I now know that my civ will be the Inca, but who will my leader be?
My leader will be a Protective leader. I really want that production bonus for the Terrace. Therefore, the real question is, what will my leader’s other trait be? Let’s go through the options one by one.
Organized: I can’t do it because it doesn’t exist! Creative: It would defeat the purpose of the Terrace. No. Aggressive: It isn’t as bad as for Creative, but Aggressive’s cheap, culture-providing Barracks and Inca’s Terraces fill the same niche. Probably no. Spiritual and Philosophical: As I mentioned earlier, I don’t think that I could use these traits effectively enough for them to be worthwhile. No to both of them. Financial: Earlier I said that I didn’t want this, but I am reconsidering now that I won’t have Organized to help my economy in the later-game. Financial might be able to serve the role Organized would have served. However, it might also be terrible if there are many rivers, few coasts, or both. I don’t want to gamble like that. Still, maybe. Charismatic: Another trait that I said I didn’t want earlier. However, I don’t think that anything has changed to make this one better than I thought it was before, so probably still no. Industrious: Cheap Forges are very nice, but I think that other traits will outweigh this one if I can’t make use of the wonder bonus too, and I don’t want to count on wonders, especially because my Inca are already starting slower than superdeath’s Zulu or Charriu’s China. Probably no. Imperialistic: Possibly yes, I like this one. If I can’t boost my later-game, then turbo-charging my earlier-game might be the way to go, and Imperialistic certainly does that. Expansive: Very possibly yes, I like this one even more than Imp. It boosts my earlier-game like Imperialistic, but it also gives a middle-game economic bonus through its various boosted buildings, with can do a little bit to help balance my combo between early and late like I want to do.
All of that means that my current most-considered leaders are Wang Kon (Fin/Pro), Charlemagne (Imp/Pro), and Mao Zedong (Exp/Pro). However, I could of course be swayed to other ideas by some good advice…
PRO Terraces = a lot of saved hammers in the early game. So the question to be answered is where do you want those hammers to go?
The logical answer is setters and workers, which would favour IMP and EXP. But that runs the risk of overexpanding, especially with no direct assistance to your economy from a trait. Of the two I would favour EXP so you can essentially overbuild workers early to make sure your cities contribute as early as possible, it also comes with a lot more discounted buildings than IMP.
But then again, I appear to be advising you to take Mao, the leader I had in my first pb here, and I didn't do so well there, although that had little to do with my leader, so take that how you will.
About FIN, I see a few too many rivers to suggest it.
PB 38 spoiler.
I haven't updated in a while, but have a look at the land I was saddled with in that game to see where FIN is ideal. In fact, I'll probably do a new update for the next turn there and you'll be able to see just how many non-riverside cottages I've built.
IND could be interesting, letting you put those extra hammers into wonders. But which ones? Stonehenge is useless, and I don't see enough coast to think that The GLH is good. Maybe an Oracle play? But you don't start with mysticism. There are some good ones a little later in the tech tree: TGL, SoZ, MoM, Hanging Gardens. But you'd have to plan for them right from the beginning.
I have done a few sims with Charlemagne, Mao, and Tokugawa (who plays the same as Wang Kon for the immediate start, so I just used a sim I had already set up). Tokugawa/Wang Kon is the slowest, Charlemagne is in the middle, and Mao is the fastest. These results aren’t very surprising, but they do reaffirm my desire to play Mao. It sounds like you agree, so unless shallow_ thought and Hitru take him, I will be taking him. If they do take him, I will have to think a little more. I really hope that they don’t.
Also, I don’t plan to do a full opponent analysis until after everyone has made all of their picks but I will say now… COEURVA AND OT4E CHOSE SHAKA OF ROME! AHHH! I’m already feeling extremely paranoid, and I hope that I don’t start near them (Hear that, Commodore? Put some other sucker near them!). I am glad that I will have Protective and the option to settle for copper with my second city, that’s for sure. I want to start thinking about how to defend against them already. So, I ask you, how exactly do you effectively defend against Aggressive Praetorians? What strategy and unit composition is best? I don't really have much warfare experience, even against the AI.
Yeah, that's concerning. There's the other aggressive combo of Boudica of Zulu out there as well.
Well, how to defend against an early attack? I don't know from experience, unfortunately
But my advice firstly would be to deter either of them from attacking you by making yourself look pricklier. So prioritize Archery for those PRO Archers much earlier than you would in a normal game. However, that may not be enough for Rome.
Even Strength 7 Praetorians are scary, especially with their buff to city attack. So you really don't want to be defending in your cities against them. Ideally we'd be able to attack their army as it comes forward. So, if we do spawn next to them there's a few things to just generally keep in mind:
Clear forests near to them asap, you don't want to give them nice defensive terrain to approach in.
Build a good road network, you want to be able to bring units in from all over to wherever they attack. This and the previous one should be easy with all the extra workers from EXP.
Keep units near their border to scout, if they're building roads towards you, get ready.
Finally, I would normally advise delaying hooking up copper if at all possible, to get plenty of cheap warriors for future use as Military Police. But, with Shaka of Rome and Boudica of Zulu out there, hook up the copper asap (maybe even go Mining->BW out the gate). Then, if you see the chance, rush them before they can rush you.
Thank you again for your advice. The issue of Shaka of Rome (and now BOUDICA OF ZULU as well) is a scary one, and I will come back to it in the opponent analysis I am going to do after everyone has fully chosen their combos. However, for now, now that I know for certain that Mao Zedong of Inca is the combo I will be playing, I would like to talk about how I should play my start.
I have tried a few different sims, and the one I currently like most goes like this:
I open by researching Mining (done turn 8) and building a worker (done turn 10). The worker improves the corn (done turn 14), and my capital grows on the corn while slowly putting production into a quecha. As soon as I hit size 2 (turn 16), before even finishing the quecha, I start building another worker (done turn 22), while the first worker farms the sugar (done turn 19), then mines a hill (done turn 24). Once the second worker is produced, it moves to a forested hill to begin chopping, which it can do because I have Bronze Working on turn 23. The capital then continues the quecha (done turn 24) and puts a turn into another quecha while it grows on the sugar and corn to hit size 3 (turn 25). Once the capital is size 3, it works the corn, sugar, and mine to build a settler at twelve hammers per turn (it doesn’t finish the quecha first). With the help of a chop on turn 25 and another on turn 28, the first settler is ready to go on turn 30. One of the workers will stay at the capital to start improving the sheep the turn Hunting comes in, and the other will go to work at the second city. The exact micro of the workers in their mining and chopping activities depends on the direction I want to plant my second city in, so I can't finalize it until we actually start the game.
If you have the time to try some starts, I have attached the starting save of my sim to this post. Even if you don’t have the time, what do you think of the start I just outlined? Is there an alternative that you think would be better?
I had a go through your sim a couple of times.
The first tryI did your plan, with just a few differences, mainly that the mine I build is on the sheep, which gets the worker out 1t earlier. Then by using both workers on the second chop (on the forest 2s of the sheep), that finishes a turn earlier. That doesn't speed up the settler, but then both of them can quickly build another mine on that hill, then go and pasture the sheep. It doesn't really take into account where the 2nd city is though, so that part may not be ideal. But the main change is to build that first mine on the sheep.
My second go through I was focused on just getting that settler out as early as possible. By skipping the sugar and mining the sheep after the 2nd worker, and starting the settler right away after the 2nd worker, I get the settler out on turn 28 (with 2 chops).
Then I tried settling ON the sugar, but doing the same thing, and I got the settler on turn 27.
I tried some other stuff to see if I could get the settler earlier while still having 3pop, but it require a little more much sacrifice of future development, so it's not really worth it.
So overall, your plan looks to be the best, the only change I would suggest is for the first mine to be on the sheep (which hill did you mine in your sim?).
Also, for future planning, here's a copy of your sim file with another civ added to the map (surrounded by peaks) to avoid getting the conquest victory on turn 10.
Sorry, but I am confused about what you did in your first try. In my sim I didn't finish my first mine until turn 24 (by the way, I put it on the plains hill north of the capital), which is too late to speed up the second worker even if the mine is on the sheep, because the second worker is already done on turn 22. Can you further clarify what you did?
Also, the snake pick is done now, so I will be posting some thoughts about my opponents and their combos soon.
T16 - city grows, start worker 2 (city on corn and sheep, the latter until farm finishes)
T19 - sugar farm finishes
T20 - send worker 1 to sheep hill
T21 - start mining the sheep
T22 - worker 2 finishes, goes to forest (either 2w or 1nw)
T23 - bronze working finishes, start hunting. Worker 2 on forest chops
T24 - quecha 1 finishes, mine on sheep finishes. Can here swap from sugar farm to sheep mine for +3 hammers into whatever you build for 1t before the settler.
T25 - city grow to size 3, start on settler, first chop finishes, worker 1 goes to forest hill 2s of sheep
T26 - start chopping on hill, worker 2 joins it
T27 - worker 1 & 2 finish the chop to get the settler out by turn 30
So yeah, I'm not sure how I got the idea the worker was out a turn earlier
Basically the only difference is mining the sheep for the extra foodhammer.
This is a problem I have doing sims tbh. I just sit there and play through x amount of turns over and over again until I get something I like. I don't usually keep track of it I'll try to make sure I actually know what I'm talking about next time
No problem, the confusion is all cleared up and the game hasn't even started yet. I think that I will use your method of going turn by turn when I try to communicate what I am doing in a sim in the future. I don't think that the wall of text I used before was the best way to convey information.
Anyway, it seems we have figured out what to do on the first twenty turns or so, so there is still plenty of time to discuss "the Sheep Issue." Following your sim's path, it costs five worker turns and offers only a few additional foodhammers before we pasture it anyway. However, I think that it could be a good idea if our second city is positioned in such a way that the workers would have a hard time efficiently both covering it and pasturing the sheep. I'm not sure what I think about your idea of doubling up the workers for the chop and then for subsequent improvements. I think that how good of an idea it is depends on where the second city is located (actually, I think that is true for all of the Turn 20-onwards worker moves), so we will just have to scout and see...
Also, the snake pick is over, so here is my opponent analysis.
Charriu and Zalson, Tokugawa of China: They have a solid combo, although lacking in synergy (the only synergy is that Protective promotes Cho-Ko-Nus). They should have a fast early-game due to their excellent starting techs and cheap granaries, although probably not as fast as us because we have Terraces and Expansive and they don’t. Our midgame is likely stronger due to all of the cheap buildings we have, but when Aggressive maintenance savings starts really mattering in the late game, they probably have the advantage. Their traits are rather warlike, but their civ isn’t that warlike, so I’m not too worried.
RFS-81 and haphazard1, Pacal of Mongolia: Their combo is decent, although I do have my doubts about Financial’s power and I am rather surprised by their pick of Mongolia. For our start, its starting techs are definitely subpar. Maybe they have a start with double pasture food and one agriculture food, a sort of mirror image of our start, or maybe they just want Mongolia’s uniques that much. And about those uniques…yes, they do scare me a little bit. I know that horse archer rushes can be painful, and Mongolian Keshik rushes are even worse. Also, we need to keep in mind that they are the only ones in the game with a true later-game economic trait, so we need to watch out for that (although I again think that our start should be stronger than theirs because we have Protective and Terraces and they don’t).
superdeath and masterjason, Boudica of Zululand: I don’t agree with their choice of Charismatic, but besides that this combo is good, and it is also scary. Aggressive/Charismatic is the ultimate trait combo for getting good promotions, and the Zulus aren’t exactly a friendly-looking civ. Besides that, their starting techs are excellent, and Aggressive Ikandas are very nice economic buildings. The Zulus’ start can be good, even without any traits that directly boost early expansion, but I again think that our start can be faster, for similar reasons to before. We should be aware that their Aggressive Ikandas could eventually do quite a bit of direct economic work, though.
shallow_thought and Hitru, Genghis Khan of Persia: Persia must have been selected for the starting techs, their uniques just aren’t that good. Or maybe they are trying to show solidarity with their teammates in Pitboss 38? About their leader, they do have Aggressive, but they don’t have a very scary civ to pair it with, so, like with Charriu and Zalson earlier, I am not too afraid of them. They do have one of the traits that directly boosts expansion, Imperialistic, so they could have a fast early-game too, but I again say that we are faster due to Protective Terraces.
Coeurva and OT4E, SHAKA OF ROME, AHHHHH: I’ve said it before, I will say it again, these guys and their combo terrify me. Aggressive Praetorians are just so scary, and it doesn’t help me feel better that OT4E seems to be an extreme warlike warmonger who fights wars with all of his neighbors in every game he plays in. Also, it’s not like Shaka of Rome is a terrible combo for peaceful development, with Aggressive’s maintenance discount and Expansive’s numerous cheap things. Their starting techs aren’t even that bad! I wouldn’t want to actually tech Fishing first, but with a Mining/Fishing start they can (assuming a start similar to ours) tech Agriculture, then Bronze Working and do a start quite similar to what we are probably going to do. Scary, scarier, scariest!
Conclusions: I think that our traits and civ enable us to have the fastest, best start in the game if we play well. However, we don’t have anything in the way of later-game bonuses, and every opponent does, so we need to do very well in the beginning to have a chance. We also need to be very mindful of defense in this game, because every opponent has some sort of scary offensive threat in their combo. You mentioned this earlier, and I agree, that the best defense is not getting attacked. We are one of the two Protective leaders in this game, and we should have quick cultural defenses everywhere from Terraces, so if we keep up a respectable army, then potential attackers might turn elsewhere.
All that sounds great, I was just looking for any efficiencies I could. I do prefer mining a grassland hill over a plains hill though. It makes no difference for the settler, and at that point I'd rather have a food than a hammer. Although I can't remember if there are any obvious candidates.
I'll right something up about the opposition tomorrow
AHHH! 
I’m already feeling extremely paranoid, and I hope that I don’t start near them (Hear that, Commodore? Put some other sucker near them!). I am glad that I will have Protective and the option to settle for copper with my second city, that’s for sure. I want to start thinking about how to defend against them already. So, I ask you, how exactly do you effectively defend against Aggressive Praetorians? What strategy and unit composition is best? I don't really have much warfare experience, even against the AI.
I'll try to make sure I actually know what I'm talking about next time 