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As requested, thoughts about our team's selection.
Realms Beyond: Pacal (Fin/Exp) of Egypt (War Chariot, Obelisk, Agriculture/The Wheel)
I believe that Pacal is the strongest leader in Civ4, and any time that you can pick that with the 7th slot in a draft pick, you have to be reasonably happy with the outcome. One thing that we have seen over and over again in competitive play for this game is that the initial starting turns are the ones that matter the most. Everyone knows that Civilization is a snowball game. If you can get your first worker done 2t faster, then you get your first food resource improved faster, and then your starting city grows faster, and then your first settler comes out faster, and so on. Pacal is the best leader because he combines the overall best economic trait in the game (Financial) with the trait that does the most to charge a fast start (Expansive). The potential to get the first worker done more quickly (cross fingers for a plains hill start and/or forested plains hill!) combined with the cheap granaries allows Expansive to have the strongest early game growth curve. Imperialistic can sometimes be equally valuable, but Expansive is simply better in most cases, and it retains its value throughout the game with +2 health in all cities (really good in Industrial era). An ironclad rule of Civ4 is that every city needs a granary. Expansive gets that benefit in every city you will ever build, and gets their growth working that much faster. While I like different aspects of Spiritual, Creative, Industrious, and even Philosophical, there's simply no better economic pairing of traits than Fin + Exp. We could not have done better on our leader pick.
The Egypt civ pick is not as strong, but a good choice nonetheless. The starting techs are probably the best argument in favor of Egypt; while Agriculture/Mining is the best combo, we all know that's only possible on China, which is otherwise a weakish civ. Egypt offers the second-best pairing of starting traits with Agriculture/Wheel, the two most expensive first-tier techs and ones with excellent synergy for a Financial/Expansive leader. Here's the cost of the six starting techs, FYI:
Hunting 40
Fishing 40
Mysticism 50
Mining 50
Agriculture 60
The Wheel 60
This is a pretty big deal at the start of the game - Agriculture is fully 50% more expensive as a tech compared to Hunting! Those first row techs also have no pre-requisite bonus beakers either. So we have a very significant advantage over a civ like the Aztecs (Hunting/Mysticism) just on beaker count alone. We also avoid the dreaded scout start, another starting tech advantage. Furthermore, it's always fun to have a civ that starts with Wheel tech, as you can micro your workers and get a lot of "free" roading done and avoid wasting lots of worker turns as they move around in the early game.
Egypt is a strong pick for a Fin/Exp leader because the starting techs allow for a fast teching to Pottery, which offers up both cheap granaries and cottages. Now every start is different, and the initial research path depends on what resources are available at the start. Still a common research path for the poor Aztecs or HRE teams (Hunting/Mysticism) will probably have to look something like this:
Agriculture (60) -> Mining (50) -> Bronze Working (120) -> The Wheel (60) -> Pottery (80) = 370 beakers
We're in much better shape. We already have two of those techs! A likely starting tech path for us could look like this:
Mining (50) -> Bronze Working (120) -> Pottery (80) = 250 beakers
The sooner we get those cheap granaries into place, the faster we can start whipping for producution, growing our cottages, and so on. The snowball rolls down the hill faster. Egypt has the near-perfect starting techs for our leader, as close as we can get without having to take China.
The UU and UB are what makes Egypt superior to other Agriculture/Wheel civs like France or Sumeria. The war chariot is an excellent unique unit, one of the best in the game. I would probably rate it around 5th best or so, behind more obvious units like the praetorian, cataphract, skirmisher, and so on. War chariots make for superb barb defenders (and barbs are on for this map), are great at rushing other civs (unlikely in this game, but you never know), and kill any kind of axeman or axeman UU with extreme prejudice. They retain their value as a cheap horse archer replacement long into the medieval period, although they don't flank catapults. Same strength of 5 as an axeman, but cheaper to build and with two movement? That's semi-broken as a unit. This unit is what sets Egypt above the other alternatives.
The obelisk is pretty underwhelming as a UB; I would say it's middle of the pack. We are unlikely to build very many of these. Better to tech to Writing and chop/whip libraries instead. However, the obelisk does at least offer the potential to produce a Great Prophet if desired through its Priest specialist slots, which can sometimes be useful. No idea if we will use this or not. This additional flexibility makes it superior to something terrible like the Ethiopian monument UB. Most unique buildings in Civ4 tend to be pretty lacklaster.
I'm pretty happy overall with what we ended up getting. If we had been higher in the draft order, I would have advocated for us taking India and then picking up a strong leader on the return trip. That would have been slightly more ideal, but we made out very well for ourselves considering our spot with the 7th pick. There's absolutely no excuse for our team getting Pacal in that position. If I'm ranking the teams based purely on the leader/civ combinations and not the player base, I would order them this way:
1. Willem (Fin/Cre) of Mayans (Ball Court)
2. Pacal (Fin/Exp) of Egypt (War Chariots, starting techs)
3. Mansa Musa (Fin/Spi) of India (Fast Workers)
4. Elizabeth (Fin/Phi) of Ottomans (Jannisaries, Hamman)
5. Darius (Fin/Org) of Aztecs (meh civ)
6. Isabella (Exp/Spi) of Inca (Terrace)
7. Ragnar (Fin/Agg) of Native Americans (meh civ)
8. Mehmed (Exp/Org) of Holy Roman Empire (Rathaus)
9. Boudica (Agg/Chr) of Zulus (Impi, Ikhanda)
You'll notice that the list weighs much more heavily on leader than on civ, because I feel strongly that the leader traits are much more important. Even a strong civ like the Incas doesn't get you into the top half of the list if you have a weak set of leader traits. I like CivFr's pick the best because it has such beautiful synergy between Creative and the Ball Court, plus I give them a minor advantage from being the only Creative team in the entire game. I put us second because of slightly less synergy, and then CivFanatics very close behind, for the same reason: Mansa Musa was not the best leader to pair with India (Huayna would have been a lot better choice, free pick of any early game wonder they want).
Elizabeth of Ottomans is nearly as strong on paper as the top three. In practical terms for this game, however, I expect it to be a lot weaker because it's Apolyton running the show. (Sorry Apolyton! Prove me wrong.) The rest mostly follows from there - you can see how not impressed I am by the civs with the courthouse UB replacements, and the non-Financial leaders. A second-tier leader with cheap rathauses remains a crummy choice. Ragnar of Rome would have been much higher on this list; Ragnar of Native Americans is also fairly terrible. Boudica of Zulus is by far the worst choice here - it's so much worse than everything else that it belongs in a different game entirely.
Anyway, here's to hoping that this game starts shortly. The picks are done, the map is done: time to begin.
