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

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Civs
HRE - Starts with Hunting and Mysticism, so gives us good starting techs...
Sumeria - Starts with Agriculture and the Wheel, so not the best starting techs...

To qualify, FOR OUR START, Hunting is the best. We have two pasture resources. Hunting/Agriculture/The Wheel are all the most expensive first row techs. I just wanted to point this comment out because it amuses me.

[Caledorn]

Civs
HRE - Starts with Hunting and Mysticism, so gives us good starting techs...
Sumeria - Starts with Agriculture and the Wheel, so not the best starting techs...

To qualify, FOR OUR START, Hunting is the best. We have two pasture resources. Hunting/Agriculture/The Wheel are all the most expensive first row techs. I just wanted to point this comment out because it amuses me.

Heeey..! The toaster god will zap you with freak goat lightning for mocking me

Yeah, ignore that first analysis I made. As plako (and yourself in our chat) pointed out we have this amazing ability that's called research where we can get Hunting through little blue beakers. Should set us up with Hunting before our first Worker is completed I believe. Okay, so snide green Cal is probably not helpful... :D

Also, as plako pointed out, Mysticism is a rather crappy star t tech unless we want to get early religion (or as you pointed out in our chat, attempt our hand at the Oracle).

So that's the reason "Said No One Ever (prior to RtR)" was perhaps a bit off with his first attempt at Civ analysis. :D

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I think it was a good analysis. Thinking things through is the way to make decisions. As said before, we can research whatever starting techs are needed, but we can do things faster if we already have them (Hunting/Mining but the civs are uninspiring to me). Or, we can go for early goodies. HRE (Hunting/Mysticism) can get off to a decently fast start:



Meditation first, then Mining--> BW. Then The Wheel, Agriculture --> Pottery. We could perhaps skip Agriculture for now, but I'm assuming that we will discover some grains through scouting. The screenshot above is notable because we get 4 cities by T46 (meh for IMP, btw) but you also had to divert for the religion. The biggest hangup is that I have no idea what kind of food tiles we will have to use. So I built mines instead. City placement on the first two settlements allows trade routes without the luxury of having roads in place. Sketchy defense? Would you survive this? But probably. I mean, you have three warriors!

To be fair, I have no idea where the bronze will show at this point, so none of this is relevant except to serve as a baseline for what you can accomplish actually trying to use Meditation rather than setting it aside and immediately chasing worker techs. This was not optimized, just a single play through, so improvement is certainly possible going with a scheme like this.

Earlier, I suggested that you need to learn when to risk and when to play it safe. There are few times that the risk/reward ratio is skewed more heavily in the direction of greater reward than in the early game, IMO. Absent any scouting knowledge, knowing who your neighbors are, etc., I think that you ought to swing for the fences. Take whatever civ/leader combo that will help you to the biggest snowball. In this mod, that's what IMP/ORG is aiming for, a larger, leaner empire that gets more because it does more with what you already have. With IMP, you shouldn't have any problems after ~T50-60 having spare hammers to build up units as needed. Before then, just spawn bust the barbs decently and you ought to be fine with a cardboard cutout army. But this is risky, things can go wrong. But there is reward, even if you don't optimize it 100% right.

What I think I'm suggesting is that Russia is good, but it doesn't build you a better snowball, which I think is what Julius wants. It makes your already big snowball even better later on, but you have to get there first. ORG has good late game juice with cheap factories. The earlier Courthouses will, I think, give more punch than the Research Institute, which you won't get a discount on anyway. But the best snowball probably ignores the early religion. I just like HRE better than Russia at this point (could be fatigue from my other game) and if I want HRE, which I like better than Sumeria (your PB18 fatigue) and Aztec (plako doesn't seem to care for this civ), I want to make some use out of Mysticism. We have a couple of fishing civs already taken, who in theory could have lakes and beat us to the religion, except they aren't Spain. So, since we have a riverside resource to use while building the worker, I think we are pretty sure of taking whichever religion we go after, if we choose to do that. Buddhism is the shorter path to researching worker techs, which we will want ASAP after the 9-10t delay for Meditaiton, so I'd recommend that direction. Or, after the picks, if no one has Mysticism, we just go worker techs and then get the religion when we're ready.

1. Dreylin/Ipecac/Ruff - Vikings - FISHING
2. AdrianIer/Old Harry - Rome - FISHING
3. Agent427/TBS - Zulu - ZULU DON'T FISH, THEY ATTACK
4. Caledorn/Plako - Julius Caesar
5. Elum/Mackoti - Augustus Caesar
6. Grimace/Wetbandit - Mehmed II --> non-AGG UB (Ger). So many cheap buildings for this combo. Is there enough water?
7. Whosit/Gavagai - Washington
8. Whosit/Gavagai - Mongolia --> Ottoman could have been cool. Cheap aqueducts with +2 happy! It's like a second CHM bonus.
9. Grimace/Wetbandit - Korea --> for the techs (Ag/Mining)? If so, varied starting resources.
10. Elum/Mackoti - civ UP --> Mali looks like a good fit.
11. Caledorn/Plako -civ ON DECK TO MAKE A GAME BREAKING GOOD DECISION
12. Agent427/TBS - in the wings --> will want AGG/snowbally to pair with Zulu. Genghis Khan?
13. AdrianIer/Old Harry - leader --> may choose AGG to pair with the Praets. Shaka is a decent bet.
14. Dreylin/Ipecac/Ruff - leader --> ORG?

[Caledorn]

Okay, I've been thinking a lot (probably too much .. lol), and I need plako to comment before making a final decision - however, I really think Aztecs and/or HRE are among our best options.

Both synergises well with the traits of Julius, but I'm going to make an argument about the Aztecs since BGN has made one about HRE in the post above.

So, first of all, we are going to need something to pop our borders with, and wating time and hammers on building monuments doesn't strike me as a good idea. Early religion thus seems to synergise well with being an IMP leader, giving us the tool we need for early border pops. Myst also gives us the option to go for both SH and the Oracle (more on the Oracle later). There are, so far, no other picks for Civs that have Myst, and if Elum/Mack picks Mali - which seems very likely - we would definitely be the only Civ present in the game that has Myst early, so we could comfortably research Mining & even BW first if we want, and then get a religion, proceed to Priesthood and have a fair shot at the Oracle if we want to try for that.

Now, the Aztecs give us some fairly interesting options, while leaving us with several strategies. First of all the Sacrificial Altar, if I understand things correctly, halves the unhappiness penalty already present in a city when it's built. Whipping settlers, even under RtR, is a strong option for an IMP civ I believe. After we get the SAs up and running, we are close to the point where we can whip just like we would whip in base BTS, so we could expand rapidly. Also, if we go for the Oracle, we could try to time it in such a manner that we could Oracle CoL (yes, that is highly situational, so not something I think we should aim for - but the option is there - slowteching CoL is also perfectly okay).

Finally, the Jaguars are a nice UU in RtR. We'd get 50% odds vs an axe defending in a city, which is very nice - not that I think we should go on any early rush though. Another nice use for the Jaguar is if we do end up in war we could make one into a super healer with a GG.

As far as I can tell the Aztecs give us a lot of options, without locking ourselves into one specific strategy (well, except slavery, since Aztecs really beg heavy use of the whip - but whipping settlers as IMP is nice, right?), which gives a broad game where I can learn quite a bit about several aspects of the game mechanics.

I know you've said you don't like a Mysticism start, nor the Aztecs, plako - and I will be more than happy to defer to your wisdom if you think we should go with a different civ if there are better options that you think are better suited to learn as much as possible about the core mechanics while still leaving us in the loop as a contender for the victory! - I just wanted to show that I've done my "homework" and made some serious considerations, picking up a bit of info here and there from various people, to give a detailed analysis as a green player.

Bottomline: Unless plako thinks we should go with some other specific civ, I think we're at a point where I feel we should take either Aztecs or HRE, and since it's very unlikely that elum/mack will pick either, we are most likely going to have to make a choice between them.

[plako]

I'm ok with HRE or Aztecs. Minor preference for HRE. In many scenarios Jaguars are downgrade from normal swords. If you go for Religion, Oracling CoL should be pretty high in TODO list.

[Caledorn]

I'm ok with HRE or Aztecs. Minor preference for HRE. In many scenarios Jaguars are downgrade from normal swords. If you go for Religion, Oracling CoL should be pretty high in TODO list.

Do you think HRE would give a broader view on learning stuff, as the Aztecs absolutely scream heavy use of the whip?

I think the UU of both HRE and Aztecs isn't really something we will make use of either way, since early warfare, at least on our part, seems unlikely in this setting (even though both Rome and Washington/Mongolia does tell me that at least two other teams have other plans... We need to be prepared for early rushes by both praetorians and keshiks - sigh). The Landsknecht seems subpar compared to the regular Macemen, as I strongly doubt it's a good idea to beeline Engineering over Civil Service. Engineering does offer the extra road movement, but CS offers the powerful Bureaucracy civic! And engineering is 200 beakers more than CS too.

The biggest difference that I can see between HRE and Aztecs are their UB, and how we'll use that. SAs mean whips are us, while Rathauses mean we will be running a higher science % slider usage, since we'll have a better economy.

[plako]

In RtR your hammers should be coming from Caste+workshops. SAs are just a bit cheaper courthouses.

[Caledorn]

In RtR your hammers should be coming from Caste+workshops. SAs are just a bit cheaper courthouses.

That pretty much means we are best off going with HRE then, as the Rathauses is not just a bit cheaper CHs, but a beefed up version of them. So it's settled - we'll go with HRE unless elum should for some bizarre reason pick them Thanks!

[Caledorn]

I just did a short sim myself. Bar too bad defense, I had 4 cities on T41. In the real thing I probably should have built an additional warrior over the settler, delaying the fourth city 2 or 3 turns.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I'm not sure about Persia. I called Khannnn though.

Edit: All picks are in. Discuss.

1. Dreylin/Ipecac/Ruff - Monty of Vikings
2. AdrianIer/Old Harry - Shaka of Rome
3. Agent427/TBS - Genghis Khan of Zulu
4. Caledorn/Plako - Julius Caesar of HRE
5. Elum/Mackoti - Augustus Caesar of Persia
6. Grimace/Wetbandit - Mehmed II of Korea
7. Whosit/Gavagai - Washington of Mongolia