"Don't move or the bunny gets it" - German Joey plays Cyrus the Virus of Khmer

[GermanJoey]

thank you!

Aki, who do you think I should pick here? I won't have time to try everything I've hoped, and so I've narrowed my shortlist to roughly this order:

• Montezuma
  
• Tokugawa
  
• Boudica
  
• Washington
  
• Wang Kong
  

Montezuma is most likely to give me a nervous breakdown, so that might be exciting, but Tokugawa is definitely the coolest and Boudica is potentially the weirdest.

Hmm, I read your summary of the ToW changes but I still don't think I've internalized them enough to make a "good" suggestion here, but I will say that first picking Tokugawa(despite the changes) would be so badass that it may even border on BM.

Yeah totally... I had intended to pick him from the beginning, hence the thread title, but then I got really nervous about my starting techs because it's kind of an awkward start otherwise.

Here's a few different micro scenerios. There's a few others I tried directly in my sandbox without writing them down, such as what happens if I move to 2cow, different Agricultural leader options, etc. I think I made this public but please let me know if its not.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...=163026905

[agent427]

Khmer: War Elephants reduced to 7 strength.

Awwwwwww....

They're still pretty good I think though! Besides, I'm picking this civ for the flexiblity of the starting techs and the UB.

You mean elephants in general or Ballista Elephants? I thought the conventional knowledge was that Khmer ties with the Dutch in terms of useless UU

[GermanJoey]

Elephants in general, although I don't think the ability to pick off horse archers in a stack, especially in defensive scenarios, is a poor ability at all. Also, the Dutch UU isn't bad at all on maps with water. Galleons are very useful in land wars to get troops to the front lines instantly via boat chains, and the East Indiaman can't be stopped from doing this until Chemistry at least.

Speaking of which, I wonder if Mackoti will take Portugal? His and Seven's picks lead me to believe that they have starts similar or possibly even identical to mine. If Mackoti plays a chop rush for awhile, then he might not need any other starting techs for a good 20-30 turns, enabling him to be more selective about which civ with Mining he wants. A pick of Portugal and an Optics bulb for fast Carracks would be a very deadly combination on a civ with that much production on a map that's 44% water.

[GermanJoey]

Wow, picks goin' down fast... and 3 of my top 5 leader picks are already gone. Monty is still there, as is Washington. I'd have greatly preferred Boudica over Washington though. Qin and Stalin are still there too, and there's no Industrious leaders yet... Qin could get the GLH while Stalin could try for an Oracle MC -> Pyramids slingshot, although now I wish I had started with Mysticism. I thought about Churchill a bit but his traits seem anti-synergistic. Gotta figure this out by tonight...

[GermanJoey]

Churchill is gone too now, damn... I actually thought about him a bit and had basically convinced myself to take him because of all those hills in my BFC (I was still thinking in terms of Cha=whip an average of 1 pop/turn/city, i.e. 2-pop whips every other turn so that you don't dry whip, which I didnt explain well at all before. In fact it was completely retarded and flat-out wrong the way I wrote it before, but in my defense I've been very sick lately (bronchitis) and getting just a few hours of sleep a night ), but oh well, another one bites the dust. Zulu is gone now too, that's another point in favour of all the starts being 2-livestock starts. There's no way in hell that Germany will remain untaken by the time the snake wraps back to me, which just leaves Ethiopia as the only other Hunting/Mining civ on the table (plus China as Agri/Mining) for 6 players left to pick a civ. I don't regret my pick at all.

What do I do now? Qin or take a deeper look into Cyrus? Maybe Degaulle? Why am I so goddamn hung up on Charismatic over the other two new traits? Do I need somebody to slap me?

[GermanJoey]

Ok, looks like every Hunting/Mining (thank god I have one then!) civ is gone as well as the one with Hunting/TW and Hunting/Agr. I wouldn't be surprised if Kuro picked China, either. Three civs have Fishing as a starting tech, which, while stronger in ToW, is probably more due to those players wanting something else (e.g. the Vikings' Trading Post).

I'm still very surprised that we never saw a Portugal pick, Carrack chains with the circumnav bonus would be completely game-breaking in a match where Astronomy's base-beaker cost is increased by almost +50% due to the Tech Scaling option and even more on top of that because of the Huge map size. (as far as I understand it, TS only makes the earliest techs immune to size-based tech cost increases). In contrast, you could likely bulb Optics in the BC years. They were my de-facto pick before I saw the start position. Well, thank god we don't have to deal with that.

I played a test game (randomly generated map, but mostly-recreated my start position) with Cyrus last night and I really liked him. Imperialistic shores up some of the weaknesses of Charismatic and vice versa. With Charismatic, its really easy to "forget" to keep expanding because you're always trying to grow cities to work tons of tiles. With Boudica, that was OK because you had such huge food surpluses, but other leaders like Hannibal and De Gaulle had problems dealing with that. However, with Cyrus it's easy because settlers can be easily pumped out of a big, high production city without preventing growth for many turns. And, while older cities can build workers out of hammers, Newer cities can build workers out of food and the whip until more tiles can be improved. I found I needed TONS of workers because I was just working so many tiles EVERYWHERE. Big cities can also easily build lots of military, leaving me in a strong position in the early game. Big REXing means a currency beeline, but that's also perfect because I won't hurt from skipping Monarchy because of Charismatic (in fact, I'm hoping to skip the entire Mysticism line for a very long time), and Currency also gives me Cheap Markets. Going through Mathematics gives me Barays, further helping me grow to my high happy cap.

In short, I'm very happy with my situation here!

[GermanJoey]

Kuro picked freaking Productive India. I got the feeling that Productive workers were already sort of like having Fast Workers, so I can't help but wonder that this might be too much of a good thing.

[GermanJoey]

Ok so here's the rest of these. I guess I never got around to the other changes, even though I touched on the bigger ones (MC cost change, starting techs cost change). For the most part, they sound pretty good. I also just noticed the circumnav bonus got removed, which means you basically need a Cha/Spi (Brennus) civ to make Carrack chains work. (switching into Vassalage/Theo for 4 XP. Way more tech-expensive, perhaps not even worth it anymore).

Agricultural
Direct Changes: Aggressive removed; this trait now gives +1 food on every tile with 4 or more food.
Indirect Changes: The Agriculture is cheaper, and thus AH is as well. Biology is more expensive because of tech-cost scaling.
TLDR of below: Agricultural = Better Faster Stronger Harder
Thoughts:
Agricultural is a trait that makes everything you do better. You can grow faster, you can work more tiles, you can support more specialists, you'll have more whips, etc. You'll have a lot of flexibility in accomplishing whatever you want it to do - it is a micromanager's dream trait.

It can be very difficult such sprawling growth, however, even with the whip, which makes beelining Happiness techs, such as Monarchy, Calendar, and Metalcasting very important in the early game. Thus, in contrast to your cities' situation, Agricultural limits your flexibility on the tech tree.

It's not as impactful in the late-game as you'd think, as by that point you're limited by health and a few extra food from farms is at any rate a small drop in the bucket in the overall output of a size 20 city. This brings up the point that Agricultural is at its best when the majority of tiles in a city are ones receiving the benefit. We primarily think of this as the early game, but Agricultural is useful in the mid-game too, where smaller whip cities produce much of your military and many islands are still being settled. Note that it gives the most relative benefit to tiles that are right on the 4F bonus point - and thus, cities that can be placed next to multiple floodplains or multiple sugars can be even more lucrative that sites that sport wet corn or pigs.

Leaders under consideration:

• Shaka (Agr/Exp) - A potentially devastating combo, Shaka gives cheap granaries with extra food to whip them. However, unlike Washington he does not have a free +3 Whip happiness - he'll have to use deep whips to get the most out of his extra food.
  

Productive
Direct Changes: Protective removed; this trait now gives +50% worker construction, +50% workboat construction, and +1 hammer on every tile giving 4 or more hammers. Tech Scaling makes Chemistry and State Property much more expensive to reach.
Indirect Changes: Work boats are buildable without needing Fishing, initial worker techs are slightly cheaper.
TLDR of below: Pretty good, maybe overrated. Probably isn't.
Thoughts:

This trait can either be insanely useful or completely overrated. The +50% worker production can easily give you a 9 or 10 1st-turn worker (PH start + 1f2h or 3h tile -OR- non-PH start w/ 3 hammer tile), which is great if you start with just the techs you need to get to work right away, or very awkward otherwise. This is less of a problem when you can see your start and have unrestricted leaders, of course. The workboat changes make fishing starts extremely good, especially as you can always start the WB at Turn 0 regardless of what techs you have - you just need to finish teching Fishing by the time the workboat is planted in order to work the tile. Together, these two sub-traits by themselves could save you hundreds upon hundreds of hammers in the BC years and helps you get new cities productive quickly. Compare this to the 3 other new-city traits, those that aid a new city's development the in various stages of its life from fetus to teen years, that give approximately the same overall amount (to your empire) of bonus hammers:

• Productive - Helps original city, by helping get the new city's tiles improved (figure about 1-1.5 workers per city depending on other traits, and I'd guess around 0.3-0.5 workboats per city for a mostly land-baed empire)
  
• Imperialistic - Helps original city by helping get the new city's settler built.
  
• Creative - Helps get the new city by helping get its borders popped.
  
• Expansionist - Helps get the new city get productive.
  

In contrast to Pro and Imp, which help the mother city, Expansionist and Creative help the baby, where each extra hammer is more useful due to how difficult they are to come by. Expansionist is the best because EVERY city needs a granary, in contrast to Creative where not every city needs a quick border pop (or a pop at all). Exp is also better than Pro/Imp because they rarely get the full benefit from their multiplier due to it not applying to hammers from food. So, I'd rate these guys, on the basis of these sub-traits alone (they all do other stuff too, of course) ,,Exp > Pro > Imp > Cre.

The other part of Productive, the +1 hammer bonus, will be anywhere from a slighty bonus to as much as a +25% passive hammer increase. This multiplies with a Forge and other hammer multipliers, but doesn't work with the whip. This bonus becomes completely insane when applied to 1f4h workshops, but these will, alas, not come until very late in the game.

Leaders under consideration:

• Tokugawa (Pro/Agr) - Tokugawa's traits are all about working as many awesome tiles as possible as fast as possible. Not much to say other than that. An extraordinarily flexible leader, I think. He was my favourite leader in ToW at first glance and remains near the top even after a couple dozen test games and a pretty exhaustive analysis here.
  

[GermanJoey]

Here's a rough overview of what I think of my opponents' setups...

REXERS

• Lord Parkin - Churchill of Zulu (Chm/Pro, Agriculture/Hunting, Imp, Ikhanda)
  
• Mackoti - Charlemagne of Germany (Imp/Pro, Hunting/Mining, Riesengarde, Assembly Plant)
  
• GermanJojo - Cyrus of Khmer (Chm/Imp, Hunting/Mining, Ballista Elephant, Baray)
  

Three pretty similar picks here, both in starting techs and strategies. All three will be focused on REXing to large-sized empires and then going to war. Mackoti will have the fastest expansion, then Lord Parkin, then myself. Lord Parkin and I will be able to grow more and work cottages once our Charismatic trait kicks in a little more. Mackoti and I will both likely beeline to Currency - I wonder if we'll compete for the Hanging Gardens? I think LP wants to rush Currency too, although he doesn't get as much benefit without the cheap markets I'm not sure exactly what the point of the new Impis (50% withdraw rate) are, but the Ikhanada will be nice for a large empire. My Barays will be very nice for my Charismatic trait, especially since I'll get a few of them up early. My traits and civ make me the strongest in mid-game, able to have a decent economy and field an insane amount of military units, especially if I can leverage Cha into an early Heroic Epic via barbs - note that I can produce Lvl 4 Ballistas, Knights, and Horchers with just Theocracy + a single settled GG. None of Mackoti's special stuff comes early, but if he's still strong come come Chemistry, then we've basically already lost. I wonder if he'll make TGL a priority in order to bulb it? Obviously Seven will really want that wonder too. Anyways, I hope I'm not near either of them!

TECHERS

• Gavagai - Willem van Oranje of Ethiopia (Fin/Cre, Hunting/Mining, Oromo Warrior, Stele)
  
• SevenSpirits - Pericles of Russia (Cre/Phi, Hunting/Mining, Cossack, Research Institute)
  

Here's the other two Hunting/Mining pickups. In contrast to the more REXy strats above, these guys are both more about leveraging a tech lead. Pericles is the best leader to rush Oxford, what between Education bulbs and cheap libraries and universities.The new Russian Research Institute is very powerful for a Phi leader. I wonder if he'll adopt a more defensive position, develop a tight empire (cottaged cap, specialists everywhere else), and skip the religious line in order to beeline something really deep in the tree? He'll likely want TGL and will probably grab the Music artist too. Gavangai, OTOH, will likely play the standard cottage game. If he tries to win lib, however, he'll find his attempt stymied by Seven. All other things being equal, nobody can possibly beat Seven to Lib if he wants it. Thus, I think Gavangai will be smart and rush towards something different, like Guilds or Gunpowder - he IS Ethiopia, after all, and Oromos are awesome.

GIMMICKY

• slowcheetah - Napoleon of Scandinavia (Chm/Org, Fishing/Hunting, Berzerker, Trading Post)
  
• Gawdzak - Boudica of Rome (Agr/Chm, Fishing/Mining, Praetorian, Forum)
  
• Haram - Ragnar of Mongolia (Fin/Agr, Hunting/The Wheel, Keshik, Ger)
  

Each of these guys, it seems to me, are going for a particular sort of all-in rush. Haram wants to rush to and then whip Keshiks. Gawdzak wants to whip a load of Cha Praet. slowcheetah wants to rule the seas. I don't think this will win any of them the game, even though it will sure be a pain in the ass to be their target. The map is of huge size with 11 civs; the winner will be one who can develop a big empire and make some friends. Seeing Boudica paired with a silly civ pick like Rome is a real disappoint to me; she was, in the end, the leader I wanted to play the most. (even though I had listed Montezuma #1 before I saw my start position). The Cha/Agr synergy is extremely good I think, because you can grow into lots of cottages fast while still whipping all sorts of stuff everywhere. An extremely flexible that's wasted if used on an obvious beeline. Fin/Agr doesn't make as much sense to me, on the other hand, while Cha/Org seems like an ill-conceived pick when the Medium Distance Maintenance option is turned on. I guess Organized is for the cheap Trading Posts? Doesn't seem worth it; I think he's over-estimating the amount of water on this map, as I was before. I generated a Torusland map last night (amazing mapscript, btw) using the settings that Krill did and the water is more akin to a high-sealevel Lakes map than anything more Big-And-Smally. I'd have put Cha/Org in with the REXers if I didn't think he was gonna do something goofy with boats.

AWKWARD

• HitAnyKey - Wang Kon of Spain (Fin/Pro, Fishing/Mysticism, Conquistador, Citadel)
  
• Douglas Quaid - Elizabeth of Egypt (Fin/Phi, Agriculture/The Wheel, War Chariot, Obelisk)
  

These picks... don't make a lot of sense to me. DQ's Agr/TW Egypt pick was weird considering how ubiquitous Hunting was in other picks, leading me to believe that he might have just picked Egypt hoping to be near me and dump dozens of War Chariots into my land. If that doesn't happen, he's gonna try to do the Bureau cap thing, although I'm worried that he'll fall behind overall if he goes for that. HitAnyKey, OTOH, picked what I considered a very strong leader, but then paired it with a civ that doesn't make much sense to me. Spain's unique stuff is very strong, but it comes very late. His starting techs are also very weak given the ubiquity of Hunting... maybe not everyone has a 2 livestock start. Productive/Fishing/Mysticism implies he wants a fast workboat and then grab a religion. Maybe he even has multiple seafood? I'm guessing he'll go for a shot at the Oracle, use it to pop MC, and then try to bulb Machinery for the Colossus. That wonder can be very good *IF* you have the right city for it.

NEW META?

• Kuro/Wetbandit - Tokugawa of India (Agr/Pro, Mining/Mysticism, Fast Worker, Mausoleum)
  

Now this is literallily gonna be some Refresher Naga shit.

[Dp101]

Now this is gonna literallily some Refresher Naga shit.

That video is the greatest idea in dota ever.