[SPOILER] PB37: Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the most aggressive of them all?

[Mardoc]

Don't mirror the 9*9 area, take longer and check each one out. I see no issues with this. I may dislike the 9 identical starts, but that has never been a dealbreaker for me. Mirroring the 9*9 area though, that would be.

as a side note, I don't see why the starts have the be the same mirror image for each player, could have just made three mirrored starts and made sure they were close enough in power. That would have alleviated an umber of problems with the snakepick interaction.

I hate aiming for 'close enough' at RB.  Everyone has a different definition.  Particularly when trying to hurry up and get you started with the snakepick (did not anticipate Dtay).

I honestly thought you were asking for mirrored 9x9's, as well, which is a large part of why I pushed back so hard on the idea of publishing 9x9 screenshots.  In retrospect I must have misread you.

[*]Restart map making process with a new map maker, the players give specific directions, redo snake pick.

[*]
Always an option.  Although you're approaching a detail level of directions where you might as well draw a map in public...

[*]Use the current starts in some form of rotation on that donut map.

No, can't do this without breaking the start distance and 150 tile/player constraints.  I'd have to remove one side of the start to shove you up against the coastline.  And therefore probably change the clams to fish to make up for the salt water, and...pretty soon I'm just redrawing.

I'm willing to redo with a donut, but I'd be trusting the script to do most of the work and I would only check capitals and resources.

[Krill]

Ah, thinking the whole 9x9 should be mirrored would explain why we've had that misunderstanding. I do agree i could have explained that better.

What I was originally proposing was just giving each player the view of their surrounding land, which would be unique to each of them. I did not intend for each start to be mirrored either but i can understand why any mapmaker would want to do that. I agree that not having to deal with the arguments is always an incentive. I dislike mirror maps for a variety of reasons, including boredom due to the ease of understanding an opponents decisions.

The specific reason i dislike this mirror start is that by placing such a high tech burden to unlock the food techs, it limits the choice rather than increasing it. If you had given everyone a single pig and grass cow for instance, a player can start mining/whatever and it doesn't matter, you can always get the food tech researched before the worker then focus on whatever strategy you want. This start will show the problems with not going for all three food techs, due to severely decreased output, expansion and research from about T30.

I will acknowledge that i am more than a bit bummed by Zulu going, but I must hold my hands up and say the civ balance is not great in the 2.x line. It works alot better with varied starts.

[Krill]

I'm going to get a choice between HRE, Inca or Persia, only one of those could be taken.

Inca lacks Hunting, so has a slightly slower start than HRE (delayed wb by a turn or two, but get slightly more commerce), but then it's a question of Quechua + Terrace v. Rathaus. In all cases I can consider going religion after immediate food techs and ignore Mining>BW. In case of HRE I could just go fishing>religion and be fairly sure of landing it (I doubt anyone else but Inca starts with Myst, they have other priorities). Persia was a fall back, to just say *fuck it*.

I tried micro for Rome (Fishing/Mining) but BW first is dreadful, nothing for a worker to do. OTOH, AGG Rome and Forums aren't shabby. Just setting yourself behind on tech from T0.

I'm tempted to try for Religion via Polytheism and Oracle>Aesthetics. That opens up Lit which is cheaper than HBR. I would only need Writing. Due to delayed BW, would be able to chop 4 forests for Oracle.

[Thoth]

Aiming for a hyper early Great Library?

I like terraces better than Rat-houses. The extra maintainance saves is nice but really only shines if Corporations are in play. I'd much rather have culture from the granary.

[Krill]

Ultra early, like t80 gl would solve a few issues. But if we can get HE down early? That's a 100% production modifier in a predesignated hammer city, better than any forge and alot cheaper compared to the effect. That strategy also opens up SoZ and an early high happy cap suggests this is not impossible, especially when the capital can work so many cottages.

Inca isn't really that much worse than HRE but must go Hunting to Fishing then reassess.

[Krill]

The other point is that if Inca are around for us top pick, then we could go IND/CHM, PRO/CHM or AGG/CHM or even PHI/CHM with this sort of plan so we would have more than enough options on the return of hte snakepick.

If Gav picks Inca now though I'm going to laugh. Everyone has picked food/mining techs. It'd be hilarious if Gav is the player that breaks that cycle and screws us over.

[Krill]

Lurker request: if Gavagai does not pick Inca, please pick them for me.

[greenline]

CHM minus any supporting expanding trait? That's gonna hurt early

[Krill]

Exp loses hammers.or significant amount of commerce, but can be 3 turns ahead finishing first settler.

IMP got nerfed, I'm not concerned regarding that. This start needs 1 worker, not 2 so an early settler just leaves the capital with unimproved food tiles and slows it down. Working all the food res gives imp a 2 hammer boost from 14 to 16 at size 3, early whipping requires growth to size 4 and gives a 4 turn settler with overflow but needs a revolt.

PRO will not kick in until T50 so i don't give a shit.

CHM will let me stack 2 extra whips in each city and have the same happiness. I would expect to be able to turn what is a relatively high food start into extra hammers once the granary landed as the problem then would be the happy constraints. That would be about an extra 100 hammers imo. I could even try to use whip overflowing I cram out oracle.

CHM plus Inca would go e me enough to be confident in ignoring the early game traits. Plus AGG lowers costs, which raises the slider so make more use from an academy. That was why i liked Zulu so much.

[Krill]

Well I'll not surprised Inca lasted until sixth in the pick with this start so now need to see what the other three players do. Dtay will pick AGG, CML picks Phi, Couerva will not pick EXP because it for Carthage but because he wants EXP as an early trait. DS won't pick CRE but no other indicators of choice. Gav went EXP/CRE but that suggests Rome to me burn that won't work. I see a preponderance of single and double early game traits.