Astronaut without sin confounds press, invites trio to control civilization

[novice]

For some reason Joao appeals to me (that's Exp/Imp, spaceman). Show everyone that rexing works on Emperor too as long as you have enough workers.

Pairing him with Sumeria (Agri/Wheel) or Zulu (Agri/Hunting) would give us easy access to lowered maintenance, as well.

[novice]

So since noone listens to me (or rather, listens to me and then rejects my opinion), we decided in chat that our preferred leader is Isabella (Exp/Spi).

If Mackoti picks Isabella we're less sure, Hatshepsut, Catherine and Joao have been mentioned.

[SevenSpirits]

So what is your reason for wanting the western rice/cow capital? In the long term I don't even think it's got better tiles. The difference to the coastal site is:

Coastal site has plains forest deer and coast fish instead of rice and cow; this is worth +2f, -1h, +1c (after lighthouse but before biology).
Coastal site has 3 river grass compared to 3 nonriver grass of inland site, pure +3c there.
Coastal site has 5 coast and 1 river plains compared to inland site's remaining tiles: 1 lake (=coast), 2 plains, 1 desert, and 2 fogged tiles. Those fogged tiles need something good to make up for the other factors.

Additionally, coastal site starts much faster. It only needs one tech (hunting) to get going and it produces the first worker a turn faster because of the forest deer. And it has the same number of choppable forests.

The lack of tech requirements means we could for example go for bronze working or a religion once we have hunting rather than having to complete agr/hunting/AH before anything else.

That's the good I guess. Bad news is it means we may be expanding purely in one direction from our capital for a while (west).

[SevenSpirits]

I made a sandbox. Here's the WBsave so you can edit the leader/civ if you want to try out different possibilities. Right now it's set to Izzy of Maya which is admittedly not a good combination.

[SevenSpirits]

I tried a couple things. I'm really liking founding on the coast and going worker-settler to found on the other plains hill. With EXP you get a second city on turn 17. With IMP you get it turn 16 but the worker was a turn later. With neither, the second city comes t18.

It's a great second city because it immediately has a trade connection to capital for 2c, is on a plains hill, and works a flood plain. So the immediate net benefit of the city is 3f/2h/~2c if you subtract the approximate 2 maintenance.

Only problem then is to pop its borders so you can farm the rice. If you are creative this is easy. If spiritual maybe we want a religion, i.e. start with Agr/Wheel and research Hunting/Mysticism/Polytheism. But man, there are a lot of techs to get through. We need Agriculture, Hunting, Animal Husbandry just to hook most of our resources. Wheel is handy (and it's expensive so a good starting tech), fishing is needed eventually for the fish, then there's mining/bronze and mysticism/poly! So many techs we need at such a slow tech pace.

One option is to ignore Mining/BW for a while. They're not really necessary if we've got resources to hook, and if we are Egypt and have horses we don't need it militarily.

Another option is to pick a CRE leader so we can ignore the whole religious branch. CRE is probably extra good in a no-talking game anyway, where I'd expect more border conflicts. But SPI is so cool, and part of its coolness is being able to do a decent impression of CRE...

My one conclusion is I think we should actually pick Egypt first. We're unlikely to get it otherwise, I think it's just better than the other civs (because WC are a fantastic answer to emperor barbs, and they let us delay mining/BW, and I think we want Agr/Wheel as starting techs). Meanwhile there are a lot of leaders I'd be OK with, basically any combination of EXP/CRE/IMP/SPI.

[zakalwe]

I'm gonna need a hint for the title.

[novice]

My main gripe about settling on the coast was that I didn't want to waste early resources on a work boat. However you seem to have found a nice way around that by going worker->settler.

Assuming we start with The Wheel and research Hunting, the worker can camp the deer, then road 1W of the deer, then camp the furs.

If we pick Egypt we probably won't get Isabella, but I'd really like Exp, so I suspect we could end up with Joao or Bismarck, or even Peter. That's fine with me though.

[spacemanmf]

Oooh lots of discussion.

Mackoti has gone with Pericles.

So which is it? Isabella or Egypt? The first two have chosen leaders, so that does at least make it a little easier to get a pick of a civ on the way back.

[spacemanmf]

I'm gonna need a hint for the title.

You don't have to look very far.

[SevenSpirits]

Well if you really want EXP that badly maybe we should take Isabella as I think I want CRE or SPI badly.

We can always hope that other teams decide to take advantage of the unusual setup knowledge and pick civs with e.g. hunting.