4 score, and 77pb years ago (superdeath)

[superdeath]

Spongebob theme. Spongebob memes. Are you ready kids?

[Commodore]

Ready.

Screenshot is very slightly inaccurate; forest 2S1E isn't present.

[superdeath]

Ready.

Screenshot is very slightly inaccurate; forest 2S1E isn't present.

[ljubljana]

hi sd! as promised i will dedlurk here, if you will have me

idk how much insight i can provide and i do have a tendency to sign up to dedlurk, get overwhelmed by my own game, and then fail to actually post stuff BUT let's not worry about that now....

thoughts on the start/what civs you want post-bans? water maps scare the crap out of me in this game after seeing games ended by 7-move galleons sniping capitals from the fog.....

[superdeath]

hi sd! as promised i will dedlurk here, if you will have me

idk how much insight i can provide and i do have a tendency to sign up to dedlurk, get overwhelmed by my own game, and then fail to actually post stuff BUT let's not worry about that now....

thoughts on the start/what civs you want post-bans? water maps scare the crap out of me in this game after seeing games ended by 7-move galleons sniping capitals from the fog.....

Welcome to the pit of despair known as Superdeath's thread.


Thoughts being either AGG/CHA Rome, for easier ship/amphibious praets OR CHA/PRO Spain. Either of those two options is the dream. Rome is standard aggression, and Spain is more the variant play where i try YET AGAIN (thx commodore) to go Spain and grab a religion and go from there. CHA is obviously the best thing since sliced bread on a water map since ORG/FIN are banned. PRO for better finances early on, and not having to worry too much about other players not giving open borders ect. Also makes for cheaper UB for Spain.


Im expecting Churchill to be taken before i get my hands on it though. He is my #1 pick. #2 is probably.. Washington. 1pop whip granaries sound pretty good. Might swap with Churchill. Thoughts?

3rd pick options if somehow Spain/Rome Churchill/Washington are taken...

Probably Lincoln. Use PHI to get to Astro quicker perhaps. 3rd Civ pick... Well, Japan is already taken.. so probably.. America? lol

[ljubljana]

yeah what traits WOULD be good on a water map without ORG/FIN? idk really but i guess my first instincts are:

agree that CHA seems like the best military trait since it's the only one that directly impacts ships (especially since ships seem to love both attached and settled GGs for the extra movement). PRO i don't really understand the math behind lol.... if you can rush out a galley settler and get very fast ICTRs, would those be above the +2 GPT you get from PRO domestic routes in the early game? if so yeah that seems like a pretty powerful snowball accelerant.... especially since, do we know how big the starting landmasses will be? if they are small enough that sailing becomes as urgent a priority as pottery/BW just for galley access, the opening could end up seriously tech-gated, and PRO is i suppose the trait that helps most with that. AGG, well.... idk, land units and barracks are probably bad relative to baseline but AGG is now with PRO the only trait that directly generates commerce long-term. not sure if that's enough though, probably depends as always on how gigantic everyone's navies end up being

SPI might be nerfed relative to baseline in that serfdom will be ass... but i guess religion should be ok since nobody will be working many cottages so flat gold income should be good? and also easy swaps to vassalage and theocracy i guess should be strong since ships seem to benefit sooo much from each promotion.....

i guess PHI could be strong too since i'd expect water maps to have high food, few cottages, and therefore to favor specialists? IND i'd think would be worth a look if all the super high-impact water wonders weren't banned, but they are, soooo... IMP i guess would be worse than usual since some of the limiting factor on expansion now comes from transport availability.... CRE and the culture half of CHA, idk really, but i imagine better than baseline since you can't get second-ring food in range just by changing your dotmap as you can (in theory) on land maps, you actually have to wait for the culture.

i wonder if ORG being banned favors sumeria somewhat? since you would be the ONLY one with cheaper courthouses and could probably get enough EP to have tech vis on, like, everyone simultaneously.... not sure how much of a benefit we can really expect that to be but sumeria is already seemingly considered strong so might not need much of a buff to be pickable, esp for purposes of remaining economically functional after military action

ugh i wanna play america so bad, and you playing it would be almost like me playing it i guess there's no obvious synergy with CHA, but if we think specialists will be good on this map you could try PHI and add some kind of expansion accelerant... maybe CHA to get your cities large enough to run specialists and/or whip a bunch to not fall behind on expansion, or PRO to keep the economy afloat while PHI is not helping the snowball

hmmmm if rome is taken, maybe mongolia is worth a look? amphibious praets could also be amphibious keshiks or knights :D and there will be a relevant mounted unit all game to surprise someone with off of boats, long after praets obsolete

i guess in a vacuum, if all the best econ stuff seems to be banned, and water maps run slow economically withOUT all the banned economic stuff (is this true? i don't know but i'd imagine so with so many water tiles where there should be cottages), that should favor a military approach.... only issue is that everyone will be expecting that coming from us lunatics but yeah i generally like where your head is at about CHA

[ljubljana]

oh right i forgot to check anyone's starting techs i see that there is an island literally visible at the start so i'm guessing the urgency for sailing will be quite high, so the tech-gating in the opening might be really really bad. bad enough that i am not sure we can afford to go for one of the REALLY early religions.... maybe something like bulbing CoL with a fast prophet from somewhere would be a better religious play

mongolia: wheel/hunting which looks really bad for this start that's sad, i like mongolia but that + no econ trait might = too much of a hole to climb out of
america: fishing/agriculture looks like the best possible pair, which i guess is probably a large part of why you suggested them that i completely overlooked in initial analysis lolll
rome: fishing/mining, also looks pretty good although it is a pain that SO many of our hills are under forest relative to america, we'd have to make sure that without ag, we could still get AH in time to pasture the sheep as the second worker action i guess
spain: fishing/mysticism, i'm a little worried about mysticism if we need a ton of beakers in the opening for sailing to get to the best snowball spots. but no guarantee that that's true
sumeria: ag/wheel, yeahh wheel is probably pretty weak as a starting tech if we don't need roads for trade connections. but at least it's better than wheel/hunting lol

other civs that start with 2 of {agriculture, fishing, mining} that seem worth a look: wow, 3 of these are the banned china/dutch/portugal lol. the other ones we haven't talked about are native america (doesn't seem too strong to me otherwise), england (unless CtH changed this it seems like their kit comes online WAY too late....), carthage (wait....cothons could be crazy?? with PRO and guaranteed ICTRs in as large a number as you want? would love to see them paired with EXP to offset the otherwise very high 100 hammer cost, if cothons actually do receive the EXP bonus)

ok it seems like we've mostly mined the list for civs that work VERY well with this open, but i really wanna see how carthage plays... something like EXP/CRE carthage, and then have all those crappy water cities get their second-ring fishes online as soon as possible with CRE, then whip granary -> lighthouse -> cothon -> library to contribute 3 harbor-boosted library-boosted ICTRs immediately? definitely seems worth a look at least if we can make it to compass tech-wise with no direct boosts to economy

want me to try to run some opening sims or nah?

[superdeath]

I can see an argument for Mongolia as a possible choice. Sumeria isnt terrible, but every civ i want would have to be taken first.. and while that might happen, its unlikely. Cheaper courthouses ARE nice, and they come early, but the question is do you/is it wise to spend those hammers on courthouses when those could be spent on more settlers/ect. Obviously there is a point when they would be useful, but i suspect (especially if we have PRO) that that time will come around the time we would be getting CoL anyway. I could be wrong tho.

If CHA didnt also give cheaper monuments... But anyway.

[superdeath]

oh right i forgot to check anyone's starting techs i see that there is an island literally visible at the start so i'm guessing the urgency for sailing will be quite high, so the tech-gating in the opening might be really really bad. bad enough that i am not sure we can afford to go for one of the REALLY early religions.... maybe something like bulbing CoL with a fast prophet from somewhere would be a better religious play

mongolia: wheel/hunting which looks really bad for this start that's sad, i like mongolia but that + no econ trait might = too much of a hole to climb out of
america: fishing/agriculture looks like the best possible pair, which i guess is probably a large part of why you suggested them that i completely overlooked in initial analysis lolll
rome: fishing/mining, also looks pretty good although it is a pain that SO many of our hills are under forest relative to america, we'd have to make sure that without ag, we could still get AH in time to pasture the sheep as the second worker action i guess
spain: fishing/mysticism, i'm a little worried about mysticism if we need a ton of beakers in the opening for sailing to get to the best snowball spots. but no guarantee that that's true
sumeria: ag/wheel, yeahh wheel is probably pretty weak as a starting tech if we don't need roads for trade connections. but at least it's better than wheel/hunting lol

other civs that start with 2 of {agriculture, fishing, mining} that seem worth a look: wow, 3 of these are the banned china/dutch/portugal lol. the other ones we haven't talked about are native america (doesn't seem too strong to me otherwise), england (unless CtH changed this it seems like their kit comes online WAY too late....), carthage (wait....cothons could be crazy?? with PRO and guaranteed ICTRs in as large a number as you want? would love to see them paired with EXP to offset the otherwise very high 100 hammer cost, if cothons actually do receive the EXP bonus)

ok it seems like we've mostly mined the list for civs that work VERY well with this open, but i really wanna see how carthage plays... something like EXP/CRE carthage, and then have all those crappy water cities get their second-ring fishes online as soon as possible with CRE, then whip granary -> lighthouse -> cothon -> library to contribute 3 harbor-boosted library-boosted ICTRs immediately? definitely seems worth a look at least if we can make it to compass tech-wise with no direct boosts to economy

want me to try to run some opening sims or nah?

Feel free to run as many sims as you wish lol
ill never turn it down.

Ill wait for the snake to get to me before simming much. Dont want to get my hopes up too much. Probably still going leader first though. Plenty of civs do just fine here. imo.

[ljubljana]

wait, did they really change native america's starting techs to hunting/fishing in CtH?? if so, why? i am really sorry if i misled you into picking them based on having "good" starting techs that are not actually good here (( that is on me, i didn't fully read the CtH changelog before posting and was just going off of civwiki....

anyway i do like their UB, and the synergy with churchill - with CHA barracks + totem pole = double-promoted units out of the gate right? AND you're pro so you can spam 4-promoted archers almost immediately? seems very fun and i'm looking forward to seeing it play out :D