Leader / Civ selection

[nabaxo]

@Nabaxo - Darius was a very solid pick, obviously assuming equal empires he will have the largest economy. I think the case can be made that he's the third best, particular if we're really spread out.

Darius have always been one of my absolute favourite leaders back when I was very new at this game. I was not sure why, but I was always able to go up a difficulty level when I played him. Now I know why and I still think he's a stellar leader. Especially on higher difficulty levels. //End musings.

[nabaxo]

I think I broke the spreadsheet. How do I collapse everything again?

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Because Immortal rushes are pretty good when your AI opponents are teching and producing slow enough to have nothing but Warriors and Archers.

They're of little use against metal spears, of course.

[Lord Parkin]

Regarding Sumeria: Realistically, how many Courthouses would we build before we'd have Code of Laws anyway? At 90 hammers they're still pretty expensive for that early in the game... almost prohibitively so in new cities, and in existing ones and we'll most likely have better things to be building. I'm just not sure we're going to get that much benefit out of them before we'd have access to regular Courthouses anyway.

On a different matter, should we set up a new bet on which picks are going to be paired with what? I'm willing to bet on seeing CivPlayers take Holy Rome and the Spanish take Rome for a start.

[SleepingMoogle]

I'm kind of inclined to agree with LP. If we take Sumeria for the Ziggurat, it also means we have to invest in the religious techs early to unlock it, and we get a crappy UU to boot. It locks us down into a very specific early strategy. Is that really what we want to be doing?

If altogether possible I'd much rather ignore the religious part of the tree and focus on getting techs like Writing, Math and maybe even Currency. The only argument I'd have for getting Priesthood early is if we have are low on happy resources and need to get Monarcy up and running, but we have a good mapmaker so that is unlikely.

An early religion would be nice too, but I fully expect some other teams to beeline them, and without an Ind leader I don't think we should try and go for the Oracle either (unless we maybe have Marble at our starting position). With a solid start we should be able to land Confucianism anyhow.

Before we get too attached to the idea, let's also consider some other usual suspects like the Ottomans, who start with Agri/Wheel and who have a pretty decent UU and UB as well.

[Lord Parkin]

Ottomans are good if we think the map is likely to be low on happiness. Otherwise maybe not quite so useful. UB is pretty expensive for its time too.

I'd be inclined more towards Egypt (Agri/Wheel), Mali (Wheel/Mining), or China (Agri/Mining) myself. The former two with good early UU's and UB's, the latter with a brilliant mid-game UU.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

If that's the case, then I'd prefer Egypt. Other people want to make us sweat. Let's return the favour.

The UU is pretty bad though.

[Cyneheard]

If that's the case, then I'd prefer Egypt. Other people want to make us sweat. Let's return the favour.

The UB is pretty bad though.

UB's best if you're Phi, b/c then it's helpful (see PBEM4V). But Pacal doesn't need Priest slots early.

[slowcheetah]

Huzzah I won something

[Nicolae Carpathia]

If I never ever need to build a monument I would be happy.