[SPOILERS] SevenSpirits trashes three estates and a copper

[SevenSpirits]

Mysticism. It sucks, but maybe a civ is good enough to make up for it?

Mysticism/Hunting is Celts, Aztecs, HRE. Celts are uninteresting but the other two have strong UBs. This game will have the same maintenance costs as pbem29, where maintenance was fairly high and Roosevelt of Sumeria did well.

Mysticism/Mining is Korea, Maya, and India. India starts without a worker which is very painful. Korea is nothing special, Maya is a fine civ but unlikely to be worth it IMO. Mysticism is bad, remember.

[SevenSpirits]

Finally the Hunting/Mining civs:

Germany is out. Russia only exists as its own thing with CHA. Then there are Ethiopia and Khmer. The former is dumb and the latter has a banned UU. So we're done here. Nothing stands out. Kudos to the lurker team!

The challenge now will be to find a decent opening (for which traits will be important) and pick the best civ with those techs. Or convince myself that playing Russia isn't cheating and/or suicide.

[SevenSpirits]

Trait overview:

Aggressive: Observatory
I don't care for this.

Charismatic: Laboratory
A bit better but I'd still like to avoid it.

Creative: Barracks
It has a small bonus but this is really just plain old Creative. The Barracks won't change anything important.

Expansive: Harbor
Well expansive is good. The harbor is ignorable.

Financial: Customs House
Financial is strong. The Customs House is literally blank unless you have Portugal.

Imperialistic: Lighthouse
This bonus is worth +1f after you're allowed to work the Whale, enables a 3/0/2 lake tile, and is a bit worse if you start with Agriculture (because in that case the whale is no longer great).

Industrious: Stables
Wow, this is bad. I mean 5xp chariots are cute but ultimately this map is too big for such early shenanigans. The barracks from Creative is better, and Creative was already better than Industrious. I suppose the idea is that you will get oracle, colossus, stonehenge, and/or pyramids (since there's no stone around). I will let someone else do this.

Organized: Supermarket
+1f at the start. Solid. And this map should suit Organized well.

Philosophical: Colosseum
The most relevant combo is with Greece and it's not very impressive. I plan to skip Philosophical here.

Protective: Levee
That's cute. An immediate +1h, and 6 more hammers as you add more tiles. But I don't think it's worth it even so.

Spiritual: Islamic Temple
A happy, a culture (relevant with Fishing), and a priest slot (bad). A weak bonus but a strong trait.

First impressions: I like CRE, EXP, FIN, IMP, ORG, SPI. Don't like AGG, CHA, IND, PHI, PRO.

[SevenSpirits]

I am a bit worried that the research institute start will ruin this game. Did you lurkers test it?

Here is a funny screenshot.

[zakalwe]

This is a thing, and it's awesome.

Thanks for this link, SevenSpirits. Awesome is an understatement. I've been captivated for over an hour, now.

[T-hawk]

Trashing copper, though, is always nice.

Yeah, I was surprised too when that dawned on me. I mean, I've played Magic the Gathering forever so I know about small decks yielding up the best cards more often. But copper always felt like a positive card, until I started trashing them and realizing just how quickly the value of your average card exceeds a copper.

Thing is, that made the game boring. You don't need to set up crazy throne room deck-drawing combos... you just buy simple gold and markets and every turn plop down either six coins for more gold or eight for a province. And then you shuffle and draw the same cards over again next turn. :zzz:

[SevenSpirits]

I was planning to pick Darius and hope to follow up with HRE, but he's gone at pick one. So I'm going to have to reevaluate. (fin and org seem like top traits here, and org lets you work the town to speed up fishing without slowing growth.)

[Commodore]

I was planning to pick Darius and hope to follow up with HRE, but he's gone at pick one. So I'm going to have to reevaluate. (fin and org seem like top traits here, and org lets you work the town to speed up fishing without slowing growth.)

Whoa, really? You were going to opt for a cottage economy too?

[SevenSpirits]

Whoa, really? You were going to opt for a cottage economy too?

Let's see:

PBEM6: I sucked, did a lame GLH/wonder/cottage economy.
PBEM11: Tried to do cottages, sucked, game ended early due to bad setup.
PBEM19: Wonder economy with cottages.
PBEM23: Pyramids specialist economy.
PBEM29: Railroaded into pyramids specialist economy, added colossus though.

So yeah, I want to try cottages again. Wanted to last game too but couldn't really.

[SevenSpirits]

I'm thinking FIN or ORG (because I can't have both) combined with one of EXP, CRE, maybe SPI. Some civ options include:

Sumeria (or other Ag/Wheel civ)
Portugal (with FIN of course), or other mining/fishing civ
HRE/Aztec

(Wow, that covers all 6 starting techs with no duplicates...)

I'm planning to pick leader first. Not sure what I want...