[Spoilers] Bacchus debuts on RB showing unmatched vision and slick dice-rolling

[Bacchus]

Yes, I did see. Thank you! WillLP was very firm in his pronouncement.

@Brick, is the picking process actually taking just 3 days, as advertised, or more? And supposedly we are not waiting for the 18th, as he would have to pick from a pool lacking 17 leaders judged acceptable or better?

[BRickAstley]

PickinG process is ongoing yes

[Bacchus]

Thanks, Brick!

On a different note, with all the emotion erupting in the settings thread before we've even picked leaders, what will happen hence?

[Bacchus]

First thoughts:

Ichabod/Wetbandit: Shaka of Greece — aggressive phalanxes are nice, techs aren't that bad, no-one cares about Odeon. In the previous version, Agg/Exp was junk on junk, according to SevenSpirits, let's see it now.

dtay: Alexander of Germany — late UU and UB, non-synergistic and average traits, ouch.

Plako: Ragnar of Maya — excellent, even with the nerfed Fin due to the expected large number of coasts. Holkan is great now that Hunting is an economic tech, if plako gets a livestock resources, I'd expect he will knock this out of the park. Techs are a bit on the slow slide. 1st religious civ.

retep: Sitting Bull of Khmer— distinctly meh on all fronts, too boring to even write about. [Please quote this at me, when we are rolled over by Ballistaphans]

Jowy: Pacal of India — this could have been the first pick of a PBEM, where the picker can choose both the leader and the civ, and there is already commotion about the pick in the settings thread. Still, RBMod makes India starts really slow, if you want to improve food you can only start chopping by T30, which invalidates Sulla's favourite chopalicious opening. This game will be a good test of whether the nerfs are enough. In my mind, this still has potential for awesomeness, but requires very good judgement about how to play the start. Second religious civ.

Slowcheetah: Ramesses of Mongolia — interesting. Spi is probably the best trait in RBMod, and I'm thinking that's why Slowcheetah kept this (note to self: check out postcounts and try to figure out who re-rolled). There are probably interesting synergies to be uncovered here, but one would have to work at them. SoZ, perhaps?

mostly_harmless: Qin Shi Huang of Sumeria — Second Ind civ, which with 18 players is enough to kill this trait dead. Sumeria is really nice, and Pro is meh. Weakish and unexciting, I'd say, albeit better than Alex of Germany

Azza: Joao of Netherlands— looks like Azza will get rushed after settling an advance city again. Very strong, I'd say, except that in such a multilateral MP the last thing you want is early-game prominence drawing the attention of potential warmongers. To elaborate, the large numbers mean that warmongering civs there will be, we already saw Greece, Sumeria and Mongolia, and they also mean that some of those warmongering civs will be screwed for land/resources and will push their warmongering advantage to the full. So REXing here is not that exciting.

Pindicator/scooter: Darius of Vikings — this is huge, Fin is still good, and Org always was, now it also unlocks the Vuikings' UB. Triple move galleys on B&S with a Fin/Org supported economy is one of the better engines for expansion I can think of for this map. And the players know how to use this. First financial fisherman.

Nakor/CFCJesterfool: Wang Kon of Rome — second financial fisherman and a strong, balanced pick which suits the teams playing style. Praets are just enough to ensure deterrence, and Fin/Pro is one of the better builder combos in RBMod. Darius of Vikings is probably more robust, though.

Fintourist/Old Harry: Montezuma of Babylon — looks fairly solid and flexible. The maintenance reduction granted to Agg should make it decent, and Spi, as mentioned, remains strong. Techs are good, UU and UB fairly irrelevant.

Commodore/Kurumi: Victoria of Portugal — double speed Feitorias! This is really interesting and fun, if not immediately and apparently strong, and I really appreciate Commodore holding onto this, it's in good spirit. Third financial fisherman, there will be plenty of early teching.

Bacchus: Suryavarman of Carthage — discussed above, playable and solid if we can get at the coast. Playable, but somewhat hopeless if we can't.

WilliamLP: Isabella of Inca — Third religious civ. At least this balances plako's advantages out a bit. Also, yet another Spi leader — we did roll a great many of them, didn't we? Exp Inca is really strong in the early game, and Spi will allow the team decent mid-to-late game plays, they just need to take advantage of them.

Yuris: Mehmed of Ottomans — this is average in straight BTS, and with Granaries nerfed even more so. On the other hand, he will get Hammams cheaply. Still, quite difficult to stay in the game with this long-term, and not so exciting for early expansion either.

Serdoa: Mansa Musa of America — Mansa is still the jackpot leader, I'd say, and America is a robustly fast-starting civ, so Serdoa, lurked by Seven, has excellent chances of doing well.

Bigger/Lewwyn: Ghandi of China — Did we get every single spiritual leader in the game? Up there with Mansa of America and Darius of Vikings, this is a strong pick run by a strong team. Probably a bit more dependant on vertical development and thus a bit more peaceful than the other two.

suttree: Huayna Capac of Spain — The third Industrious leader (together with the faux-industrious India) and the third Mysticism civ (together with a whole bunch of faux-mysticism financial fishermen). I'd say suttree was dealt an incredibly poor hand — RBMod Fin needs something else to support it, and this pick doesn't provide. I would have only kept Mysticism or Industrious for Spi, and I wouldn't have kept them both even for Spi with 18 players.

[Bacchus]

Some stats:

Spi: 4 | Ind: 4 | Cre: 1
Exp: 6 | Imp: 2 | Pro: 3
Fin: 7 | Agg: 4 | Phi: 3
Org: 2 | Chm: 0 | Imp: 2

Fishing: 8
Mining: 8
The Wheel: 4
Mysticism: 4
Hunting: 5
Agriculture: 7

We are the sole creative leader, but have the most popular tech combo, yay!

[Bacchus]

There haven't been that many re-rolls and amusingly of the 7 re-rolls, 4 turned up Fin, providing more than half of our Fin field. And 4 Charismatics were rolled away, never to appear again.

[Cheater Hater]

Being the only creative leader is great, since that means that we should be able to win any early culture wars, in addition to not needing to fight for religion

Don't forget, Industrious still give half-price forges, which isn't exactly meaningless--the cheap wonders still means extra fail gold even in the worst case as well

[Bacchus]

I was a bit too rough on poor old Ind, sure.

No we just need to see the screen showing a landlocked start.

[BRickAstley]

[Bacchus]

Thanks so much for the speed and tight organisation Brick, this is awesome.

On another note, I cannot help but worry at the necessity to manually insert wheat into the start with only one other potential source of food in the fog.