[SPOILERS] dtay's thread awaits a title

[dtay]

Snakepick! Snakepick! We have a snakepick! Trait thoughts (not comprehensive) are below:

Traits I'm high on:

1) Aggressive - I don't know exactly how people think about aggressive, but I suspect it is underrated. The maintenance reduction is roughly equivalent to the savings from Org or the bonus commerce from Fin for a lot of the game and a decent poor man's version for the latter half. The cheap barracks that now give culture give a nice way to pop borders and ignore myst/monuments. And then the promo's are pretty sweet, especially for early game combat when swinging 2-3 combats can give you total victory (easy early access to shock is huge). Basically aggressive is a grabbag of useful stuff that I think everyone underrates.

2) Financial - it's still financial. Worth tons of commerce over the game, and especially makes fishing villages way more useful. Don't need to comment a ton more.

3) Expansive - similar to aggressive, it is now a grab-bag of useful awesomeness. Worker bonus early is huge, I think no trait is better for the early-early game than expansive (Imp is the one rival, and pro a bit later on once granaries are being built). And then the scattering of cheap buildings is very nice later on.

RtR is pretty balanced, so it's not like I think the other traits are poor by any means, all are pretty cool. But those three are the one's I think I'm targeting unless I go for a synergistic civ-leader combo. Besides those three I think I'm most likely to pick spiritual, since I haven't had a chance to play a Spi civ in a mp game and the options it affords are especially interesting in RtR.

I do think that having at least 1 trait to boost the early game is important, snowballs still exist here. Early game traits are:
True early - Expansive, Imperialistic, Protective
Quasi early - Aggressive, Creative

Civs wise I've thought about this a lot less, and it is hugely dependant on the starting techs I need. I'm generally high on Egypt, France, Inca, Aztecs, and Sumeria, but that is non-systematic and I'll be more thorough once I have a starting shot.

[The Black Sword]

Here you go:



Fog gazing may be quite unpredictable.

Looking forward to reading one of your threads from the start!

[dtay]

Lots of civilization picking on the first go around, which I think speaks to how balanced the players think the traits are. Good job to Krill.

I haven't put in the time to even check what the starting techs are for the civs people picked, which probably will reveal something about their starts. I'll do that before I'm up at least.

[Krill]

Yeah, the civs need a bit of work, but TBH, I doubt I'm going to be able to do it without a coder for a week.

[dtay]

Yeah, the civs need a bit of work, but TBH, I doubt I'm going to be able to do it without a coder for a week.

Do you have a broad outline of the sort of changes to civs you think need to happen? My impression right now is the best civs aren't runaways, but a few civs really just have little interesting to their name and need a boost. But that's an impression, I haven't looked at it systematically. (Don't answer if I could find this in the Rtr subforum, haven't checked there in a week or so).

Thoughts on start:

1)I obviously need an ag civ, since I have Ag and AH food resources.
2) No water pushes against financial, looks like there's some to the south (if TBS doesn't change the fog as he hinted was possible), but this is a boost to Org over Fin as an econ straight.
3) Hut from the start is nice
4) Religion? I suspect not, workers need things to do and this isnt a low-worker-tech start, but I'll do the math to be sure.

[Krill]

I intended to change the tech costs to a similar scaling formula to that in ToW, and homogenise all starting tech costs.

That then precipitates a required change to work boats which no one could ever agree on

At that point, nerf Zulu and Egypt, potential change to India for Fast Worker due to bonus movement effects, leave Inca as is (not OP). Then pass through every civ for interestingness, as you said.

Coming up with viable options? Take me 3 hours. Getting people to not think I'm a loony? Still trying to do that now.

[dtay]

Shot of the opening:



Haven't decided on tech, sims (hopefully sandbox, perhaps just mental) to be done tomorrow.

Think I'll just let culture pop the hut and get the scout covering ground, this map is large enough no one should be remotely close enough to steal it in 5 turns.

Seeing the gems made me consider moving the settler 2 NW, but then the scout revealed there's a paucity of food over there. Hopefully I can make that city 2 or 3, but it's tricky to figure out how to manage it. More on that later though.

[dtay]

Hey, hopefully I'll start reporting once we're past the opening (basically once I have 2 cities).

I've concentrated on scouting for city placement as opposed to rival location, trying to be relatively thorough about my surroundings. metraninja/others are off to my east somewhere, so that's turned into the goal now since I have lots of the nearby land scouted.

Pictures of said land:





It's reasoably nice. Not as good as my pb18 starting land was, but i'd say better than 13 or 19. What it unfortunately lacks is a good 2nd city site that checks all the boxes, but the next ring out is full of great stuff.

Absent a good site that shares food, basically settled on settling here, 1N of the gems



It gets a new 6food source (pigs), gets a good early tech booster (gems), and once borders expand will get me copper, which is good cause I sure don't want to actually settle city just for that copper anytime soon, it is not very pretty over there.

Tech path was mining->bronze working, chopping is just too good. Now it's hunting for my pigs and deer, then either animal husbandry for chariots to defend myself or wheel->pottery for lovel teraces. Depends a lot on the distance between 2metra and I.

Settler done eot29, settling t32 (2 turn travel time). I'm satisfied with that time given my lack of 2nd-city-speed boosting traits (exp or imp).

[dtay]

Hey, hopefully I'll start reporting once we're past the opening (basically once I have 2 cities).

I've concentrated on scouting for city placement as opposed to rival location, trying to be relatively thorough about my surroundings. metraninja/others are off to my east somewhere, so that's turned into the goal now since I have lots of the nearby land scouted.

Pictures of said land:





It's reasoably nice. Not as good as my pb18 starting land was, but i'd say better than 13 or 19. What it unfortunately lacks is a good 2nd city site that checks all the boxes, but the next ring out is full of great stuff.

Absent a good site that shares food, basically settled on settling here, 1N of the gems



Note - yes I am aware in my plans hunting only would let me pasture the pigs, and AH is for the deer... the perils of writing reports during an all-nighter.

It gets a new 6food source (pigs), gets a good early tech booster (gems), and once borders expand will get me copper, which is good cause I sure don't want to actually settle city just for that copper anytime soon, it is not very pretty over there.

Tech path was mining->bronze working, chopping is just too good. Now it's hunting for my pigs and deer, then either animal husbandry for chariots to defend myself or wheel->pottery for lovel teraces. Depends a lot on the distance between 2metra and I.

Settler done eot29, settling t32 (2 turn travel time). I'm satisfied with that time given my lack of 2nd-city-speed boosting traits (exp or imp).

[dtay]

Sooo, might be about to lose a city to a barb. From the one fogged spot that could surprise me, in a 3 turn window of vulnerability. Urgh.

I forgot to take a screeny, but I have decent odds to keep it, depending on where the barb breaks. It has 4 spots to advance to. 2 of them charge at a city with a Quecha, and a second built before barb gets there. There's a third spot that approaches a currently unguarded city (ugh), but I can hit with a quecha for a 50-50 shot to keep the city. And then there's a 4th spot going towards the unguarded city, that I can road to, but is on a forest. Ugh.

That all would make a ton more sense with a screenshot...

Anyway... here's for luck on the turn roll.