[SPOILERS] enough is ENOUGH! scooter opens some windows and finishes first!

[oledavy]

I vote to swap Industrious's bonus from Castle -> Forge.

A random idea occurred to me: If you picked Spain and Industrious you would start with a Citadel in the capital for early 5xp siege.

Would it be fun? Yes. Would it beat out other choices? Probably not. Spain isn't typically ranked as one of the power civs Just wanted to share the thought

[scooter]

Ok so I've chosen to eliminate Mining and Agriculture from consideration. That eliminates:

India (mining)
Rome (mining)
Germany
Russia
England (mining)
Persia (agri)
France (agri)
Carthage
Babylon (agri)
Egypt (agri)
Inca (agri)
Portugal (mining)
America
Mali (mining)
China (agri)
Ottoman (agri)
Maya (mining)
Native American (agri)
Zulu (mining)
Khmer (mining)
Korea (mining)
Dutch (agri)
Ethiopia (mining)

That's... quite a list actually. In fact, all it leaves is:
-Greece - eh
-Celts - no
-Holy Rome - no
-Mongolia - I love Keshiks
-Spanish - eh
-Byzantine - strong but no scout
-Aztec - sacrificial altar on T0 could be fun
-Viking - no
-Arabian - eh

I think Mongols, Aztecs, and Byzantines are most interesting to me, which is not the coolest bunch ever for a top 3. I'd really like to have Mongolia. The only issue here is I pick 4th both times, so if I go traits first, I would not at all be shocked if Mongolia is gone if someone feels similarly to me about the starting techs. I feel they are the best civ available with no Mining and no Agriculture.

Actually the more I think about it, I'm not sure the Sacrificial Altar is THAT big of a deal. It's more that it sounds fun. I definitely wouldn't take the Aztecs in the first round anyways.

[scooter]

A random idea occurred to me: If you picked Spain and Industrious you would start with a Citadel in the capital for early 5xp siege.

Would it be fun? Yes. Would it beat out other choices? Probably not. Spain isn't typically ranked as one of the power civs Just wanted to share the thought

That's a good point and that would be fun. Considering Spain is on my "ok starting tech" list it's a possibility I'll consider...

[scooter]

I will say that the Agriculture "penalty" isn't quite as bad as the Mining one. It's more that a non-Agriculture civ will hook corn before an Agriculture civ will, which defeats the purpose of starting with it. You need to get to Bronze Working before you can hook it, and even then it'll take longer because of the forest. Sure you'd get a 3/1/0 tile until then which isn't bad, but it's still meh.

I think I'd be willing to live with this for Egypt, but that might be it out of the civs that start with Agriculture.

[scooter]

Well then, Catherine is off the board first. I admit I was not expecting a pick so quickly. So Catherine is Creative/Imperialistic. That means the usual stuff, plus:

-Starts with a Courthouse
-Starts with a Grocer

This seems similarish to my idea to grab one of the big 3 (Fin/Exp/Cre) and pair it with a good mid-tier trait. Imperialistic is solid and unspectacular, but this is still one of the better expansions combos because duh.

The courthouse is practically useless from a gold-saving perspective, but I'm somewhat interested in the EP bonus. Having that bonus basically means you're getting +50% EPs on everyone for quite some time, which means you could get graphs quicker, get to techs quicker, while subsequently denying those to others for longer. This isn't a huge deal, but it's better than 1gold or a Hospital.

The Grocer is also underwhelming but better than 1G. The health bonus is negligent given the abundance of nearby health resources. All that really matters is the +25% gold bonus, but even that should be pretty unimportant in the early game when you're mostly running at high tech rates. It will help him tech at 100% for longer because his 0% will be more lucrative, but overall it's a mild bonus.

Overall my gut is that this is a meh pick for first overall, only because I suspect this still would be available in the second round. That said, I don't think there ARE any leaders who are obviously better than the rest (just some that are probably better), so he's in a tough spot because going first here isn't all that much of an advantage. The real benefit is probably going first again in the second round.

[scooter]

And down goes Inca. Strong pick by Lewwyn IMO. I only wanted to skip it because I've played Inca so much. Losing the scout hurts, but if Lewwyn is interested in Spirtual then it's a wash. If I take Byz I'd almost certainly pair it with Spiritual so I'm assuming he'll probably do the same. He starts with Mysticism and Agriculture... This means his corn moves 1S to the forest and is now a plains corn. This is not all that great (could be worse), so hopefully it'll somewhat temper the usual Inca quick start.

I'm curious if we'll see any Mining civs at all. Probably depends on if someone wants Rome.

[dazedroyalty]

Wow! Lots of thinking done already. Unfortunately, today is a crazy busy day so I won't be able to add much input until this evening. However, after briefly skimming the choices and some of your thoughts, I like the idea of a power trait and a power bonus combo. Will have to think more about that but I think we really want to settle on our meta game strategy in order to pick. For example, Financial and then choosing the Library start and getting an early academy would be awesome. I actually like that more than library/philosophical because even though the academy wouldn't be QUITE as early, the Financial extra gold more than makes up for that when tile yields are lower. E.g. adding one coin to a two coin tile is a 50% bonus that's like having an academy but more flexible. By the time our cottages grow, we'd have the academy up. Anyways, that's not an official vote or anything. Just thinking out loud. More tongiht...

[scooter]

Ok Dazed and I had a chat and then exchanged some emails, and we nailed down our first pick and narrowed down our second. If Commodore takes our first pick it's seriously back to the drawing board because we feel there is one pick that is clearly the best for us. I'm going to try to write up a lengthy post detailing the thought process behind it all. If you want exact chat logs feel free to request them, otherwise I'm going to assume nobody wants those and summarize it all.

[scooter]

Ok so Dazed and I spent about 30-40 minutes going over options and I think we've got it all straight now. First we sought to narrow down the traits. So let's start from the beginning:

Mining - NOPE
Agriculture - NOPE
Fishing - lose 5 starting culture
Wheel - lose village
Hunting - lose forest under deer
Mysticism - grass forest turns into plains forest

So the bottom 4 are all doable. Dazed and I agreed that Fishing is the "easiest" penalty followed by Mysticism... However we also agreed that those are hilariously bad starting techs. Considering we start with a worker, Fishing/Mysticism would literally mean that the worker sleeps for 4-5 turns, which is not acceptable. Therefore, Fishing/Mysticism together is out. Dazed then asked if the capital looked more like a commerce or hammer capital. We agreed it's got better hammer potential and working the plains village is somewhat unlikely, so we agreed Wheel is the next best tech as it lets the worker at least do something. So we decided we wanted Wheel. So the list of civs that have Wheel but no Agriculture or Mining goes like this:

Mongolia - Wheel/Hunting
Byzantium - Wheel/Mysticism
Arabia - Wheel/Mysticism

Oh hey, Mongolia/Byz were two I wanted! So the choice is either Hunting or Mysticism. We made the case for both. Here's the brief version.

The case for Mysticism
1. We get to keep the forest under the deer, meaning +1 hammer for all of eternity. Mysticism literally gives us hundreds of hammers compared to Hunting. 4/2/0 tile is very good while a 4/1/0 tile is just okay.
2. Religion is always there if we want it, though we wouldn't go for it until a bit later. Henge also possible.
3. We still have the Wheel so we can get a couple good roads down and make up the lost turns.

The case for Hunting
1. Best possible start from a worker perspective. We immediately move up, camp the deer, and then we'll have Agriculture and can immediately start farming the corn. Hands-down the most efficient use of the worker at the start.
2. This allows us to grow extremely fast which is useful when you have as many awesome tiles as this. Use the right traits and this would be wonderful.
3. Sure it hurts to lose the hammer from the deer, but Mysticism loses a cottageable tile by changing C to plains. In reality, I'll happilly trade 1 hammer for a cottageable tile. Granted, that cottage will be worked much later and less than the deer, but it at least helps offset the pain a bit.

So that settled it. Hunting it is... The only Wheel/Hunting civ is of course Mongolia, which is wonderful because out of all the non Mining/Agri civs, they were the ones I liked best from the start. The only problem is if Commodore decides to be a tool and steal Mongolia from us, but given how many good options are out there the odds are at least in our favor. If he steals Mongolia, then I'm not sure what we'll do because I'm pretty set on this being the best choice available by quite a bit.

We could of course go leader first, but we feel there's more flexbility in leaders than civs. Right now, the plans are "Fin/Imp/Phi/Exp - pick 2"... I'd be happy with any of those. Expansive is our least likely choice actually. I'll get into traits and such later.

[scooter]

Quick note - I love this setup. I've never had a game where I actually spent serious amounts of time pondering which starting traits to choose and the impact that had on my civ choice. Extremely interesting!