Zara of Sumer sounds fun 
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[SPOILERS] SevenSpirits trashes three estates and a copper
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I went and picked Zara. Couple reasons:
* I have never played with CRE or ORG! (in multiplayer) * CRE is unusually strong here compared to EXP: you don't open with a worker build so exp doesn't save you turns there; you start ahead on production (again, free worker) compared to tech so the religious branch wants to be avoided more than usual, which CRE does happily. * ORG is unusually strong here compared to FIN: it's toroidal prince 40x40 which gets pretty high distance maintenance and respectable maintenance costs in general. And lighthouses will be built in quite a few cities. And it comes with +1f in the capital! * CRE makes fishing openings a bit better and that's what I'm leaning toward. But it's fine with just about any civ. * I then chatted with Mackoti and he suggested Zara too. * Sian likes Zara! So. Now to wait for my second turn.
to elaborate on my reasoning behind why i think Zara of Sumer is fun
Creative is one of my personal favorite traits, since it makes you less dependent on having food in first ring around dots, and the faster Libaries only just helps getting fast Scienists up and running Org is strong (might even say underrated) on Toroid maps, and it is in my opinion more due to Org Zigs than Industrious GLH that both me and Mack won 29 with the FDR/Sumer pick (although admittedly both together wern't a bad thing either) ... in that game there was 3 ways to go IMO ... GLH, spamming coastal cities, the classical Pyramid-specialists, and early/cheap Courthouses.
Yup, should be good. I'm leaning against Sumeria though actually. With CRE I want to avoid the religious branch as long as possible and that means that I may well want Code of Laws before Priesthood, so the Ziggurat's place on the tech tree could easily be a drawback. Meanwhile Vultures are of dubious value (probably a net positive but it's not clearcut) and the agriculture start has been nerfed a lot (and CRE helps the fishing start). If I'd picked Mehmed, Sumeria would be more appealing.
I actually dislike Org with Aztecs and Sumer...cuts the courthouse discount in half, basically.
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
I write RPG adventures, and blog about it, check it out. Sian Wrote:what are you leaning towards then ... tossup between HRE and Aztecs? Basically I want to try out some openings with Zara and the various tech combinations, to see how much they all hurt. (The supermarket from ORG really softens the blow to a lot of the starting handicaps.) But in addition to HRE/Aztec, I was considering Japan and Vikings quite heavily (Japan just got taken though) and also keeping in mind Rome and not really eliminating anything. Commodore Wrote:I actually dislike Org with Aztecs and Sumer...cuts the courthouse discount in half, basically. It's an interesting interaction, though not entirely negative. Here's a simplified abstraction of the situation: You can buy Vanilla Plantations for $100 each. Vanilla Plantations produce $13 every year. There are also a limited number of Coffee Plantations you can buy for $100 which produce from $5 to $15 per year - there's one for each output level. Similarly there are a limited number of Tobacco Plantations, available for $100 each, which produce between $5 and $15 per year. So the default state of things is you should buy 2-3 each of the Tobacco and Coffee Plantations and then just buy Vanilla. But you have a discount code for Coffee Plantations - 25% off. So they are a good deal for you. You can also get one more discount code for 50% off - either for Coffee or Tobacco Plantations. If you choose Coffee it's multiplicative, so the end price is 37.5% of the original. Which type should you get it for? If you plan to buy all of them anyway, you should clearly split up the discounts, as that results in the lowest total price. But you're not going to buy all them, that would be silly. Many of them are not worth buying at all! The discounts have two effects: providing value per unit bought, and causing more units to be viable purchases in the first place. So what happens here? If you choose Tobacco, then you will buy the 11-15 of Coffee, and the 7-15 of Tobacco. Your income from these non-Vanilla sources will be $164 and your outlay will be $825. If you choose Coffee, then you will buy the 5-15 of Coffee, and the 13-15 of Tobacco. Your income from these non-Vanilla sources will be $152 and your outlay will be $712.5. Spend another $100 on a Vanilla plant and you're making $165 for an outlay of $812.5 which is better than if you discounted Tobacco! So even though the absolute discount gained across all purchasable items was smaller, it ended up providing a greater benefit. The analogy to civ is this: the Coffee Plantations are obviously Courthouses. The Tobacco Plantations are other things you can do that are highly dependent on the city you build them in, like Markets or Libraries. And the Vanilla plants represent just growing your population. It's not a perfect analogy but it shows how discounting the same thing multiple times can be synergistic despite a lower total gain. One thing I didn't even touch on is the compounding of gains. In fact, having one really good investment opportunity has a further benefit over having two merely above-average ones, because you will do your best investments first and then be able to reinvest the highly efficient returns. This favors getting multiple discounts on the same thing even more. Btw the same reasoning applies to IND + marble/stone. While IND does provide a great absolute gain if marble/stone are missing, the gains it provides when the multiplier resources are available are more likely to come up in the first place, and they will come up earlier.
Regarding the naming scheme, I'm no thief, and though it's noble of you to offer to loan me your own stash of names, I've already developed mine. To expand on this: the comic theme is your possession; I venture to claim that the lurker rabble would have fair grounds to consider it ill-gotten gains if I remade it for my own cities. Plus my own theme has already received a few comments (not counting house posts) and I have to be on the lookout for my opponents out-posting me. I'm banking on my theme for this, which is an upgrade from just wishing. Well that's how I see it anyway - I'm no fortune teller!
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