[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[pindicator]

Most Likely to Ask us to Play Vanilla BtS
WilliamLP - Isabella of Inca
Honorable Mentions
Jowy - Pacal of India
Bacchus - Suryavarman of Carthage

[NobleHelium]

Stop spelling Gandhi incorrectly, it's really not that hard.

[pindicator]

Stop spelling Gandhi incorrectly, it's really not that hard.

I'm trying to find the typo now...


Breaking down the picks by traits:


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


Looks like people are still happy to have FIN.  And with the boost to EXP I can still see people wanting to try that out and see if it's as strong as it seems it could be.  Or perhaps we simply have BtS bias seeping in?

Having so few CHM and CRE teams is a bit of a surprise to me.  Few IMP teams, sadly, isn't a surprise.  And I'm guessing with ORG going back to BtS values that means opinions of it are going back to BtS values as well.

It is nice to see PRO and AGG getting enough of a buff to make people want to take them this game.  I almost wish we had rolled Hammurabi of Vikings instead of Darius, but can one really quibble when they roll the Big D?

[scooter]

I haven't seen that many fins since the last time I was at Sea World!



Now that the free agent signing period is over, I think pindicator needs to update his Power Rankings. In interest of our theme, I'm going to blatantly rip off a Peter King column staple:

Ten Things I Think I Think:

1) Montezuma is in this! Cool to see that one in. That one wins the prize for being much better than it sounds at first glance. I'm generally a fan of Aggressive right now (cheap barracks/stables, -25% city maintenance), so that's biasing me a bit, but Montezuma was one I specifically was hoping we'd get.

2) No Aztec civ, so this game certainly ends in a draw right?

3) At this point, the traits are close enough AND we have no idea what people's starts look like in relation to their starting techs, so I think any true ranking of pregame combos isn't all that valuable. I think I'll try to tier them though.

4) Ragnar for Plako is horrifying, that's great. Commodore getting cheap Feitorias is scary. Serdoa getting Mansa and a suddenly-doesn't-suck America is scary. Our pull of Darius/Vikings is scary. Like I said, poor greens.

5) One thing that jumped out at me was I felt bad for dtay. Alexander of Germany is a perfectly passable combination in this mod, but when you factor in how significantly above-average the draws were, it looks pretty crappy.

6) Bold statement: Montezuma of Babylon > Pacal of India. You might disagree, but I think you should have to sit and think about it at least, which is not something you'd say without the mod. At the very least, I do firmly believe Montezuma > Pacal. India is still better than Babylon, even with a (mild) fast worker nerf and a starting tech nerf... but man, those two combos are way closer than you'd think at a glance.

7) My least favorite: Yuri's Mehmed of Ottomans. Boring and thoroughly average, and average means below-average in this game. I would have rerolled that in a heartbeat.

8) Sury of Carthage: top 3 here if we're playing vanilla. Slightly below average here in this game. I think this combo here is hit hardest by the mod. At least Pacal/India is still very good. Full Disclosure: I'm having a really hard time estimating the value of the cheap markets here. So I could be slightly underrated Exp, but I don't think it's by much. Also, the fact that he gets expansive cothons means this is still pretty good, but there are a lot of great combos here which still trumps "pretty good."

9) Oh good, protective Khmer again. THIS WILL END WELL.

10) I'm disappointed we aren't getting one of the Aggressive combos that I think could break the game - that being Aggressive Zulu or HRE. Aggressive Zulu: -25% maintenance from trait, -25% from Ikhanda, -50% from Courthouse for 95% off city maintenance. Even worse would be Agg/Org HRE, getting cheap Rathauses for early ZERO city maintenance. Honestly, the Aggressive change is ripe for all sorts of abuse, but I don't think we're really going to see it that much here. That's one downside of full random - I definitely would have pushed us to get an abuse-ready Aggressive combo in a snake pick.

[scooter]

I'm going to try to split these into tiers. These are purely tiering the power of the combos, I'm not taking into account who is leading them at all. Also, lines within the tier are in no particular order.

The Best[b]
Serdoa: Mansa Musa of America
Plako: Ragnar of Maya
Nakor/CFCJesterfool: Wang Kon of Rome
Pindicator/scooter: Darius of Vikings
Commodore/Kurumi: Victoria of Portugal

[b]Very Good
Jowy: Pacal of India
Fintourist/Old Harry: Montezuma of Babylon

Good
Bigger/Lewwyn: Gandhi of China
suttree: Huayna Capac of Spain
mostly_harmless: Qin Shi Huang of Sumeria

The Rest
Ichabod/Wetbandit: Shaka of Greece
dtay: Alexander of Germany
retep: Sitting Bull of Khmer
Slowcheetah: Ramesses of Mongolia
Azza: Joao of Dutch
Bacchus: Suryavarman of Carthage
WilliamLP: Isabella of Inca
Yuris: Mehmed of Ottomans


That's just a quick run through, but I think everyone is at least within one level of their proper tier here. Honestly, the gaps between the best and worst here isn't even that big. Hitting the geographic lottery is way more important here.

[scooter]

Also, I can immediately tell you I'm REALLY underselling Ichabod's Shaka of Greece here. That sounds pretty great to me for a lot of reasons. I think Shaka is the most interesting leader since it had the most changes since last iteration of this mod.

[Mardoc]

10) I'm disappointed we aren't getting one of the Aggressive combos that I think could break the game - that being Aggressive Zulu or HRE. Aggressive Zulu: -25% maintenance from trait, -25% from Ikhanda, -50% from Courthouse for 95% off city maintenance. Even worse would be Agg/Org HRE, getting cheap Rathauses for early ZERO city maintenance. Honestly, the Aggressive change is ripe for all sorts of abuse, but I don't think we're really going to see it that much here. That's one downside of full random - I definitely would have pushed us to get an abuse-ready Aggressive combo in a snake pick.

If I'm interpreting the change log correctly, and assuming it's correctly describing the code - it wouldn't quite work like that.

Aggressive: Free C1 promo for melee and gunpowder units. -25% city maintenance [Not shown in trait description. Bonus not shown in interface. Bonus is multiplicative with other maintenance modifiers. Final displayed city maintenance value is correct and includes this bonus.] +100% production of Barracks, Stable, Drydock.

Multiplying the bonus in means that HRE would save 81.25%, and Zulu would save 77.5%. Still a rather small bill, but not quite broken.

[Krill]

Yeah, it's multiplicative, which is how T-hawk interpreted the change and implemented it. And to be fair, that is probably the more balanced implementation of because as you say, if it were additive, it would be rather abusable from about T50 to T150.

[pindicator]

Nice writeup. Just promise me you will never channel Bill Simmons in this thread...

Also, I can immediately tell you I'm REALLY underselling Ichabod's Shaka of Greece here. That sounds pretty great to me for a lot of reasons. I think Shaka is the more interesting leader since it had the most changes since last iteration of this mod.

I was halfway through a post saying how you were underselling this combo when i decided to keep reading

[scooter]

Yeah, it's multiplicative, which is how T-hawk interpreted the change and implemented it. And to be fair, that is probably the more balanced implementation of because as you say, if it were additive, it would be rather abusable from about T50 to T150.

Ah, good to know. Still strong, but not as game breaking.

Nice writeup. Just promise me you will never channel Bill Simmons in this thread...

Personally, I've always preferred the KissingSuzyKolber interpretation of Peter King's writings over Peter King himself.