Thinking about a new possible pitboss with some rather vanilla settings, 8-10 players, snake draft. Emperor if map leans towards usual RB richness, poorer map Monarch. Using the latest CtH Mod 

Desired map spec:
Tight-ish borders 1 - 1.5 rings of expansion ~12 tiles distance between capitals. 

Borders between players wider, not choked, and no clear distribution.  I don't want to make borders super rich—no luxuries/wet-corn—but to make them worthwhile and interesting, I suggest making the borderlands riverine with sheep/banana as the sort of food. Curious to hear thoughts. 
 
Usual settings:
No Huts/Events/Spies
AI Diplo
1 city per peace treaty
No barb ships/cities

Hi all,

I've started playing MoM again after several years away from the game. It's early in a game where I have Halflings, 8 Life books, Warlord, Alchemy. I want to eventually spam Slingers.

To build my 3rd and 4th cities in the game, I have three options:

Option 1: (low population, high production)
City 3: 19 max population, 36% production bonus, gold ore (+3 gold), silver ore (+2 gold)
City 4: 16 max population, 18% production bonus, gold ore (+3 gold), silver ore (+2 gold)

Option 2:
City 3: 19 max population, 36% production bonus, gold ore (+3 gold), silver ore (+2 gold)
City 4: 22 max population, 15% production bonus, gold ore (+3 gold)

Option 3: (high population, low production)
City 3: 28 max population, 20% production bonus, gold ore (+3 gold), gold ore (+3 gold)
City 4: 17 max population, 9% production bonus, silver ore (+2 gold)

Which option would you pick and why?

Just to write something.... Toku? (Because I now always pick what Plemo is playing) - not gonna get foreign trade anyways, so the bonus will remain
Boudicca....
Churchill?
Kublai?
Vikings! (I haven't really looked at the map, but there's water in the middle and around it, right?)
Or eh, Egypt? Too much on the nose?
Do I need a mining start? God what have I got myself into....

<p>Last time I started one of these I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time.<br></p>

This is gonna be fun. I hope Yuri doesn't slurp up all the dedlurkers.

Have at it!

Would three other people be interested in a tiny AW game very much in the vein of Pitboss 50: https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/foru...hp?fid=327

Something like this in CtH would be a blast.

Mapmaker: Tarkeel

Players:
Commodore
Yuri (if dedlurker/teammate)
Thoth and Krill
Miguelito

Game info:
Url is pb.zulan.net:3068 and the PBSpy page is up.

You has to use the same mod as RB67 named 'RB67', too. It is linked on the PBSpy page and the mod content is equal to CloseToHome_3.0.2

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For the past 10 years I've been tweaking a personal mod of Civ4 based off RevolutionDCM.  There are too many changes to count and I never kept a formal changelog.  I explain more about the mod here in this thread where I started a first playthrough of the mod on Emperor here:
https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...#pid815313

Well, that first playthrough was quickly becoming a snowballing blowout of the AI, partly because I guess my Civ4 skills weren't as rusty as I assumed, and partly because the AI gets knocked down about a level in difficulty from dealing with the Revolutions mechanics.  So, I'm starting a 2nd playthrough in this thread, this time on Immortal difficulty. 

(By the way, I put that thread in the "Adventures & Epics" subforum, but then I realized that that is more for multiplayer succession games, so I'm putting this 2nd playthrough here instead).  



I chose Jan Sobieski III of Poland to show off a new civ and leader from the RevolutionDCM mod:



From playing ahead a little bit, I can already tell you that this is going to be a CRAZY roller-coaster of a game.  So HERE WE GO!

The starting location:



I'm thinking settle-in-place unless the scout reveals something amazing.  SIP gives the capital irrigated corn and lots of riverside forests and jungles.  Why are riverside jungles and forests important?  Because in this mod, you can build camps in any forest or jungle tile, and we are going to get most of our early commerce from camps on those tiles.  

Tech-wise, I already start with all of the worker techs I'm gonna need, so I'm gonna go straight for Priesthood for the nerfed Bureaucracy civic (+50%h, +50% GOLD, +50% city maintenance) even though I don't expect I'll snag Hinduism on the way there.  



I find some horses and some coast exploring to the NE.  We appear to be on a sort of peninsula, which is great because it will make fogbusting versus barbs a lot easier!  Also, STONE!  



As Warsaw's borders expand, I find two goody huts just to the south of the capital.  



The first goody hut gives 43 gold.  Also, as I expected, we don't even come close to snagging Hinduism.  There must be another starting civ that started with mysticism and beelined straight to Hinduism.  The second goody hut also gives gold.  80 gold total between the two of them.  

Also, there's THIS:  a starting barb city (from having "Barbarian world" checked on the starting options).  



And this city doesn't even have a garrison for some reason (which is weird.  Usually they start with a couple of warriors...).  Alas! I don't think I can take this city anytime soon.  My capital's production is pathetic, and by the time I get 1 or 2 warriors over here, the city will surely have 1 or 2 warriors defending, and I'd have to have delayed my getting a worker out in the meantime.  Plus, this city is too far away to keep in the very early game (due to revolutionary unrest scaling with distance and lack of trade connection with the capital, especially in the early game).  So, snagging it is out of the question.  The only question is, what will happen when this city gives birth to a new civ (which is something that can happen in this mod).  Usually when that happens, the new civ gets a fairly big army and a golden age to start off with.  It can be frightening if you are unlucky enough to be right next to such a civ when that happens.  (Hint: foreshadowing...)

Another goody hut spotted!



This goody hut gives mining!  Not essential at the moment, but it will speed us onto bronze-working whenever that becomes relevant....



My scout ends up right next to a bear, which kills it on the interturn.  I should have known that animals would start to come out and that I ought to start being more careful with my scout.  That'll be 1 more scout I'll need to build for fogbusting eventually.  Oh well...



Someone builds Stonehenge VERY early.  Also, here you can see the power of early riverside camps.  The 2 commerce is nice, and you might ask, why is the tile giving 3 food?  Because the starting labor civic in this mod, communalism, gives extra food from camps and pastures, and also makes units built with food.  Sounds great, right?  But it also comes with +50% city maintenance and -10% commerce and hammers.  It's not a civic that any decent-size civ can stay in forever, and is outclassed by slavery and serfdom at a certain point.  But in the beginning, it really speeds up the early game and gives the player a reason to consider staying in the starting civic for a while.  

Also, I'm building the monument mainly for the +1 happy from charismatic. 



We meet Shaka.  He shows up with a scout, which is fortunate because our capital still doesn't have a defender...



Many uneventful turns.  Priesthood comes in and we immediately revolt to (nerfed) bureaucracy.  



Now with our +50% hammers and having grown to size 7, we can plow those hammers and food surplus into 1-turning some warriors and scouts as fogbusters, which we need to do because the barbs will start showing up soon.  



Pottery comes in.  We might want to build a granary at some point in preparation for going into slavery (although granaries only store 20% food, kind of like in FFH2), but the main point of pottery is just to get to masonry so that we can start building the Oracle.  



I get some javelin peltasts out as fogbusters.  They are resourceless and available with hunting, and in most cases slightly better than 3-str warriors (although warriors get +20% melee combat, so javelin peltasts can be situationally worse, but are usually a slight upgrade).  



I detour from my masonry beeline for The Wheel so that I can expand to a 2nd city and get trade routes connected.  



And here's the 2nd city.  For food, it will have irrigated corn at first, and then ocean fish eventually. 



My fogbusters are getting into position.  There is a convenient mountain chain that serves as a great chokepoint, so as long as I can clear the fog within that boundary, I think we will be in a good position vs. barbs even without copper or iron units.  

We also receive a negative event worsening our relations with Shaka, but I doubt it will be relevant anytime soon because Shaka's borders must be some way off. 



We get enough fogbusters out and, with masonry in, start on The Oracle.  The plan is to oracle Code of Laws for Confucianism and courthouses (actually, Semjiks, the Polish UB that is cheaper to build and gives culture and +1 xp to mounted units).  



OH NO....the moment I've feared...the barb city has spawned a civ.  I don't think the Aztecs will come after us quite yet.  But once they graduate from minor civ to full-fledged civ, we could have problems....



I forget what I was trying to show with this screenshot...maybe just how neat and tidy I had all of my fogbusters set up?



Writing comes in.  I've been skating by without any military techs so far.  I wonder if I will come to regret that...



We get the Oracle and slingshot Code of Laws!  (Also, you'll notice 1 barb warrior did manage to slip past my fogbusting net from the hills to the east.  I've gotta clean him up somehow...)



Bronze-working comes in.  And look!  We have copper in the 2nd ring of our 2nd city!  Just in time to build some spears and axes to guard against our new Aztec neighbors, right?  Right???...



I start frantically building military even before getting the copper hooked up, and put a few units in what I think will be a strong position on the hills across the river.  And it WOULD be a strong position for defense...if I had enough units.  But I don't.  And here come the Aztecs, SWOL from their emergence from being a minor civ.  



I briefly swap to slavery to do some frantic whipping.  (Being spiritual is nice. No anarchy!)



I get archery, just in time for the Aztecs to declare war on me and overrun my pathetic border guards.  To be fair, if those units had been archers, it wouldn't have made a lot of difference. 



They easily take my Confucian holy city.  And LOOK!  It appears they have even more chariots than I first assumed. 



At this point, I was tempted to ragequit and question whether the boost that minor civs get was OP.  But notice that chariots don't do great when attacking cities.  And my capital can 1-turn archers.  Maybe I can hold this.  

I'll be honest, at this point in the game, I did not think that it would be remotely possible to ever win this game.  I thought, best-case scenario, I would be able to punish the Aztecs at some point and retake the Confucian holy city.  That was my goal.  That was my mission.  That was my solemn oath.  So I played on...

But the rest will have to wait until the next installment....