hippodrome -- which only costs 25 hammers for us (down from 50). While that's a modest savings, realize that the Hippodromes here are basically auto-builds in every city (one forest chop is enough!) and are going to be extremely important for Medieval era and Renaissance era warfare.
Of course, things don't come without costs. The major downside of Byzantium here is that we have weak starting techs -- Mysticism and The Wheel. For us, Mysticism is especially useless as we are Creative, but The Wheel is versatile, and means that we can get roads and trade routes up early, in some ways making up for our lack of Financial. And regardless, I've always wanted to play as Byzantium, but have never done so in single player as it meant that I would have to skip cataphracts.
So what can we do? Here's the general idea I have in mind:
1. We expand rapidly, making use of our traits to place cities in optimal locations and getting more workers out.
2. We consolidate during the late-Classical and early-Medieval era by growing our cities and possibly pre-building some units that upgrade to Cataphracts.
3. We beeline to Guilds and amass an army of Cataphracts, which ideally may help put us in a strong position in the Renaissance era.
For reference, here is the technology tree. Guilds requires both Feudalism and Machinery, so it will be a while before we get it, and if we do beeline it, we'll have to ignore the top of the tech tree (including Drama). But I don't view that as necessarily a downside; this actually gives us options. If we for some reason decide teams are going to mass-produce pikemen for some reason, then we have a Drama "beeline" to fall back on which will help us with a draft-based army. Furthermore, the way to Guilds isn't even a bad path. To get that, we'll need Monarchy and Metal Casting before we can start Feudalism and Machinery, respectively. Monarchy and Metal Casting are superb, obviously, and we'll want to run Hereditary Rule ASAP. A quick Feudalism beeline could also deter other teams from attacking us. In fact, I suspect other teams are thinking of ways to kick us down a notch so that Cataphracts don't dominate.