Leader / Civ selection

[Lord Parkin]

Yep. I want to reward people for predicting what the consensus feels is strong, not which team will favor which specific combination. The latter has a lot more luck involved anyways.

Order only matters for ties.

Okay, cool. Placed my bets... quite a lot harder than I thought it'd be. Reasonably confident that we're more likely to see leader picks (rather than civ picks) in the first 6, but was still tossing up between about 9-10 leaders. I'd be surprised if I didn't get at least a couple right, but not so confident on getting 4+ right.

[ironstar]

After reading kjn's post I got a little inspired, so here is a pretty unconventional idea and some more run-of-the-mill ones. I'm not saying they are any good, but I think they could be fun to pull off:

1) Ragnar or Monty of Ethiopia. Get to gunpowder and nationalism and draft a fuckton of Oromos. With barracks and Theocracy you're looking at a possible Combat I / Pinch / Drill II draftee gunpowder unit. Monty will probably be best here to do 5-turn switches from economy civics and into nationhood/theocracy. Ragnar would be better at keeping the economy competetive though.
Either beeline steel for a Oromo/cannon offensive or beeline rifling and after a sufficient number of Oromos has been drafted/built then mass upgrade into highly promoted rifles and go on a rampage.
Unfortunately the Ethiopian starting techs aren't exactly mouthwatering.

2) Sitting Bull / Frederick of Spain / Sumeria. Build Great Wall and do an espionage economy. Frederick of Sumeria could get cheap courthouses and fast Gspys into play very early. However why would we wan't to be dependant on the other teams ability to tech, when we expect to be in the tech drivers seat ourselves?

3) Any-SPI-leader of a-good-or-solid-civ. I am 100% in agreement with "Locke" when he praised spiritual as an awesome trait in PB4. It opens up a ton of possibilities in the mid and late game and with the amount of talent and MM obsession on board in this team, I have no doubt that we could milk this trait to its extremes.

I'm mostly just along for the ride here, as my skills in civ are nowhere near a lot of you guys (emperor SP player ), but regardless I thought would just give my 5c on the subject.

[Lord Parkin]

Thing is, it's a huge risk to base your entire strategy around one thing, however appealing it may seem. The massive boon of a trait like Financial is that it is so flexible - it's beneficial to pretty much any other strategy you want to go for.

Not to say those aren't cool ideas to try out. Just that we probably want to go for something tried and true - and flexible - in this sort of game.

[ironstar]

Parkin, you're absolutely right that option 1 is extremely one sided. The plan is set in stone from the get go, and any deviation, forced or otherwise, will likely doom you to obscurity since aggressive is not exactly a power trait... However the idea of an offensive with cannons to collateral and a C1 musketman with the ability to hit wounded units with 2 inherent first strikes (and the chance of a further 3 if you go drill III) as well as immunity to enemy first strikes sounds awesome to me. I have no idea how effective it is though, I'm trying it out in a PBEM with my brother, but I'm still 2 turns from gunpowder there.

I'm not saying that it is a good plan either, only that it is unconventional and therefore fun in my book. Perhaps a multi-site demo game is not exactly the place to try it out though. Tried and true will probably win the game

That said, when we're talking flexible traits, it would probably (even though I might get crucified here) rate spiritual above financial. The possibilities that it brings to the table are just so varied compared to "gain +1 commerce". The ability to use all of the benefits from the various civics when it suits you is really appealing. Also it helps with other minor tidbits, like popping borders with artists etc.

[SevenSpirits]

The aggressive oromo plan is pretty weak unfortunately. First strikes are meaningless against knights and cuirassiers. And you don't need anything special to mop up after cannons (which incidentally are also countered by cuirassiers).

Aside from late UUs not being worth much just because they don't have an effect until late in the game, they are also less valuable because later battles tend to be dominated by collateral damage and tech advantages. Similarly, aggressive is most useful in the very early game (when you would rather not be battling anyway).

Basically it would be much more valuable to just get to steel sooner via financial or another economic trait if we wanted to attack someone with cannons.

[ironstar]

Glad we got that out of the way then I only suggested it for the novelty of it. You're right that aggressive is a weak trait, and as for knights and cuirassiers ignoring first strikes...

[antisocialmunky]

The aggressive oromo plan is pretty weak unfortunately. First strikes are meaningless against knights and cuirassiers. And you don't need anything special to mop up after cannons (which incidentally are also countered by cuirassiers).

Aside from late UUs not being worth much just because they don't have an effect until late in the game, they are also less valuable because later battles tend to be dominated by collateral damage and tech advantages. Similarly, aggressive is most useful in the very early game (when you would rather not be battling anyway).

Basically it would be much more valuable to just get to steel sooner via financial or another economic trait if we wanted to attack someone with cannons.

Cannons are also countered but a crap ton of maces, catapults, and CKN's from our WB experience.

[Shoot the Moon]

Cannons are also countered but a crap ton of maces, catapults, and CKN's from our WB experience.

Yeah but only if there's a hard deadline on said cannons succeeding. If it had been a normal "we just want your land and cities" war the cannons would have probably won

[Amelia]

Can we reserve the right to swap our votes after the difficulty has been chosen? If it's immortal + torodial i'm putting ORG > Fin in the choices...

[luddite]

Can we reserve the right to swap our votes after the difficulty has been chosen? If it's immortal + torodial i'm putting ORG > Fin in the choices...

Indeed. Also, high maintenance makes me think that the pyramids will be by far the best way to tech.