[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle

[T-hawk]

Other similar ideas we did in single player epics were to start with any wonder, or any great person. Either of those could make for an interesting draft. Or maybe draft some terrain, like choose resources to be at the capital, or some towns or railroads or something to be pre-placed.

On the other side of this one, I liked the start draft idea too. That would probably be too swingy just by itself without some other factor to snake-pick as well. What was missing from the start draft was knowledge of neighbors. I wonder if there's a workable game for something like, draft starts where you know the high quality one has several tight neighbors, and the much weaker one is isolated.

[luddite]

Basically, there's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma when it comes to the tech selection that's very interesting overall. That said, in a rerun of this game I would definitely tweak it. For one, I think stick it on a Pangaea or similar. Beyond that, I think you'd want to reset the tech choice meta in some way. I would just blanket ban all of the techs chosen in this game, for one. I think there's too many other cool choices that just can't hang with Gunpowder/CS/Artillery.


The other alternatives to banning these 5 techs specifically would be some sort of tech ban phase, or allowing a second tech choice rather than a capital starting location. Or perhaps allow folks to choose one military and one economic tech? I dunno, there's room to tweak this one for sure to avoid a straight rerun. I think we did a decent job of picking out the best techs, and a future game on the same settings would just come down to neighbor dice rolls.

I was thinking you could do a ban on military rushes for the first, say, 50 turns, so we don't have to worry about just dying to a super fast rush. Like when I played Starcraft back in the day we had "NR20" games. 

And do you still want to offer super capital as picks? It seems very hard to balance that. It seems like the super capitals were worth more than any of the techs, and yours just happened to work very well with CS. One mil and one economic tech would be cool though, so that it's not so obvious of "that player chose a military tech, they *have* to rush...

I'd like to see one where someone starts with a corporation already founded, because that would be nutty. Starting with the SoL or Kremlin would also be nuts.

[Tarkeel]

I have a few thoughts/suggestions if we do something similar again:

1) Use CtH instead of BtS.
2) Use balanced starts, but could still draft-pick to get the resources/terrain you'd like.
3) Everyone on the same landmass.

As for ways to spice it up:
A) Do a seperate ban-snake before picks starts, where everyone gets two chances to ban a civ, leader and/or tech.
B) Instead of just picking techs, you can chosse between tech, wonder (from a non-picked tech) corporation or great person. Note that starting with wonders or corps would necessittate starting with settled cities, or extra work for Ramk.
C) Do a boosted start like the latest EitB game: Everyone starts with a worker and all starting techs, and gets to pick one of the techs their normal starting techs leads to. Gives you some nutty options like Egypt starting with AnimalHusbandry and can roam to settle on/near horses.

As for starting with military+economy tech, how about Vikings (or Japan) with CivilService+Machinery?