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Alright, why Wang Kon of China? The short version was I was leaning Pacal of China, but the extra commerce from Protective actually mattered here as it unlocked key techs quicker. The granary bonus is nice, but when you unlock granaries several turns earlier, it kinda turned out to be a wash, and Protective has more upside.
I was originally dismissive of Protective, but I came around on it recently after doing testing and reading up on the other CTH game more closely. In a neutral environment, Protective likely makes more commerce than Financial for the first 100T or so, and you also get the other bonuses that come with Protective. However, here I have better Financial leaders, and this grassland river heaven with nearby coast isn't quite a neutral environment. I did that original test-run with Pacal and 5 cities. It did better than I thought at first, but it was still incredibly awkward. On a whim, I tried to follow the same gameplan with Wang Kon, and it did noticeably better. The main reason for this is hooking a city nets me 2 commerce, which wipes out most of the city maintenance, which means I'm not getting killed on the tech front. If I can start with 3-4 cities and quickly get them to 2c routes each, that's actually a lot of commerce in a start where commerce is bottlenecking my workers early on. It also lets me get to something like Pottery faster, which is a killer tech here. Granaries are obviously very important, but also getting cottages down along the river in a way they can be shared is super important too. Once these cottages turn to Hamlets after 10T of being worked, the FIN bonus kicks in, and then I'm really cooking. If Expansive can't get me going significantly quicker here, then there's really no point because the other two traits offer me too much long-term.
As for Civ, the thing I ultimately found is starting techs don't feel super important here, as long as they aren't actively bad. That might sound weird considering I picked the Civ famous for their starting techs, but I think China's starting techs are merely very good in CTH. The truth is I need all of these techs. I need Agriculture for the Corn and Rice, Fishing for the Crabs, Hunting for the Deer and Elephant, Wheel to open up Pottery and give workers things to do when lulls hit, and Mining to open up BW for chopping and slavery. I need them all ASAP too because I'm likely going to start with a minimum of 3 cities, and this start forces me to pick and choose which good resources sit for a few turns. (File that one away as a "map complaint" that's actually a good design.) However, I want to buy 0-1 techs just because it's inefficient and doesn't snowball me all that much due to the opportunity cost. So that basically just means that as long as my starting techs are fine, pick based on something else. I gave serious thought to Mongolia because in terms of CTH tech costs, they're slightly better. Ultimately, the chance to pair up PRO with Cho-Ku-Nus was too tempting. Keshiks may prove more useful on this map, but the total lack of synergy between Keshiks, Gers, and my traits pushed me away from that and towards Protective Cho-Ku-Nus.
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I knew that sooner or later somebody will combine both economy bonuses from FIN and PRO. Very curious how this turns out for you.
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(July 13th, 2020, 10:22)Charriu Wrote: I knew that sooner or later somebody will combine both economy bonuses from FIN and PRO. Very curious how this turns out for you.
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(July 13th, 2020, 10:22)Charriu Wrote: I knew that sooner or later somebody will combine both economy bonuses from FIN and PRO. Very curious how this turns out for you.
Will also be following this one with interest. I was very tempted to take "all teh commerce" in 52 so I hope it works out
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Really interesting picks all-around. By my count, 9/11 traits were chosen, and no trait was chosen more than twice. Here’s the breakdown:
Quote:Pro: 2
Exp: 2
Ind: 2
Fin: 1
Agg: 1
Cre: 1
Imp: 1
Phi: 1
Chm: 1
Spi: 0
Org: 0
I was the only one to take Financial, but The Black Sword joined me in taking a Protective leader. His other trait (Expansive) was one I nearly took, so I feel pretty good that he seems to have a similar read as me. Nobody took Spiritual or Organized. I’m not quite sure what to make of that. Some of that may be people looking at civics and thinking that outside of golden ages, they’re likely to mostly stick in Slavery. Another possible explanation is that nobody intends to go for an early religion, because Advanced Start seems to make that an even more dubious choice than normal. Anyway, I’m definitely surprised nobody else took Financial, which is making me wonder what other people are seeing or not seeing in their starts. Here on a Wheel map, everyone ought to be able to see water from their starting location, and I assume I’m not the only one who was given a green river. Financial seems really strong to me here, but maybe I’m overvaluing it. An alternative explanation is some of the more compelling Financial leaders were given to me (Exp, Pro, Agg), which left fewer choices for everyone else. I'll look at the competition next in a bit more detail and see what we have.
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Time to look at the opposition. There are no obvious weak links here even if there is an obvious favorite. The skill levels vary a little bit, but the gaps aren’t that big. Let’s look at what people chose. I’m not going to dwell much on starting techs because Advanced Start and whatever their screenshot looks like affect that so much.
Commodore: Washington (Exp/Chm) of Ottomans
One of the most well-rounded choices anyone made. He’s got Expansive to speed his growth curve with granaries, Charismatic to boost his happy cap, a wartime trait, cheap Hammans to boost his happy even higher… I like it. My guess for him was Washington of Inca, which I still think is the better choice, but this can work. To be fair, Charismatic picks up double speed Monuments in this mod, so the need for Terrace culture is a bit lessened with these traits, so it's ultimately kind of a wash. That probably makes Ottomans the better choice. The ability to support a sky-high happy cap in the mid-game is an excellent choice when combined with a very lush-looking map. Commodore is probably the second-best player in this game. If you’re looking for a fault, it’s a lean towards being a notch over-aggressive. In many case it pays off for him, but it's also sabotaged a few games here and there too. I don't have a lot to say here, because I think everyone knows his strengths and weaknesses pretty well.
Neighbor Preference: 4th
Cornflakes - Nebuchadnezzar (Phi/Ind) II of the Dutch
He took it, and I don't blame him. I think these traits are legitimately quite strong in this mod. While in theory Industrious did not get buffed here, in reality it received two noteworthy buffs. First, this mod lifts the RtR change where wonder resource doublers only provide a 50% production boost rather than 100%. That makes the Industrious 50% feel a bit more impactful when it's not just constantly drowned out by resource doublers. Also, Metal Casting is significantly cheaper, which means cheap forges are even more accessible. When combined with Philosophical, that makes the engineer play even better. Cornflakes then gets first dibs on basically any wonder in the early game other than maybe Stonehenge if someone is particularly determined. The Dutch choice is interesting, and it signals to me that Cornflakes expects this to be a longer game. I think he might be right on this map script. If we do get into the midgame, the East Indiaman power spike will be quite scary, and I expect him to have the bulb power to get to Astronomy pretty early. His challenge may be surviving that long given that if he builds a few wonders, his neighbors might become interested in acquiring them. Cornflakes is a good player who has improved quite a bit over the years. I wasn't sure what to expect going into PB50 because he was pretty green when I was last playing games here, but it's obvious he's much improved. I think he's in the pack of people who are contenders if things go wrong for TBS.
Neighbor Rating: 2nd
Mr Cairo - Cathering (Cre/Imp) of Khmer
This choice puzzled me initially, but I've come around on it. The key here is that I learned that Advanced Start does discount settlers with Imperialistic. Normally, you can place cities or buy settlers, but they both cost 100h. Generally it's better to just place the cities, but the trade-off is you may be placing them without defogging. If you pick settlers, you can be a bit more precise about placements. This matters when an Imperialistic player gets 66g settlers rather than 100g. You still have to place your first city with 100g, but an IMP player could theoretically buy 6 settlers for 396g and start with 7 cities. Theoretically. That would be a crazy thing to do, but not crazy might be buying 3 settlers for 198g and using the 102g you saved with IMP to speed up your growth curve quite a bit. Imperialistic is therefore pretty enticing on Advanced Start, and I think that might be the idea Cairo has. If he plants fewer than 4 cities in the initial turns, something has gone wrong. Creative is a bit weird to go with it because Creative benefits the Advanced Start in different ways (planted cities start with borders popped, while IMP prefers settlers), but he had limited IMP choices, so that might be why. Khmer is a solid all-around Civ and a sensible choice. Cairo's choices in general are interesting because I don't see anything particularly synergistic, but all of the individual choices are good on their own. Cairo is the one player I know the least about. He doesn't really report his games in great detail. Perusing some threads of his, he talks like someone who knows what he's doing, but without diving into his past games too thoroughly, he seems to end up further down the scoreboard pretty often. My gut says he's the weakest player here, but that has more to do with the player quality being pretty good here than anything else.
Neighbor Rating: 1st
AutomatedTeller - Stalin (Agg/Ind) of Japan
Now there's a spicy pick. I like it. I've made my feelings clear on Industrious, though he's going to have Cornflakes' Engineers to compete with early on. Pairing up these exact traits with Japan though - yeesh. So, Aggressive obviously gets him C1 and cheap Barracks, great. Industrious (and cheaper Metal Casting) gets him cheap Tatara, which is a Forge-replacing new UB for Japan. This new building gets you +2XP for melee units on top of the Barracks +3. That ... might be a little bit broken? They can roll 5xp units off the line very early in the game. Once you get to their UU of Samurai, tack on Vassalage and Theocracy, and you're talking 9xp units immediately by building nothing but trait-boosted buildings. That results in units starting with 3 promotions, and picking up a 4th the minute they win a single combat. There's lots of crazy things you could do with this. Give them Combat 4 and use a GG to acquire a few Commando units with a 5th promotion. Amphibious units out of the gate is another scary option on a map containing water. This is my favorite pick overall for sure. AutomatedTeller is challenging to rate as a player and possible neighbor. In past games he seemed like the ideal neighbor. He was a bit of a builder who was solid at the game, but not spectacular. He's picked a leader/civ combination here that I expect to be difficult to execute but enormous in potential. Is he good enough to pull it off? I have no idea. I'm torn between preferring to be next to him because there are better players in this game, and preferring to be far away from all those promotions. I give him an A+ on the pick.
Neighbor Rating: 3rd
The Black Sword - Mao (Exp/Pro) of Carthage
This is all about those trade routes. Protective boosts your trade routes by 50%, and the Cothons do the usual Harbor thing and bring it up another 50% (additive I believe), and pick up another trade route at the same time. If he can put an emphasis on settling on coast, this can be super lucrative. I just wonder if it'll cause people to refuse OB with him. He might go all-in and pursue the Great Lighthouse, but I suspect he'll have some competition for that. Expansive is fine, and the ability to get super early granaries is pretty great, and it's a big reason why I was considering Pacal so closely. I have more faith in this economic choice than something like Commodore's Grow Tall approach. TBS is obviously the best player in this game. If I'm looking for a reason he doesn't win, it's the map script. Wheel is going to result in a setup where everyone has exactly two neighbors, and therefore start quality will be heavily dependent on neighbor luck. If he ends up next to Commodore for example, and they end up squabbling, suddenly this game is wide open. A compounding factor of his reliance on trade routes may mean players are less likely to work with him, potentially isolating him.
Neighbor Rating: 5th
Projected order of finish:
1) The Black Sword
2) Commodore
3) Cornflakes
4) Yours Truly
5) AutomatedTeller
6) Mr Cairo
I'd say anyone in the top 3.5 can win if things break right, but TBS is the 85% odds favorite. Any burning questions?
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No questions, but that was a great, detailed read. Am looking forwards to this one ![popcorn popcorn](https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/images/smilies/popcorn.gif) .
Have fun.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
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Looks interesting Scooter. I'll keep my eyes here.
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(July 13th, 2020, 11:41)pindicator Wrote: (July 13th, 2020, 10:22)Charriu Wrote: I knew that sooner or later somebody will combine both economy bonuses from FIN and PRO. Very curious how this turns out for you.
Will also be following this one with interest. I was very tempted to take "all teh commerce" in 52 so I hope it works out
I was deciding between my pick and FIN/PRO ![lol lol](https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/images/smilies/lol.gif) Likewise curious to see how it plays.
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I didn't want to elaborate in the public thread for fear of worsening the situation, but here's what I saw since we're likely going to have to make a decision on whether or not to make all starts public knowledge since I saw one. I closed out very quickly, but these are the details I vaguely remember:
* Water on the right edge of the map
* I saw some floodplains
* I think I saw a "start 4" sign, though I could have the number itself wrong.
I didn't catch any resource details or remember much else other than it's similar in greenness to mine, which I would have expected anyway. Up to lurkers and players whether we just post all screenshots publicly, or if that's not necessary. Don't really care either way.
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