[SPOILERS] Pindicator plays PBEM62 (not to be confused with Twitch Plays Civ)

[pindicator]

Oh I wasn't ranking combos within each tier, otherwise is have put Cathy ahead of Ramesses as well. I actually have wanted to play a game with Ethiopia for a while. Warning: I will beeline Gunpowder if we end up with this pick. I actually had the same thought about India too; I've never played with FW either in MP. I think if there were two real traits to pair with it (like IMP/SPI) I'd be pushing for it. Especially because worker turns are at a premium on quick speed. If I felt non-conformist and against picking the best pairing available I'd probably pick India here.

Agree with you about FF as a naming scheme. I'm not feeling it. I actually forgot about the runner up naming scheme I had for pb18, so here are a few ideas:

Hearthstone Cards / Popular Streamers
Final Fantasy Tactics Locations
Final Fantasy Bosses (guess where I got this idea from! )

[Gaspar]

Any of those options work pretty well for me in that I know them well enough to contribute suggestions. I have a slight bias towards city names that actually correlate to locations so maybe I like Tactics locations best. But any of those other options are great.

Just to contribute more meaningfully, I guess I'd rank the top 5:

1. Vicki/China
2. Izzy/England
3. Hannibal/France (this is really just a vote against CHM, its obviously a stronger pairing than 2)
4. Cathy/Ethiopia
5. Rammer/Turkey

I don't really care about the start in front of us in this sort of a setup, because generally speaking I think Leader >>> OP uniques >> start techs >>>> other uniques.

[pindicator]

And look who dazed picked first. Isn't that a funny coincidence?

Hope I hit the right amount of tongue-in-cheek on my IT comment. :D

I think I agree with your list for a top 5, and we can forget about any other ones unless one of us comes up with a crazy plan between now and when we pick. Actually, I'd still put Hannibal/France first just because you can get an early pottery and grow, grow, grow that capital onto cottages. But I have also never played with Izzy despite liking her traits.

[Gaspar]

Well played in the tech thread.

Also I dunno what THH is talking about - this field is pretty competent but I wouldn't exactly call it murderer's row. I think you're the only one in here who has won a game that wasn't a complete gimmick. Plus its a cramped map job which I always think knocks the skill/luck ratio much heavier towards the luck end.

Anyway, yeah of course Hannibal of France goes before Izzy/England. No way Hannibal gets to you, though. Its possible Izzy slips through if someone really values IND. Then I guess you get to debate whether there's a reason to take Cathy over Izzy. CRE is really good on a small map.

[pindicator]

Well, so far you've nailed the pick order. I guess we're up now? Between Cathy of Ethiopia and Rammer of Turkey I think I would prefer Cathy

I guess that's my problem with this list. There really isn't a choice. And the whole point of having a list of 10 is to have a choice

Edit: Commodore rebels against having the same "there's no choice feeling". I should have asked for a list reroll when it came out yesterday; I was thinking it but I wasn't brave enough to put it out there. Sucks for Comm too; this was his game and it's obviously not going like he envisioned.

[pindicator]

Just to play devil's advocate here are some possibilities:

Peter of Germany
Play the solid econ game EXP early on. Use GS bulbs to get to a quick Education and fast Oxford. Hope we get left alone until our tech lead makes attacking easy.

Frederick of Egypt
I guess you could play this as a slower version of the Peter strategy, but if I'm going to reach down to here it's going to be to bulb lots and lots of Great Priests. A quick Theology would encourage war mongering too, as would war chariots. Caveat: neither of these seem to lead to a victory, unless we really catch someone with a WC rush.

Catherine of Ethiopia
Mentally I was already starting to prepare for this pick. Cathy is great for the early game landgrab and I've been wanting to play with oromos for some time (rush cannons, mix with oromos). But this would take a lot of technical precision to pull off and while I will have a lot of time in September (finals are next week though), the next term may be even busier. So it makes sense in a way to play something simpler. Something like ...

Hannibal of France
I can't believe this actually fell to us. I mean this has to be the pick right? I listed or the other ideas just to see if anything was more tempting to play and nothing besides Cathy is even perking my interest a little. Plan here seems straight forward: grow tall, abuse FIN, and aim for cuirs + drafted musketeers to roll someone over.

If you think of anything different or feel strongly about another pick, I'm open to ideas. But otherwise I'll pick Hannibal in a few hours

[Gaspar]

I mean look: Its a cramped map. You can make an argument for Cathy - she's probably #2 to Joao in landgrab power and landgrab is super important on a tight map. You can make an argument for Peter - EXP is good on any map and PHI is much, much better on a tight map. I could actually say Peter might be better than Cathy if Germany wasn't basically playing without a Civ.

But uh... its Fin of France. You want to win the game, right? You cottage everything, grow big, outtech everyone, whip up an army, kill someone, win. I dunno about the specifics of your strategy but Musketeers seem like they'd be really freaking good here. People underestimate just how quickly you can get to Gunpowder if you don't need Rifling/Steel/MilTrad to make it worth something. But I don't think that even matters, in this setup we really just have to defend against the others and play better than THH.

That said - I think you're the best player in this field and the drop-off between #2 who just took fucking Charlemagne and #3 is pretty steep. So if you want to be a little more interesting and take Cathy instead I think you can easily still win and feel like you have more street cred. I don't know how important that is to you.

[pindicator]

That said - I think you're the best player in this field and the drop-off between #2 who just took fucking Charlemagne and #3 is pretty steep. So if you want to be a little more interesting and take Cathy instead I think you can easily still win and feel like you have more street cred. I don't know how important that is to you.

I'd be lying if I said this hadn't crossed my mind as a reason to pick Cathy. And having an interesting game is actually a good reason in my mind to pick a little less optimally.

So how would a game with Cathy play out? Agriculture - BW - Pottery - Currency for starters. Get a quick Academy in the capital to help us get to Currency. Take care not to overextend. Certainly have to walk a tighter line without the FIN crutch but it could end up stronger if we can core off a good amount of land.

I'd rank musketeers better than oromos abs anything better than steles.

I'm going to make a pro/con list. Don't worry, we'll get a pick shortly

[Gaspar]

Yeah, there's not a lot of game reasons to take Cathy/Ethiopia over Hannibal/France. I think the main thing that's going to be different is with Cathy you're going to want to spread out a bit and basically the overflow from all the settler whips goes into units to defend the extended territory. I mean you pretty much have to have the settler swarm mentality to make it work. But it is doable.

The main downside to the Cathy pick is you really have to nail the early game because you get absolutely nothing valuable out of the traits once landgrab is done beyond cheap libraries.

[pindicator]

In the end the biggest factor is I'm still upset about how pb19 ended up and I want to give myself the best chance to win here.