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

[Gavagai]

That's awesome! Thank you very much for input. I knew that my initial performance can be improved as micro is very complex for this start and I clearly wasn't playing optimally during my trial runs - but I didn't think that we can squeeze in a 60-hammers worth granary. Though I suspect that it was done partly via overuse of worker force. In my sims I assumed that a worker or two is going away with a settler and is permanently unavailable for capital duties. Of course, we will need to make an extended micro-plan with early cities included to see how it may work out...
A question regarding your final table - second and third chops are shown to be completed in T38 and T39 respectively and it is in accord with workers completion dates. But I see that hammers from these chops appear in our queue on T37 and T38. Is it a mistake or I'm missing something?

[Gavagai]

Actually, there is an issue which I should probably have considered earlier: will our scout be located at the same place we see at our starting screenshot or it will be on the same spot where our settler is? If it will be on a settler spot, then we'll be able to scout 1NE and may be find some grains to the east. If there is a wet corn we will definitely need to start our micro-plan from scratch as we are settling in place.

Edit: thought about it a little bit. It looks like that even wet corn isn't necesseraly good enough to SIP. We will be able to improve it by about T20 and at this point will have a 40 food disadvantage compared to our current micro-plan. We will be able to consistently produce more food in a capital only by T30 - and will be splitting food soon after that anyway.

[Bacchus]

The hammers appear on the queue the same turn the chop is marked in the "chops" column, in fact the formula looks for a number there, multiplies it by 20 and adds the result to the "saved" column. I should clarify, that "saved" is hammers at the end of turn, that is after chops, whips and organic hammers are all counted.

Yes, there was overuse of the worker force in the capital, I thought about how to approach this and decided to test with maximum commitment to the capital, so that if we decide to withdraw a worker we know what exactly we are sacrificing.

On the scouting, we will just have to wait and see. I'd probably be against settling in place even for wet corn as our tech line comes together very well just at the moment, and we can easily throw that corn into the eastern city anyway. I would prefer having that eastern city there — in presence of the grain and given the ability to share out a clam it will be a good one, Moai worthy, perhaps.

[Bacchus]

There are no Mysticism civs and only one fisherman financier besides us. I think we should still get Poly rather than Meditation, though (explanation to follow).

[Gavagai]

My thoughts about our opponents' combos. I don't evaluate players.

1. Jowy + Qgqq, Mansa Musa of Babylonia. Awesome leader and meh civ as can be expected from a team which is the first in picking order. Mansa is more a late game leader and bowmen can protect him from early rushes - may be that was a part of reasoning. But I still suspect that Baylonia was chosen mostly because of starting techs: when QJowy were able to make their second pick, only Babylonia and France were left of Agri/Wheel civs. And France is pretty meh too. What this choice of techs tells us? They have grains nearby and their micro-plan doesn't require early chopping/slaving. They can possibly have early luxury resource nearby. And they are not coastal. It is possible to reasonably pick non-fishing civ while being coastal but to do it in our circumstances you should consider your civ of choice as something better than Rome. And no, no way Babylonia is better than Rome.
This combo has a decent chances to win a game, I think: something to rely on for early safety and a stellar leader for late-game struggle.

2. Slowcheetah, Suryavarman II of Mali. Insane early game leader combined with a good early game civ. Also not coastal. Will be extremely dangerous in the beginning but if unable to capitalize on his advantages, will have a hard time struggling with financial leaders later. Really don't want to start near him, it will be a Commodore vs Scoopin scenario from PB8.

3. Dazedroyalty, Victoria of Zulu. I guess, he really wanted agri+hunting (AH and/or hunting resource nearby, I assume) and decided that Zulu is better than Persia. One more leader which can outexpand us with ease. Lategame, however, his second trait would be practically useless. So, I don't think this team has high chances of really winning. And yes, not coastal.

4. Gavagai, Elizabeth of England. The strongest Renaissance combo ever - stock exchanges, fast universities (and hence - fast Oxford), easier access to golden ages, RIFLEMEN! And very good potential to reach Renaissance quickly via early academy, bureaucracy and bulbs. Our main difficulty is to survive and not get outexpanded during early turns. If we are in OK shape after turn 100, we should be able to become a major contenders. However, we should try to get decisive advantage in Renaissance because later we will start to lose to Serdoa's combo.

5. Kurumi, Mehmed II Mongolia. Well, this guy will be able to kill someone early due to hammers advantage and keshiks. No real synergy, however - Mongolia really wants a charismatic leader, Washington would be a better option. Yet another person I would want to start as far as possible from. No good chances for winning of course - barring extremely lucky early war. Given that map was promised to be balanced, I doubt that it is possible. Not coastal, of course.

6. Serdoa + Ichabod, Darius of Sumeria. They have courthouses for 45 hammers and available at Priesthood. So cheap that actually worth building during early game on Monarch - even for esp advantage only. Cheap lighthouses are also handy. But true power of organized becomes apparent late game, when huge empires with lots of cities and heavy costs struggle. And at this point also come cheap factories which can just decide the game. This is the one team I would actually prefer to start relatively close: they don't have many early advantages against us and clearly wouldn't want an early war. On the other hand, I want to have an ability to kill them before industrial age.
This team has probably the best combo out there and is a very real threat to win this game. And they may be coastal. Sumeria's starting techs are rather awkward for a coastal start but in some circumstances still reasonable. Also, it is clear that Sumeria was chosen mostly for UB.

7. Merovech + WarriorKnight, Isabella of China. Yes, another team with a very quick start: expansive leader and awesome starting techs. Of course, they can outexpand us, that's why I don't want them close. However, like all non-financial civs they will inevitably fall behind during lategame. This means that we can expect them to try to get some decisive advantage early. Yes, definitely don't want them close. And they can be coastal.

8. Sian, Huayna Capac of Carthage. Well, this is the one leader whose start is pretty clear defined. He is going for religion + Oracle + Colossus and possibly Pyramids, of course. He will need to sacrifice expansion in the process and to play peacefully, so I can accept him as a neighbor. Also, the only other civ which is definitely coastal and our only competitor for an early religion. He will be our main competitor in spearheading to Renaissance but when he gets there, he won't have our advantages. Still, he may have a decent shot at winning.

9. Nakor + CFCJesterFool, Pericles of Egypt. And yet another team with a quite obvious strategy. They may be coastal as Egypt was clearly chosen for UB and synergy with philosophical. The only other philosophical leader but leaning towards prophets and monk economy while I'm thinking more about caste system, scientists and merchants. They may give a pretty solid show but, frankly speaking, I don't see non-financial civ winning this game, unless something unusual happens. May be coastal as I think they aimed for UB.

10. BaII, Zara Yaqob of Ottomans. Yet another leader who really needs to exploit early game advantage. Don't really understand the civ chosen: Ottomans are decent but this team was the first to choose a civ. Couldn't they find something stronger? Not going to win this game, I think. And yes, not coastal.

So, to summarize:
Fact: two coastal starts, three undefined, five non-coastal.
Fact: no one starts with Mysticism.
Fact: only five financial leaders in a NTT game. All non-financial leaders are either creative or expansive and, I assume, are counting on early-game advantages. We have a clash of long-term vs short-term visions here.
Fact: no one seems to be posed for a direct early aggression, except may be Kurumi. Of ten teams none wanted to make an aggressive Rome combo, though one could have easily taken Ragnar of Rome. I'm quite surprised, actually.
Fact: I see Sumeria team as our most dangerous rival.

[Gavagai]

Bacchus, why do you think we need to go for Poly? I'm actually hesitating in this regard. Of course, we will possibly have a competition for Meditation with Sian (though I'm pretty sure he will go BW first) and in an ideal world I would want to research Mono before Monarchy and then jump into HR/OR. But I'm not sure we will be able to afford it as I foresee a research bottleneck at turns 50-80. We will need pottery, writing, priesthood, sailing, monarchy ASAP and in a close time frame. Also, meditation would allow us to have BW earlier, to whip a worker immediately after we start one and to start chopping earlier. So, my current thinking is to follow Sian's score and if he doesn't research anything before we take mysticism or on the same turn, then we go for meditation. Otherwise - for polytheism. But you can try to convince me otherwise.

[Bacchus]

So, the single advantage for meditation is 2 turns faster research queue, which isn't actually as great for faster BW reasons, as you think -- we can only whip the worker 1 turn earlier to avoid a no-hammer-invested penalty, and moving the chops up 1 turn (or even 2) doesn't speed up the settler. The second warrior will be sped up, but we don't actually need him faster, what we need at that point is growth. The biggest advantage in moving the research queue up is that we'll get pottery earlier, and won't have to spend a turn investing a hammer into the third warrior, we could go straight into granary. I'm not even sure we should do that given the ability, though -- the granary completes with overflow as it stands, an extra hammer doesn't do anything for it, whilst kepping a warrior on the queue with 1 hammer invested for a timely whip with 15 overflow is useful.

So the advantages are fairly minor, and we'll have to research poly anyway and relatively soon, for Mono, Literature and potential Parthenon reasons, so why waste beakers into Meditation when they are precious? I'd say the two are balanced and would be indifferent, if Sian takes BW. I originally had an erroneous precept from metagaming, thinking that by taking a tech which takes a little longer to research, we can get him to waste some beakers, but I miscalculated.

EDIT: There was something incoherent here, deleted.

[Gavagai]

Do you take into account that we will almost surely need to research agriculture before pottery? And may be AH either. Also, I don't think that we will want a granary in a capital until later. Subsequent cities are my concern however - we will typically want a granary as the first build in them.

[Gavagai]

And also, we are most surely not building Parthenon. Frankly speaking, I hope to avoid aesthetics and subsequent techs for quite a long. We will need to build TGL only in a scenario where we can't afford caste system which is a bad scenario by itself.

Edit: on the other hand, I will want to bulb philosophy. Hence, meditation is by no means a waste of beakers.

[Bacchus]

If we don't rush pottery and get Agri, the Meditation advantage is even smaller. If we need AH _and_ Agri rapidly though, we get a good reason to pick Meditation over Poly.

This is all a bit far out to discuss at the moment, but what are you planning to research after CoL/Currency and why the aversion to aesthetics?

EDIT: The philosophy bulb is pretty much a given, but by the time it comes online beakers are much less valuable, and its easier to throw them into meditation.