Gaspar, Lewwyn, et al go full Sartre

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

NOBLE YOU WIN, OK?

[Gaspar]

So I don't want to get too deeply into the game before the picks are revealed, but I'll use this moment to launch the first of a new series for this game - Awkward Silence, where I post about something because the thread has gone too quiet.

Here are some stray thoughts for the game at this moment in time...

Naming Scheme

I'm debating a few here. I'm not giving Lewwyn input because 1) At least a 70% chance he's bailed on me before t50 and 2) When he has input he does things like names every city Bacon. Here are my current ideas and my thinking behind them.

1. Smurfs. This is obvious, since Smurfing was prevalent in my last game and has become a current topic of interest in the RB consciousness. Capital could be Smurf Village then could go on to name all the cities after Smurfs - i.e. Papa Smurf, Handy Smurf, Mikehendi... Downsides here are that there aren't actually that many smurfs in either the cartoon or RB and more than half the cities would have Smurf in the name, which might get repetitive.

2. Hearthstone Cards. This isn't that great, since they're basically just WoW terms and that's been done to death, including by me in PBEM26. But the upside is phenomenal - the last time I named my cities from a Blizzard game that I didn't play that long I won. So 6 months of looking at Argent Squire and Angry Chicken after I've ceased playing the source game are a small price to pay for victory.

3. Teams from the lower reaches of the English Football Pyramid. I'm told this has been done before but I like an homage to CM/FM, easily the game I've played the most in my life (my account on the SIgames website is 13 years old!) I also am slightly partial to cities that sound like cities and Billericay Town is much cooler than say, Smurfette as a city name.

4. Something Historical. Relatively speaking, I'm also a fan of this sort of a scheme. The quick thought is perhaps Battles of the Middle Ages - particularly involving the Byzantines or the Normans, since those are two historical periods I knew little about prior to recently that I've been reading/listening about in my spare time. Just doing something based on Bellisarius or Robert Guiscard could fairly easily fill a Civ.

5. Something else. Always open to suggestions from the crowd.

Leader Choice

I'm already having a wee bit of buyers remorse on my picks. I keep thinking that given we're playing a Cylindrical-Lakesish map, Catherine might be a better choice than Zara. While Org is certainly superior to Imp, I don't expect maintenance to be too crushing here and Lakes vs. lots of water generally reduces the impact of Lighthouses as well. While I don't think Zara will be bad, I just wonder if leveraging two fast start traits will be superior to the traditional one early, one late. She's no Sury, but she's cut from the same cloth. Also, should I get both my tops choices, there's something a little "paint by numbers" to Zara of the Ottomans, which isn't really what my original intention here was.

I'm not convinced enough to resubmit before the selections are announced, but I'm definitely stressing a bit. Of course, we could just miss out on all our top choices and end up with Caesar of Persia and its all moot. That would suck.

Opponents

I'm actually doing a bit of research on my opponents to make the opponent previews a bit more robust for the players I'm less familiar with. I found decent enough games to read on TBS and dtay but I was wondering if anyone could recommend a thread to read to get familiar with Oxy.

Thanks.

[NobleHelium]

Read PB11 and 57 for Oxy.

[Gaspar]

(All gifs should be spoilered since RB doesn't have a hide image option, imo)

WHY IS THIS TAKING SO LONG? Each hour that passes without the picks being resolved makes me doubt and want to change my picks more, which makes me an ornery Gaspar.

[Ichabod]

I liked naming scheme number 3 and number 5.

I think Catherine is definetely a better pick up than Zara.

To be a bit more useful, you could use FM/CM players that were really good in the game and a "failure" on real life as a naming scheme. Though I think your proposed theme is better (you could add teams from the whole world or the UK).

[Gaspar]

To be a bit more useful, you could use FM/CM players that were really good in the game and a "failure" on real life as a naming scheme. Though I think your proposed theme is better (you could add teams from the whole world or the UK).

The problem is so many of them don't really fit. Orri Freyr Oskarsson or Tonton Zola Moukou are too long. I like the theory though.

[Lewwyn]

Naming Scheme is usually the least of my worries.

[Mardoc]

WHY IS THIS TAKING SO LONG? Each hour that passes without the picks being resolved makes me doubt and want to change my picks more, which makes me an ornery Gaspar.

Well...Mr. Mardoc can't step in and resolve things because it's not actually clear what your pick list is. I assume you PM'd it, because I don't see anything labeled as a final answer in here.

[Gaspar]

Interestingly enough, looks like we could have had Cathy if we wanted her as well. Can't complain about getting your top pick, though.

[Gaspar]

Alright, so a brief generic post discussing the pick list outcomes and then we'll get to opponent previews.

Here's the final outcomes:

Commodore is Ramesses of Rome
Thoth is Hatty of Zulu
Gaspar is Zara of Ottomans
Pindicator is Washington of Carthage
Dtay is Roosevelt of Mali
TBS is Joao of Mongolia
Oxyphenbutazone is Pericles of Maya

Stray thoughts in no particular order...

Surprising nobody took Louis, I think he or Zara were the strongest available leaders. I suppose its possible he got eaten by first round ties... 2 SPI, 3 CRE, 2 ORG, 2 IND, 2 EXP, 1 IMP, 1 CHM. I guess that means a lot of us had similar trait valuation for this set. Only Dtay and Commodore didn't grab Cre or Exp and they both grabbed Ind... Us and Oxy are the only civs without a decent early UU. Hopefully that doesn't hurt (Holkans are early but garbage since MP maps always have copper near home.) In particular, I don't want to be anywhere near Commodore, Thoth or TBS... I'm having lots of buyer's remorse on not taking Cathy.