[PB72 SPOILERS] Aetryn learns humility

[Mjmd]

You try to avoid wasting turns, but especially for non wheel civs it happens (and BW before wheel is easy choice usually). I imagine the opening regardless of civ is worker first due to elephant (which I missed for some reason first time looking at when I mentioned going work boat first), grow while building workboat (to note might be worth checking on building a settler or worker before farm finishes for 4 turns or if just building workboat during those turns is better and if so working what tiles). I haven't looked at timing, but definitely growing to at least 3, but wouldn't be surprised if its perhaps a grow to 4 situation dependent.

Most of the time Mali would be better probably for a large map like this going late. How good is Inca UB in the maps blank patches? Hard to say. Also will help with snowball and be better (but not required) for building stonehenge (again optional, but is better on bigger maps). Obviously Inca also has some help towards snowball, but is a little more awkward for early tech.

Do you have a preference on leader? Might help with civ choice. Both Vicky and Stalin have early game benefits. Imp is just silly easy micro and saves early worker turns and financial can help out tech the field (or at least A neighbor). Stalin obviously helps grab early wonders, but unlike other leaders we would need to prioritize as that would be part of economy (not that that is a bad thing). Between his traits they both are semi economy so I think its valid going late (especially if armies get real big), but might struggle teching earlier on. I forgot to mention that combat I also helps towards commando if the game gets to that point...... Mansa obviously gives you no help early other than saving a turn revolting to slavery, but is probably easily best later game option and if it ends up being a serfdom map can enjoy best of all worlds, but might give up some early snowball advantages, which isn't nothing. 

Its a hard choice.

[aetryn]

You try to avoid wasting turns, but especially for non wheel civs it happens (and BW before wheel is easy choice usually). I imagine the opening regardless of civ is worker first due to elephant (which I missed for some reason first time looking at when I mentioned going work boat first), grow while building workboat (to note might be worth checking on building a settler or worker before farm finishes for 4 turns or if just building workboat during those turns is better and if so working what tiles). I haven't looked at timing, but definitely growing to at least 3, but wouldn't be surprised if its perhaps a grow to 4 situation dependent.

Most of the time Mali would be better probably for a large map like this going late. How good is Inca UB in the maps blank patches? Hard to say. Also will help with snowball and be better (but not required) for building stonehenge (again optional, but is better on bigger maps). Obviously Inca also has some help towards snowball, but is a little more awkward for early tech.

Do you have a preference on leader? Might help with civ choice. Both Vicky and Stalin have early game benefits. Imp is just silly easy micro and saves early worker turns and financial can help out tech the field (or at least A neighbor). Stalin obviously helps grab early wonders, but unlike other leaders we would need to prioritize as that would be part of economy (not that that is a bad thing). Between his traits they both are semi economy so I think its valid going late (especially if armies get real big), but might struggle teching earlier on. I forgot to mention that combat I also helps towards commando if the game gets to that point...... Mansa obviously gives you no help early other than saving a turn revolting to slavery, but is probably easily best later game option and if it ends up being a serfdom map can enjoy best of all worlds, but might give up some early snowball advantages, which isn't nothing. 

Its a hard choice.

I'm definitely leaning either Mansa or Vicky at this point.

Might the ease of placing farms with Inca's UB make Serfdom a slightly better play? (Rhetorical question, largely). Otherwise, if I'm not choosing Stalin, I'm inclined to lean Mali for the help appearing less appealing to conquer. On a third hand, am I really considering taking a vanillia Mansa/Mali combination?

[Mjmd]

I mean I've been wanting to play (re play) financial plus Mali. But yes obviously serfdom in general would be better with Inca. However as much as I've been hyping Mansa for serfdom I think Mansa is still financial first and spiritual / serfdom second, but again even a good second priority could be good. But Imp having 4 or so extra cities (map dependent) and cites in general and earlier is also really good.

I will say Mansa would be the hardest to do wonders with and in general will require to be on the ball expanding. TBS once basically* said that your trait savings early help you do other things. So with imperialistic, it saves you worker turns and you can use the overflow on other stuff that isn't settlers. With Mansa or any non imp leader I really like overflowing whipped workers and settlers into a settler because it saves you worker turns and forest putting chops into them (still usually have to do on early ones). This usually leaves me with a weak military but between not cottaging a lot and doing this, you can skimp on workers, and I am usually the fastest expanding or near fastest expanding player most games even when I'm not imp, so again, imp is not needed for fast expanding necessarily.

The fun thing for you is both leaders have reasons to want both civs, so all the fun choosing.

Something that was recommended to me once and I recommended to Bellarch was to flip a coin. If you are disappointed in the result you know how you really feel. Hard thing is you have double choice here. I would probably* pick leader first here, but mainly because I think that choice is closer. The civs have fairly different qualities depending on how you want to play the game.

[aetryn]

All right, the choice is Victoria of Mali.

[Mjmd]

All right, the choice is Victoria of Mali.

I was trying to be as neutral as possible I SWEAR. All you lurkers can attest!

[aetryn]

All right, the choice is Victoria of Mali.

I was trying to be as neutral as possible I SWEAR. All you lurkers can attest!

Basically my thinking is "let's get a good solid expansion and economy going, backed up by Skirmishers for defense and some later econ advantage with Mints, and then see what we can do with it". It seemed like the most straightforward play, and that's what I was looking for here. I was very tempted by Mansa's ability to ignore anarchy, but I knew I wasn't really going to get the true value out of Spiritual, and I'm really just trying to stay away from overly cute atm. I'm sure this will make my civ pretty boring to lurk, as it's pretty straight down the middle. But that's what I wanted here, basically

[aetryn]

While we get setup:

I can't see why I would take anything other than Agriculture first to get that wet wheat farmed. Second tech is more interesting though.
Hunting - I want it for elephants, but there's plenty of time to research one or two other things while the farms are built. If I start double worker though it's much more appealing. 
Sailing - To hook up the early fish and generally start moving toward Lighthouses and +1 commerce to all those coast tiles
Bronze Working - to enable chopping and Slavery

My single-player brain wants to go Agriculture-BW-Hunting here, but I'm not actually sure what I'm going to do with chops that early - if I build a second worker, I'd still be growing and not yet ready to work settlers. Though I suppose I could chop out a worker.

[aetryn]

From Commodore's post in the tech thread:

Aetryn is Vicky/Mali
Xist is Boudicca/Rome
Bing is KK/Aztecs
Greenline is Mao/Byzantine


Well, there's clearly going to be some war in this game. Skirmishers might help against Rome - they obviously aren't going to do a thing against Cataphracts, but we're a few months away from that danger. 

Two Aggressive leaders, and two aggressive civs, though KK is paired with the Aztecs which... maybe I'm not as scared of as I should be?
Aggressive Charismatic Rome is definitely scary. Let's hope to be as far away as possible from these guys, and maybe hope they don't want to come in early against Skirmishers but tangle instead with one of the others. We definitely want to make sure we don't run too light on military, as I'm probably already looking like the most appetizing target and I don't need to give them any help thinking that.

The good news is that, outside of Aggressive savings on unit cost this does not look to me like a particularly strong group of econ leaders. There are no other FIN, only one PRO. Nobody else is IMP either, so I should get an early advantage in expansion.

Also no Industrious leaders at all, which means Stonehenge is still a possibility (though Byzantine and Aztecs both start with Mysticism and, while it would make a lot of sense for Bing to build it with KK providing border pops, Greenline may well target it) and all other wonders are pretty much up for grabs.

Well, I'm going to live or die by virtue of building a good economic engine and being ready for the attacks when they come.

[Mjmd]

I think I'm going to need to know the tile count / player and honestly maybe actually figure out the distance between people before doing an analysis. I maybe mentioned it with Mali, but the specific combo of Vicky of Mali is a great hedge pick. Unless you are me and end up in one of the worst close knife fights, but even still did ok. Point being there isn't a lot of hedge here. Maybe the Mao pick is a hedge or maybe its because number of players as I mentioned with pro. Although Zara even on monarch might have tempted me.

But YAA we have two players that think the map will be one way and one player that thinks it will be another.

[aetryn]

I think I'm going to need to know the tile count / player and honestly maybe actually figure out the distance between people before doing an analysis. I maybe mentioned it with Mali, but the specific combo of Vicky of Mali is a great hedge pick. Unless you are me and end up in one of the worst close knife fights, but even still did ok. Point being there isn't a lot of hedge here. Maybe the Mao pick is a hedge or maybe its because number of players as I mentioned with pro. Although Zara even on monarch might have tempted me.

But YAA we have two players that think the map will be one way and one player that thinks it will be another.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by hedge here. How do we figure out tiles / player? From demos once the game starts and I can get in game?

I'm sure the mapmaker will have made sure everyone has access and nobody has to go some crazy route around mountains and seas to reach another player. But unless he really edited this map there's going to be chokepoints and a lot of defensive terrain.  It's reasonably possible Bing just didn't roll the mapscript to see what it would be like, assumed Small meant "easy rush" and chose accordingly, as Bing is in several other games and.. um, doesn't always pay meticulous attention to what he's doing. But the map scripts I rolled at least didn't scream early aggressive warfare just from the terrain. My intuition is that making the map more lush by adding extra resources should reduce the value of rushing someone, as the tech pace will be higher and there's more chance the attacker will be overmatched either in tech or in production by the time he can assemble his attack stack. But my intuition is probably wrong  .  Anyway, people picked what they picked and I suppose we'll find out which way the map went. I'm darn glad I have a UU with some defensive value though.