[Spoilers] When Commodore is 64

[Commodore]

Thanks Krill.

[Commodore]

Some few thoughts:
-China's techs are good, as ever. Bronze Working first, then Fishing to the work boat chop.
-Glad to be not-Financial, lotta riverside to cottage. This will remain the capital...this much water isn't ideal but it's good enough.
-Bang out a quick Imperialistic settler, settle 3N1W and enjoy the ivory/trade route, etc etc.
-Currency beeline is called for, screw messing around with Mysticism lines and so on.
-Combos:

Wetbandit: Pericles of Azteca (analysis)
Flugauto: Darius of England (analysis)
Pindicator: Wang Kon of Ottomen (analysis)
Yuris: Zara Yaqob of Japan (analysis)
Commodore: Genghis Khan of China(analysis)

   

[Krill]

You wrote normal speed.

[Commodore]

Whups, I did, that's fine. Still doubt it's worth moving my palace.

[Commodore]

A start! Hopefully a real one this time. That remarkably pretty starting screenshot looks...even nicer now. Wow, I'd love some better food, but that's not too bad with land this lush and green...and hey! Jungle free this time! Those secondary cow-eating city sites, too!

Well, it's green.

[Commodore]

Scout's away! More of my little slice of the lush land of Weirdblob has been revealed. The pace has been fine, although I could wish for one more turn with the capital's border pop revelation. It's too early to start dotmapping, but I can already tell I'm going to be building some Agg barracks early on here. That's unfortunate, but needs must as devils drive and I'm not going to complain about the quality of the food and rivers here. I'd grumble about the Animal Husbandry-needing luxuries, but Hunting is going to have to happen for nice grass kine, so why not? To be honest the only tech that is really annoyingly superfluous right now is Fishing.

Pretty green, and just pretty. More than 200 land tiles per player, too, so lotsa cities incoming.

I'm waiting on the border pop to finalize the micro for this opening. Worker-first improving wheat is obvious. If I wanted to slip in Fishing to grow onto a work boat I could without harming the chop timing, but given barbarians are on that really doesn't seem wise; warrior needed brah. Unless that sugar out east somehow promotes itself to “second city” by dint of sexy further tiles. Fortunately, I can weave in Fishing after borders pop if I want to get weird. Worker-worker-setter or worker-settler-worker is the real question at hand here.

Ottawa Coefficient: .47

I would show demos, but I forgot to upload them to imgur and they're pretty boring; looks like we're more or less all working from the same start, albeit with some people having wetter capitals.

[Commodore]

I'm also waffling on theme, sadly.

[Dreylin]

So it's not the Shipping Forecast then?

[Commodore]

So it's not the Shipping Forecast then?

Never that, alas.

Wetbandit: Pericles of Azteca
Flugauto: Darius of England
Pindicator: Wang Kon of Ottomen
Yuris: Zara Yaqob of Japan
Commodore: Genghis Khan of China

So thanks to the multiples of aborted starts and having just played with 75% of these guys, my full-up analysis posts are going to wait for actually meeting said player. Still, I find the results of the half-assed but extremely swift pick/assignment phase interesting. We can be slapped into three groups:

Team Financial:

Pindicator as Wang Kon (Fin/Pro)
Flugauto as Darius (Fin/Org)
These gentlemen opted for the oldie but goodie trait of Financial, pairing it with the awesome early game power of Protective and the astoundingly good economic muscle of Organized, respectively. Both opted for mild synergy; Pindicator will get CG1 and Drill 1 on his occasionally useful Janissaries, while Flugauto double-speed builds those pretty okay Stock Exchanges. Of the two combos I much prefer the earlier good stuff that Pindicator gets. Redcoats strike me as rather overrated, to be completely honest. Still, I could take either of these choices and be quite happy...certainly, if the era of Banking and Rifling comes and Flugauto is sitting pretty on two dozen cities, look out world. But that's going to be a long time from now.

Team Creative:

Yuri as Zara Yaqob (Cre/Org)
Wetbandit as Pericles (Cre/Phi)
Looking more at the early than the late, these two selected Creative for themselves, both pairing it with a later-game economic trait. Creative's rarely-seen new building boost is actually helping Yuri's UB. The pagoda's bonus to hammers is small, but at least it comes late enough in the game to actually help, rather than screwing the owner with rounding. The UUs both players are driving I like more than they're worth; Jaguars are fun and all but still pretty easy to deal with using axes, while Samauri are awesome looking maces but still in the end just, um, macemen. I feel the same with these two as above; I'd be happy using either combo for the good bits. Wetbandit will be winning this game, given Aztecs and RBmod, so I guess we're going to see Pericles shine.

Outlier:

Commodore as Genghis Khan (Agg/Imp)
Yeah, so I missed the chance to hang with the cool kids using Organized; no regrets, though. It's strange given my reputation (basically, Genghis Khan) that I've never actually played...Genghis Khan. RBmod is the pace to do it, though. Imperialistic didn't get a huge buff but +60% on settlers is never ever bad (custom houses on a Pangaea are near worthless, though) and Aggressive's baked-in maintenance reduction pairs nicely with settler spam. I don't see this game going to an always-peace space race condition, so the war aspects of the trait will be handy. I probably will spam some normal-speed barracks border monuments like an idiot...and I am the me who is okay with this today. China's Chucklenaughts won't get the bonus combat one but who cares? They're basically just uber-terrifying super cats that also work on cats (yo dawg). I'd be okay with any of the combos listed, but with the possible exception of Wetbandit's, this is the leader/civ that looks the most fun. So my border popping will suck and my late game economy will be weak? Who cares, I just need to rush out to 50% more cities than the rest of them and then eat a guy.

Simple as that, eh?

[GermanJoey]

-Glad to be not-Financial, lotta riverside to cottage. This will remain the capital...this much water isn't ideal but it's good enough.

A few coast tiles at your capital ain't too bad in RtR... you can mostly make up for the income difference compared to towns with a Harbor + Custom House.