Hashoosh gets into bed and Dhalphir sometimes watches from the closet (SPOILERS)

[Dhalphir]

I'd like Kublai Khan if we're going Agg.

[Dhalphir]

I think if we want to play aggressively, we're better off picking a civ with a strong UU early on, but picking a leader with one or both traits being good for lategame too.

Ragnar would fit that bill, but I think I'd prefer Sury. Creative is a very versatile trait early on, Expansive is useful early and mid.

Aggressive is nice, but I feel that it's not THAT great. C1 is only 10%, it doesn't tip fights very far in one's favour, and in a game with this many players, an early war is almost always a bad idea. Having stronger promos out of barracks is nice though.

[Hashoosh]

I was only being half-serious with agg.


Hammurabi/Sumeria is a very synergetic combo, with insanely cheap courthouses and S6 C1 +25% melee axes, that we can turn into monster S6 C1 +75% melee axes.

But in all honesty Ottomans may be the better choice for us, hammams are downright sexy. The starting techs are good for us as well.

[Dhalphir]

Ottomans tend to get attacked right before knights.

[Dhalphir]

We are up!

1.Sevenspirits/Krill - ??? of Zulu
2.Zaldax - Huanya Capac of ???
3.Gavagai - Darius I of ???
4.2metraninja - ??? of Sumeria
5.Jowy - Suryavarman II of ???
6.Dhalphir - UP NEXT
7.Gaspar/Noble - ON DECK
8.Retep
9.Kuro
10.Mikehendi
11.wetbandit
12.Goreripper

So the predicted three most power leaders (with Paccy and Willem banned) of Sury, Huayna, and Darius are gone

Remaining FIN leaders

Lizzy - FIN/PHI
Mansa - FIN/SPI
Hannibal - FIN/CHA
Wang Kon - FIN/PRO
Ragnar - FIN/AGG
Vicky - FIN/IMP

Given that this is base RBmod and we have a river, FIN is a no-brainer.

I think our choices boil down to

Lizzy
Mansa
Vicky

I have no idea how to use PHI effectively - but given that you're an SP buff playing on Immortal, maybe you have some super awesome GP builds that we can utilize for early academies and things? The good old "hire two scientists in your food heavy city early on" is about as far as I've gone with GP stuff.

Mansa - again, I'm not so good at working spiritual.

Vicky would be my pick. 50% faster settlers means we can play a rapid expansion game quite easily, FIN means we will be able to afford it.

But, that would be my pick if I was playing solo. If you feel like we could work together to leverage PHI or SPI more than IMP, let's go for Lizzy or Mansa.

[Atlarge]

So I think Vicky, Lizzy, or Ragnar are fine choices at this point. I would also be fine with Wang Kong and Hannibal honestly. As for Mansa I have never been a big fan of spiritual though perhaps I have been using it wrong.

My one concern at this point is that Zulu and Sumeria are both potentially strong early rushing powers. I think there are enough leaders with early strong units left that we will likely get one but for safety sake if we take a economic powered leader (Vicky and Lizzy) now we should almost certainly follow that up with a civ with a strong early UU.

[Hashoosh]

I'd take Mansa. Spiritual is an incredibly powerful trait, and with our lake/river start, financial works very well for us.

I mean, furs, 3 fp and a lake? And all those juicy river grasslands! It screams financial.

I vote Mansa Musa!

Really, though, the flexibility that spiritual affords you with civics is unparalleled, we can whip our first settler if we want (I'd say wait for the second worker for the first wip). I mean, as soon as we get religion, we don't have to wait for anarchy, and we can flex between Caste/Pacifism/Mercantilism (if we get there) or Vassalage/Slavery/Theocracy to pump out high xp units. The possibilities are endless.

As for an early UU, Babylon comes to mind for insulating us against an early aggressor, Persia is a strong choice with Immortals.

Then there's Mali if we want early religion in the mix (Mali would be better with an industrious leader for those juicy half price mints).

Oh well, let's see how Mansa Musa does it for us. My last SP game was a very heavy GP build, and I didn't like how that worked out. (Stagnation towards the industrial era).


Waaaait
This is RBmod?!

[Atlarge]

Your enthusiasm makes me like Mansa more than I did. So easy civic swaps is really better than half price settlers or double GPP?

Brass tax Mansa is still financial, still not my first choice but I can get behind Hashoosh on this. Let's Mansa these MoFos!

Ummm...I think these are the settings
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...#pid429903

[Hashoosh]

Oh ok.

Dhalphir, you said it was base Rbmod?

I'm going to run a sim on Mansa, see what kind of stuff we can pull off.

I guess I'll go with an Agri/Wheel civ, but I don't know how likely we are to get that!

Edit: Ok, here's the sim I ran. We didn't use financial's effect just yet, but we did swap into slavery on turn 22.

Worker->Warrior->Settler (as seen)
Worker built a mine first to save a turn and then went 1 SE to build farm. Then 1W to chop forest. Then NE-N-N to the furs, where he's building a camp due in 3 turns from pic. I'll run some more sims to see what's optimal.

[Hashoosh]

Here's a second sim I just ran. Our settler is delayed until eot 30 (but we can whip the cap to size 1 to get him out earlier). I decided to go for mining->hunting, hunting finished the turn after the worker, and so the camp started right away. The city's growth is slowed by working 2/1/5, and so i send the worker south to farm the wheat. The cities grows on warrior and then 2 turns into another scout. At size 2, I start the settler and chop a forest into it. The worker then gets a mine up for when we go size 3.

The real kicker of this approach is our powerhouse economy from it. We grab Mining, Hunting, BW, Pottery and some into AH.

Thoughts?