[SPOILERS] Cheater Hater hates bad advice. BGN gives only bad advice.

[Caledorn]

Also note, there is a straight line of coast north. Settling in place could possibly waste a seafood. It would be really nasty from the mapmaker, but you never know

I see it now that you mention it. I am uncertain about the grass hill up east, if the water is N of that too, but that should be possible to figure out based on a sandbox (provided I install Blue Marble).

We are 4th in the snake pick too. Without knowing what may be south or north (I'm guessing going south with the scout to scout the elephant is the best move), do you guys have any suggestions for good leaders or civs for our initial pick? I've noticed that picking civ first seems to be far more common with RtR than with just BTS, where some leaders are critically overpowered (Willem for instance. I love Willem. But while he is still good in RtR, he's not nearly as good as in base BTS), so I am a bit unsure what is best for this start and mod.

[Caledorn]

I tried my hand at making a sandbox for the setting - I'll be very pleased if someone takes a look at it and gives me feedback on whether it is correct. I have used the map size specifications Krill shared in another post (76*28 I think), and I have set the difficulty to Noble (as I don't think there's been an agreement on the difficulty yet?). I installed Blue Marble terrain to be sure I got the correct tiles, but I may have made some mistakes in the fogged tiles that we can just make out the edges of.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4186...dSwordSave

[Haram]

If we SIP, the capital is able to grow size 19 and work up to 16 cottages (incl. 8 river ones). It's really nice and it could be strong commerce base for our empire. We need only 1 tech to hook both food resources, so we could consider religion - its only 7 players. The religion path is also appealing, b/c we probably want our capital to grow tall. If we find anything interesting around, building settler at size 2 could be a good option - we have 2 great 6FH/1C tiles and 2 hammer plant (its just a feeling, I didnt do any sanboxing). With this start I find ORG stronger than FIN. EXP is still good - we want to work our 2 food tiles ASAP. It lost granary bonus, but got a lot of other cheap buildings. Health bonus is just a tip, but it could be handy. In RtR it seems to be more worth to grow cities tall (because nerfed slavery). For the same reason Imp seems to be a strong trait to me.

Plako and BGN - you have more experience than me, so if you find my comments inaccurate, dont hesitate to point it out. I also want to learn from this game

[Caledorn]

We should probably seriously start discussing what leader/civ we want, as the pickings should commence soon and we're 4th in the order and we don't want to be the ones everyone else is waiting for!

I'm going to ask for you guys to come with some suggestions, as I'm really lost on what are good options for RtR. Haram has already brought up some suggestions about leader traits that I'm curious to hear your thoughts on plako and BGN. Also, there is the matter of whether to choose leader or civ first. Based on what has been said in the thread about the tech costs in RtR, I think we want a civ that has hunting if possible - or at least make hunting our first tech, given that we want to improve the animals asap with our first worker?

[plako]

RtR traits are pretty well balanced. Economically strong options are ORG and FIN. AGR is also pretty good in this respect. You can get early game boost from IMP/EXP/PRO and then there are bunch of good support traits some of them unchanged or improved over BtS.

Since there are plenty of good leader candidates picking a nation 1st is good alternative. The ones having Hunting should be checked 1st. If you want ORG + very early religion HRE could work. Byzantium is also decent despite of Cathapracts bing nerfed. Zulus are probably best Hunting nation, but then you probably want AGR leader. These nations were from memory. There are definately few others worth considering that I can't remember now and of course AGR/WHE nations are pretty much always good.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

You have time to research Hunting prior to the first worker completing, so you do have some flexibility on tech choices. In this mod, Agriculture, The Wheel, and Hunting are the most expensive first row techs. From Krill's tech thread post:

I'm pretty sure I remember that Hunting was equal cost with Agriculture and The Wheel though, so I'm not sure. I'll have to check that against the most recent version of RtR mod, which I installed last night. In any case, we can research Hunting while building the worker if needed.

My knee-jerk reaction to the start is that Hunting/Mining looks pretty good. We could open with Bronze Working and go for a couple of workers. SIP, worker. Pasture the pigs, grow to 2 on a warrior, swap to worker2 at growth (cows pastured on time), commence chopping, 2 workers available to chop into a fast settler. This is all subject to what scouting finds, of course, and I didn't run through the entire process to see how worker actions line up, but this seems a fast start option here that is worthy of a run through and possible optimization for comparison to other options.

As for traits, the more I see of ORG the better I like it. If Krill did use the Torusland script, which it seems he did, then lighthouses may be less useful than normal because there will be more lakes and less coast/sea, which nerfs ORG just a bit. But the map also seemed to spit out a lot of rivers, so FIN is weaker than it otherwise might be. Still, FIN is awesome and ORG has other buildings to discount.

Ok, BGN does math , be scared and take this with a chunk of salt: 74x28 map dimensions is 2078 tiles/7 players is 296/player. That's around 18 cities, less if there is more water on the map. This assumes some overlap between cities. That's a decent number of cities to build settlers for, and more if you take more of the land by getting there first, so IMP is helpful.

With only 7 players, you have a decent chance of getting a religion, so CRE is less useful than it could be for early game popping borders, if you feel you have the time to divert to getting a religion. Alternately, you could go with AGG and just chop out a cheap barracks for a slightly delayed border expansion. As plako mentioned, the economic buff that AGG has is also to be considered. I'm actually interested in how IMP/AGG would play economically. Grab up the land with a modest financial discount, grab up more than your share of land with IMP, and hope that you don't bankrupt the economy before Currency can float you on wealth and boosted trade routes. I haven't played RtR AGG so I'm not sure how well this would play out. Plako has done some periodic analysis of traits in his games comparing FIN/ORG/AGG in the past, I think, so he could provide some more input here. In general, it seems to me that the AGG economic benefits would be felt most keenly in the early game, right when your expansion has the economy on the edge of a knife. After wealth builds this is easier to manage.

All of that said, I do still really like ORG. Cheap CHs are good and the passive benefit of having cheaper cities is not to be overlooked. Depending on how much happiness we have on the map, Aztec could be a great paring here. I have a feeling that OH/Fin have made out like bandits in PB18 with a series of 1-pop whips with the SAs to sidestep the nerf to whipping on 2pop and above. Aside from a situation like that, I think going away from the whip and using Caste workshops early is a good idea. Which makes forges better, and so IND to make them cheap enough to be a viable early investment.

So, traits are balanced and mostly all good. That makes this comparison more difficult. It should come down to whatever you want to play that you will enjoy.

[Caledorn]

Okay, looking at some options while talking to BGN on Hangouts.

The four ORG leaders that are candidates would be Hammurabi (ORG/AGG), Julius Caesar (IMP/ORG), Mehmed (EXP/ORG) and Roosevelt (IND/ORG) - listed in alphabetic and not preferred order that is. I am discounting FIN because of all the rivers likely to be present on this map. I'll also drop in Genghis (IMP/AGG) as BGN mentioned interest in that combo, although the gambit sounds risky (hope you don't bankrupt the economy before currency? hmmmm ). That aside, the civs are even more important.

Civs with Hunting and Mining as start techs are a sorry bunch: Germany, Ethiopia, Khmer and Russia.

Whereas civs with Hunting and Mysticism are a lot more interesting (and the early religion is definitely an idea worth following I think, as BGN pointed out in our chat that we're not very likely to see early rushes on this map, being a green map where people are interested in learning long term strategies, thus a holy city would be very nice): Aztecs, Celts and HRE. If we can get HRE, that would be brilliant. If not, the Aztecs are also an interesting idea based on what BGN writes in his previous post about sidestepping the whip nerf with SAs.

Zulus are also a nice suggestion, and could be teamed up with Hammurabi with his ORG/AGG combination. But as far as I can tell we really don't need Agri immediately with this start, so that tech doesn't right off the hat support our start, even if we get a few "free" beakers.

[Haram]

If we decide to try religion, I would try something like Mehmet of HRE. IMP is especially strong, when you go straight to BW and build first settler(s) with hammers (chop/whip), not with food. If we try religion, we will delay BW a bit. Part of AGG strenght is that you can build cheap barracks for culture (btw: barracks giving culture - what a crazy idea ). Religion negates this value a bit.

If we decide not to go religion, I would strongly consider Zulu. Am I correct, that Zulu paired with AGG is giving -45% maintenance at a cost of 30 hammers? It seems so strong to me AND it works so early. You can spam sooo many settlers, grab so much land before currency... Nice. Other good options are IMP/ORG/AGG in any combination.

I'm not a fan of IND. It just tends to draw my attention to wonders in the early game, at a cost of expansion. In mid and late game its not a metter of who's got IND to win a wonder race, its just who's the first to have a right tech.

[Commodore]

Agg's reduction is actually not additive. Agg Ikhanda city gets a -40% reduction, and when you add the courthouse it's a -77.5% redux.

[GermanJoey]

Haram, do you mean Suleiman, not Mehmed? You were talking about Imp, and Suleiman is Phi/Imp, while Mehmed is Exp/Org. Suleiman is my dear friend, one of my favorite (and in my opinion, #1 most fun) restricted SP leaders, I know him very well. I'm always very sad to see the RB community looking down on him, so I'd love to see someone lead him to victory... edit: although then again, you were talking about HRE, so maybe you meant Mehmed after all, and thought he was Org/Imp for a moment?

Also, I may be mistaken with how Agg works, but I think Zulu paired with Agg gives 1 - 0.8*0.75 = -40% maintenance in cities with Ikhanda. My understanding is the Agg discount is multiplicative with building discounts.