[SPOILERS] scooter, pindicator, and Huayna Capac try some fast Zulu cuisine

[pindicator]

Well if nobody else is going to quibble scooter's rankings then i think i will!

Quick correction: CHM is just a straight +2 happy now, and doesn't get the bonus from monuments. I think it still gets the happy from broadcast towers? Not sure really, and it's probably unlikely the game gets far enough for that to play a factor anyway.

What I agree with:

I think you nailed #1 and #11 in the rankings. Sad that the team with one of the best UUs also got the best trait, but thems the breaks of random. If Nakor and Tatan can plan ahead and use SPI strategically then they will be able to turn a Fast Worker advantage into a midgame advantage with SPI.

On the other end, I feel sorry for anybody who gets Arabia. It seemed every other civ with subpar UU and/or UB got them buffed - but Arabia got no changes. Not saying you have to kill the theme of the madrassa but it needs more boost to it than 4 culture to make it a UB that you give a care about. The UU is like a weaker version of a numidian mercenary: being a knight with 15% innate withdrawal means you can promote to F2 and get 45% withdrawal; in other words, mobile mini-catapults. The problem is that at the cost of a knight they are very expensive. I think the camel archer could be served with a slight cost reduction to help make it a UU that people don't groan when they roll. You could even ditch the resourcelessness of it, although that is its own kind of benefit in a random game. Then on top if that Merovech rolled IMP/IND, so i hope he has a decent start to make up for his unlucky roll.

I also agree that ORG is one my favorite traits in this mod. It really did not need the library bonus, and that just makes it a little ridiculous. I think I told rego in PB5 by dream leader for this mod is Asoka, and doubly so on a Big & Small map.

Now the quibbles:

I don't think IND is going to be quite the downer you're making it out to be. Yes, we're not going to be able to build every single ancient era wonder like you did last game, but a lot more of winning wonder races is going to be from getting to a tech first. And FIN is going to be a big part of being first to tech, largely because of the coast bonus. But even with that i agree with our placement. Org/Chm is going to be a great economic combination, and the forum's buff means that every specialist hired gives an extra GP pt - not a must have but a nice bonus for an important part of the game.

I also think CHM is going to be better in this game than you're giving it credit. By the maps I've rollex luxuries aren't overflowing on this map script, so getting a straight +2 happiness all game is going to be big. And we didn't specify the type of happiness people got edited in; some teams may not be able to grow before calendar or HR but the CHM teams will have a significant advantage in early happy cap. Think of it this way: size 7 to size 5 means the CHM cities can potentially have 40% more citizens early on if the luxuries break bad. Of all the CHM civs I think you undervalue Serdoa the most- he is going to be able to grow to size 10 at construction and with zero luxuries. Unless land screws him i expect him to have the largest cities in the late classical era.

But those are all really just quibbles- like you said, most leaders and civs are really close. I just think Arabia needs a little something (slightly cheaper cost of either the UU or the UB) - every other civ rolled i can see a good way to take advantage of its benefits.

[NobleHelium]

Since Seven and Krill did the editing I would expect something balanced - one early luxury and one Calendar luxury (or wine). Remember whale is now an early luxury, heh.

[scooter]

I was hoping somebody would disagree . Surprised Cyneheard and NH both passed up the opportunity. My wording on the Chm description was awkward, but yes I know it gets a straight +2 instead of +1 with Monument bonus. I should've added some commas or something to make it more clear.

Chm is pretty useful, the one downside is you can freely trade here and you're guaranteed to have 2 luxuries in the vicinity. I obviously had a much harder time trading in PB5 because I had nothing of value to trade to people, but most people had easy access to luxuries by trading extras with other people. You didn't really have happy struggles in PB5 did you? We're running literally the same script/settings here I think. Chm is good, but Chm Maya is definitely overkill IMO. Cyneheard said to me by chat that Louis of Maya would probably land around 5th on this list, and I definitely agree. I just think happiness will be pretty easy to come by with 2 guaranteed and the one-continent happy bug fixed.

[pindicator]

We still had some issues, at least until we stretched for spices and traded away the excess. Even then we were bumping up against the happy cap at size 11 or 12 - it wasn't until we conquered Yuri that we really got independent from happiness problems. If Krill had just taken Crazy Plant Hand off of us and not gifted us it's resources to "make up for it" then we would have been hitting it earlier, also if we hadn't been able to pull off some imbalanced trades (like health for happy).

Quick edit: I think in the initial area we had 1 silk, 2 sugar, and 1 elephant for happiness. We stretched onto the western island for a few spices. But that was all we had access to pre-Yuri

[scooter]

Ok, good news is that sunrise got the game up and I got in. Bad news is I somehow told him sequential instead of simultaneous, soooo since it wasn't my turn, I couldn't even move anything . So we're still waiting. I'll move the scout 1E once it's up and report back and we'll decide from there what to do with its second move. Anyways, here are the settings with land tiles added on:



Also, Commodore happened to be around and sequential gave him first in the turn order. Not realizing it was sequential, he went ahead and settled:



So 8 land, 1 water tile, and working a 2/1 tile. His health is pretty high so he's got a ton of forests. He's also Hunting/Mining, so unfortunately he's going to be able to go chop-crazy. I'm just assuming he'll do this the same when the game gets restarted.

Hopefully the game is up properly soon and we can figure what to do with the scout. Password will be set to "impifood"

[scooter]

Ok, situation after scout move:



Bummer, nothing shiny. This is a LOT of forests, which is generally good news. Makes me wonder if there's a resource 2S of the settler in that one tile where there's a clearing.

[NobleHelium]

Speed simmed. Ikhanda -> work boat -> worker -> warrior is the way to go methinks. The worker can move onto a forest right as BW comes in (probably the hill so we can mine it). Compared to your sim Cyneheard I would probably work one of the clams for an extra 1f in the box before starting on the work boat - we build the work boat at 5 hpt so the 2 extra hammers from the plains forest doesn't do anything, and even when carried over to the worker it doesn't do anything (we get 6 hpt into the worker which is also a divisor of 60). We could work a grass forest instead. But regardless, having that extra 1f in the box lets us hit 22f instead of 21f on eot28, right as we finish BW.

I think we definitely need a warrior after a worker. Wouldn't want to lose a settler to a wolf now would we. Then chop into work boat, grow to size 4, double whip settler?

[scooter]

Ok, I owe the lurkers an update. Didn't have time to put it together last night, as Pindicator, NH, and I spent a good 40 minutes debating where to move the scout . I think we fog-gazed every single tile from different angles, calculated how many tiles each would reveal, estimated at where food would be, etc. Let me give the short version. The plan of course was to move 1E with the scout and then re-evaluate:



Good news: we have forests in spades. Bad news: no resources anywhere in sight. So the two options here are S onto the the hill or SE to see what's across the river. Pindicator and I also think there's a reason 2S of the settler here. It's a random plains surrounded by forests, and that screams horse/iron/copper... but we also wondered if it wasn't a cow. Also, some fog-gazing on what we'd see if we moved the scout SE:



That looks like a grass hill and a flat grassland. If there's food on a grass hill it's usually pig, and another pig is just 2 tiles away so that seems unlikely. That left the flatland grass, where a corn/rice/cow would be welcome. We're basically looking for one extra food resource to justify settling on the plains hill. One thing NH pointed out as a problem with going 1S with the scout is if we see something that might make us want to move, we still haven't revealed the stuff across the river... Whereas if we move SE, we do have the option of moving onto the plains hill with the settler and moving back and settling the following turn. Anyways, after we considered a bunch of other things (we also figured the tile 3E of the scout was water), we decided to go SE:



Nothing interesting. Pindicator pointed out how "nice" it is to have all those rivers as a FIN leader. Kinda sucks as it's taunting a little bit. Anyways, we could find no compelling reason to move inland now, so SIP it is:



Snow trees present, so we're obviously in the south. Nice to see that hut - ideally we'd get a tech from that (that's possible after you've settled the city, correct?)... Failing that a warrior would be pretty awesome. Anyways, this land looks like we're on a crappy island. All in all, it's pretty uninspiring. We do have a lot of forests to work with which is nice, but other than that this isn't an amazing start. I imagine something like SE-SW is probably best for the scout. Also, I firmly believe there's a resource 2S of Long John Silver's. It's touching SIX forests, so it should pretty much have a forest if there's no resource right? Gotta think there's something there - copper would be my strong preference.

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I'll try to sim some tonight. We can then figure the best plan and end turn. NH's suggestion is probably pretty close to what we'll end up doing I imagine.

[scooter]

Do any of you lurkers who are not playing here seriously think playing on is an option here? Am I nuts for being shocked that a restart is even being debated? This seems like such an obvious "must be restarted" thing.

[NobleHelium]

Allowing the EP spending to continue is retarded.