I have a confession to make: I love reading these pre-game writeups, but didn't want to wait until the game was over to have to do so, so I asked Commodore to do it. Perhaps there's a bit of attention to detail that is escaping me as well, as I couldn't tell you who is ded-lurking whom in half the cases here, and the other half I would say "who?" for the whom you would ask of when inquiring about the different players. Verbal gymnastics aside, I just mean to say that I'm not too great at reading players unless I've played games and directly neighbored them before, and so I defer entirely on judgment about skill level.
That said, I can quibble about combos, and I am going to give the top spot straight away to Genghis of Zulu over Mao of Inca. PRO terraces are a wonderful thing, effectively saving 60h per city in the early game and an additional 10-15h per worker, but the threat that AGG Impis grant over their neighbors can't really be discredited. Zulu can use their UU to dictate early game borders to their choosing, which is something we've seen TBS do twice recently with the same combination. Anybody neighboring them are going to need to play with the threat of an Impi coming out of the fog constantly in their head. And if Ichabod is active and gets a lot of weight with the decision making then I think it could spell trouble for their neighbors. In addition, Inca is going to suffer from the same early game problems that we will since they effectively only start with Mining as a tech. (Mysticism too, but why would they want to pursue the religious line?) So they are going to take a bit longer to get their engine up and running, while the Zulu with Hunting and Agriculture start out with most of what they need (assuming similar starts).
Putting Joao of Khmer ahead of us a little closer, though. Of all the Hunting/Mining civs I think I like Khmer the least -- that Baray just feels like a trap UB, much like the Cothon, and the Ballista Elephant UU is just too weak an ability to be all that special. Joao is a great pairing on this map, providing cheap workers and settlers, and then cheap markets to grow cities / dig out of the maintenance hole -- assuming you were able to leverage IMP well enough to get into one. I think you're also under-selling our combination a bit, too. CRE/EXP Fast Workers is all about getting our resources hooked up and working as quickly as possible. Fast workers can't quite navigate as well as the BtS version, but they still show their best in rugged terrain, which we have plenty of. And turning that rugged terrain into plenty of chops to fuel settlers. I plan on chopping a lot. And CRE isn't just about saving hammers, it's saving time. If you can get that missionary or forest chop timed perfectly for a new city, you still need to wait 10 turns before anything happens. We only need to wait 5. So we're trying to snowball with this combination, just in a different way than the IMPs and PROs of the world. (Side note: I had given Willem some thought as well, but just didn't want to play with FIN as much as I wanted to play with EXP; but Willem may be the better leader overall for the map.)
Julius of Russia seems about right at #5 -- this should really have been Vicky if they were trying for an economic benfit with ORG. Again, making assumptions about the map, but I don't believe large map toroid on prince will scale costs enough to make ORG come out ahead. But I like pairing a fast trait (IMP) with a Hunting / Mining civ, and Gawdzak especially should be able to make that work well enough to give him a good empire.
Wang Kon of Aztecs... The more I think about this pick, the more I hate it. It's a BtS strategy ported straight into RtR: get most your production from whpiping. In RtR that just doesn't work well enough to keep up in the mid game. If there is a civ that can make whipping work it's the Aztecs, but Nyles is really going to have to keep as many whips at 1 pop as possible to get the most out of them. I don't know too much about Nyles, but this also smells of a fast religion gambit, and if he's considering that then he's probably going to turn into someone's breakfast. I'd drop this a couple spots.
On the other hand, why no love for Bismark of the Ottomans? If there was a combination that was set to explode in the middle game, this has got to be it. Hanging Gardens is clearly a target, and even if they fail in that, +2 happy for 50h is a great deal. They're also the only IND leader in the game, which is about as strong an IND as it gets.
Mehmed of Carthage would be fantastic if this turns out to be a water based map. I haven't seen any indications of that, but maybe the starts are different. Still, I've heard the siren song of the Cothon before, and while it has a great bonus, it's just too spendy (even at half price) to justify building. It's not really half-price when you're paying for a building you never intended to build in the first place -- much like you aren't really saving money when buying a new appliance that just went on sale. And I don't think there's a great payoff for that trade route in a land or continents based map, much the same reason we don't see a lot of Castles being built in RtR games (even by PRO civs with stone). There's usually something more pressing to build. I'd drop these guys beneath Shaka of Arabia (just because I really like Shaka as a leader in RtR), and can see Shaka of Arabia kind of like a Julius of Russia - lite. Not as good, but still all-around bonuses to help early game, mid game and warfare.
Finally, I think Asoka of Sumeria is just a mistake as a pairing and deserves the last place spot. I've already said my thoughts on ORG this map, but it goes doubly so with a cheap UB in the Ziggurat. It seems like the goal was to get the UB so they could push expansion -- but then they've got no expansion trait to grab land early on. Asoka wants to go down the religious line, but I think they would have been far better served with Justinian or Isabella if you wanted to get the pairing of Ziggurats and early religion. (This is another civ that I think has a high chance of trying for an early religion out of the gate.)
And as usual, it's very possible I'm just wrong about the map (hello PB31) in my initial assumptions in which case a lot of these civs have the potential to really do a lot better. But really, I feel confident that we have one of the better pairings and can make use of it to get a strong early game going.
That said, I can quibble about combos, and I am going to give the top spot straight away to Genghis of Zulu over Mao of Inca. PRO terraces are a wonderful thing, effectively saving 60h per city in the early game and an additional 10-15h per worker, but the threat that AGG Impis grant over their neighbors can't really be discredited. Zulu can use their UU to dictate early game borders to their choosing, which is something we've seen TBS do twice recently with the same combination. Anybody neighboring them are going to need to play with the threat of an Impi coming out of the fog constantly in their head. And if Ichabod is active and gets a lot of weight with the decision making then I think it could spell trouble for their neighbors. In addition, Inca is going to suffer from the same early game problems that we will since they effectively only start with Mining as a tech. (Mysticism too, but why would they want to pursue the religious line?) So they are going to take a bit longer to get their engine up and running, while the Zulu with Hunting and Agriculture start out with most of what they need (assuming similar starts).
Putting Joao of Khmer ahead of us a little closer, though. Of all the Hunting/Mining civs I think I like Khmer the least -- that Baray just feels like a trap UB, much like the Cothon, and the Ballista Elephant UU is just too weak an ability to be all that special. Joao is a great pairing on this map, providing cheap workers and settlers, and then cheap markets to grow cities / dig out of the maintenance hole -- assuming you were able to leverage IMP well enough to get into one. I think you're also under-selling our combination a bit, too. CRE/EXP Fast Workers is all about getting our resources hooked up and working as quickly as possible. Fast workers can't quite navigate as well as the BtS version, but they still show their best in rugged terrain, which we have plenty of. And turning that rugged terrain into plenty of chops to fuel settlers. I plan on chopping a lot. And CRE isn't just about saving hammers, it's saving time. If you can get that missionary or forest chop timed perfectly for a new city, you still need to wait 10 turns before anything happens. We only need to wait 5. So we're trying to snowball with this combination, just in a different way than the IMPs and PROs of the world. (Side note: I had given Willem some thought as well, but just didn't want to play with FIN as much as I wanted to play with EXP; but Willem may be the better leader overall for the map.)
Julius of Russia seems about right at #5 -- this should really have been Vicky if they were trying for an economic benfit with ORG. Again, making assumptions about the map, but I don't believe large map toroid on prince will scale costs enough to make ORG come out ahead. But I like pairing a fast trait (IMP) with a Hunting / Mining civ, and Gawdzak especially should be able to make that work well enough to give him a good empire.
Wang Kon of Aztecs... The more I think about this pick, the more I hate it. It's a BtS strategy ported straight into RtR: get most your production from whpiping. In RtR that just doesn't work well enough to keep up in the mid game. If there is a civ that can make whipping work it's the Aztecs, but Nyles is really going to have to keep as many whips at 1 pop as possible to get the most out of them. I don't know too much about Nyles, but this also smells of a fast religion gambit, and if he's considering that then he's probably going to turn into someone's breakfast. I'd drop this a couple spots.
On the other hand, why no love for Bismark of the Ottomans? If there was a combination that was set to explode in the middle game, this has got to be it. Hanging Gardens is clearly a target, and even if they fail in that, +2 happy for 50h is a great deal. They're also the only IND leader in the game, which is about as strong an IND as it gets.
Mehmed of Carthage would be fantastic if this turns out to be a water based map. I haven't seen any indications of that, but maybe the starts are different. Still, I've heard the siren song of the Cothon before, and while it has a great bonus, it's just too spendy (even at half price) to justify building. It's not really half-price when you're paying for a building you never intended to build in the first place -- much like you aren't really saving money when buying a new appliance that just went on sale. And I don't think there's a great payoff for that trade route in a land or continents based map, much the same reason we don't see a lot of Castles being built in RtR games (even by PRO civs with stone). There's usually something more pressing to build. I'd drop these guys beneath Shaka of Arabia (just because I really like Shaka as a leader in RtR), and can see Shaka of Arabia kind of like a Julius of Russia - lite. Not as good, but still all-around bonuses to help early game, mid game and warfare.
Finally, I think Asoka of Sumeria is just a mistake as a pairing and deserves the last place spot. I've already said my thoughts on ORG this map, but it goes doubly so with a cheap UB in the Ziggurat. It seems like the goal was to get the UB so they could push expansion -- but then they've got no expansion trait to grab land early on. Asoka wants to go down the religious line, but I think they would have been far better served with Justinian or Isabella if you wanted to get the pairing of Ziggurats and early religion. (This is another civ that I think has a high chance of trying for an early religion out of the gate.)
And as usual, it's very possible I'm just wrong about the map (hello PB31) in my initial assumptions in which case a lot of these civs have the potential to really do a lot better. But really, I feel confident that we have one of the better pairings and can make use of it to get a strong early game going.
Suffer Game Sicko
Dodo Tier Player
Dodo Tier Player
