[PB24 Spoilers] In which Joey finds himself out on tilt from the get-go...

[GermanJoey]

... but then surfs his way to victory.

A death sentence is STILL in effect for anyone who steps on my pigs, let it be known.

password: Grandpa (the name of my cat )

[GermanJoey]

At any rate, all I'm saying is, until I see my start, and as much as I might want to, I am NOT going to pick Shaka a third game in a row.

[GermanJoey]

just so not to have too boring of a thread, here's what I wrote at the start of my PB22 regarding my thoughts on what traits/civs I'd like to have:

So, I'm going to start off saying my dream leader is one with explosive early game REXing power with some mid-game economic pickup. The guy that fits that profile the most is I think Mao of Inca, but there's a few others that seem pretty cool too.

Favored Traits: Exp, Imp, Agg
Rejected Traits: Fin, Cha

Standout civs:

For Expansive:
Ottoman w/ Exp - Ag/Wheel, 50 hammer Hammams into the Hanging Gardens worked out pretty well in PB18.
Khmer w/ Exp - 50 Hammer Barays I think might be insane, especially if we get Mao. Also see above about the HG.

For Imperialistic:
Portugal - Commodore's PB13's game (Victoria of Portugal) showed that Imp Feitoria's are pretty insane. He had way less land than the Top 3 but managed to keep up in GNP largely with the help of Fin+Fei coast.

For Aggressive:
Mongolia - Half priced Gers, duh.
Rome - Praetorian, despite dropping from 8 to 7 str, is even more fearsome with built-in +50% city attack. The Forum is also improved, giving +1 GPP to every specialist. The Forum is also half-priced with Exp.
Celtia - The Gaellic Warrior is now utterly terrifying, spawning with +50% hills defense, +50% city attack, and double movement on hills. Sort of like a harder-hitting horse archer with different movement limitations. With Agg - combat 1 and half-priced barracks - it can pick up shock, guerilla 3, or CR1 right outta the gate. We could even pick Tokugawa here for half-priced Duns + half priced barracks - 55 hammers total to get the gravy train rolling
Zulu - Ikhanda are even better now that they're the same price as a normal barracks and give out +1 culture. Impis are still ridiculous.
Carthage - Cothon is improved (now costs the same as a normal harbor - only 80 hammers, 40 hammers if Exp), and the Numidian isn't bad at all.

Other civs of note:
Korea - Now have Agr/Mining, like China. Still have the Hwacha, which is still pretty good.
China - Still great. Protective is much better now, so Protective CKN are a real possibility...
Inca w/ Protective Leader - pretty self explanatory here.
Arabia - Now have Myst/Agr, making them very good if you want to start with a religion. The Madrassa now only costs 70 hammers, which is pretty good since Cre doesn't get half-priced libraries anymore. If we don't pick up Expansive or Philosophical, the Madrassa seems awesome for hammering out that first golden age. If we were playing with Krill's ridiculous new Phi remake, I would pick this civ in a heartbeat.

Leader Shortlist
Mao (Exp/Pro)
Joao (Exp/Imp)
Bismark (Exp/Ind)
Tokugawa (Pro/Agg)
Shaka (Exp/Agg)
Qin (Pro/Ind)

Combo Shortlist:
Mao of Inca
Mao of Khmer
Joao of Portugal
Tokugawa of Celtia
Shaka of Rome
Shaka of Carthage
Peter of Arabia

I'm still pretty bullish on RtR Exp, for whatever that's worth, although I'd like to give Ind or Pro a try too... I'll probably hedge my leader pick until the backpath through the snake and pick a Civ first. If I could get Exp Carthage again...

[SevenSpirits]

[GermanJoey]

Thanks Seven!

[GermanJoey]

stream of consciousness time...

Man, first look I thought, "Welp, basically no river, maybe I should pick Fin even though I hate that trait"... but then I see 4 lake tiles and 6 hills, and 3 flatland plains on top of that... do I really want to be working nine 1/1/1 tiles just to make them 1/1/3? Are 2/0/3 tiles really something I want to work in my capital? Hell no. I'll probably have to move my palace, I think, this is not an ideal spot at all for Bureau. So, I guess Fin doesn't really matter so much then. Its a bit annoying that I can't check to the NW w/ the scout to see if a move is worth it... that said, after PB20 I really should not ever move my capital, ever. At any rate, this will still be a pretty good BC-year capital, with two 6-yield food tiles and a good happy resource to work.

I think this is a good start for Exp, which I was already inclined towards anyways. Exp does get its head start here, in a 10T worker, and there's a market happy in BFC... 2h start + 1h from the fur, and 6 grassland hills for mines means that I'll pretty much always get the Exp hammer bonus from size 3+. Looks like some coast in the west and east, so the Exp wb bonus will come into effect. I expect that this bonus is actually at its most powerful when you do NOT have a seafood start, as seafood is at its worst when you can't accelerate it via already-strong cities.

Maybe not the best start for Imp... there's lots of hills, but the numbers don't work out so that I get the bonus hammers cleanly unless I'm size 6 and working 3 mines. Only 5 forests as well... do I need to start with Mining? 10T worker, 5 turns to hook the pigs, 6 more for the corn, 2 more to move to a hill... as long as I start with A or H, I just need mining as a 2nd tech. Do I want BW as 3rd tech then? That'd be like... T33 BW, something like that? Can I delay it more? I hate delaying BW though... have to sim, I guess. If I go for a early religion, this means Pottery will be very late, considering I need AH early too, which discourages Pro I guess... I guess late Pottery makes sense if I'm planning to move my capital anyways.

As far as civs go... I need Agriculture or Hunting, preferably both, with Agriculture/Hunting Zulu being the standout... doubtful they'll last that long in the snake though. I had my mind on Inca or Aztecs before the game started, and they'd both work out here very nicely. Again, I doubt they'll last so long as to get to me, although I guess I *almost* got Inca last game, before dtay snatched them right before my turn to pick, and the Aztecs went completely unpicked to, I'm sure, everyone's surprise. OTOH, my food isn't rivered, which means I'd be hard-pressed to get an early religion unless nobody else picks a myst civ. Ag/Wheel civs are also pretty appealing... ordinarily, you'd want to improve the pig first because it takes 1 less turn than the corn to improve, but Ag/Wheel can also lay down a road on its way to the corn in order to hop back over the city tile on the way back to the pig. I guess that doesn't really matter, now that I think about it more. Whatever. This start wants AH kinda early, to hook up the furs, which would be nice for finding horses with Egypt though.

Hmmm... I think I want Isabella of the Aztecs or Zulu. Wouldn't mind Khmer either.

[GermanJoey]

lol Inca out with the first pick... c'est la vie!

[GermanJoey]

Decided to go with the Aztecs... gonna be a slower start than I'm used to. The micro did not work out nicely for a Hunting/Mining start; getting a second worker early doesn't do a lot of good because the scaled tech costs mean that I don't have time to get BW before that second worker wants to start-a choppin'. This start is weak for chopping anyways, with only 5 forests in BFC.

I'm still aiming for Isabella... if I can't get her I'll grab Mehmed or Justinian. Spi was always one of my favorite traits from back when I mostly played SP games, and I should get a lotta flex outta it here with a crappy Bureau cap and enhanced Aztec whipping. In PB22 I only stopped whipping because my whip anger started to reach outrageous heights - that surely won't be the case here!!

[GermanJoey]

So why Imp here instead of Exp? I've been very bullish on RtR expansive, which I think is a contender for the best trait in this mod. I owe my strong positions in PB18 and PB22 almost entirely to its power, I think. However, I think it will be weaker here than in those games. It seems to me that Expansive is really kinda like having 6 mini-traits, each of which is pretty situational but can be spectacular in the right situation. And, if you can leverage all of them at once, you've got a trait that does it all: early game expansion trait, workhorse hammer trait, economic trait, and war trait. Here's what I see as the 6:

• Exp gives a straight-up 2-3 turn head start, due to a faster first workboat/worker. You want to make sure you get a bonus here or part of the trait is wasted! We did good here, getting a 12T worker instead of a 15T one while keeping our 4 food bonuses and coastal access intact.
  
  
• +35% bonus on workers and workboats - saves hammers and gets resources hooked sooner, kinda like a crappy version of Imp, but still pretty good. I think Exp's worker/workboat bonus really needs a situation where workboats are important (e.g. this map) to be competetive, whereas Imp's settler bonus is good no matter what. I posted a pretty detailed comparison of Imp vs Exp early game hammer savings in my PB22 thread. Exp's hammer bonus is also useful for when you need extra scouts (workboats or even workers in the late game) or suddenly need a few extra workers to do, heh, something special at your enemies frontlines...
  
  
• +3 base health, production bonus on harbor, aqueduct, and grocer means that you basically never have health problems, ever. A more minor point but still pretty nice to have in the midgame, where your biggest cities can start pushing the limit. A minor point here is that you can skip worker turns roading food resources early.
  
  
• Double production on harbors, markets, and grocers - this is a big game changer, IMHO. First of all, RtR Exp markets are amazing, going from one of the crappiest buildings in BTS to one of the best, partly from the production bonus and partly due to other RtR changes. Exp markets/grocers are now actually the cheapest commerce multiplier in the game (except for Madrassas), and one that comes at a time when your slider is likely approaching a break-even level nearer to 0% than 100%. I forget who said it, but the saying goes that if you're not limping to Currency, you're not expanding fast enough. On top of that, rather than give often-useless culture, a market gives 0-4 bonus happiness, based on what resources you can grab and trade for. The value of a market varies wildly with how many of these resources you can find; a 75h market with 4 happys is perhaps the best-value building in the entire game, after your granary, while a 75h market with 1 happy is just "pretty decent." At the very least, you're likely you will get at least 1, if not 2, of these happys. In PB18, between some trades and eventual conquest, I eventually got all 4! Same with PB22, although I had to pay a lot out of pocket for some of them. Having early trade access is thus important for Exp! Between the two effects, this is a very powerful building to get fast. The grocer is less of a big deal, but its still nice in your Bureau cap, any other large commerce cities, as its pretty reasonable to 1-pop whip a market, or in any shrines. Exp is a very good shrine civ, I think.
  
  Next, harbors. This one depends a lot on the map type; for Continents and Big & Small maps. I was extremely impressed by them in PB18, and ended up leveraging them even better in PB22. (more on that in that thread) The harbor has two effects: the first is that the base foreign ICTR trade route goes from +3c to +4c, and routes with cities sized 12 and larger get +1 commerce (compared to no-harbor) because of the way rounding with multipliers works. The second effect is hidden: the actual cities you have routes with are HIGHER QUALITY because the trade route algorithm matches routes globally based on which cities have the best multiplier. A corollary here is that your rivals will have LOWER QUALITY routes for the same reason, unless they have harbors too.
  
  This is interesting to me: harbors and the custom house are the only buildings in the game that can hurt your rivals indirectly. I remember that in PB18, when my first harbor came in some crappy size-7 fishing village, my city went from having two generic +3c routes to having routes to two cities in the Top 5 City list the turn after the harbor completed, a bonus of 9 commerce total from two routes! These routes had to come from somewhere, which is very likely a rival's capital. Finally, Harbors also protect your trade routes when other civs get the Free Market trade route bonus - they'll get +25%, but you'll get +50%/+75% (if you have FM too), so the algorithm will still prefer your cities to theirs when matching routes from a shared neighbor.
  
  
• Double production on aqueduct means you have the option to get two new, otherwise non-existent buildings: the Khmer Baray and the Ottoman Hammam. I say these buildings are otherwise non-existent because even Khmer and Ottoman players may not ever build a single one of these things, and certainly nowhere except for the capital before the Renaissance. With Exp, however, these two clunker UBs become pretty attractive to put everywhere as soon as you have Math and Masonry. The Hammam is the same cost as two HR archers without neededing to pay the unit upkeep (or needing the entire religious line at all), while the Baray is kinda like an extra lighthouse you can build everywhere, turning mediocre cities into decent ones. Not bad.
  
  
• You effectively get Industrious' wonder-bonus on the Hanging Gardens - an Ind leader pays 325/250 for the wonder, while an Exp leader pays 350/275 (nostone/stone). It's still not worth it without stone, I think, unless you're Bismark.
  

Going through each point for my start in PB24:

• I would get a 2 turn head start here, so that's a nice plus.
  
• Workboats won't matter as much. The start is not even coastal; there's supposed to be a fair bit of water on the map though. Maybe this one is neutral? It's a pretty minor point for the trait unless you're on a very watery map. Workers may matter more; the less coast you have, the more workers you need, as the less you can rely on working "ok" lighthoused coast in lieu of worker-improved tiles. So we'll give this a plus too.
  
• Whatever, I have a corn, I'll manage.
  
• I do see a fur, so that's a plus for markets. But will I find the other three? I don't think I'll have as-easy of a time getting trade connections with this land-based start as I did in PB18 and PB22, so I'd need to rely on luck. In addition, this start looks very commerce-poor so far, so maybe early markets wouldn't be so great; my UB also comes at approximately the same time as markets would first come available, and, I think, would have higher priority. Also, a big motivation of Exp+Spi was to get an early shrine boosted by a market+granary, and there's 4 other myst civs and one other spiritual! Actually getting a religion will be tough. Harbors will be weaker here as well; they'll get some good mileage in the age of Economics, but this won't be a start where a compass beeline makes sense, I don't think.
  
• Doesn't apply for my civ.
  
• There's 3 other Exp civs and an Ind civ in the game, so the motivation for the HG is weak here. I'd need the luck to find stone to pull this off, and I don't have as-strong of a motivation to build an aqueduct without one of the special aqueduct UBs available.
  

Now, let's compare this to Imp. Imp gives you three things:

• Super cheap settlers. This is particularly important with the RtR mod nerf to Slavery; Imp can get 80h on a double whip, 48 on a single. 32h on a chop. This is by far the main part of the trait.
  
  
• Double GG points; this one is overlooked, but can be pretty good if you war a lot. Imp is the third trait, in addition to the better Agg and Cha, capable of getting commandos, something I've come to understand as extremely important for late-game pitboss civ. Assuming Vassalage+Theocracy+Barracks+West Point+(Stables if relavant), we start with base 11/13 XP for a infantry/calvary unit. Agg needs 3 planted GGs to hit 17 XP on a gunpowder unit, Cha needs 4 GGs for a 20XP calvary, while everyone else needs a whopping 7 for a 26XP calvary. (or 5 with the SoZ). For non-Imp civs, assuming your first GG goes towards a super-medic, this is likely an unreasonable number to get in a single game. However, Imp gets double GG points - 8 GGs for Imp is the same as 4 for any other civ. You'll have a much harder time getting there compared to Agg, considering you don't get the extra free early promos and cheap rax/stables that make Agg so nice for medieval war, but still - its something else to the trait.
  
  
• Cheap custom houses, a building you'll be hard-pressed to get out earlier than late game unless you're Joao.
  

So, for my start:

• This is supposed to be a huge map, so cheap settlers will matter quite a bit. I will want to keep my raw hpt at either 5 or 10; 5 will be easy, working the corn, pig, and a grass mine. 10 could be 2 grass mines, a plains forest, and the corn (if, as I assume, I need to settle 1W or 1NW of the pig with my first city - the one spot I get an auto-trade route, necessarily for my first city due to high tech costs and needing to delay the wheel by a fair while b/c of my starting techs). At any rate, I think I'll get more hammers from Imp's settler bonus than I'll get from all of Exp's stuff combined before 1AD.
  
• Some nice synergy with Spi for the 2 necessary civics, if this ends up mattering.
  
• Probably won't matter too much, maybe save me a couple hundred hammers in late game total.
  

Why Spi? Well, I love Spi, its one of my favorite traits in the game from back when I used to only play SP deity civ. I have yet to use it in a MP pitboss game because I've focused thus far focused on leaders that are able to guarantee early-game strength, whereas Spi doesn't give you much until the mid game. However, this is a big map and I'm feeling more confident, so we'll go back to the trait that can do anything. RtR has a lot of cool new civics, and I've thought a lot about how I can maybe leverage them in parallel; getting half-anger whips and drafts in the mid and late game, when every other civ will have abandoned the whip for many dozens of turns prior, will be some heavy power by itself. I just hope I can land a religion somehow, as it will be very tough with 5 myst civs! There's four big competitors for Stonehenge too, most notably Krill with Joao of HRE and Luddite with Viccy of India. The Oracle may be a problem as well... hut luck will end up matter a lot, I think. We shall see!

[Dreylin]

However, Imp gets double GG points - 8 GGs for Imp is the same as 4 for any other civ.

Isn't it more like 6 due to the escalating cost of each additional GG?