[SPOILERS] Seven Russias Into the Periclous Fray

[Krill]

I don't think it's the settings that enable that tech choice then.

EDIT: ugh, I'm being grumpy. There are more than a few options here, obviously don't need me to spoil them. But it's not a total slam dunk on the starting techs.

I look forward to your evaluations of the traits and civs for this start.

[SevenSpirits]

Certainly the map plays a role too. It's always possible to have e.g. your two food resources be bananas if the mapmaker thinks they're hilarious. BTS map generation can start you with a plains cow and no other food resource. In RBMod, if the mapmaker just gives you deer, they're kind of being an asshole.

Anyway, I'm happy about the options I have, something which took both certain settings and a reasonable map to happen. Specifically, I'm happy about them in comparison to a lot of actual games that I've played where I had much less freedom (or greater punishments for deviating from the "good" starting techs).

[SevenSpirits]

An important fact of playing an 11 player game is that religions are more contested. An important fact of playing with completely unknown players is you can't know they won't go religion super early or even first. How to react to this?

One option is to pick Inca and research Buddhism first, AH second. In this case the worker has to waste one turn while AH finishes. Religion is very likely, modulo other crazy players (in particular, spain is the most dangerous opponent). Then if EXP I can go Terrace second and grow super quickly to size 5 or 6. Research of mining, BW, and the wheel lags, though, and the worker won't be too useful after improving the resources.

Another option is to pick creative. Then I don't have to worry about these religions almost at all.

Third option is to plan to get stonehenge, what with all these forests. For this I need to be IND, and again, the fact that there are some wild card players in the game makes it a gamble.

Fourth option is to enter the game without a hard and fast plan about this and take things as they come, trying to pick up a religion a bit later.

[SevenSpirits]

Starting techs:

* Agriculture is a tech I need, but as mentioned there's plenty of time to get it and it's one of the cheap ones. So if I start with agriculture, I lose in raw beakers, but gain in flexibility of what I can research in the next few techs.

* Hunting is a tech I would like since it makes the scout faster and discounts AH, but it's not necessary. Again there's no need to start with it and it's cheap, but if I do start with it rather than teching it first, I get 5 extra turns of higher scout movement.

* Fishing is a tech I don't need, but if I'm not planning for early religion I will still consider fishing civs because it's decent beaker value and quite a few civs which start with it have some pretty nice UUs/UBs.

* Mining is a good tech - it's needed for bronze working which I will want very soon. It has medium cost so it's good value to start with.

* The Wheel is a strong tech that can wait a bit longer, but is expensive so it's good value to start with.

* Mysticism is a potentially very important tech that I may or may not want. If I do want it, it's very valuable to start with since it's time sensitive and expensive.

Overall, all the techs have pros and cons except for fishing, which doesn't really have any pros except for the civs it's attached to. Agriculture/Mystiism is the best combo for getting Buddhism. Mining/Mysticism is the best combo for getting Stonehenge. Mining/Wheel is best if I am creative and want to skip hunting. Other combinations of Agriculture/Hunting/Wheel/Mining are all reasonable. Combinations involving fishing are mildly subpar, and Mysticism/Fishing is very bad. Mysticism/Wheel and Mysticism/Hunting are all mediocre because they are a bit too slow to reach Meditation or Polytheism.

I am not sure what I want. Given that I just played a game as Montezuma though, I think I prefer to avoid spiritual, so that makes creative or industrious (for henge) more appealing (and biases me away from Izzy of Inca).

[SevenSpirits]

Since I decided on the traits, in theory I must think they are all about equal in general. So what makes some traits stand out especially with this map and start?

* FIN: Nothing special going on with this.
* EXP: Nor this. Well, maybe I can say the +2 health doesn't look too important for our capital.
* CRE: The game is above average in player count, so there are fewer religions per player, so CRE is worth more. Also, we have dyes, so CRE's theater discount is worth a bit more.
* SPI: Sort of the inverse of CRE - it's worth a bit less since getting a religion will be harder than average.
* ORG: Lighthouses worth a bit more than average, courthouses worth a bit less. I'd call it a wash.
* IND: I think that not seeing any marble or stone is a mild drawback for IND. No precious metals is too.
* PHI: A huge map means that Oxford requires extra universities. Maybe that makes PHI better? This capital would certainly like to have Oxford.
* IMP: No resources that combo with cheap Markets, and not a lot of hills, so I think it's worse than typical.
* CHA: We have 3 luxuries in sight (including a duplicate dye) and will surely want to research calendar for them. So the happiness is less valuable.
* AGR: No Flood Plains around. I'd say this is a fairly average, mayble slightly below average situation for AGR.
* PRO: Only one plains hill we can work and almost no plains we can workshop at guilds+caste or chemisty. And it only gives 3t on the first worker, and we already have a 3t discount courtesy of the plains hill, so that aspect is a bit below average too.

I think my ideal pick is Pericles of Russia.

[SevenSpirits]

In reality, what traits do I think are most likely to be overpowered? AGR and PRO of course. AGR is a little dangerous and it's unfortunately hard to tweak small amounts. I think the current version is liable to be overpowered, but I can't know either way until we actually play a game with it. I don't intellectually think that PRO is too good, but a lot of people disagree with me on how much of EXP's benefit was in the granary bonus vs how much was in the worker bonus. So there's some indication I could be undervaluing the worker bonus, in which case PRO could be too strong and/or EXP could be a bit weak. We'll just have to see. It's not surprising that the two new traits are the most in danger of being unbalanced.

If I can't get Pericles by the way, I was thinking about taking an EXP leader to see how well that plays.

[SevenSpirits]

Well PRO is certainly going to get a good workout this game. 50% of leader picks so far have it. PRO/AGR, PRO/IMP, PRO/FIN, PRO/CHA.

To my surprise and regret, no IND leaders have been picked yet. And here I am with a PHI-synergy civ, and no IND/PHI leader exists.

Spain got picked though which validates my avoidance of Inca.

[SevenSpirits]

Got my preferred Russia on the way there and Pericles on the way back. I wonder if anyone's going to pick an IND civ. Well, I guess it's time to get started on opponent previews.

[SevenSpirits]

First to complete his combo is:



Lord Parkin. Infamous for powergaming (particularly in relation to the pitboss turn timer), winning games and pissing people off. He played in PB4 which had diplomacy on and won. And he played to great success in PB7, the "double moves: allowed" disaster where he took full advantage of this rule... in some people's eyes, fuller advantage than was intended. His skill in a more typical no-diplo game is still something of a mystery, though it's clear he puts a lot of productive thought into his play, and it's clear he can do both war and peace from his two major games here.

But to truly understand Lord Parkin, we must ask each of the 5 sacred animals how they rate him on a scale of 1-10.


7/10

8/10

9/10

7/10

7/10


Very respectable 7.6/10 overall; so sayeth the sacred animals.

In this game he took Churchill (CHA/PRO) of Zulu (AGRI/HUNT) with the last position in the snake. The techs from Zulu hint at a start where he feels he needs to tech AH first. Either that or he really likes the UU/UB which are still admittedly useful. Churchill is interesting and a little bit puzzling to me. I guess it's just trying out two new(ish) traits - PRO being completely new and CHA being the most radically different one still available to pair with it?


What sayeth the sixth sacred animal of this pairing?

Baaaaaa

[SevenSpirits]

Disclaimer:

The sacred animals have not met the players. The sacred animals are not themselves familiar with Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword nor with the Tides of War mod. The sacred animals do not speak. The sacred animals are merely interpreted by trained interpreters. The interpreters, though trained, have not necessarily been trained in anything related to animal interpretation or Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword or even other Firaxis games. The interpreters might not exist in real life. The sacred animals might not exist in real life, or might be deceased. It is unknown whether the sacred animals actually give ratings out of 10 or out of some different number. The word "sacred" in the phrase "the sacred animals" is there only for marketing purposes. (Not to be confused with marketing porpoises, which it could be, but is not, used for in this case.) The fact that several of the players in this game have nothing substantial to be evaluated on yet are still being evaluated by the sacred animals (marketing!) might hint at the level of sophistication with which the sacred animals are capable of evaluating players. These ratings are provided for entertainment value only. The entertainment value is provided only to market the sacred animals. The sacred animals are trying to get a thing going, OK?