[SPOILERS]PB34:Burnin' Daylight - DMOC/gsorel/Ichabod

[gsorel]

Hello! This is a spoiler thread.

The game may begin sooner or later, but plenty to discuss in the mean time:

1. Leader Ranking
2. Civ Choosing
3. Mod Analysizing
...
4. ?

Welcome!

1. Borsche - Mehmed II of Carthage
2. Gawdzak/Chumchu - Julius Caesar of Russia
3. GSorel/DMOC/Ichabod - Genghis Khan of Zulu
4. Nicolea Carpathia - Brennus of Korea
5. Elkad - Asoka of Sumeria
6. DTG/picklepikkl - Mao Zedong of Inca
7. OT4E - Bismark of Ottomans
8. wetbandit/ipecac - Winston Churchill of China
9. StarDoor - Shaka of Arabia
10. dcodea - Joao II of Khmer
11. NylesStandish - Wang Kon of Aztecs
12. pindicator - Suryavarman II of India

1. Borsche (Eastern Brown Snake)
2. Gawdzawk & Chumchu (Belcher's Sea Snake)
3. GSorel/DMOC (Philippine Cobra)
4. Nicolea Carpathia (Tiger Snake)
5. Elkad (Inland Taipan)
6. DTG + picklepikki (Central Ranges Taipan)
7. OT4E (Rattlesnake)
8. wetbandit & ipecac (Death Adder)
9. StarDoor (Blue Krait)
10. dcodea (Black Mamba)
11. NylesStandish (Viper)
12. pindicator (African Puff Adder)

password:

wayne

[gsorel]

I think the strongest civ in this mod is something like Julius Caesar (IMP/ORG) of Sumeria (Vulture/Ziggurat).
I think a strong but undervalued civ might be something like Churchill (PRO/CHA) of France (Musketeer/Salon).

[Ichabod]

Checking in. I will comment further later.

[DMOC]

Welcome, Everyone!

For those of you who don't know, I'm DMOC, a long-time member of this website as a player and (more frequently) as a lurker. I've been playing Civilization IV since 2007 and in the past few years, I have learned a lot from the community here and from CivFanatics (my most recent single-player walkthrough is here, and I'm hoping to have another game there soon). I'm excited to be playing this game with gsorel and Ichabod. Before going futher, I should say in advance that my schedule is going to be unpredictable this summer since there may be consecutive days when I have to focus on work, but I might also have weekends free for extensive analysis of the game. My goal is to be a solid dedicated lurker, providing insight and suggestions, hopefully augmented by some World Builder simulations. Ultimately, however, I'll let gsorel take the final decision on things. I am also interested in trying out the RtR Mod. I know it's been around a while, but I have never played a game with it. Here's the changelog, courtesy of pindicator, along with a backup by Old Harry (should be identical).

This is going to be a snake pick game, so I'd like to compile my thoughts on how we should value traits and other aspects of leaders/civs. First, I don't think it will matter that much what leader/civ we draw, because the purpose of this mod is to introduce more balance to the game. If there was imbalnace, I think Krill would have made extra changes to this Mod if otherwise (well, he did, but 2.0.7.4 is pretty mature so hopefully that's balanced). So I think we might want to make use of whatever synergy we can get from the leader/civ selections, as that might have relatively more impact given the similarities among trait strengths. The obvious way to do this is to get leader traits that will also double production speed of whatever civilization's unique building we get.

The traits we want also depend on what kind of game we want to play. In my opinion, we should default to a leader/civ combo that results in rapid city expansion and growth, so we should aim to have the most amount of cities and populations, or at least close to it. If we get a map with poor land, we might need to go "tall", but given the history of Realms Beyond providing lush, fertile maps, I think we can assume for now that fast expansion is key. With paper-thin military. But be warned, barbarians are on.

I had some time to look at the updated changes. My summary is that I'm thinking some combination of Expansive, Creative, Organized, or Imperialistic might be nice, since those traits have either obvious expansion benefitis (expansive, imperialistic for workers/settlers), culture benefits for creative, a nearly-hidden economic benefit for organized, or building bonuses (organized/expansive/creative). I don't count the custom house as much of a benefit for the Imperialistic trait, since custom houses might be the worst buildings in the game from a cost-benefit standpoint.

Also, if we're among the last to pick our leaders and at most one other team is Industrious, I think we should seriously consider an Industrious leader. That trait has some benefit here because stone/marble have only +50% bonus, not +100%. Another thing to consider is the number of teams that start with Mysticism (we may want to use an early religion if others don't prioritize it).

Regarding other traits, I'm not sold on the Protective trait despite its granary bonus, since that's about all the trait has going for itself, and regarding Financial, I think it's safe to assume a rivery-heavy map (or at least, a river capital) making Financial have little benefit. I briefly thought about Charismatic, but I think if we beeline to Monarchy, we shouldn't have much problem with happiness. Spiritial would be another trait to consider but its benefit is really minor in the early game when we have few civics. If we were playing Pitboss 33 with its late-game situation, then I'd reconsider, but at the moment, I think we should just take the anarchy and rely on well-timed Golden Ages, with the understanding that these games aren't going to last that long due to concessions, human players "checking out", etc.

gsorel, regarding your civ comments, would it be possible to elaborate why you believe the following two to be true:

I think the strongest civ in this mod is something like Julius Caesar (IMP/ORG) of Sumeria (Vulture/Ziggurat).
I think a strong but undervalued civ might be something like Churchill (PRO/CHA) of France (Musketeer/Salon).

Though I think I like these selections. For Caesar, I like the imperialistic/organized trait as helping us to get lots of settlers, while having bonuses on the ziggurat. I'm probably less sold on the Sumeria civ, but I can see the benefits of having vultuers as a deterrence to other players. (We should *not* be attacking players with vultures ... that's too early for war, unless the attack would obviously benefit us with very low cost.) Another possibility here would be to pair Julius Caesar with the Holy Roman Empire, with the Rathaus? The benefit of courthouses do not really appear until much later in the game when cities grow in size and cost more, so the Priesthood advantage of ziggurats is virtually useless.

Regarding your second selection, I'm warming to France, because (a) in this mod, drafting rifles takes two population points, so if we want to draft for only one population, muskets (i.e. musketeers) provide the best tradeoff and (b) musketeers are unchanged from the base game, and the key is their *two* movement points. Having extra movement flexibility is so crucial in multiplayer games to surprise and fork your opponents' cities, something I learned a lot from watching Sullla play in the past. What do you think of pairing France with Kublai Khan? Kublai is Creative/Charismatic in this mod, which doens't exist in the base game, so the Creative trait would speed up the Salon construction, while the Charismatic preserves happiness and means we can promote musketeers better. In the base game, Creative was already one of the top three traits that Realms Beyond players used (the others being Financial and Expansive), and Creative only lost the library bonus. A bit tough but can't live with everything.

Other leaders I'd like would probably be combinations of the four traits I mentioned earlier.

All this analysis might not add up to much, as the traits might be too closely balanced for them to matter, but I thought I should bring up some brief opinions so that you can think about and criticize (er ... critique ) them. It might not end up mattering much because the teams who win these Pitboss games are very often those teams that haven't checked out yet. I'm hoping our team can be one of those that stays committed to the game, so we'll hopefully be in the running even with some suboptimal leaders/civ combination. I remember back in Pitboss 14 (ugh, that game, full diplo ...) and plako, the game admin, said this about me:

Dick76 / DMOC - DMOC will run the show at 1st without Dick. ~70T DMOC gives up and Dick will run the game solo. Team will end up eliminated. I know DMOC already from the 1st demo game. He was very young back then so things might have changed quite a bit. He has the civ skills, but diplo was the problem at least back then and he also gave up too easily.

I'm flattered that he thinks I have the civ skills. However, I do agree that my youth back then (along with my lack of access to civ -- I didn't have a laptop those days) meant that I gave up too frequently (this was pre-2010). I'm hoping he has a different opinion of me now! I do want to stay committed to this game until the bitter end.

PS: Don't worry, my other posts aren't going to be as long as this. I just wanted to ramble a bit to start.

[DMOC]

[Ichabod]

Hey guys!

Some random comments:

This game has a casual tag, but a lot of great players signed up. So, expect a very competitive field of play (way more than PB 32, the other casual game, I'd say). Gawdzak and DTG are top players; Nicolae, Pindicator and wetbandit are very good, if commited; OT4E is very experienced. And we had a lot of great newbies come up in past games, so some of the new names can also surprise.

Considering picks, I'd say to go with something that suits you. Choose what you'll find fun, because commitment has way more to do with being successful in this games than power picks. But if we want power picks, my opinion is that Inca is the best civ, even after nerfed, especially if coupled with PRO (for faster terraces). Zulu is also a top tier civ (perhaps even better than Inca, now that I think of it), because Ikhanda's are amazing (barracks and Ikhanda's give +1 culture in the mod, so AGG Ikhanda's cost the same as monuments, but gain a lower maintenance bonus and the xp bonus) and Impi's are incredibly useful (for offense and defense, if the idea is to go with a skeleton military).

If you want Inca or Zulu, they have to be a first pick in the snake pick, because they'll be chosen very soon. Inca has to be paired with a PRO leader and Zulu with an AGG leader, I think, so we'd still have one trait left. It's worth saying that AGG is way stronger than in base BTS, due to the culture from barracks and the maintenance bonus, which adds up to save a lot.

If the idea is fun civilizations, I think Carthage and Celts are really cool. France and Sumeria are also very good.

Regarding leaders, I think CRE is weak in this mod, when culture is easier to come by and without the Library bonus. I'd also be against CHA, because the happiness bonus is too map dependent and usually the maps are heavy on happy resources (+ in games with a lot of players, it's easy to trade for resources).

ORG is still very good. IMP is favoured by a lot of players in this mod. Overall, I'd say there's not a lot of way of going wrong.

[gsorel]

Very helpful advice DMOC!

Also, if we're among the last to pick our leaders and at most one other team is Industrious, I think we should seriously consider an Industrious leader. That trait has some benefit here because stone/marble have only +50% bonus, not +100%. Another thing to consider is the number of teams that start with Mysticism (we may want to use an early religion if others don't prioritize it).

I like the idea of picking an industrious leader if others ignore it. I think this mod really boosts the potential of a hammer economy.

Regarding other traits, I'm not sold on the Protective trait despite its granary bonus, since that's about all the trait has going for itself.

I think a half price granary is more powerful than it appears at first. Compare IMP: a city will be settled x turns earlier but remains a net drain until it actually contributes further workers or settlers or it grows on to commerce tiles. With PRO, the city is settled later but this unproductive period is y turns shorter. I suggest that x and y are comparable so that IMP and PRO are of comparable strength. Moreover, since a scarcity of commerce is likely to be the limiting factor in settling cities, PRO is eventually the more powerful trait: saving y turns after the city is settled and incurring a maintenance cost is better than settling the city y turns earlier. This balances IMP's ability to speed development before the discovery of Pottery.

... regarding Financial, I think it's safe to assume a rivery-heavy map (or at least, a river capital) making Financial have little benefit.

I agree that Financial is very map dependent. I also think Financial would make the game less interesting since it gives incentive to simply cottage every grassland tile. A non-financial civ really needs to think through how it will
earn commerce.

I briefly thought about Charismatic, but I think if we beeline to Monarchy, we shouldn't have much problem with happiness.

This sort of argument is why I listed a CHA civ in my "powerful but undervalued" civ choice. I have been reading through some of the threads from games that use this mod, and I noticed others who assigned a low value to CHA. One reason given was that maps often have plentiful happy resources. I read on, however, to see the same player decided, with plentiful and even excessive food, not to whip because of insufficient happy. A city with even one good food resource can whip from 4 citizens to 2 every ~4 turns and net 25fh on each whip. I can burn through as much happiness as you give me - earning 25fh per happy - in very short order and without tile improvements beyond the base food resource. This is very powerful through the early game when workers are scarce. And even after workers become more plentiful, it is a nice hedge to have extra happy independent of map or tech. As happy resources and hammer tiles come online, my experience is that it often cheap to "buy back" the burned happy simply because surplus food is channeled away from the whip. Being able to delay Monarchy/Calendar research until more pressing tech is secured can be very powerful. I take a more dim view of the Monarchy tech because the happy is very expensive and requires a costly revolution - and again, there are so many pressing techs that I prefer to delay Monarchy unless the situation demands it.

Spiritual would be another trait to consider but its benefit is really minor in the early game when we have few civics.

I agree that this is a less powerful/situational trait if we can be clever with our great people.

For Caesar, I like the imperialistic/organized trait as helping us to get lots of settlers, while having bonuses on the ziggurat. I'm probably less sold on the Sumeria civ, but I can see the benefits of having vultuers as a deterrence to other players. (We should *not* be attacking players with vultures ... that's too early for war, unless the attack would obviously benefit us with very low cost.) Another possibility here would be to pair Julius Caesar with the Holy Roman Empire, with the Rathaus? The benefit of courthouses do not really appear until much later in the game when cities grow in size and cost more, so the Priesthood advantage of ziggurats is virtually useless.

I'm not sure what maintenance/tech costs will be like in our game but with Emperor difficulty maintenance/tech costs, I find the 45h Ziggurat at priesthood to come at exactly the right time. I concede that the religious line is not very strong and I like how this mod makes alphabet attractive with open borders, but I also think that ziggurats are a very strong solution to the upper bound on early expansion caused by city maintenance. Libraries at 90h I think are a poor solution. Sufficient riverside cottages or commerce resources may not be available.

Regarding costs: a non-CRE/AGG civ is likely forced to take Mysticism in any case and the prerequisite bonus on Writing also lowers the cost of priesthood. A 45h ziggurat is built very efficiently even with weakened slavery. I build ziggurats when the city maintenance is >2g/city - so initial savings of 1g/city and rising with the square of the number of cities. Most of the cost of a new city is the increase in number of cities maintenance it imposes on already existing cities and this is what the ziggurat addresses.

I do not think the Rathaus is as strong as the Ziggurat because the CoL tech is very expensive unless we have some other reason to research up the religious line - it would be preferable to shoot for currency or perhaps alphabet in this mod.

In any case, I don't think Sumeria is the civ we necessarily ought to play, the idea is that Julius Caesar of Sumeria gives a sense of what I believe is most powerful in this mod.

What do you think of pairing France with Kublai Khan?

That would be fun! (AGG/PRO) of France with C1/Drill Musketeers would also be pretty cool.

/gsorel

[gsorel]

Haha - posting at the same time as Ichabod

I agree that Inca is super-powered and probably a bit unbalanced.

[Ichabod]

You make a good point about CHA and you are right that the "map dependent" criticism is one easily repeated, but perhaps without real substance behind it (I, for one, used it just in my previous post without thinking too much about it). I'm sure the trait can work, but going whip heavy (perhaps the trait's main strenght) requires a lot of thinking and planning, so it's perhaps not an easy trait to use. ORG and the like are way more strightforward, but if you are willing to do what's needed to make CHA good, I'm sure it can shine (you can grow your Capital tall very soon and whip a lot of auxiliary cities for workers and settlers, which seems pretty good -> a pity that there's no trait that speeds libraries for a quick academy). My experience is that I don't find myself whipping that much in RtR, but I'm not a very good player.

By the way, a cool, perhaps overlooked, civ in RtR is Arabia: madrassas cost 70h (libraries are 90h), so you essentially get quick(er) libraries, and they now start with agri/myst, which is pretty good. Camel Archer is a knight with 15% retreat chance - not very good on paper, but considering that knights are really powerful and one of the big key military units, any bonus on them is great.

I can see Arabia working with a CHA leader.

[DMOC]

Checking in. Thanks for the tips, Ichabod. I wasn't aware of what other players have viewed civs in this mod. If indeed other players rated Zulu/Inca highly in past RtR mods, we should probably go with those civs rather than use my judgement. I'm so used to the default Civilization IV version and I'm sure many other players here have already played full pitboss games with the RtR mod.

This game has a casual tag, but a lot of great players signed up. So, expect a very competitive field of play (way more than PB 32, the other casual game, I'd say). Gawdzak and DTG are top players; Nicolae, Pindicator and wetbandit are very good, if commited; OT4E is very experienced. And we had a lot of great newbies come up in past games, so some of the new names can also surprise.

Considering picks, I'd say to go with something that suits you. Choose what you'll find fun, because commitment has way more to do with being successful in this games than power picks. But if we want power picks, my opinion is that Inca is the best civ, even after nerfed, especially if coupled with PRO (for faster terraces). Zulu is also a top tier civ (perhaps even better than Inca, now that I think of it), because Ikhanda's are amazing (barracks and Ikhanda's give +1 culture in the mod, so AGG Ikhanda's cost the same as monuments, but gain a lower maintenance bonus and the xp bonus) and Impi's are incredibly useful (for offense and defense, if the idea is to go with a skeleton military).

If you want Inca or Zulu, they have to be a first pick in the snake pick, because they'll be chosen very soon. Inca has to be paired with a PRO leader and Zulu with an AGG leader, I think, so we'd still have one trait left. It's worth saying that AGG is way stronger than in base BTS, due to the culture from barracks and the maintenance bonus, which adds up to save a lot.

If the idea is fun civilizations, I think Carthage and Celts are really cool. France and Sumeria are also very good.

Regarding leaders, I think CRE is weak in this mod, when culture is easier to come by and without the Library bonus. I'd also be against CHA, because the happiness bonus is too map dependent and usually the maps are heavy on happy resources (+ in games with a lot of players, it's easy to trade for resources).

ORG is still very good. IMP is favoured by a lot of players in this mod. Overall, I'd say there's not a lot of way of going wrong.

Agree with the commitment level being a huge factor. Let's hope we're among the more committed teams. If we're advertising a casual game, however, it would seem to make sense to discourage certain players from joining. Though I believe this has been tried in the past (Pitboss 16?) without success.

And let's not forget gsorel as well --- I'm betting he'll be one of the "newbies" here that surprises everyone.

You make a good point about CHA and you are right that the "map dependent" criticism is one easily repeated, but perhaps without real substance behind it (I, for one, used it just in my previous post without thinking too much about it). I'm sure the trait can work, but going whip heavy (perhaps the trait's main strenght) requires a lot of thinking and planning, so it's perhaps not an easy trait to use. ORG and the like are way more strightforward, but if you are willing to do what's needed to make CHA good, I'm sure it can shine (you can grow your Capital tall very soon and whip a lot of auxiliary cities for workers and settlers, which seems pretty good -> a pity that there's no trait that speeds libraries for a quick academy). My experience is that I don't find myself whipping that much in RtR, but I'm not a very good player.

By the way, a cool, perhaps overlooked, civ in RtR is Arabia: madrassas cost 70h (libraries are 90h), so you essentially get quick(er) libraries, and they now start with agri/myst, which is pretty good. Camel Archer is a knight with 15% retreat chance - not very good on paper, but considering that knights are really powerful and one of the big key military units, any bonus on them is great.

I can see Arabia working with a CHA leader.

Thanks for the general overview of traits. So looks like the Realms Beyond community so far seems to value the following civilizations:

Inca, Zulu, Carthage, Celts, France, and Sumeria.

(I looked up the changes for the Celts, and I'm not sure off the top of my head why they'd be highly valued, but perhaps it's just the "fun factor" Ichabod mentioned, or that swords got buffed in this mod.)

For traits, the community here values:

Imperialistic, Aggressive, Organized (?), Protective (?), and perhaps Industrious only if very few (or no other player) has it?

I'm still trying to wrap my head around how a trait that "only" speeds up a granary can be great relative to the others, but perhaps I'll run some sims or observe more previous games. I'm probably undervaluing the granary's impact. But for the Aggressive trait, I'm now liking it a lot as I didn't realize Barracks gave +1 culture.