[SPOILERS]Specialist of Everything: JC of the Zulu

[Gawdzak]

My thread for PB22, where all opinions will be presented as facts.


Players:
Commodore - Tokugawa of the Dutch
Gavagai -Huayna Capac of England
GermanBorsche - Shaka of Carthage
Dtay - Wang Kon of Inca
Gawdzak -Julius Caesar of Zulu
Furungy - Darius of Vikings
2metraninja - Pacal of Portugal
Plako - Roosevelt of Sumeria
REM/AI - Mehmed of Korea
HAK and Flakes - Boudica of Egypt
Mackoti - Frederick of China

Password: rome

To come:

Self Analysis
Mod Analysis
Pick Analysis
Opponent Analysis

[Gawdzak]

Civilization Analysis

In the RtR mod, there are no OP leaders but there are OP civs! So if one of the OP civs is open, I'm picking that first.

Best:

Zulus(Agriculture/Hunting, Impis, Ikhanda)

The Zulus, what's more to say? Amazing techs, amazing unit, great building. Agriculture and Hunting ties for the best techs in the mod. The Impis are the best unique unit in the game. People have died to Impi in 2 recent pitbosses, could any other unique unit could say the same thing? The Ikhanda is pretty good too, I might even take Aggressive to make them cheaper to build.

Egypt(Agriculture/Wheel, War Chariot, Obelisk)

Egypt's power is well known, great techs and amazing unit. The building is mostly useless, but that's ok. Agriculture/Wheel is still a top tier tech combo.

Inca(Agriculture/Mysticism, Quechua, Terrace)

Terraces now give +1 culture instead of +2. Quechua loses combat 1. Free border pops with a building that you would build anyways, very good. Average techs, Mysticism is a bad tech for the Inca. Much better with Protective.

Carthage(Fishing/Mining, Numidian Cavalry, Cothon)

Carthage is now the premier Fishing civ. Horse archers are one of the best non-UU unit in the game. You now get free combat I with that now? Good stuff. The Cothon is mediocre, better with Expansive.

Good:

Arabia(Agriculture/Mysticism, Camel Archer, Madrassa)

Arabia gets the only cheap Library in the game, with 4 culture per turn. After 1000 years this doubles to 8 culture per turn, you can almost pretend to be a Creative leader. I like the Camel Archers with the 15% withdrawal chance.

Persia(Agriculture/Hunting, Immortal, Apothecary)

Best tech combo in Agriculture/Hunting. Immortals are ok, the only Chariot that gets odds on Axes on defense with enough defensive bonuses. The Apothecary is useless.

China/Korea

Agriculture/Mining civs, both with good uniques.

Ottoman/France/Babylon

Agriculture/Wheel civs, always solid.

Rome(Fishing/Mining, Praetorians, Forum)

The other good Fishing/Mining civ.

Bad:

The rest. No reason to pick the others, unless you want to...

Troll:

Celts: Dun now gives G2. Gallic warriors gets Guerilla 3 promo now with just a barracks. Guerilla 3 is a ridiculous promo that give 50% withdrawal chance. So if you pick Toku of Celts, you get cheap barracks/cheap walls to get a 6 strength melee unit with +10% strength, double movement in hills, 50% withdrawal chance, 50% hills defense and +50% city attack.

[Gawdzak]

Trait Analysis

Best:

Organized: No change from BtS

Organize was strong before, but now that all the traits that were better than Organized was nerfed, Organized emerges as the one of the best traits. Civ 4 economy is about breaking even and then make a profit; Organized helps to do that better than any other trait. Scales extremely well with empire size. Best pure economical traits.

Financial: +1 commerce on all non-river tiles that have 2+ commerce. +100% production of Bank.

Financial was nerfed to not include bonus on river tiles. This is a significant nerf, but Financial is still strong enough. Where Organized shines in all different kind of maps, Financial shines less when your land have many rivers. Scales extremely well with empire size.

Imperialistic: +100% Great General emergence. +60% production of Settler. +100% production of Custom House

Wait what? Imperialistic only got a small buff but now it's good? Hear me out here, one of the most game changing, er, change in the RtR mod is the nerf to Slavery. The most efficient way to get out settlers in the base game is to 3-pop whip them. However, this would be a terrible play in this mod. Therefore Imperialistic is much more valuable then before. Scaling with empire size is irrelevant since the goal is not help empire run better but rather to run a bigger empire. As a result, this trait is extremely good when coupled with a trait that scales well with empire size. Best pure expansion trait.

Great:

Expansive: +2 health per city. +35% production of Worker, Work Boat. +100% production of Market, Aqueduct, Grocer, Harbor.

Workers are very significant investment early in the game, not only are they expensive but you can't grow while building them. Cheap workers means that you not only get them faster but you also get to spend more time growing your cities. Cheap Markets are nice but in reality it's still not worth building in most cities. Good expansion trait with mediocre economical benefits. This trait doesn't scales particularly well with empire size.

Protective: Free CG1 promo for archery and gunpowder units. +100 production of Granary, Walls.

Apparently Granary is a good building, so cheap Granaries are very good. Good expansion trait that doesn't scale well with empire size nor does it scale well into the late game.

Situationally Great:

Aggressive: Free C1 promo for melee and gunpowder units. -25% city maintenance [Not shown in trait description. Bonus not shown in interface. Bonus is multiplicative with other maintenance modifiers. Final displayed city maintenance value is correct and includes this bonus.] +100% production of Barracks, Stable, Drydock.

With barracks giving culture and the reduced maintenance, this may fool people into think this trait is actually better than it is. Aggressive is still Aggressive, great to have if you get involved in an early war and sucks otherwise. The maintenance portion of the trait scales poorly into the late game due to diminishing returns when coupled with Courthouses. The value of this trait highly depends on the state of the game.

Industrious: No change from BtS

Industrious is still a good trait. The value of this trait goes up significantly when the number of other Industrious leader in the game is low.

Poor:

Creative: +2 culture per city. +100% production of Theatre, Colloseum, Observatory.

This trait is pretty terrible, all you get is the culture now. The rest, who cares.

Charismatic: +2 happiness. +1 happiness from Broadcast Tower. -25% XP needed for promotions.

2 happiness, big whoop. It's an alright trait if there's no happiness resources, but even with just one happiness resource, the power diminishes significantly.

Philosophical: +150% Great Person production, +100% production of University

Philo kinda sucks in typical RB game because it scales very poorly with empire size. Philosophical is great if you have a 6 city empire, but in a RB game where people gets 20+ cities? Not very good.

Spiritual: No change from BtS

This is the most overrated trait ever. They say after you found a religion, build the right wonders, and research the tech that unlock different civics, Spiritual is pretty good. Except that Spiritual does absolutely nothing to help you to do any of those things.

[Bobchillingworth]

I don't like Spiritual very much either, but the main advantage is strategic flexibility, right? Being able to jump into Slavery and/or Nationhood to suddenly complete a round of military, switch in-and-out of Serfdom at will, briefly adopt Pacifism to get that GP you need, etc. I guess it depends how much you end up changing civics; if you constantly change them, you'll save yourself quite a few beakers, hammers, turns of growth etc. that would have been otherwise lost.

[Gawdzak]

I don't like Spiritual very much either, but the main advantage is strategic flexibility, right? Being able to jump into Slavery and/or Nationhood to suddenly complete a round of military, switch in-and-out of Serfdom at will, briefly adopt Pacifism to get that GP you need, etc. I guess it depends how much you end up changing civics; if you constantly change them, you'll save yourself quite a few beakers, hammers, turns of growth etc. that would have been otherwise lost.

Yes Spiritual gives one flexibility that is unique, however do not confused that ability with a bonus that helps one win a game. With good golden age timing and prudent civic choices, Spiritual just doesn't do enough.

[Gawdzak]

Opponent Analysis

As you can see, I really like my analyses. This time on my opponents in this game. Yesterday I did quiz called "what Hearthstone card are you", I thought this is a fun idea to use for this.

Best

Plako



Plako has play in many games, and he pretty much never played badly. The longer the game goes on, the experience of Plako will shine through, making him always a contender to win.

Commodore



Commodore have also played in many games and have always reported well. He doesn't have the game winning power as some of the other best players but he will sure as hell kill off any weak players in front of him.

Great

Dtay



Dtay first made his RB debut on PB13, he played a good game. There he built quite a few wonders and won Lib. In this other games, he continued to build various wonders. He has yet to win a game, but definitely don't count him out.

Gavagai



Gavagai have a history for aggression. His gameplay is solid, however aforementioned aggression often hurt himself.

Potentially Great

GermanJojo



GermanJojo joined RB around the same time I did and I'm playing against him in a few games. From what I can see from his PB18 thread, but he seems to get mad at everything. His gameplay seems decent enough, but more information is needed to truely evaluate his true skill.

retep



retep seemed to be a pretty competent player. With a strong liking for aggression.

ReallyEvilCupcake/AdrienIer



REM is pretty new here on RB. His comments in PBEM61 makes me think that he read Sullla's PB2 thread and takes it as gospel, not realizing the metagame has changed since then. He can be good, but not enough is known about his gameplay skill.

Average

2metraninja



2metra played in a couple game here. He never seemed to do particularly well to be perfectly honest. He seemed slow out of the block in the early game and that snowballs into insurmountable deficits.

Furungy



I've lurked some of Furungy's game, and I'm not very impressed. He often overestimate his own strength which leads to strategic error.

Poor

HitAnyKey



Sorry but HAK is not a very good civ player. He will seen as the human goody hut in this game.

[Gawdzak]

Self Analysis

Here is where I talk about myself.

Gawdzak



I'm not interested in the fancy play. I like to focus on standard solid game play. The only thing I value is food/hammer/commerce. I put a low priority on religions and wonders. I'm a big user of slavery, which is nerfed in the mod so I will have adjust my play style. My strategy always involves going to war at sometime so I will be always looking for a fight. However, my multiplayer inexperience is very limited, so other players have an opportunity to exploit that.

[Gawdzak]

1. retep
2. HitAnyKey/Cornflakes
3. TrulyDiabolicalCupcake/AdrienIer
4. Plako
5. 2metraninja
6. Furungy
7. Gawdzak
8. Dtay
9. GermanJojo/Borsche
10. Gavagai
11. Commodore

I am 7th pick. Clearly pindicator wanted revenge for that map I made for him in PBEM62. I noticed that Commodore coincidentally is also at the bottom.

What does this mean? Well I probably won't be getting one of the top civs that I wanted. So I might as well go leader first.

[Gawdzak]

So retep stepped out and Mackoti might join.

Mackoti, as most you know, is considered one of the best players here. However, he doesn't report well, so it's hard to learn from his play by reading his threads. I'm playing against Mackoti in PB20, and I'm learning a lot from him just by playing with him in the same game. I enjoy playing against him, so I hope he joins.

Which Hearthstone cards is Mackoti?

[Gawdzak]

I decide to do a trait valuation case study. The data is taken from PB18 at turn 127. I took each player's two traits and assign a number based on the rank of the player on the scoreboard. For example, the player Boldly Going Nowhere is ranked 1st on the scoreboard. He is playing as Pericles with Creative and Philosophical. With the method, both Cre and Phi and assigned the value of 1.

In the end, I averaged out the total score with the number of players.

Without further ado, here's the results, ranked from lowest to highest.

IMP 3,6,13,16,23

12.2

CRE 1,6,7,10,11,20,32

12.43

FIN 3,10,12,15,19,26

14.17

PRO 2,5,15,17,24,30

15.5

EXP 2,4,13,14,25,27,28

16.14

PHI 1,9,12,27,33

16.4

IND 5,7,8,16,22,25,26,29

17.25

ORG 8,14,19,20,31

18.4

CHM 11,17,21,22,28

19.8

SPI 9,18,21,30,32

22

AGG 4,18,23,24,29,31,33

23.14



From here, one can see that IMP and FIN ranks high as expected.

CHM and SPI ranks very low, also as expected.

CRE is much higher ranked that usual, possibly due to the higher land score points that the CRE leaders were able to accrue.

EXP and PRO are good.

AGG seems terrible, having the worst score.

PHI is perhaps not as bad as first thought.

ORG is ranked much lower than expected, but ORG is a pure late game trait.

IND is interesting, due to the its polarity. I suspect this is due to one's ability to land wonders. IND sometimes is described as mainly about the cheap forges. However cheaper wonder is still a very important part of the trait. If one is unable to land wonders then one is wasting a part of their trait, which is never ideal in a competitive environment.