[Spoiler] Desperados: The Black Sword & Agent

[agent427]

I did half of my research in-game using WorldBuilding and half jotting numbers on a sketchpad... and my math may be shaky. But assuming IMP, I believe it's possible to have 2 workers & 2 settlers by T30, starting with only Hunting or Mining. Starting with both would save a turn. Since there are plenty of interesting civs that start with only 1 of these two techs, there's no need to pick one of the civs that starts with both of them.

So, Zulu is my number one pic for starting beaker investment, powerful UB and versatile UU.

As for Wheel vs. Agr-- you say there's no need for farms here, and I can see that the capital can go for awhile before working any. But city site #2 will likely have resources needing to be farmed or camped, so wouldn't it be useful to have those techs ready?

[The Black Sword]

Zulu is a pretty good first choice. I think it's probably worth picking over a leader.

Wheel vs Agri; it comes down to the fact that Wheel would be useful for our first city, Agri won't. By the time of our second city we will almost certainly have had time to pick up Agri if necessary. So, in a vacuum, Wheel is better. The only hunting/wheel civ is Mongolia though and I think Zulu has enough advantages over them to outweigh the mildly worse starting techs.

[The Black Sword]

Nice! Zulu makes Aggressive a lot better obviously. What do you think about Khan for the leader?

[The Black Sword]

Man, we managed to go through the pick without anyone picking up Pro Inca.

Cha/Mongolia certainly is interesting. I guess with 2 early game traits they can try get off to a good start and then leverage that into conquering someone. I'm just not that impressed by either Exp or Cha individually.

Anyway, it's into us for the leader choice. I do like the idea of Genghis(Agg/Imp). Spam cities everywhere with Imp, ignore the religion line and use barracks for border pops. That's then 60% maintenance per city and we can use our well promoted troops to protect our land push. Seems to cover all the bases. Also, free C1 + more generals from imp could give us some late game commando access .

I'm sort of afraid we won't make great use out of the Ikhanda without Agg. 60h is just very expensive to pop borders, there are bound to be some cities that need a quicker pop. If we do unlock a better method then we won't be putting up Ikhanda for a while. Even if we stick with monuments for those cities, we won't put an ikhanda up in those and we'll have to pay the Mysticism tax.

[agent427]

I am much keener on IMP after running the early sims. Earlier I'd been thinking in terms of, well, early Settler production is a mix of food & hammers, and IMP only applies to the latter-- without realizing the massive boost it offers to chopping.

So given IMP as a starting point I consider the companion trait..

ORG -- as mentioned, I like ORG-- but it is not as important with Zulu, due to the Ikhanda's maint reduction. So I knock that down.
CRE -- same as above, from the Ikhanda's cultural bonus.
CHA, FIN, SPI -- no thank you.
PHI -- Useful in the long run, but hard to balance specialists with an IMP rex strategy. Additionally I'd prefer a trait whose benefits manifest much sooner, as games can be effectively decided early on, far before PHI would come into play.
IND -- This is less appealing when there's already an IND civ on the board. Of the early wonders, we don't need Stonehenge (same reason we don't need CRE), Great Lighthouse is good but there's no guarantee how many coastal cities we'll have. Great Wall/Temple aren't necessary... Really, it's Pyramids. And Mackoti is mentoring the other IND civ. I don't think we want to risk a trait choice on challenging the Mack strategy....

leaves AGG (Genghis), PRO (Charlemagne), EXP (Joao)

The latter two are appealing because of what EXP used to be... cheap workers, cheap granaries. But do each of these stand up to be good traits in of themselves?

Well, I'll knock IMP/EXP off immediately, for the simple reason that GermanJoey is playing as Joao in a pitboss on the other forum we frequent and I don't want to look like I'm imitating him

And when it comes to AGG vs. PRO-- AGG is just more synergistic with Zulu. The other reason I lean towards AGG-- apart from TBS' wisdom of course -- is my brief experience with the RB metagame is that players tend towards aggressiveness and early military action. Early barracks, early border popping, and buffing an early tactical unit would allow us to project force instead of having to react to someone else's force. Which is exactly what you want when you're running a low-military REX strat.. right?

[agent427]

Shaka of Rome and Montezuma of Viking... exciting times ahead!!

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, seems like we've had a late run at the Agg trait. I see why you'd pick Shaka, he's probably one of the best options left if you want Agg Praets but I think Monty could be hard to use.

[agent427]

I assume the intent is to use spiritual to play around with the military boosting civics, get a religion and do Theocracy/Vassalage/Police State (if they swing the Pyramids) and go nuts once the beserkers come online.

[The Black Sword]

Seems like the game's up I'll try log in when I get home. Decisions to make:

1. Scout to pig hill? A natural second city seems to be around 3W of our capital, sharing resources and connected by a river, so it seems like a good idea to scout that way. It looks like water on either side though so we might not be able to loop around and check out other areas quickly.

2. Tech Mining. I think we've both been assuming this but haven't explicitly stated it. I tried a Wheel -> Pottery opening a while ago just to rule it out and it didn't seem very competitive.

[The Black Sword]

Got in, we have the correct techs. I set the password to KHAN.

Also, I think we should settle before scouting, since I doubt we find anything to prompt us to move.