[Spoilers] RFS-81 and haphazard1 don't know RtR, but won't let that stop them

[RFS-81]

Ok, I've got to start thinking about leaders and civs. For leader traits, I probably should pick among financial, spiritual, philosophical, creative, and imperialistic. I guess my civ choice should depend on my start, so that I can get appropriate starting techs. With no city states to conquer, early UUs probably won't matter too much (exception: Fast Worker), but Renaissance or Industrial UUs would be interesting. Early economic buildings would be very good, on the other hand. (The Netherlands, I like you but your dikes are just too late in the tech tree.)

Side note: It's my first pitboss game, so take that with a grain of salt, but I feel like restricted leaders would make for more interesting trade-offs: I want these traits but those starting techs.

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Leader and Civ: Pacal of Mongolia
Password:

fruitfly

[haphazard1]

Dedlurker checking in.

I do not have much MP experience, but hopefully can be useful as a sounding board or for Civ IV questions in general. I tend to be too much of a builder and not enough of a war-monger for MP, so it is probably wise to build more military than I recommend. Our Toku game has been a bit of a blood-thirsty exception in some respects.

Unrestricted leaders does allow for some potentially interesting combinations. But unless you are in the exact middle of the snake pick you can not guarantee a particular pairing. Traits that fit your expected play style, and a Civ with good starting techs for your situation and maybe a good UU/UB. Hmmm, I am not familiar with RtR mod, I will have to find some info on that and what it changes.

[Commodore]

Here's your start. Don't trust the fog.
   

[haphazard1]

Interesting possibilities here. And second in the snake pick order, hmmmm. I will wait before commenting further, don't want to bias anything.

[RFS-81]

Thanks, Commodore!

This looks like a start for a financial leader. In RtR, that trait has been nerfed so that it doesn't apply to river tiles anymore, so you get most of the additional gains only once you have non-river hamlets. However, the coast tiles would all produce 3 gold from the start. The crab tile would be especially nice, 4 food, 3 gold with fishing boats. Also, I'd better double-check that the financial trait applies to coast tiles next to rivers. I mean, it should because they don't pick up additional commerce from the river, but you can't argue over it with the code.

Settling in place looks like a bad idea. If I learned one thing about civ 4 so far, it's that cities like to have a food resource next to them. If I move my settler 1S, I can use the rice and spices to feed two more cities. I think I really want financial in this case.

If I move it 1NW, I could found at the rice and later on plant a fishing village 2S from my start. (Wait, do tile borders also fall under don't trust the fog?) I could also found one city next to the sheep and another one next to the spices. I'm still leaning towards financial here, but maaaaybe something with a more immediate benefit would be better in that scenario.

[Commodore]

Fin applies to coasts next to rivers, no worries.

[haphazard1]

In place would have a ridiculous amount of food. It is nice in other ways: plains hill, fresh water, coastal, hills for production. It might orphan some seafood if there is any in the fog to the south.

There are some other plains hill options available if you want to found on one for the bonus hammer. 2N1E is potentially interesting, having the rice and sheep while leaving room for a seafood city later. 2E would be a bit more of a gameble due to the fog, but would have decent food from the sheep and sugar and lots of forests. (Does RtR do anything to chops?)

Need tor read up on RtR. Sounds like FIN has taken a pretty big hit. I assume you would still get the bonus once a river-side cottage grew to a hamlet?

[RFS-81]

In place would have a ridiculous amount of food. It is nice in other ways: plains hill, fresh water, coastal, hills for production. It might orphan some seafood if there is any in the fog to the south.

Settling on plains hill would add two food to the hill, right? That's good. And what I overlooked is that not only the rice but also the crabs could be shared with future cities. What do you think where I should send my scout on the first turn? South to check for more seafood?

There are some other plains hill options available if you want to found on one for the bonus hammer. 2N1E is potentially interesting, having the rice and sheep while leaving room for a seafood city later. 2E would be a bit more of a gameble due to the fog, but would have decent food from the sheep and sugar and lots of forests. (Does RtR do anything to chops?)

I didn't see anything about chopping in the change logs.

Need tor read up on RtR. Sounds like FIN has taken a pretty big hit. I assume you would still get the bonus once a river-side cottage grew to a hamlet?

I haven't tried it yet, but the wording in the changelog is pretty unambiguous:

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

Oh, and a total noob question, what's simming? Do you recreate your start in the worldbuilder and play it out?

EDIT: Starting to doubt whether Fin is really all that great here. SIP would give me only +2 gold at the capital, ever. Still probably good for the long term.

[haphazard1]

What to do with the scout is an interesting question. The core area with resources is rich enough it is hard to imagine finding anything that would make you want to move away from it. South for seafood is an option, or N->NE to the hill for some visibility to the north and northeast. NW->NW would also give some visibility.

The city center will always be at least 2-1-1, even if you settle on desert or ice. It is possible to gain a bonus food in the city center by settling on a food resource (actually any tile that would provide 3+ food without improvement), but that is rarely worth it since you could get more food by improving the resource. (An exception is dry rice, which only provides 4 food anyway so the +1 to the city center without needing a pop point to work the rice is actually competitive.)

Similar to the food bonus, you can get a bonus hammer in the city center by settling on a tile that provides 2+ hammers without improvement. Usually this means a plains hill, but can occur with resources such as a plains ivory tile or a plains tile with a hammer resource like copper or iron. It is even possible to get a 3 hammer city center by settling on a plains hill with a hammer resource; I had a game once with a plains hill marble start where my capital's city center was 2-3-1. The extra hammers can make a significant difference in getting the first worker out faster, speeding up your entire growth curve by several turns.

Commerce can work similarly as well, if you can find a tile that has 2+ commerce without improvement. In practice this means river side with a commerce resource such as dyes. This can be worthwhile when you will not be able to improve the commerce resource until Calendar; the extra commrce per turn right from the start adds up nicely over time.

What else? Simming, yes this is building a test or sandbox start in WorldBuilder for simulation purposes. You can then try out build orders, worker tile improvement order, etc. and see what actually works best. It can be tricky to get everything just right, though, including things like map size and wrap type so that maintenance costs match what you will actually see in the real game. It is possible to mislead yourself with a sim that is not an exact match to the real game, so it is improtant to remember to check your results against what actually happens in the real game. And of course, don't get confused by which one you have loaded and play real turns when you thought you were in your test game! I have seen it happen. A common thing to do is to add a sign in your test game by the capital to remind yourself that it is the test game; Civ usually starts at the capital when you load a save, so having a sign right there saving "TEST GAME!!!" can help prevent unhappy errors.

OK, read through the change logs for RtR, lots of interesting stuff changed. The weaker traits have gotten some nice buffs, stronger traits are not as dominant, lots of changes big and small. Should be interesting to see how things play out.

FIN is still likely to be useful -- more commerce is always a helpful thing. But it should not be the overwhelming advantage that it is in the base game.

[RFS-81]

Civ choices: I want to start with Agriculture, farm the spices and research Animal Husbandry. I've got to test if I can also research fishing by the time I get the first border pop, or if that should be my other starting tech.