Glad to see that we landed our top choice.
Now we start the long hard slog of trying to make our pregaming strategy choices hold up in practice. Thanks also to Brick and the rest of the game organizers for the setup. There were some very interesting choices on the leader/civ combos, and the fact that everyone ended up with either their first or second choice testified to how balanced the field turned out. (Or, at least how balanced the field is perceived to be right now - we'll find out!
Industrial is such an unknown that we don't have much data to go off of yet. I still remember the early Pitboss games where I was landing India on the SECOND pick of a snake draft, haha.)
Some early thoughts on the leader/civ choices:
REM: Julius Caesar (Imp/Org) of Japan
This is the only Imperialistic leader that was picked, which was surprising to me. The other choices were Genghis Khan (Imp/Agg) of America and Augustus Caesar (Imp/Ind) of Rome, which are admittedly both weaker options. Still, you'd think someone else would want the much cheaper settlers in a late era start, right? Anyway, this combo is based on using Imperialistic for fast(er) expansion and then Organized to control the costs. And the field as a whole seemed to value the Organized trait a lot, as this is one of three teams with Org out of only seven total. We'll see how well that holds up...
I think Organized is decent in an Industrial start without being great. If cities didn't start with free lighthouses, it would be significantly better. Cheaper courthouses and factories are nice without being gamebreaking. The cheaper civics could be nice as well, especially on a Toroidal map. I think that an Organized pick suggests a rush to Assembly Line to make use of the cheaper factories, and scooter and I think that path comes out weaker than early State Property at Communism. We could be wrong about that, of course. For me, both of these traits are pretty good in isolation, but the lack of Spiritual really hurts.
Japan does have a lategame unique building in the Shale Plant, which does the same thing as a normal coal plant along with a +10% production bonus. Nice without being too big of a deal. I'm sure that REM wanted this choice for the traits, not for the civ.
Pindicator: Boudica (Agg/Chm) of Russia
This is the scariest team on the map to me. Not necessarily in terms of winning the game per se, but for having the potential to wreck someone else's game so easily. I hope that we don't draw this team as a neighbor. Aggressive/Charismatic means very highly promoted units, and as scooter said, a very real opportunity to crank out mass Commandos down the road. They need 5 promotions on Gunpowder units for that, which is 4 promotions after the free Combat I, so that's 13 XP, right? That's only 1 or 2 settled Great Generals, depending on how Pentagon shakes out. Yeouch trying to defend against a large number of them!
Then they also have Russia, with their unique unit Cossack that kills other cavs, and the unique building Research Institute that provides 2 free Scientist specialists - free Great Library, heh. Too bad it comes so late as to be practically useless. With highly promoted units and Cossacks, this is the team that's most likely to rush early on.
Of course, that all comes at a tradeoff: there's absolutely nothing here in terms of economic power. All of their bonuses are military in nature: no Spiritual, no Imperialistic, no Organized, no Philosophical, etc. This team is probably going to have to run someone over to be successful, and I'm guessing that they intend to try. Hopefully it won't be us! (In our defense, having Aggressive ourselves makes us a much less tempting target. We can pop into Nationhood/Theocracy and get draftable rifles that come with 2 promotions: C1/C2 or C1/Pinch on demand. That makes us much tougher than your average bear.)
CH'DZ: Peter (Exp/Phi) of India
Here's your team based around use of the Fast Worker. India is a great pick in every era, and India's poor starting techs don't even matter for this game. With the Expansive trait, workers come out even faster, and Fast Workers juiced up on Serfdom civic and Steam Power are truly ridiculous.
Now the bad news: Expansive is a pretty terrible trait for an Industrial era start. Every city begins with a granary in place, and that's a crushing blow to what's normally the game's best or second best trait. Furthermore, all cities start with a forge (+25% production) and it's really easy to pop the capital into Bureaucracy for another +50% bonus to production. Therefore, in a normal game the first worker comes out noticeably faster for Expansive: it's a 25% bonus versus a 0% bonus. But in this game, the advantage at the capital is a 100% bonus versus a 75% bonus, which is much smaller in relative terms. Expansive just doesn't speed up your opening very much in these settings, not when 1 forest chop = 1 worker even for non-Expansive civs. It's simply an undesirable trait.
I'm also dubious about the benefit of Philosophical in the later era starts. I just don't think Great People are quite as useful when they're lightbulbing 1/3 of a tech and cities can produce so many more beakers compared to the early stages of the game. Plus, everyone can also run Pacifism civic on demand to duplicate the Philosophical bonus for free, which is again a lessened relative bonus. The specific Peter/India pairing seems designed to go after the early wonders; I expect this team to pursue Taj and/or Statue of Liberty, which we won't be doing. Are they worth the investment of early game resources? Hard to say since we have so little data. If that's the play that you want to try, this is the combo to do it with. I feel like that might be trying to be a little too smart, but who really knows right now.
This might be a good team to have as a neighbor if they do end up going the early wonder route.
Gaspar/Noble: Darius (Fin/Org) of the Dutch
This is the classic unmodified BTS economic leader setup, Darius with his Financial/Organized pairing. If we were in an Ancient setup, this would be a slow starting but terrifying lategame teching combo. However, with us already starting in the lategame, I'm not at all sure how well it will work. Scooter posted above and laid out the case for why cottages aren't that great under these settings. We think it's better to focus on production and pump out vast quantities of production (which can then be turned into beakers or units or whatever) rather than try to grow cottage tiles. I've made this point before, but it bears repeating: an Industrial era game simply doesn't last that long. We're only about 25 techs from the end of the tree here. I'm expecting this game to last only a little over 100 turns, maybe 150 turns at an absolute maximum. That's not a lot of time to grow cottages into maturity from scratch. You have to run Emancipation to do that, and with Slavery and Serfdom and Caste System all being such powerful options, it's hard to justify that in my mind.
Where this team really gets their advantage is in the water. Financial makes all the water tiles have 3 commerce, and the Dutch unique building Dike gives all of them +1 production. That's a Moai Statues in every city, and this map looks like it has a lot of water on it. The problem is that even 2/1/3 water tiles aren't really that great this late in the game, not when a State Property watermill can easily be a 3/2/4 tile or whatever. As nice as their water tiles will be, we think the goal is to minimize working water tiles, as the land tiles are just so much stronger with the right civics in place. And even though they have good economic traits, they don't have Spiritual and therefore won't be able to take advantage of all the civic combinations that we can use.
Like most of the other pairings, I don't think this one is bad by any means. It reflects some different assumptions about how the game will play out than scooter and I are using.
Boldly: Asoka (Spi/Org) of Aztec
I feel like this trait pairing is pretty similar to ours. Organized has more pure economic value, while Aggressive is significantly better in combat. The unique appeal of this combination is cheap Aztec sacrificial altars, which would be really nice in an earlier era. However, as we've been writing over the last week, we don't think Slavery civic is all that great in this period. The cities grow really fast, the happy cap is much higher than in earlier eras, units and buildings cost a lot more production (and therefore population to whip), and the enhanced tile yields + forges + factories mean that it's easier to build things than whip them. This pairing is still good even leaving aside the Sacrificial Altar for slaving purposes, but if that ends up being relatively unimportant, then this pairing looks a lot less impressive. As I keep saying, we shall see if that holds true.
Dreylin: Gandhi (Phi/Spi) of the Khmer
We discussed this combination a lot elsewhere in the thread so I don't have too much to say here. Like scooter, I'm surprised that there weren't more teams trying to pick this combination. It feels like a classic RB combo to me. This is another team that has a good chance of going for one or more of the early wonders, using Philosophical to slingshot the early Great Engineer into either Taj or Statue of Liberty. In fact, there's almost no way anyone can beat them to the first wonder if they really push the Great Engineer. The other hidden advantage of this combo is the free +1 food from the Baray (aqueduct replacement) that every city gets upon founding. I think that if we could have picked any combo without going through the draft, this is the one we probably would have taken. Either people share my dislike of Philosophical for these settings or there were a lot of teams metagaming the picks and avoiding this one for fear of losing the dice rolls.
I am also very surprised that no one took the Brennus/Vikings combo. That was the other truly terrifying combo, and I'm exceedingly happy that no one went for it. Poor Brennus was only on two other team lists, and he was 5th and 7th in their rankings. Maybe other teams don't value Spiritual as highly as we did. I thought this was one of the top three picks on the board, but of course I love Spiritual for this setup with a passion.
No one took the bait on Frederick of HRE (correctly I think but another one of those classic RB favorites) or Hammurabi's Aggressive English redcoats, or Joao's expansion-heavy traits paired with the Carthaginian cothon building. Outside of Brennus' exclusion, I think these are all smart picks.
Scooter, I'll see what I can figure out with some sandbox simming. This is hitting at night for me, so most will probably have to wait for tomorrow.
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