[SPOILERS] *Placeholder* Zakalwe plays a soldier

[zakalwe]

Asoka + religion + Paya would be amazing.

[zakalwe]

Spi/Org is what I'm leaning towards currently. Not saying it's better than Cre/Org but I think it will be more fun.

Pick a civ with good starting techs and go for monotheism after all the basics.

[zakalwe]

With Spi we can also easily generate great artists, which could be very handy. And we wouldn't be reliant on golden ages for civic swaps, so we can use our GPs for bulbing instead and ignore the MoM race.

We could tech to aesthetics and literature instead, build Paya and TGL, and bulb our way to liberalism, taking nationalism for yet another powerful civic.

[mackoti]

well its your game, so pick what ever you think you'll play better.I seen many time advance planning like this and when you get your map well cant be put to work.With ORg/Cre play its straithforward with SPi/org its a litle more complicated, and you start without any early traits.

[zakalwe]

Yeah that's a good summary. I'm not saying I'd be married to any particular long term plan, just that Spi is fairly flexible. With two late blooming traits the early game plan would primarily just be to survive.

If we're lucky everybody else picks creative and we can pick up Stonehenge at our leisure. That's unlikely, though. Maybe two creative leaders, but not three.

[zakalwe]

Well I made the call. I hope you'll still help me salvage it if it was a bad one.

I feel we can do without the library bonus without falling too much behind. The culture is obviously nice for border wars, but expansion wise it just makes it easier to grab good city sites. The exact value is map-dependent. So basically I'm gambling that we'll be able to settle decent cities with first ring resources without curbing our expansion.

So long as we manage to keep up in the early expansion, I think our traits will serve us well.

[Commodore]

So long as we manage to keep up in the early expansion ancient-to-renaissance eras, I think our traits will serve us well dominate beyond belief.

FTFY

[zakalwe]

Dazed got Cre/Org, Boldly got Cre/Ind.

Cre/Imp for Novice? Or Ind/Spi.

[zakalwe]

Called it. (Novice got Cre/Imp.)

I also did think Greece might be a possible pick. Starting techs aren't so crap in this scenario, when we know there are no grains and everybody gets a scout anyway. Phalanxes are good defensive units, I think? Looks that way on paper, at least. He also gets double speed odeons, which is ok.

[zakalwe]

So unless Boldly builds the henge just for the hell of it, we can probably get it. We should play it cool and not build it too early, though. Better to lose it than to stunt our growth.