Don't worry, we won't bite - Whosit and Yell0w travel to Transylvania

[Whosit]

I might have missed it then, but what did you repick to?

[Yell0w]

We are Flauros of the Calabim now... so Vampire power for us =)
I decided not to use RoB turn 1 since we can't do anything with a faster worker but build roads, so it'll probably go down when we got our 2nd city.

[Yell0w]

Well Whosit, I looked in your PB 18 thread and you write a lot more than I do, I'm gonna try to up the ante and write more.

For now I'll copy paste what little I wrote about Flauros in another PBEM (don't worry no spoilers since I didn't get the pick)

Why Flauros over Decius?

Well one part I already said: I want to utilize the Slavery civic, so getting half cost Governors Mansions isn't that attractive. Command posts are great but require a significant hammer investment at a point in the game you want to build units.
Also in my opinion you kind of need to chase drama with Decius giving you culture and Sanitation. Otherwise you need to invest significant hammers into Monuments, or found a religion, which means a significant tech investment.

I think Calabim overall are pretty strong. The Moroi unit is great, very great, available early and with a long time of usefulness. The next level of units are Vampires which are pretty ridiculous, but require a hefty tech investment, though not as much as almost all other endgame units. The extra granary with +2 food is great as well. The synergy with slavery is obvious to me.

Flauros has creative which saves a lot of hammers and makes a huge impact in settling cities, I think due to the cost of acquiring culture this is one of the T1 traits in EitB, at least if coupled with a civ that doesn't want to go for a religion early anyways. I want to go a very straight path towards Vampires, and not going for Drama or Sanitation is worth it I think.

On the other hand researching Festivals is with Fin/Cre really worth it, I can use both Markets and Carnivals, still Philosophy and after that CoL will probably be better, that is one of the hard early decisions I would have to make.

Fin is otherwise fine, in this case I won't couple it with a gold focused economy but the 25% extra gold will save some bakers and let me keep an event pool easier.

Raiders is great of course but I feel that Calabim units are good enough without it, if you get them fast enough, and I'll get them quicker with Flauros. Also Flauros synergizes better with Slavery

Hmm. I agree that slavery is a good choice for the Calabim, but whipping a 120 hammer building wil usually cost about 4-6 population and thus require size 8-12 cities to do it. If you were organized, you could whip 2-3 population instead and get them built sooner. (Slavery is worth 20 hammers per population, right?)

Financial is pretty good, but the loss of passive gold savings from Organized takes some of the shine off. Creative in general seems a bit lackluster, but maybe I'm just biased. Religions give culture, happiness, and plenty of other bonuses as well, so I've never really wanted to skip them.

I guess Financial and Creative are definitely stronger in the earliest stages of the game, but cheaper manors(+ etc.) makes a huge difference later.

Hmm. I agree that slavery is a good choice for the Calabim, but whipping a 120 hammer building wil usually cost about 4-6 population and thus require size 8-12 cities to do it. If you were organized, you could whip 2-3 population instead and get them built sooner. (Slavery is worth 20 hammers per population, right?)

I don't know. I think Decius is superior if you go for Aristocracy/CoL asap, then just build the Mansions, making the detour to slavery is less worth it, especially cause this means running Aristocracy without Agrarianism. I plan to go for CoL a little bit later.

I can't really make a coherent argument, thing is I wanted to use slavery and I played a couple of single player games with Flauros and Decius before deciding, and I felt that Decius synergized really well with rushing CoL while Flauros fits Slavery and my playstyle better

I guess Financial and Creative are definitely stronger in the earliest stages of the game, but cheaper manors(+ etc.) makes a huge difference later.

I think due to utilizing slavery cheaper manors won't weigh that much.

[Whosit]

Thanks for the info dump. Reminds me I should update my PB18 thread, too.

[Yell0w]

Btw. Slavery is worth 30 hammers per pop if I'm not completely mistaken.

[Whosit]

Really? I was pretty sure that Slavery in EitB was 20 hpp, and that it is generally weaker than in BtS due to reduced output and things being more expensive.

[Mardoc]

30 hammer Normal Speed, 20 Quick - generally weaker because it's later, when you have bigger cities, and because Granary/Smokehouse are much weaker and more expensive than in BtS. I think it's a valid choice in EitB, but it's not the One Right Choice like in BtS.

[Yell0w]

So in the last turn of the previous PBEM where we still played Sheaim, I discovered an Incense


Back then that would have posed an interesting question, settling our 2nd city. Now we are CRE and get Wheat, Incense and Rice.

[Whosit]

Wouldn't that be Wheat, Incense, Rice, and Pigs? Where were you thinking of putting the city? It could be 1S(2) of where our warrior is standing, it would get all those resources with border pop, and also be coastal with river health bonus. We could later settle a city somewhere north of that to get cows and peel off extra food resources.

[Yell0w]

Wouldn't that be Wheat, Incense, Rice, and Pigs? Where were you thinking of putting the city? It could be 1S(2) of where our warrior is standing, it would get all those resources with border pop, and also be coastal with river health bonus. We could later settle a city somewhere north of that to get cows and peel off extra food resources.

Hmm, it wouldn't get the Rice, though, rice ain't the best tile, it's not wet and we'll get in cultural borders in a reasonable time. Hmmm