[SPOILERS] scooter's PB53

[sunrise089]

Yay new thread with PB50 ending.

What mod is this? The ‘minimal changes’ one? Because that America UB, while super fun, is like a FFH mechanic in terms of flavor prioritization.

[sunrise089]

Scooter, will you do your ‘thoughts on each player’ post again?

[scooter]

I'd think of PRO like this:  you know how early on you want to get those foreign trade routes or a city on an island to get all your trade routes to jump for 1c to 2c?  PRO gets that for free at the start, and then can jump up to 3c.  I don't think it's a too big of a spoiler for pb52 to say that we're at turn 80 and I've just recently reached the threshhold where FIN would get me more commerce than PRO each turn.  So PRO gets it faster, but FIN of course will overtake it later in the game.  So I agree it's weaker than FIN, but it's a sneaky good buff.  EDIT:  Because it gives you the commerce ealier.

You know, I was actually going to ask you out of thread what you thought about Protective now that you've experienced it for awhile. I may still ping you about a thing or two to avoid spoilers. That's interesting though. I was especially curious what the break-even looked like between the two traits. While of course Financial surpasses it eventually, Protective does still have the combat/deterrence perks too in addition to the quicker start, especially on a tight map. Perhaps I was too dismissive of it on its own. Wang Kon of China is awfully tempting.

Yay new thread with PB50 ending.

What mod is this? The ‘minimal changes’ one? Because that America UB, while super fun, is like a FFH mechanic in terms of flavor prioritization.

It's definitely not intended to be a minimalist mod, but rather it's a full balance mod that tries to be pretty close to BtS when in doubt rather than Civ 4.5. Charriu described his main principles here:

According to that I want to postulate 3 golden rules, which the mod has to stay true to:

• Balance common overpowered elements
  
• The mod should stay close to BtS
  
• Make rarely used elements a bit more interesting
  

The changes to America specifically falls under rule #3, as it's a dumpster-tier null Civ in BtS, but it's interesting here. Most Civs didn't change, but the particularly strong or weak ones did. It feels a lot closer to what RtR was back when it was called RBMod. You should be able to click the link in that quote to give you the link to the full explanation. There's a full changelog in that subforum. I should probably paste it into the first post here. I'm definitely interested in trying it out, though I suspect the strongest things in BtS are still the strongest here, even if those things are brought closer back to the pack. In a vacuum, I slightly suspect Pacal is still the strongest leader by a much smaller margin, and it is an option for me...

Scooter, will you do your ‘thoughts on each player’ post again?

Definitely. I need to learn a bit more about Cairo and Amicalola, but the other 3 opponents I know quite well. I'll probably wait until I see their choices.

[Charriu]

I'd think of PRO like this:  you know how early on you want to get those foreign trade routes or a city on an island to get all your trade routes to jump for 1c to 2c?  PRO gets that for free at the start, and then can jump up to 3c.  I don't think it's a too big of a spoiler for pb52 to say that we're at turn 80 and I've just recently reached the threshhold where FIN would get me more commerce than PRO each turn.  So PRO gets it faster, but FIN of course will overtake it later in the game.  So I agree it's weaker than FIN, but it's a sneaky good buff.  EDIT:  Because it gives you the commerce ealier.

Plus PRO gives you more neat stuff in addition to the trade, while FIN only has the bank as addition.

[Charriu]

I'd think of PRO like this:  you know how early on you want to get those foreign trade routes or a city on an island to get all your trade routes to jump for 1c to 2c?  PRO gets that for free at the start, and then can jump up to 3c.  I don't think it's a too big of a spoiler for pb52 to say that we're at turn 80 and I've just recently reached the threshhold where FIN would get me more commerce than PRO each turn.  So PRO gets it faster, but FIN of course will overtake it later in the game.  So I agree it's weaker than FIN, but it's a sneaky good buff.  EDIT:  Because it gives you the commerce ealier.

You know, I was actually going to ask you out of thread what you thought about Protective now that you've experienced it for awhile. I may still ping you about a thing or two to avoid spoilers. That's interesting though. I was especially curious what the break-even looked like between the two traits. While of course Financial surpasses it eventually, Protective does still have the combat/deterrence perks too in addition to the quicker start, especially on a tight map. Perhaps I was too dismissive of it on its own. Wang Kon of China is awfully tempting.

That's all very good feedback. Thanks a lot. There are quite a few PRO leaders in play in PB52. I myself play (EXP,PRO) with the Celts there which have synergy in their UB and Mr. Cairo is playing (AGG/PRO). I can't wait to read how PRO treated Mr. Cairo and pindicator there.

Yay new thread with PB50 ending.

What mod is this? The ‘minimal changes’ one? Because that America UB, while super fun, is like a FFH mechanic in terms of flavor prioritization.

It's definitely not intended to be a minimalist mod, but rather it's a full balance mod that tries to be pretty close to BtS when in doubt rather than Civ 4.5. Charriu described his main principles here:

According to that I want to postulate 3 golden rules, which the mod has to stay true to:

• Balance common overpowered elements
  
• The mod should stay close to BtS
  
• Make rarely used elements a bit more interesting
  

The changes to America specifically falls under rule #3, as it's a dumpster-tier null Civ in BtS, but it's interesting here.

A "dumpster-tier null Civ in BtS" is a great description. I agree that it's quite a new concept compared to base BtS, but I figured if I have to change the UB at all I can allow me some creative freedom. I also have to say that it's not such a foreign concept and you can get used to it quite quickly.

[scooter]

I've been doing some thinking about Advanced Start, and I'm pretty convinced this game will be lost by about half of us on T0 because it's so easy to mess this up. I was googling in an effort to find the Advanced Start point list just to have a reference guide. I didn't find that, but I found something arguably better via DaveMcW 12 years ago. Here it is:

Here are the advanced start ratios.

1 gold = 1 point
1 beaker = 1 point
1 hammer = 1 point
1 food = 0.045 pop without granary = 1.5 points
1 food = 0.091 pop with granary = 3 points
1 improved seafood = 1 workboat = 30 points


So, ranking the resources from most efficient to least efficient:

1. Hammers (cities, units, buildings)
2. Improved tiles for the existing population to work
3. Population
4. Gold (extra points)
5. Techs

His conclusions were pretty close to mine here, but I'm not sure this is quite right. Well, it's right in terms of pure value, but the start is a bit more complicated.


For example, the natural conclusion here is I should pretty much just buy cities and workers and turbo-start myself that way, right? Well, mostly yes. The problem is I did a couple quick tests where I just played the first 10T of all random starts, and I noticed I was constantly running out of things for workers to do because I'm tech-constrained. In a normal game, you don't run into this because in the 12-15T it takes for that worker to get out, you research your food techs. Here those workers are ready at T0, but your worker techs might not be. Or they might be ready for your first improvement, and then your workers idle for quite awhile. This might still be worth it, but overall it means starting techs relative to my start is even more important than a normal Ancient game, and it also means buying a tech at the start might be necessary even if it's technically an inefficient use of my starting points.


Before I see my start, this boosts China obviously, but it also boosts America due to the tech costs changes in CTH. Of course, none of this matters until I see my start, so I'm not going to dwell on it too much more until that happens. There are some other unique options here like purchasing a religion, but that looks like a sucker's play to me. Picking a Mining civ and purchasing Bronze Working is the other weird choice you can make, but that costs so many points that I think it can't possibly be a good idea.

[scooter]

But the whole point of the advanced start is that you aren't forced into one single starting location... In fact, I would consider it kinda pointless to have pre-designed starting locations as well as Advanced Start.

edit: also, the map is still hand-made, so it'll be balanced. I was just replying to Charriu talking about the possible need to move starting locations and how that could impact the advanced start. I just don't think we need to have perfectly balanced BFCs with a plains hill start and equivalent food.

I don't really want to elaborate on this in the main thread, so I'll do it in here. Main reason is, frankly, I don't want to help any of my opponents who might not understand why this is wrong . Why help someone make good choices if they might be your neighbor? One of the big bottlenecks I noticed with advanced start is how many techs you need for your workers to be productive, and how that can impact how much of your budget you can afford to sink purely into the growth snowball. If I have to buy multiple techs to get my food running, and my neighbor doesn't, he could literally buy two workers or an extra city with the savings and blow past me. This doesn't even account for things like strategic resources, the fact that the land quality will likely vary from area to area, etc. His edit clarifies things for me a little bit, but nah, it's still super important where everyone is placed.




Anyway, I don't really want to over-analyze my situation further until I see my start, so I'm going to glance at a few other players choices and see what's available that interests me and would make me a bit nervous.


Cornflakes - If he doesn't take Nebbuchadrezzar of newly minted PHI/IND, I might just protest and try to convince everyone to let me have it. I know there are two other "new" leaders, but this is the one trait combination that was unavailable specifically because the designers of Civ4 banned it after internal play-testing suggested it was utterly broken. They were probably wrong to continue to avoid those traits while adding Pacal to the game in BtS, but that's not really the point. In this mod, those traits are buffed, and the other traits better than them are nerfed. What better way to find out if the designers were right or not? No clue what he might pair it with. Maybe Russia for their cheap UB which now replace Universities in this mod and is therefore no longer irrelevant.


Commodore - Honestly think Expansive Inca is still the play here. He's got a number of Expansive choices, and I bet that's the way he goes. Arabia is interesting here, but I still think any other choice is simply overthinking it. If he really doesn't want Expansive, then of course the calculus changes, but I view this to be a borderline lock.


The Black Sword - This is the most interesting case to me. That's mainly because he's the best player here and heavy favorite, and he's very good at making these types of decisions and executing flawlessly. If he picks drastically different traits than me, I'll immediately assume I was wrong, because he's probably right. Worth noting that Aggressive Rome on a tight map is available here. Praets are nerfed harder here than in RtR though, so I'm not quite sure about that. Germany is an interesting civ here. Their new UU is a Grenadier that starts with Pinch, and their Factory UB is now available at Steam Power rather than Assembly Line. He's got several Organized leaders available to him, so that could be quite powerful in his hands if he's ok with a slower start.


AutomatedTeller - He's got maybe the least interesting set of civs in that most of them have little to no changes. Japan has a new UB here that replaces the Forge and gives 2XP to melee units. This mod's much cheaper Metal Casting combined with something like De Gaulle's IND/CHM could be quite scary.


Mr Cairo - Most interesting choice here may be pairing a Protective leader with Spain. Saladin is his only choice there. Protective gives double speed Citadels, which also allows you to link up Protective's trade route boost with the extra trade route the Castles give you. The +5xp for siege and newly added +2xp for naval units is a nice bonus.

[Charriu]

Cornflakes - If he doesn't take Nebbuchadrezzar of newly minted PHI/IND, I might just protest and try to convince everyone to let me have it. I know there are two other "new" leaders, but this is the one trait combination that was unavailable specifically because the designers of Civ4 banned it after internal play-testing suggested it was utterly broken. They were probably wrong to continue to avoid those traits while adding Pacal to the game in BtS, but that's not really the point. In this mod, those traits are buffed, and the other traits better than them are nerfed. What better way to find out if the designers were right or not? No clue what he might pair it with. Maybe Russia for their cheap UB which now replace Universities in this mod and is therefore no longer irrelevant.

I did know that the designers banned this combo. Very interesting.

The Black Sword - This is the most interesting case to me. That's mainly because he's the best player here and heavy favorite, and he's very good at making these types of decisions and executing flawlessly. If he picks drastically different traits than me, I'll immediately assume I was wrong, because he's probably right. Worth noting that Aggressive Rome on a tight map is available here. Praets are nerfed harder here than in RtR though, so I'm not quite sure about that. Germany is an interesting civ here. Their new UU is a Grenadier that starts with Pinch, and their Factory UB is now available at Steam Power rather than Assembly Line. He's got several Organized leaders available to him, so that could be quite powerful in his hands if he's ok with a slower start.

Two questions about this:

1. What makes you think the praet is nerfed harder here than in RtR? I assume it's because in RtR it has +50% city raider like every other swordsman there.
2. Would you this Germany make you play them?

[scooter]

1. What makes you think the praet is nerfed harder here than in RtR? I assume it's because in RtR it has +50% city raider like every other swordsman there.
2. Would you this Germany make you play them?

1. Yeah, Str7 50% city attack vs Str7 10% city attack. The Praetorian is still better than a Sword here, but not by a lot anymore. In RtR, Praetorians are still fearsome city attackers. They're fine here I guess, but it's not a top-5 UU anymore, leaving Rome in a weird spot.

2. I'm not sure I understand the wording of this question. I think you're asking if I think they're good or interesting enough to be playable? I'd say yes, but the catch is I think it practically requires taking an Organized civ, so that makes pairing it with a good leader a bit tougher. I think the potential ceiling there is quite high, but their stuff is still fairly late, so it asks a lot of you to make stuff happen early enough that you aren't playing from behind. Not a lot of games here make it to Factories, but if you could get there while still a contender, that's a nice power spike.

[Charriu]

That's exactly what i wanted to know. Thanks.