So....Gandhi of France Anyone? (Leader/Civ Picking Thread)

[superjm]

I say if we have the chance to grab 2 financial leaders, we go for it. I think ultimately the decision is down to whether we want to go full-bore cottage spam(boring but effective) or full SE(potentially more effective but micromanagement hell). Heck, not like Mansa wouldn't be able to take advantage of a Mids play if he needed to since he's SPI.

Still, WK is right in that Mids Gandhi could potentially be more interesting, so I wouldn't be opposed to a Gandhi pick at all. Just know that with maintenance scaling the way it does here FIN does become sort of a de facto expansion trait (if you think reaaaaly hard about it ) so it's going to be a very strong play regardless.

[oledavy]

About to head out, casting my final vote in favor of Mansa. It leaves room for WK's plan, but also gives us the opportunity to run two cottage economies and get extra commerce right off the bat

[WarriorKnight]

WK, you mentioned that wasn't the type of game you were looking for though. Want to elaborate more?

One of the reasons I didn't do so well in PBEM25v was that I was burnt out on standard civ game play (which I didn't realize until halfway through that game). Ever since that I've tried to make sure there was always some variant to the games I play, and indeed aside from PBEM25v the last 3 games I signed up for have all been team games. One of the many reasons PB6 was so fun is that there were 2 variants (Medieval & 3 player teams), so I'm looking for something slightly different then standard civ gameplay when I sign up for a game.

Now obviously if we take double FIN there'll still be some teamwork, but aside from stuff that teammates would always do it will be pretty boring with standard FIN cottage spam for both players, as you guys have already mentioned.

Happy for someone to prove me wrong though. I doubt it would be a dealbreaker but like I said it's not really what I signed up for.

If gandhi is still available he'd make the best pure support dude.

That's pretty much why I'd prefer Gandhi over Mansa.

Also, Smackdown totally took my first pick idea (Mehmed/Darius of Sumer)

ORG is not as bad as you guys say, if Superjm's chart proves nothing else.

With that in mind, we should consider Zara and Asoka, or grab HRE (terrible starting techs, I know) with this pick.

Eh, ORG still requires we rush CoL, and aside from cheap courthouses ORG doesn't give a whole lot more then that.

That said, instead of Gandhi or Mansa I think we might want to take a civ with this pick. Maya would be a very good pick, it's certainly viable and starting with Mining/Myst would mean we can take a Agri/Wheel civ on the way back, and there are plenty of good Agri/Wheel civs out there. From what I've seen of the leaders so far I think we may have a good shot at getting a good SPI leader when it gets back to us.

[oledavy]

Posting from my phone.

Maya isn't a bad idea at this point either. We just need to come to a decision soon, we've had the snake pick for 15 hours.

[superjm]

Mansa is my choice from a position of "winning the game" but I'm willing to acquiesce to WarriorKnight in favor of a more hands-on type of strategic approach. So I guess I'll change my vote to either Ghandi or Maya, depending on if we want civ or leader this pick.

[WarriorKnight]

Mansa is my choice from a position of "winning the game" but I'm willing to acquiesce to WarriorKnight in favor of a more hands-on type of strategic approach. So I guess I'll change my vote to either Ghandi or Maya, depending on if we want civ or leader this pick.

Yeah, that seems to be the current dilemma IMO (and BTW, thanks).

Shoot, what do you think? I have a slight preference to Maya but would be fine with either. If you can't reach any of us, then go ahead and pick whichever one you want, we've taken long enough as it is.

[Shoot the Moon]

I'm fine with any of the stuff being discussed, although I'm not so sure on Maya: if both Gandhi and Mansa go after that who would we pick? Either way feel free to take what you want WK as you'll be the one playing this pick I assume (well maybe not maya who knows on that but at the very least the leader).

[WarriorKnight]

I'm fine with any of the stuff being discussed, although I'm not so sure on Maya: if both Gandhi and Mansa go after that who would we pick? Either way feel free to take what you want WK as you'll be the one playing this pick I assume (well maybe not maya who knows on that but at the very least the leader).

That's a good point, but the reverse also applies (if Maya fall, which civs do we take?). Considering that the civs have a jigsaw puzzle in the form of starting techs to figure out, and I can think of at least 4 SPI leaders to take even though only 2 will be chosen before us (Gandhi, Justinian and worst case Izzy, not including Mansa), I'll go with Maya on this one so we have simple decisions for the next round.

[oledavy]

Sounds good to me

[WarriorKnight]

So with Maya picked we have a few simple choices to make, how to prioritize the remaining SPI leaders (I assume we want a SPI leader yes?), and how we rank the remaining civs that start with Agriculture. I've already touched on some viable SPI leaders last post (Gandhi, Justinian, Izzy), all that remains is how to rank them. Since Gandhi is clear 1, it's basically IMP vs EXP IMO. EXP is the stronger trait normally, but EXP is slightly weakened if our supporter isn't going to be expanding much, and the settler bonus is easier to transfer to a teammate.

As for civs, we basically want one that starts with agriculture. We could potentially be last to pick a civ if HHHHH and HAK pick both civs first, but doubling up on agriculture is unlikely (plus Smack already picked Sumeria so they probably won't pick another Agri civ) so I think we only have to pick 3 civs, although we should have 4 just to be safe. The 4 civs I posted before are a good starting point.

Agri civs:
Egypt (Wheel)
Ottomans (Wheel)
Zulu (Hunting)
France (Wheel)

Not sure how useful any other civ that starts with agri is, aside from Sumeria which is gone already. Egypt and Otto's are definitely the best 2, although I don't know which is better (awesome UU + maybe useful UB vs very nice UB + decent UU). I'd probably lean towards Egypt since I was Otto's in PB3. Likewise France and Zulu are both interesting choices (france has terrible UB and great UU while zulu has decent UU/UB but forces starting with hunting instead of wheel), not sure which deserves no.3 spot.