Civ/leader pick

[Lord Parkin]

Hmm, interesting. Will have to test that.

Though, do we want to pick a trait mainly based on hooking up a resource 1 turn earlier? Not to say Expansive wouldn't be a reasonable choice... just odd reasoning for it.

[kjn]

Hmm, interesting. Will have to test that.

Though, do we want to pick a trait mainly based on hooking up a resource 1 turn earlier? Not to say Expansive wouldn't be a reasonable choice... just odd reasoning for it.

Yeah, I'm not too sure about it, since it locks us to Pacal of the Zulu (not too good synergy there with UU/UBs).

However, this is likely the most efficient way to get both the deer and the sheep improved (done by T18) and worked. Turn 10-12 our capital can work the sheep for at least one turn, work the pasture for 3 turns, and grow on T16.

Hmmm... this discussion tells me that I likely prefer games where you get to choose leaders/civs first, and then get the map. The start discussion gets so much more complex if you have map knowledge first.

[kjn]

With all the forests around, India would also be quite good, though what our army of chopped fast workers would do would be an open question.

We can get our first worker on turn 11, and have BW up on turn 14, by tile-swapping between the sheep and the deer. Mine the hill to the SW, and then chop out a second worker.

[Mortius]

You know, thinking about the leader pick a bit, aside from Huayna I think my top preference might be Willem. I think I'd prefer being Creative to being Aggressive, anyway. Cheap Libraries are very nice, as is the lack of need for Stonehenge or Monuments.

LP I try to make my point as clear as I can

Before the game even started, I choose your team because I knew you would prefer Huayna. It was my preference too I strongly advocated towards choosing Huayna as our leader in the civfanatics Demogame, and I still think it would be the best choice there, much stronger than Pacal. But it's a huge map and very slow tech pace (emperor dificulty).
Here we have a standard map, prince dificulty and all civs on one continent, just like Pangea. I don't need to be clairvoyant to find out that it will end in a very early bloodbath and the game will be decided around 120-150 turn, when it will be clear who is loosing and who is wining. Even if we have jumbos as the only civ, we will have them around 120 turn, it's too late to be a deciding factor.

Taking into account we are Industrius we should leverage our traits and build wonders, but we need a civ that help us early to defend or to speed our growth curve slowed by investing a big chunk of hammers into wonders. Because after landing some shiny new Pyramids, Great Lighthouse or even Stonhange, we are painting a big target on our backs. Other teams will get after us. And other teams have Krill, Scooter, SevenSpirit, and Darell with them, and they know what they are doing.

There are many civs that match quite good with Huayna. India would speed up our early growth, Mali would help to defend us. But unfortunately none of the civs are available to us, because we are blessed by great riverside Sheep as our primary food and coins source, and they all are far away from Animal Husbandry.
We are realy boxed into some civs that can hook Sheeps early, and from that civs only Zulu is a prime pick, Mongolia laging behind, but not being terrible as other choices are.

But unfortunately Zulus will not work with Huayna (Mongolia will not work either), so we have an option:

1. Bite the bullet, choose Huyana nontheless, and pair it with a blank civ knowing we will have no help during the early game, when we need it at most. I don't know if with this settings it's still viable to chase early wonders. We will be too weak to defend ourselves after investing hundreds of hammers into a wonder, when others investing it into units and more cities. We need time to catch up and leverage the new wonder, but I am pretty sure other teams will not gives us the time we need.

2. Choose the best civ/leader pairing we have in our situation. And it's clearly Ragnar of Zulu. Don't take me wrong I don't state that Ragnar is better than Huayna, but I state that Ragnar of Zulu is definitely much stronger than Huayna of Khmer on this settings. With Ragnar of Zulu we will be quite secure from a dogpile all the game long and virtualy impregnable during the early game. The best early attacking units (besides of Impis) are chariots and horse archers, especialy unique versions of it. Impis will guard us against them all. It's realy not feasible to attack aggressive Zulus in the early game, giving us the braething space to expand and chase the wonders we need. If we find stone or marble we can go wonder happy, we have protection to do this.

I think most of you are biased against Aggresive trait. Thinking after Sulla it's weak. It isn't, it just don't work like people think it should. I know it's counterintuitive but aggresive trait is a great help at defence not at the offence. What makes it viable at the offence are Impis.
We will be waring almost entire game, and it would ba graet to have much better odds at most of the fights. Look here, the direct counter to spears are axes, with greater basic strenght and +50% vs melee, and even such a strong counter have problems vs aggresive spears. Not to mention in the direct fight axe vs axe, non aggresive one have no chance at all.
The initial combat promo, allow us to gives the fresh melee (or gunpowder) unit a second very valuable promo right of the bat. Shock vs Melle, Cover vs Archery and Pinch vs Gunpowder. And from a 50% odds fight we go right to 75 -85%. Don't say it doesn't matter. Not to mention we can have another valuable promo like Formation vs Mounted at 5 xp cap instaed of 10 xp. It's huge.

Sulla was wrong here and we realy can prove it and show our comunity aggresive Zulus are another viable option.

It is also versatile:
- if we need to attack lets unleash Impis with chariots, folowed by brute axes.
- if we need to defend our new freshly build wonder, Impis with aggresive axes will gladly do this too.
- if we need to harrass a stronger oponent, we also have tools to do that.

Our starting position clearly points us towards Ragnar of Zulu, choosing something else is like misplayed our great start at the begining.

[Azza]

Picking an Aggressive civ puts us behind from turn 0. Economic benefits will inevitably trump a militaristic benefit. Pick Ragnar and we're playing to avoid losing, rather than playing to win.

[Mortius]

Economic benefits will inevitably trump a militaristic benefit.

Agree That's way we paired the best possible economic benefit (Financial) with the best possible militaristic benefit (Aggressive) paired with an additional economic benefit (Ikhanda).

Every Ikhanda can save us 1 coin per turn (due to Civ4 roundings). Multiple it by the number of cities and number of turns, and you have quite a lot. Ikhanda is cheap barrack (30 hammers) that additional to training highly promoted aggressive Zulus, gives us an economic edge probably similiar to organized trait at prince difficulty.

What else economic benefit do we need?

Pick Ragnar and we're playing to avoid losing, rather than playing to win

If Ragnar of Zulu is not the combo that can win standard size 5 team crowded Pangea, then what combo can?

[nabaxo]

Mortius: All of the teams are good in this game. All have strong players and will probably power-pick. We wont be having a target painted on us that's worse than the targets painted on the other ones.

The other thing you forget is that this is a full diplo game. Diplomacy is what will help protect us in the early turns and will let us build up.

Picking AGG would be the greatest mistake we will make this game.

[Mortius]

We wont be having a target painted on us that's worse than the targets painted on the other ones.

We will, the very second we land the Great Lighthouse or the Pyramids.

The other thing you forget is that this is a full diplo game. Diplomacy is what will help protect us in the early turns and will let us build up.

How do you convince other teams to not attack us, if its viable or even neccessary for them. They are no fouls, they know, that every turn we have GL or Mids we are speeding away, if they don't do something fast they will loose tha game. I don't know any arguments, that can convince other teams to let us win the game at will.

Picking AGG would be the greatest mistake we will make this game.

Nabaxo, we are not picking Aggressive, we are picking RAGNAR, that for the most is FINANCIAL and additionaly Aggressive. But it doesn't mean we will be bashing with Impis left and right. Far from it, early war is expensive and unprofitable, and we should avoid it if we can, but if we can't and someone attacks us we will be ready. Of course if we need to take advantage of the fact that we have Perfect War Tools and some of our neighbours pissed us off, like "pink doted" us, we will be ready too. Thanks to aggressive troops greater battle odds we can field smaller but more effective army. That's an additional economic edge. And eventualy every game goes to a global war and we will be ready for that moment too.

[Lord Parkin]

I think you're underestimating the size of the map. We're talking about Standard size with only five teams. Commodore hasn't mentioned anything about deliberately cramping up all the civs. We even have the map dimensions:

52x52 tiles = 2704 total tiles

Let's assume 70% of that is water (which I'd say is probably overestimating, could be much less)... then we have:

2704*~0.3 = ~800 land tiles

If we assume about a third to half of that is off the mainland (I'd expect that's also an overestimate), then we're still left with:

~800*(~1/2 to 2/3) = ~500 mainland tiles

Which corresponds to ~100 mainland tiles per team. Granted, that's not a large amount of leg room, but I think that's probably a heavy underestimate and I doubt that will be the situation on the real map.

An better estimate might be something like ~50-60% water:

2704*(~0.4 to 0.5) = ~1100 to 1300 land tiles

And perhaps a quarter of the land offshore from the mainland:

(~1100 to 1300)*(~1/4) = ~900 to 1000 mainland land tiles

Which would correspond to ~200 mainland tiles per team... quite a lot of leg room. Realistically I would expect somewhere in the vicinity of ~150 mainland tiles per team, which is a fairly standard amount for balancing expansion with conflict.

The point is that the map is big relative to the number of civs playing, which should push us more towards long-term planning rather than short-term strategy. This definitely won't be a map where we can just blitz the other teams without throwing our own game (unless we create a dogpile) - nor will they be able to blitz us without throwing their game (unless they create a dogpile). And if we're expecting in advance to get dogpiled, then we're (a) not playing the diplo game right and (b) are playing to lose.

[Azza]

Agree That's way we paired the best possible economic benefit (Financial) with the best possible militaristic benefit (Aggressive) paired with an additional economic benefit (Ikhanda).

Every Ikhanda can save us 1 coin per turn (due to Civ4 roundings). Multiple it by the number of cities and number of turns, and you have quite a lot. Ikhanda is cheap barrack (30 hammers) that additional to training highly promoted aggressive Zulus, gives us an economic edge probably similiar to organized trait at prince difficulty.

What else economic benefit do we need?



If Ragnar of Zulu is not the combo that can win standard size 5 team crowded Pangea, then what combo can?

From Commodore's description, the map doesn't sound like a crowded pangaea. We'll have time to expand peacefully before butting heads with our opponents.


Also, while having Hunting from t1 would be a nice bonus, it's cheap enough that we'll be able to get it soon enough either way. We have a lot of easy hammers from the start, which makes me think that it could be an interesting idea to pick Vicky and really churn out some early settlers.