While we’re waiting for the remaining Turn 0 teams to finish up with their planning, let’s do the traditional Opponent Analysis. I’ll go in the snake pick order; feel free to add other thoughts about what we all chose.
scooter: Julius Caesar (Imp/Org) of the Aztecs This is obviously our team which makes it a bit tricky to evaluate the picks. For a Renaissance game, the best leader available would be Justinian (Imp/Spi), who was banned for this contest. We certainly had a lengthy debate about the next best choice, and settled on Caesar. Was that the best pick? It’s hard to say, since we’re still working with a tiny sample size of late era MP games. Right now, it’s effectively a single game (Pitboss 33), plus maybe that one Future era PBEM duel game from years and years ago. The advantages of the Caesar pick are pretty straightforward: settlers are vastly more expensive in the late era starts, and Imperialistic saves a ton of production by doubling their (hammer) builds. Then Organized has great synergy with Imperialistic by reducing maintenance costs and granting cheap courthouses. A lot of the best leaders in Civ4 tend to be a combination of an expansion trait and an economy trait (e.g. the classic Exp/Fin Pacal), and this fits that model like a glove. As compared to the Industrial start in Pitboss 33, Imperialistic is a bit weaker because settlers only cost about 240 production instead of 330 production, but in many ways Organized is better, since maintenance costs are much more of a pain here, with State Property civic being at least 7 techs away instead of 2 techs away. The counter to that argument would be that Organized discounts on factories are also a lot further away… and the counter to THAT argument would be that Imperialistic gets some value back since teams start with 2 settlers instead of 3 settlers, making it harder to expand in the opening turns. I think I’ll just say that both of these are good traits, and we’re hoping to leverage them effectively.
We also picked the Aztecs on the second half of the snake pick. I think this was a very nice pickup, although I was the one pushing for that very pick, so…
It’s another obvious but effective synergy. Sacrificial altars are essentially another source of hidden happiness for our team, allowing us to whip much more aggressively without stacking up multiple whip penalties. The math worked out to them being worse than Ottoman hammans unless we really whip a lot, but I think we might be in a position to reach that point with some of our high food cities. Also unlike the hammans, the sacrificial altars have more benefit than just providing effective happiness. They are also cheaper courthouses (90 production instead of 120 production in normal starts, 81 versus 108 here) which then get the doubling bonus from our team being Organized. Since our cities start with forges in place, the altars are almost exactly a 1 pop whip – the things are insanely cheap for us to build. Hopefully this will help us snowball our economy by keeping our maintenance costs low – REM certainly made good use of this in the Industrial game. And finally, the super cheap sacrificial altars should give us a dominant EP lead over the other teams, which will let us watch everyone’s research and use spy units with impunity later in the game. For the last pick in the draft, we could have done a lot worse here.
Alhazard: Gandhi (Spi/Phi) of the Ottomans Alhazard took the other dominant leader pick from the Industrial Pitboss game in the form of Gandhi. Spiritual is the other dominant trait for this setting; every team has a leader with either Spiritual or Imperialistic, and since no one has both, we effectively have two groups of teams: 3 Spiritual and 3 Imperialistic. A Gandhi pick means that Alhazard will need to make heavy use of Great Person lightbulbs to keep up with the rest of the field. Everyone else has more direct expansion (Imp) or economic (Fin/Org) benefits to draw upon. The positives of the Gandhi pick are pretty easy to see, as Alhazard will be the first to generate a Great Person with the Pacifism + Philosophical combo that no one else can match. Which type he picks will be interesting to see. Alhazard should have his choice of either the Tah Mahal or the Liberalism prize; I don’t think anyone can beat him to either one if he really wants them.
The problem is where to go from there with a Gandhi pick. Scooter theorized that Gandhi would be a weaker choice here than in the Industrial game, and I agree. The biggest reason why is the lack of Representation civic in the opening turns of this start. Gandhi wants to run lots of specialists and generate early Great People – that’s the whole reason to pick him as a leader. And in the Industrial game, that works a lot better because all those specialists are getting buffed with +3 beakers apiece in Representation. But there’s no such benefit here in the Renaissance, which means that running Artist specialists are pretty terrible. Frankly, non-Representation specialists just aren’t particularly strong when compared to working normal tile yields. Yes, we have Mercantilism to help out with a free specialist in each city, but that only does so much. Furthermore, Dreylin and OT4E made the Gandhi pick work in the Industrial game by leveraging their early Great People into an even bigger prize: a fast Kremlin build something like 25 turns into the game. After that, their super-charged Kremlin whips effectively made them Imperialistic for the purpose of expansion, and so they were able to avoid falling behind on expansion. They also cash-rushed a settler with Universal Suffrage (also not an option here), captured a barb city from poor Donovan, and had the free Barays pumping bonus food into every city. None of that will be the case here. Gandhi also has arguably the highest skillcap to play of any of the leaders in the field, being dependent on creating long-ranging micro plans to set up Great Person lightbulbs and Golden Age GPP chains. If Alhazard can’t set those things up, then this could wind up being a very weak pick. Long story short, Gandhi can do a lot of things well, but also has the possibility for things to go badly wrong.
The Ottomans are a good choice for a civ pick. Excellent unique building in the hamman for bonus health/happiness, and a decent unique unit in the janissary. I’ll made the same point about the Ottomans that a lot of other people have made: they’re kind of a boring civ to play. Good stuff, good choice by Alhazard, but nothing that particularly synergizes with Gandhi or leans towards one strategy. I guess the extra happiness is good for running more specialists though if need be, there is that. A safe, effective pick.
mackoti: Mansa Musa (Fin/Spi) of Byzantium This is the one pick where the civ overshadows the leader. Mackoti opted to pick Byzantium first, and if there’s one civ that’s worthy of the first pick in this era, it’s Byzantium. They were universally banned on the old CivPlayers MP ladder in 3 vs 3 Renny games due to the cataphract being overpowered. The conditions in this game are a lot different, of course; those games typically saw each player build 3-5 cities and then crank out units for the rest of the game without stop. This game won’t play out that way, since it’s not a teamer and we’re in a free-for-all setting. (We’re also not on Inland Sea, the only map ever used for those games.) Anyway, cataphracts have no real counter in this era, and retain their usefulness until cavs outclass them some 6-7 techs down the tree. That’s a long time in these games. Mackoti holding the cataphract card is frankly terrifying. Not because he’s going to rush early, but because mackoti will likely pick the exact right moment to hit someone and start snowballing his civ into a juggernaut. That said, even mackoti is not invincible, and perhaps his unfamiliarity with the late era starts will change things up in this game. Perhaps. Mackoti’s advice didn’t seem to help pindicator in the Industrial game, for whatever that’s worth.
Mackoti’s leader pick was the always solid choice of Mansa Musa’s Spi/Fin combo. I love this pairing in general, and there’s a lot to like here. Spiritual is great in late era starts, and opens up Slavery/Serfdom/Caste System swaps in the opening turns plus access to the religious civic column. That said, I do think that Spiritual is nerfed somewhat in Renaissance as opposed to Industrial simply because there are fewer civics available. It’s still a wonderful trait though, and I wish we could somehow have it. I will say that I’d rather have mackoti on a Spiritual leader than on an Imperialistic leader, which would allow him to spread out like the plague and dazzle us with his macro play. At least this way we should have more cities than him – if we don’t, then we’re not going to win this game. I think one of the defining question of this game will be whether Spiritual or Imperialistic is the better trait to have.
The other trait in play here is Financial, and this forms one of the other major questions for this game: Financial versus Organized. It’s a great topic for theory, and with the lengthy river at the starting position, Financial has a lot of cottageable tiles to work with. The basic point of comparison for these two traits is game era: the earlier the era start, the better Financial does, and the later the era start, the better Organized does. Financial wants an Ancient start to have lots of time to grow cottages and more total turns to gain the Financial bonus (which is based on tiles worked over time). Organized wants a late era start to take advantage of the way that civic costs and inflation grows so much larger in the lategame. Organized’s factory bonus is also arguably the most important building doubler after Expansive’s granaries, it just comes so late that we don’t get to see it very often. In Pitboss 33, we saw Organized greatly overshadow Financial, although I do think that Financial could be a good choice there, with post-Electricity windmills in particular all getting the bonus. However, Organized seems clearly better for an Industrial start, just as I would argue that Financial is better for an Ancient start. Which is better here in the Renaissance? I’m not sure. I lean towards Organized being better here, but it’s hard to say until we play a few games out to test it. I think mackoti made a good choice here given the leaders already off the board when he picked, and we’ll see what we can do with Financial here.
Real Men of Genius: Victoria (Fin/Imp) of the Dutch This is oledavy and WarriorKnight’s team. I thought they played a great game back in Pitboss 6 against my team, and they likely would have won eventually if it hadn’t been for the oddball cultural victory stealing that one away. They will be devoted to the game and will have a great reporting thread which any non-dedicated lurker should go check out. Their team also has a leader pick extremely similar to ours. Vicky is about as close to Caesar as you can get in terms of gameplay style, keeping Imperialistic and swapping out Organized for Financial. I’m very interested to see how our pseudo doppelgangers will choose to play their opening moves. They settled one of their cities on the first turn already, which likely means on the starting tile or SW of the starting tile. They’ll want to expand quickly and throw down a lot of cottages in the usual Financial gameplan.
I’m completely puzzled by their civ pick of the Dutch. It’s the only one that doesn’t seem to make sense in the whole snake pick. In a game where we all presumably have mirrored landlocked capitals, there doesn’t seem to be much reason to take a civ with a naval UU and a UB that only does its thing in coastal cities. Was the prospect of working Financial + Dike coastal tiles really that appealing? Dikes don’t come until Steam Power, and that’s a pretty long way away on the tech tree. This choice is baffling to me.
Nicolae and REM: Asoka (Spi/Org) of the Khmer I added REM to the team name since he’s already logged into the game, and seems like he will be active on this team. Nicolae was a very good player from a number of years ago on this site, and REM just won the last Industrial Pitboss game that we played. Like all of the teams in the field, there’s strong talent here that we’re competing against. The leader pick of Asoka grabs one of the top two traits in the form of Spiritual, and then one of the economic traits in Organized. Just as the RMOG team is our unofficial brethren, Imp/Org to Imp/Fin, this team is mackoti’s matched pair with Spi/Org against Spi/Fin. This is another pair of strong traits, and I’ll be curious to see what they do with their opening moves. Likely they will slave out initial workers and then swap back to Serfdom to juice them up. Will that be enough to overcome the Imperialistic settler discount that the other half of the teams get? Should be fun to watch. My only small issue with Asoka as a leader is that Spiritual and Organized don’t have any natural synergy with one another, aside from being able to swap into more expensive civics. (Does anyone care that much about the cost of civics? Only rarely, right? Mostly we pick the benefit that fits best though.)
The Khmer is a great civ for these late era starts, ably demonstrated in the last Pitboss game. Every city gets a free Baray, and free food is always amazing. Gandhi + Khmer was honestly pretty ridiculous for the Industrial game, not that we knew it at the time. This is another great pick for Nicolae’s team, and it should help them get off to a fast start. I look for them to be the first non-Imperialistic team to reach 3 cities.
plako: Suleiman (Imp/Phi) of England Plako is one of the great MP competitors on this website dating back to our earlier events. Plako has played in a ton of these games and almost never turned in a bad result, always near the top of the scoreboard in game after game. I would expect him to do well as usual here, unless the unfamiliarity of a Renaissance start would throw him off. Plako doesn’t update as much as he used to, and this is a start that takes some planning to maximize its effectiveness. You can’t really play a Renny start just by feel and instinct (at least not without way more experience than we have currently as a community), since there’s so many more variables to consider than in an Ancient game. If any of these teams are trying to wing this thing, it’s going to show up. Anyway, plako has picked Suleiman’s Imp/Phi combo, two traits that are individually powerful while lacking any particular synergy. Imperialistic wants to expand wide, while Philosophical wants to run specialists and grow tall. Obviously you can always do a little bit of both, but these traits do pull in opposite directions. Plako and Alhazard are the only ones with Philosophical leaders, which is a bit odd given how that trait turned out to be pretty strong in the Industrial game. One thing that Suleiman is particularly suited to do is expand out to 6 cities and then build Oxford University faster than anyone else. I wonder if plako will try to take Education first and then go for that particular play?
England is pretty straightforward: Redcoats are an improved version of rifles, and Stock Exchanges are an improved version of banks. England is a good choice for a Renaissance game, and could fit with basically any of these leaders.
One final thought that I had at the end of typing all this up: I wonder if any of the Spiritual teams will try to go for the monk economy, between Apostolic Palace, Sankore, and Spiral Minaret. It could be a very good choice, but as a non-Spiritual leader, it doesn’t particularly make sense for us to try.
scooter: Julius Caesar (Imp/Org) of the Aztecs This is obviously our team which makes it a bit tricky to evaluate the picks. For a Renaissance game, the best leader available would be Justinian (Imp/Spi), who was banned for this contest. We certainly had a lengthy debate about the next best choice, and settled on Caesar. Was that the best pick? It’s hard to say, since we’re still working with a tiny sample size of late era MP games. Right now, it’s effectively a single game (Pitboss 33), plus maybe that one Future era PBEM duel game from years and years ago. The advantages of the Caesar pick are pretty straightforward: settlers are vastly more expensive in the late era starts, and Imperialistic saves a ton of production by doubling their (hammer) builds. Then Organized has great synergy with Imperialistic by reducing maintenance costs and granting cheap courthouses. A lot of the best leaders in Civ4 tend to be a combination of an expansion trait and an economy trait (e.g. the classic Exp/Fin Pacal), and this fits that model like a glove. As compared to the Industrial start in Pitboss 33, Imperialistic is a bit weaker because settlers only cost about 240 production instead of 330 production, but in many ways Organized is better, since maintenance costs are much more of a pain here, with State Property civic being at least 7 techs away instead of 2 techs away. The counter to that argument would be that Organized discounts on factories are also a lot further away… and the counter to THAT argument would be that Imperialistic gets some value back since teams start with 2 settlers instead of 3 settlers, making it harder to expand in the opening turns. I think I’ll just say that both of these are good traits, and we’re hoping to leverage them effectively.
We also picked the Aztecs on the second half of the snake pick. I think this was a very nice pickup, although I was the one pushing for that very pick, so…
It’s another obvious but effective synergy. Sacrificial altars are essentially another source of hidden happiness for our team, allowing us to whip much more aggressively without stacking up multiple whip penalties. The math worked out to them being worse than Ottoman hammans unless we really whip a lot, but I think we might be in a position to reach that point with some of our high food cities. Also unlike the hammans, the sacrificial altars have more benefit than just providing effective happiness. They are also cheaper courthouses (90 production instead of 120 production in normal starts, 81 versus 108 here) which then get the doubling bonus from our team being Organized. Since our cities start with forges in place, the altars are almost exactly a 1 pop whip – the things are insanely cheap for us to build. Hopefully this will help us snowball our economy by keeping our maintenance costs low – REM certainly made good use of this in the Industrial game. And finally, the super cheap sacrificial altars should give us a dominant EP lead over the other teams, which will let us watch everyone’s research and use spy units with impunity later in the game. For the last pick in the draft, we could have done a lot worse here.Alhazard: Gandhi (Spi/Phi) of the Ottomans Alhazard took the other dominant leader pick from the Industrial Pitboss game in the form of Gandhi. Spiritual is the other dominant trait for this setting; every team has a leader with either Spiritual or Imperialistic, and since no one has both, we effectively have two groups of teams: 3 Spiritual and 3 Imperialistic. A Gandhi pick means that Alhazard will need to make heavy use of Great Person lightbulbs to keep up with the rest of the field. Everyone else has more direct expansion (Imp) or economic (Fin/Org) benefits to draw upon. The positives of the Gandhi pick are pretty easy to see, as Alhazard will be the first to generate a Great Person with the Pacifism + Philosophical combo that no one else can match. Which type he picks will be interesting to see. Alhazard should have his choice of either the Tah Mahal or the Liberalism prize; I don’t think anyone can beat him to either one if he really wants them.
The problem is where to go from there with a Gandhi pick. Scooter theorized that Gandhi would be a weaker choice here than in the Industrial game, and I agree. The biggest reason why is the lack of Representation civic in the opening turns of this start. Gandhi wants to run lots of specialists and generate early Great People – that’s the whole reason to pick him as a leader. And in the Industrial game, that works a lot better because all those specialists are getting buffed with +3 beakers apiece in Representation. But there’s no such benefit here in the Renaissance, which means that running Artist specialists are pretty terrible. Frankly, non-Representation specialists just aren’t particularly strong when compared to working normal tile yields. Yes, we have Mercantilism to help out with a free specialist in each city, but that only does so much. Furthermore, Dreylin and OT4E made the Gandhi pick work in the Industrial game by leveraging their early Great People into an even bigger prize: a fast Kremlin build something like 25 turns into the game. After that, their super-charged Kremlin whips effectively made them Imperialistic for the purpose of expansion, and so they were able to avoid falling behind on expansion. They also cash-rushed a settler with Universal Suffrage (also not an option here), captured a barb city from poor Donovan, and had the free Barays pumping bonus food into every city. None of that will be the case here. Gandhi also has arguably the highest skillcap to play of any of the leaders in the field, being dependent on creating long-ranging micro plans to set up Great Person lightbulbs and Golden Age GPP chains. If Alhazard can’t set those things up, then this could wind up being a very weak pick. Long story short, Gandhi can do a lot of things well, but also has the possibility for things to go badly wrong.
The Ottomans are a good choice for a civ pick. Excellent unique building in the hamman for bonus health/happiness, and a decent unique unit in the janissary. I’ll made the same point about the Ottomans that a lot of other people have made: they’re kind of a boring civ to play. Good stuff, good choice by Alhazard, but nothing that particularly synergizes with Gandhi or leans towards one strategy. I guess the extra happiness is good for running more specialists though if need be, there is that. A safe, effective pick.
mackoti: Mansa Musa (Fin/Spi) of Byzantium This is the one pick where the civ overshadows the leader. Mackoti opted to pick Byzantium first, and if there’s one civ that’s worthy of the first pick in this era, it’s Byzantium. They were universally banned on the old CivPlayers MP ladder in 3 vs 3 Renny games due to the cataphract being overpowered. The conditions in this game are a lot different, of course; those games typically saw each player build 3-5 cities and then crank out units for the rest of the game without stop. This game won’t play out that way, since it’s not a teamer and we’re in a free-for-all setting. (We’re also not on Inland Sea, the only map ever used for those games.) Anyway, cataphracts have no real counter in this era, and retain their usefulness until cavs outclass them some 6-7 techs down the tree. That’s a long time in these games. Mackoti holding the cataphract card is frankly terrifying. Not because he’s going to rush early, but because mackoti will likely pick the exact right moment to hit someone and start snowballing his civ into a juggernaut. That said, even mackoti is not invincible, and perhaps his unfamiliarity with the late era starts will change things up in this game. Perhaps. Mackoti’s advice didn’t seem to help pindicator in the Industrial game, for whatever that’s worth.
Mackoti’s leader pick was the always solid choice of Mansa Musa’s Spi/Fin combo. I love this pairing in general, and there’s a lot to like here. Spiritual is great in late era starts, and opens up Slavery/Serfdom/Caste System swaps in the opening turns plus access to the religious civic column. That said, I do think that Spiritual is nerfed somewhat in Renaissance as opposed to Industrial simply because there are fewer civics available. It’s still a wonderful trait though, and I wish we could somehow have it. I will say that I’d rather have mackoti on a Spiritual leader than on an Imperialistic leader, which would allow him to spread out like the plague and dazzle us with his macro play. At least this way we should have more cities than him – if we don’t, then we’re not going to win this game. I think one of the defining question of this game will be whether Spiritual or Imperialistic is the better trait to have.
The other trait in play here is Financial, and this forms one of the other major questions for this game: Financial versus Organized. It’s a great topic for theory, and with the lengthy river at the starting position, Financial has a lot of cottageable tiles to work with. The basic point of comparison for these two traits is game era: the earlier the era start, the better Financial does, and the later the era start, the better Organized does. Financial wants an Ancient start to have lots of time to grow cottages and more total turns to gain the Financial bonus (which is based on tiles worked over time). Organized wants a late era start to take advantage of the way that civic costs and inflation grows so much larger in the lategame. Organized’s factory bonus is also arguably the most important building doubler after Expansive’s granaries, it just comes so late that we don’t get to see it very often. In Pitboss 33, we saw Organized greatly overshadow Financial, although I do think that Financial could be a good choice there, with post-Electricity windmills in particular all getting the bonus. However, Organized seems clearly better for an Industrial start, just as I would argue that Financial is better for an Ancient start. Which is better here in the Renaissance? I’m not sure. I lean towards Organized being better here, but it’s hard to say until we play a few games out to test it. I think mackoti made a good choice here given the leaders already off the board when he picked, and we’ll see what we can do with Financial here.
Real Men of Genius: Victoria (Fin/Imp) of the Dutch This is oledavy and WarriorKnight’s team. I thought they played a great game back in Pitboss 6 against my team, and they likely would have won eventually if it hadn’t been for the oddball cultural victory stealing that one away. They will be devoted to the game and will have a great reporting thread which any non-dedicated lurker should go check out. Their team also has a leader pick extremely similar to ours. Vicky is about as close to Caesar as you can get in terms of gameplay style, keeping Imperialistic and swapping out Organized for Financial. I’m very interested to see how our pseudo doppelgangers will choose to play their opening moves. They settled one of their cities on the first turn already, which likely means on the starting tile or SW of the starting tile. They’ll want to expand quickly and throw down a lot of cottages in the usual Financial gameplan.
I’m completely puzzled by their civ pick of the Dutch. It’s the only one that doesn’t seem to make sense in the whole snake pick. In a game where we all presumably have mirrored landlocked capitals, there doesn’t seem to be much reason to take a civ with a naval UU and a UB that only does its thing in coastal cities. Was the prospect of working Financial + Dike coastal tiles really that appealing? Dikes don’t come until Steam Power, and that’s a pretty long way away on the tech tree. This choice is baffling to me.
Nicolae and REM: Asoka (Spi/Org) of the Khmer I added REM to the team name since he’s already logged into the game, and seems like he will be active on this team. Nicolae was a very good player from a number of years ago on this site, and REM just won the last Industrial Pitboss game that we played. Like all of the teams in the field, there’s strong talent here that we’re competing against. The leader pick of Asoka grabs one of the top two traits in the form of Spiritual, and then one of the economic traits in Organized. Just as the RMOG team is our unofficial brethren, Imp/Org to Imp/Fin, this team is mackoti’s matched pair with Spi/Org against Spi/Fin. This is another pair of strong traits, and I’ll be curious to see what they do with their opening moves. Likely they will slave out initial workers and then swap back to Serfdom to juice them up. Will that be enough to overcome the Imperialistic settler discount that the other half of the teams get? Should be fun to watch. My only small issue with Asoka as a leader is that Spiritual and Organized don’t have any natural synergy with one another, aside from being able to swap into more expensive civics. (Does anyone care that much about the cost of civics? Only rarely, right? Mostly we pick the benefit that fits best though.)
The Khmer is a great civ for these late era starts, ably demonstrated in the last Pitboss game. Every city gets a free Baray, and free food is always amazing. Gandhi + Khmer was honestly pretty ridiculous for the Industrial game, not that we knew it at the time. This is another great pick for Nicolae’s team, and it should help them get off to a fast start. I look for them to be the first non-Imperialistic team to reach 3 cities.
plako: Suleiman (Imp/Phi) of England Plako is one of the great MP competitors on this website dating back to our earlier events. Plako has played in a ton of these games and almost never turned in a bad result, always near the top of the scoreboard in game after game. I would expect him to do well as usual here, unless the unfamiliarity of a Renaissance start would throw him off. Plako doesn’t update as much as he used to, and this is a start that takes some planning to maximize its effectiveness. You can’t really play a Renny start just by feel and instinct (at least not without way more experience than we have currently as a community), since there’s so many more variables to consider than in an Ancient game. If any of these teams are trying to wing this thing, it’s going to show up. Anyway, plako has picked Suleiman’s Imp/Phi combo, two traits that are individually powerful while lacking any particular synergy. Imperialistic wants to expand wide, while Philosophical wants to run specialists and grow tall. Obviously you can always do a little bit of both, but these traits do pull in opposite directions. Plako and Alhazard are the only ones with Philosophical leaders, which is a bit odd given how that trait turned out to be pretty strong in the Industrial game. One thing that Suleiman is particularly suited to do is expand out to 6 cities and then build Oxford University faster than anyone else. I wonder if plako will try to take Education first and then go for that particular play?
England is pretty straightforward: Redcoats are an improved version of rifles, and Stock Exchanges are an improved version of banks. England is a good choice for a Renaissance game, and could fit with basically any of these leaders.
One final thought that I had at the end of typing all this up: I wonder if any of the Spiritual teams will try to go for the monk economy, between Apostolic Palace, Sankore, and Spiral Minaret. It could be a very good choice, but as a non-Spiritual leader, it doesn’t particularly make sense for us to try.
![[Image: t186_pigs.JPG]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5826112/PB35/t186_pigs.JPG)
I'll be home this evening and start poking around in our sandbox.
![[Image: RBPB35-18s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/PB35/RBPB35-18s.jpg)
![[Image: RBPB35-19s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/PB35/RBPB35-19s.jpg)
One of the nicer results from a math perspective that I've seen in a while. ![[Image: RBPB35-17s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/PB35/RBPB35-17s.jpg)