[Spoilers] Gavagai, Bacchus and Elizabeth Form a Romantic Trio

[Gavagai]

But I would actually see both holkans and skirmishers as great enablers of a more peaceful early-game, whilst Hwachas as fairly pointless, given the circumstances.

Hm, probably. But Korea is still better overall, I think.

[Krill]

I can't carry the conversation on without implicating spoiler knowledge, with one exception: at no point have I commented that this map has "a lot of water".

[Gavagai]

After thinking it over I decided that I will go with Korea over Portugal or even Carthage, unless there will be too many civs starting with Mysticism: we may have a good shot at an early religion and will need early religious techs to get to Monarchy quickly.
If we end up with Korea, projected techpath will be: BW - Fishing - Polytheism - The Wheel. Buildorder: worker - worker - WB - WB - WB - warrior - settler.

[Gavagai]

Well, we are losing in a post count, so more spam. Interesting that of five players who already picked their leaders two decided to take expansive over financial.
It will give them an edge in the early game but later all non-financial civs will inevitably start to fall behind. This means that to exploit expansive one needs to secure some serious advantage early. This usually means rushing someone. Oh, well.
Sury is especially dangerous here - a real beast, one of the best non-financial leaders hands down. Mehmed is a weaker pick: low difficulty level and butchered espionage make organized less powerfull than in a normal game (one of the reasons I disqualified Darious). I would assume that Kurumi has a start with lots of seafood and really wants granary and lighthouse ASAP. But he will also need early happy to fully exploit it (or to split resources between cities creatively but it is often difficult with seafood). What is bad is that he would choose a civ before us and fishing/mining should be an excellent combo for him if my analysis is correct.

[Bacchus]

Bored. Nothing to contribute, so let's discuss naming scheme. I suggest vacuous philosophical concepts, to start with:

Dialectic
Dasein
Intersubjectivity
Gelassenheit
Deconstruction
Differance
Discontinuity
Singularity

Workers can be named after the exponents of the above.

[Sisu]

Ding an sich!

[Gavagai]

Singularity is not a philosophical concept and your list seems too continental for me anyway. What is funny - I've been thinking about naming schemes too while going home from work. I had the following ideas:
1. Famous philosophers (as we are Philosophical).
2. Famous economists (as we are Financial and someone already using famous entrepreneurs in PB11).
3. Tarot cards (I discovered that I can't even remember correct sequence of Major Arcana which is a real shame).

[Gavagai]

Played a little with this start in a sandbox. Basically, we will absolutely need fishing as a starting tech - non-fishing starts are terribly slow. So, Korea is out. This means that we are left with four fishing/mining civs plus Spain. The only other civ which has fishing and a useful second tech is Japan which we are not taking. And those civs which have useless second tech are not good enough to make up for this drawback.
On the other hand we will definitely be able to take one of these five as we have only four players choosing before us and none of our desired civs is taken.

[Gavagai]

Thought a little bit more about it and now I can rank shortlisted civs.
1. England. Fast opening, excellent UU and UB, though a bit late.
2. Spain. Slower opening, meh UU and UB but opens up a possibility for a quick Oracle.
3. Rome. Non-existent UB and uber-UU which we will not use. At least, it has some deterrant value.
4. Carthage. Good UU and expensive UB which power depends on goodwill of other players. Hm, may be we should put it higher than Rome.
5. Portugal. They have fishing and mining and these are all good things I can say about them.

[Bacchus]

Played a little with this start in a sandbox. Basically, we will absolutely need fishing as a starting tech - non-fishing starts are terribly slow.

That's interesting, doesn't fishing get researched in time for the first chop to come in, or do you have to start with the WB, rather than the worker? I'm normally predisposed towards grow-to-6, whip settler for 3 seafood starts, but I felt this would be too casual an approach for RB MP.