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

[superjm]

Handicap level - I'm pretty indifferent on this. Though, could someone explain to me why we're setting the difficulty level so high?

The given justification was to slow the tech rate down since even with the 50% penalty two civs will burn through the tree much faster than one.

[oledavy]

Here are the final votes as I count them:

AW: Yes
Difficulty: Immortal
Game Speed: Quick
Banned Wonders Statue of Liberty, Cristo Redentor, MoM
Banned Other: WE, Spies, Nukes. Suggestion that the map isn't such that Sid's Sushi and Mining Inc aren't ungodly overpowered, but corps are fine.
Barbs Off

MAP STUFF
- Mapmaker's discretion. All of us would prefer a 'fair' map.

City Gifting: 1st Turn Only
Can accept trades when one partner has ended turn and the other one hasn't: Yes
Can Trade GPT: No
Can Strike: Yes

Snakepick: Yes
See Start Before Pick: No. However, we want to be able to pick a start for each Civ afterwards a la PB6
Duplicate Traits: No
Tie snake pick order to reverse turn order: No
Snake Pick Order: 4321123443211234
Bans: The Big Four

Reloads for big mistakes: No
Timer: 18-24 hours per team
New Random Seed: No

Blockades and Corps both unbanned

Starting Units: One Scout

[WarriorKnight]

So, with the ruleset done for now we need more discussion on civs/leaders.

Firstly, what's our overall plan for the game? Mass expansion like in PB6 or a tech orientated approach? Obviously the best role is map dependant which we obviously can't rely on, but a mediocre plan is better than none at all. Best case scenario we have one civ dedicated to each role, but with the snakepick as varied as it is right now we can't assume that will turn out that way.

The best traits for teching would be FIN and PHI, then probably SPI with worst case ORG. For expansion it's EXP first then CRE, but IND wouldn't be too bad either. We may need to mix these traits depending on the snakepick but IMO these are the traits we should focus on.

[oledavy]

ORG is going to be pretty huge with the difficulty level being what it is.

I think ideally, we want an expander (EXP/ORG) and a techer/great person farmer (SPI/FIN). There might be something to be said for having IMP on the team somewhere (IMP/ORG?). However, besides the possibility of that, we probably are not interested in the military traits at all; outside of perhaps combining AGG with a UU.

Darius, Mehmed, or Zara. One of the three is probably what we want to aim for on our first pick.

[oledavy]

So, I'm thinking on the first pick we try to grab one of the three above (Darius, Mehmed, Zara), then on the reverse we try to nab Mansa, Liz, or Gandhi. As for Civs, eh, I think we're just going to have to see what's available and where we are in the pick order - just as long as we get four techs.

I'm not particularly wild about the idea, but we always try some gimmick like Zulu + Egypt = OMFGHAX WTF PWNGE. I would rather not risk hurting our long-term potential with an early all-out war though. That being said, it would probably behoove us to have a decent Ancient era UU to make other teams reluctant enough to screw with us - but not so terrifying that Commodore decides we must die the moment he meets us.

[oledavy]

Third post in a row, but why the hell not. I was thinking back to PBEM25v - the last time I played on a high difficulty level. After that game, me and Mack both agreed it would have been better to pick ORG, HRE, or Sumer, or better yet both.

Playing the normal expansion game is going to be incredibly costly here. The key techs for this difficulty level are Pottery and COL. So, to allow us to expand despite the difficulty level, we're going to want one civ to focus on vertical growth early on - get out a couple cities, then grow cottages/run specialists. If we play that civ right, it should allow the other to continue to expand despite the difficulty level. We want definitely want ORG on our 'expander' civ, and preferably FIN as well. While not having CRE or EXP early on would slow our initial expansion, nobody is going to be REXing at this difficulty level, so the traits are devalued even if we do manage to lessen the impact of the maintenance costs by focusing our other civ on vertical growth. We also want FIN to be on the civ that covers the most land area so we can get its bonus on the max number of cottages. So, to that end, my preferred leader for our 'expander' civ would be Darius *fingers crossed we get him.* As for the civ itself, I say we pick Sumer. We tech up to Priesthood, and can plop down super-cheap Ziggarauts in all our cities and keep expansion going at a breakneck pace. HRE would also be a decent choice, but I think Ziggarauts > Rathauses in this case.

As for our 'techer' civ, presuming we get Darius, going to say we want Gandhi *Cue groans from the audience.* Rameses would also be a pretty decent choice. If we don't land Darius, then we go for Zara, Mehmed, or Asoka and grab a Financial leader like Liz or Mansa for our techer. As for Civ, I'd say Maya - chiefly for Ball Courts to allow us to grow these vertical cities higher.

Coincidentally, Sumer/Maya is one of the pairings that gives us Max number of starting beakers

At any rate, that's my two cents so far.

[WarriorKnight]

ORG is going to be pretty huge with the difficulty level being what it is.

I think ideally, we want an expander (EXP/ORG) and a techer/great person farmer (SPI/FIN). There might be something to be said for having IMP on the team somewhere (IMP/ORG?). However, besides the possibility of that, we probably are not interested in the military traits at all; outside of perhaps combining AGG with a UU.

Darius, Mehmed, or Zara. One of the three is probably what we want to aim for on our first pick.

Got to disagree with ORG being that good. I'll admit I underrated it by not considering the difficulty but it probably isn't that much better then SPI. IMP is worse in Ancient, we probably should dismiss it. First pick should ideally be Elizabeth/Darius or Sury.

Still think your overrating starting with 4 techs dave, it's good but by no means essential. Would prefer 2 decent civs and 3 techs to 4 techs and picking a crappy civ to ensure it (like Arabia). That said, 4 techs if desirable, just not the only thing that matters.

First thing to decide, which civ to pick first? We definitely want to start with both Mining and Agriculture, the only civ that starts with both is China but they have fairly bad unique's, so we should only consider that if we're last to pick civs. Otherwise we want 1 Agriculture civ and 1 Mining civ, here are all the decent one's in some order IMO:

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

Mining civs:
Maya (Mysticism)
Mali (Wheel)
England (Fishing)
Korea? (Mysticism)
Khmer? (Hunting) - although I think Balista Elephant's might be banned.

That should be enough (remember that China + ? is another option).

EDIT: crosspost with dave's 3rd post

I was thinking back to PBEM25v - the last time I played on a high difficulty level. After that game, me and Mack both agreed it would have been better to pick ORG, HRE, or Sumer, or better yet both.

Sure. However PBEM25v was played on a 40x40 map (or was it 30x30?) toroidal map on Emporer, which is about as extreme as you can get for high maintenance. We don't have any conformation this map will be similar (aside from Cylindrical wrap, although Immortal/Diety difficulty cancels that out, although high difficulty was supposed to cancel out faster teching in team games), and if it isn't then your highly specialized pick will fall behind.

Also you need to have backup civs, Maya is almost certainly going to be one of the first civs to fall.

[Shoot the Moon]

I seem to be thinking substantially differently here than you guys. I think FIN is clearly the best trait with these settings, as expansion will be limited more by commerce than by any expansion trait. Depending on where we are in pick order I could see double FIN as a viable combo (although would probably have to be the last pick/first in the second round to get that with viable second traits). If we're higher up in the pick order, I think Huayna Capac is probably the best leader by a fair margin. I actually rate IND a fair deal higher than either of you appear to. It's looking like the wonder list might actually be rather minimal, and there are a number of wonders that would be very powerful with this set up. I could also see things like FIN/PHI, FIN/SPI, FIN/IMP (maybe), EXP/IND all being powerful.

[oledavy]

We should pick FIN, and IND is pretty good too.

I didn't realize the votes were in favor on allowing duplicate traits on teams, that changes things a little bit

Expansion will be limited more by commerce than by any expansion trait.

Agreed, definitely want to consider taking two FINs then, depending on what's available. However, I still think we really need to consider ORG/Sumer



Me and Mack's second city in PBEM25v, Emperor/Toroidal, Three Tiles From Our Capital, and costing us 4gpt. Immortal/Cylindrical is not going to be much better.

[superjm]

That's on a 30x30 Toroidal map though. Just doing some quick math the difference in city maintenance (and civic costs for that matter) between immortal/deity and something like, say, Prince is very small until you start getting more than 4/5 cities. ORG is very helpful then during the midgame when maintenance starts to balloon due to expansion, since it cuts out more expenses and allows courthouses that much faster, but in the very early game where you have very few small cities it's not going to make much, if any, real difference. The extra commerce from a couple financial riverside cottages (or heck, even coast) is an immediate marked improvement over their non-FIN counterparts, and that advantage also balloons significantly the bigger your empire gets while having a better impact on your research. After all, cutting on expenses is only as good as the amount you're able to jack up the science slider, and I suspect that's going to be quite behind the effect of simply running a lower slider with more commerce even as your empire expands.

Now, getting Darius so you can take advantage of both traits at the same time would make sense, and since pairing Financial with EXP or CRE is not an option, I'd advocate that for one of the financial leaders, if they're available. I wouldn't worry about getting Sumer or HRE though. Sumer seems pointless as maintenance doesn't start becoming a major problem until the point where you'd reach CoL anyway, and while HRE's UB is good, I think there are much better civs to take advantage of.

Just my two cents of course.