[SPOILERS] Small Wunders and Izzy of Inca: The fat lady sings

[WilliamLP]

Barbs are on. That really changes the value of the Quechua. Having no fear of barb archers is nice and we can pick up barb cities for a song. Very good if this map is large enough for space inbetween the many civs.

This is true in SP but I think barb archers essentially don't exist in a MP game. From my understanding, if everyone knows archery, barb archers can appear 33 turns later, scaled down by how many players know archery. (Barbs need to research techs and get a max of 3% of a known tech per turn. This thread is my reference). In SP this is very early because of AIs having it, but in MP it tends to be a very low priority, so they don't show up until after barb axes, even.

Starting techs are Myst / Agr. Agr is probably the best tech to start with. Myst isn't great, but we won't get screwed on start.

Agreed. I consider Spiritual to be very powerful. With slavery nerf + improved early Workshops, Serfdom and Caste become attractive alternatives. And the religions civics are always good.

Oh, great point. Slavery isn't as much of a no-brainer for as long. And little things matter like being able to swap to OR and Monarchy immediately without wanting to double-switch or wait for a golden age.

We'll have to consider trying to land a religion. The Terrace means that we don't need one, but Spiritual means that we want one.

Agreed, and having Agr means we hopefully get a little flexibility with techs early.

Plunder, here's your last chance to say you hate having strong traits and buildings.

[WilliamLP]

Brick: KEEP

[MindyMcCready]

I was wondering why I was seeing barb warriors defend cities in some RB games. Boooo! Well that really increases the value of having chariots on hand for picking up barb warrior defended cities.

I'm on vacation tomorrow and back on Tuesday. Sorry that I'll miss your start.

[Plunder]

The only real thing I would've had against that roll would be that the terrace + cheap temples don't really synergize (is that a word?) that well together, both doing more or less the same job.

For the rest, I guess this roll is pretty good. Agriculture is a good starting tech.
The odds that a better one rolls is pretty low

[Plunder]

What will be your naming scheme?

[WilliamLP]

Yeah, cheap temples don't really buy us much. They're still not a very good building. I build them in single player for the happiness but I doubt it's optimal. And of course they help for a cultural victory. A temple and priest is a source of great prophet points if we're desperate for that. But I don't think we'd be as happy with a reroll and being stuck with whatever we got, with near certainty. We do have the best building in the game!

Do you have any ideas for a naming scheme? The quirky one I'd use is operas and opera singers which I actually know a lot about (I've studied vocal performance fairly seriously). But I doubt many on this site know about that or would be very entertained.

[WilliamLP]

Trait counts in this game:

FIN - 7
EXP - 6
SPI - 5
AGGR - 4
IND - 3
PHI - 3
PRO - 3
IMP - 2
ORG - 2
CRE - 1
CHA - 0

Myst - 4

So we have pretty generic traits for this game. We're the only ones with Myst / Agr, so it's actually conceivable that we're the only ones who could go religion first without totally screwing ourselves over. (Sut has Myst / Fishing).

Neither Willem or Egypt are in this game. That would have been a killer combo, at least in BTS. CRE without the libraries doesn't seem very popular. Nobody got Charismatic? I'm surprised by that, +2 happy cap seems like a very big early and mid game economic bonus to me.

Looking at the breakdown (I updated the beginning of this thread), I'm extremely happy with what we've got though.

Is it just me or is Aggressive now extremely powerful? It gets -25% city maintenance and double speed barracks - and barracks make culture! And they get the usual promotion bonus. Compared to something like ORG, it feels like Aggr is just clearly superior now since it's a great economic trait and barracks replace monuments.

We can forget about early wonders with 18 players and 3 IND, as well as people who are extremely good at planning and micro. My opinion is we don't want our opening turns to include a fail gold heartbreak.

The biggest decision to make is if we want to go for an early religion, and how soon. We're uniquely positioned for it, but on the other hand we don't really need it badly, like Mindy said. A crazy gameplan would be to set up to bulb Theology with a Prophet, build the Apostolic Palace, and start teh cheap temple monk economy.

[Plunder]

I'm very ignorant about opera's and opera singers. I don't get much further than "the phantom of the opera" and paverotti (probably sic). =)
So, that means that if you roll with that theme you are kinda obligated to tell us a bit more about that person/opera. =D

[Rowain]

So, that means that if you roll with that theme you are kinda obligated to tell us a bit more about that person/opera. =D

Which would be a nice addition to this thread .

[WilliamLP]

So, that means that if you roll with that theme you are kinda obligated to tell us a bit more about that person/opera. =D

I think it's going to be enough work reporting the game itself that I don't want to make an arts education class! Maybe if this were the only PB game I was playing... I think we should go with something more known then. Do you have any off the wall ideas to brainstorm? It's very easy to sell me on a brand for this civ. It should probably be something not so ordinary, e.g. anything video game related has probably been done to death unless it's extremely niche. (Towns from 1980s Commodore 64 RPGs would work!)