This will be our spoiler thread, you know what this mean.
If you are playing in this game:
If you are playing in this game:
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[SPOILERS]Zara Yaqob of Byzantium and the Melancholies of Gawdzak and BaII
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Alright I started our spoiler thread already so we can start talking about what we want to pick here. I'm going to copy pasta a bunch of stuff from my PB20 thread.
We are playing in Tides of War 1.21 with a ban on Agricultural and Productive traits. Tides of War v1.21 notes for reference:
This is what I wrote before the start of PB20, ignore the parts about AGR and PRO. Now looking back, some of what I said was pure
 .(April 20th, 2014, 14:42)Gawdzak Wrote: So what trait and civ do I want here?Let's take a look at some of the changes:
I don't really mind working around whatever you pick. Although I would be interested in trying out the Byzantium since the only thing that was holding them back was the starting techs. I was thinking trying out CRE/PHI for a extremely Academy and try not to whip our capital too much in the early game. We might fall behind on expansion but as long as we don't fall behind too much we might be able to reach Cataphracts at an early date and run over someone with them. CRE is still a strong trait because it saves you hammers on the lack of need to pop borders so missing out on a religion will not be a big deal.
TRAIT ANALYSIS FIN: It just feels so weak now since it will take 10 turns of working on a riverside to get the FIN bonus and 20 turns for non riverside grassland tiles. EXP: Good as ever really, the biggest deal about it is the cheaper Granaries. 1 pop whip or 1 chop and there you have a Granary to keep overflowing food. Not only does it save you on hammers in those small cities it speeds up the growth curve of a city by an extraordinary amount. Losing the faster Harbours was a slap on the wrist for most games, and while we don't get the faster worker anymore it wasn't always plausible to get that extra hammer so in some games it really didn't matter in most cases. So still a top tier trait right now. CRE: No more domination of cultural borders, but your still pretty likely to win them with that extra culture. Still not a bad trait, probably the best early game trait for teching because of the cheap Libs. CHA: Very strong trait for the early game. Falls of the later you go because of diminishing returns for happiness. Most of the RB maps give you atleast a couple of early game resources for happiness so it isn't too much trouble to have enough happiness in the early game. You can keep on stacking the whip penalty but whipping is only really good when you have plenty of food to grow back onto the tiles you've been working. If we were to get locked out of a religion and lack happiness resources this trait would come into play greatly. If we happen to get plenty of nice grassland tiles and plenty of food bonuses this trait would be super strong. OTHER TIDBITS: Early game units got nerfed so rushes are less likely to be a concern for us. So farmer's gambit vs these civ's will be better although we still need to watch the power graph. We win out on beakers if we choose the "bad starting techs" so they would be nice to start off with. Food bonus techs are dirt cheap and can be picked up in a couple of turns. We might want early hunting because it doubles our scout movements.
http://nijidraws.tumblr.com/ - Crediting the artist who made my profile pic.
I agree with most of what you said there. I think 2 traits that are also strong is ORG and IMP.
There's mentions in the sign-up thread that this might be Emperor difficulty, so ORG would be stronger than usual. With FIN nerfed I don't think there's anything that beats ORG in the late game. If there's a lot of water in the map, cheap lighthouses wouldn't be bad either. IMP got a nice buff with cheaper Markets and Banks. The settler bonus is still the big deal though, and now it's got some late game bonuses. I think we should look to pick Byzantium if you are also interested. However, we need to have a start that we can work the starting techs around. We need to be able to skip 2 if not 3 of the following techs early (in the first 30 turns) : Hunting Agriculture Animal Husbandry Fishing If we get say double corn,that will work. Corn and Pig?Works. Deer and Pig? Might be a little more hesistant (delays Pottery). OTOH if we get something stupid like Fish and Cow, then picking Byzantium is just shooting ourselves in the foot. I think we definitely need to be able to keep up in expansion though, we need to be able to survive until we get to Cataphracts. And with the possibility of Tech Scaling Cost option on (new option in ToW,basically ramps up the tech costs for later eras), getting to Cataphracts will take quite a while and people might look to attack us before we get there. I mean just look at these tech costs (Monarch/Huge map) : ![[Image: towtecsclig.JPG?dl=1]](https://www.dropbox.com/s/xyj4sfeig2ynwhf/towtecsclig.JPG?dl=1) So the leaders on top of my list are: CRE/ORG Zara Yacob CRE/IMP Catherine IMP/ORG Julius Caesar It seemed like we are first pick too, so unless we pick Civ first we can't "counter-pick" our leader.
Woah, I wasn't expecting those high tech costs.
Julius Caesar: With a Huge map I think we would probably want IMP trait here to help us fill out the map. We should have an easy way to get our economy back on the right track with cheap markets and courthouses. Although it's not as safe as the other two choices in terms of safety. Without CRE we will be getting slower border pops so less likely to have some cultural defenses in place. Another problem would be that our cities would need to be closer to each other without CRE to pop borders for us. Although I don't think we will likely be facing an early rush on a huge map. Catherine: She's probably our best bet for a strong early game. Not only does she grant us the fast expansion like Julius Caesar we don't need to place the cities as close cause of the free border pops. Though she does not have the late game power of ORG I think we can possibly use her to secure a strong early to mid game before the power of ORG starts to overpower these traits. This would also probably be the strongest warring leader out of the 3 leaders. We would be getting earlier GG's as well as an easy whip for the Theater in our captured cities for quick border pops. Zara Yacob: He would probably be best in terms of pure beaker output with the cheaper lib's. Although we might be able to run a higher slider with Julius I don't think he will have as high of a beaker output since we won't be getting the cheaper lib's. Zara is probably our best research leader in this group. Although we probably won't be getting as many cities out, the growth curve of these cities should be faster because we have free border pops and don't have to worry about religion and monuments as much. I personal order of these leaders would be Zara>Julius>Catherine though their all really close to each other in terms of power. I don't think we should pick civ first because leaders are just stronger than civ's in most cases.
http://nijidraws.tumblr.com/ - Crediting the artist who made my profile pic.
Your start:
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Couple of forests so this would likely be hard to sim out without losing worker turns. I'm guessing it's okay to go with Byzantine here because we could go hunting and then straight to pottery and most of the important tiles are not covered in forests so that should be interesting. Or we could go with a Hunting/Wheel civ and then research all the way to pottery and cottage those delicious FPs.
http://nijidraws.tumblr.com/ - Crediting the artist who made my profile pic.
Some initial thoughts on the start:
We should definitely settle in place. We can hook both capital food with one tech which is nice. This capital is low on production, we only have 2 hills if we settle in place and both hills are covered in forests. So my instinct tells me that the ideal starting techs are Hunting/Mining and go Bronzing Working first. Since the production is low here, I don't think IMP is as valuable. Something else to note is that there's no 4 yields tile in our first ring, so if we get CRE we can work a 4 yield tile 1 turn earlier. Not a big deal though. Total speculation: I think the tile 1 east of the wine is copper. So I think Zara would a good pick up for us, since I mentioned that I don't like IMP if there's not a lot of hills. I'm open to other suggestion though. As to civs, I need to create a sandbox and sim a few scenarios. However I would really like to know the size of the map (standard/large/huge), dimensions, world wrap and difficulty before I do that. Edit: (June 22nd, 2014, 18:31)Commodore Wrote: Large cylinder, Emperor |
![[Image: 21g.JPG]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28594063/PB19T85/21g.JPG)