[SPOILERS] Lurker thread; the omniscient view

[SevenSpirits]

I was worrying the +2 pop was a bit too strong, too. Suggestions? +1 pop is surely too weak for CHA. I'm unsure about how favorably it compares to the granary and library.

Note that Inca is also the only civ that gets their Corn moved to a plains tile.

[SevenSpirits]

How about swapping +2 pop to protective and granary to CHA? That has the side effect (not sure if good or bad) of banning the Sacrificial Altar/Granary start (since CRE/CHA doesn't exist), which I'm a little scared of.

[Bobchillingworth]

What about giving CHA leaders 8 exp on a scout on something, so they start with enough promotions for the Heroic Epic?

[Ceiliazul]

For the record, I don't think maintenance here will be as crushing as PBEM25. Distance maintenance won't be as onerous for the first ring cities, allowing the snowball to at least get started.

[SevenSpirits]

What about giving CHA leaders 8 exp on a scout on something, so they start with enough promotions for the Heroic Epic?

That's a really insignificant bonus. I'm not sure whether you meant it as the only bonus, or an additional bonus (which I don't think it needs?) but IMO it's not worth thinking about. I'd rather keep traits to one bonus each, nice and simple.

[SevenSpirits]

How about swapping +2 pop to protective and granary to CHA?

I think I'm happy with this - the two pop is just faster to get going than the granary. Thoughts? Also I'm just going to remove the village 2NE of the capital. Pillaging it is utterly obvious and gives a lot of gold compared to pillaging the random other improvements which you actually have to go and find.

Most important thing to me: what do you guys think of the tech effects? I don't want to screw up and disqualify half the civs from consideration just because they don't have, say, Agriculture.

[plako]

I think you've done good job with balancing starting techs. Balancing traits is mission impossible, but concerning techs I see pretty tough desicions. For me best combinations should give your worker something to do while keeping the best tiles intact. So I think Fishing+Wheel feels best combo to me unless you're protective that has 3 pop, when you could definately use also village as one of the tiles. You don't want to be working the village unless you're already working your food specials and if you really need commerce you can work crab after border pop instead of forested deer. Fishing+Wheel leaves us only Japan. Not too good. Back to the drawing board. Wheel still feels best starting tech. Mystisicm loses least when considering the quality of land so Wheel+Mysti seems 2nd best pair - There we've Byzantium and Arabia. Both quite attractive. Especially in case of Aggressive leader for Arabia would be very good. In case of Protective leader (+2 pop version) keeping the village would be good idea so Spain with Mysti+Fishing could work. You would get to Agriculture + Hunting very fast as protective Spain.

[SevenSpirits]

I think you've done good job with balancing starting techs. Balancing traits is mission impossible, but concerning techs I see pretty tough desicions.

Thanks. Yup, I agree it's pretty impossible to balance the traits completely here but that it's OK as we've seen plenty of games where everyone wants a FIN/EXP/CRE leader and it's not the end of the world. Nevertheless I think we're going to see people have quite different evaluations of what's been improved how much and will therefore see a little bit more variety of traits just because there's no established groupthink to rely on.

[DaveV]

Thread title + SevenSpirits's sig means the thread is desperately in need of these pictures:

[SevenSpirits]

Very funny.