[Spoilers] PBEM 63 - Ichabod's Thread, feat. a big crew

[Ichabod]

Opening this thread so we can start the discussion. We have shiny new traits to pick from and I'm a slow thinker.

Changelog from the Mod: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=6632

With no map yet, I think what's more profitable to discuss is leaders.

Traits
FIN: +1c on tiles with 3c or more
EXP: Double speed granaries and harbors, +2 health (no worker bonus)
CRE: only +1 culture in all cities (still +100% production of library, theater and colosseum)
SPI: unchanged
ORG: unchanged
IND: unchanged
PHI: +150% gpp, double speed universities
IMP: +100% GG points, +50% settler production, and double speed markets and banks
CHA: +3 happy in all cities, -25% XP requirements (no happiness from monuments or broadcast towers)
AGG: Removed, replaced with AGRICULTURAL (AGR): +1f in a city for every 4 population in it.
PRO: Removed, replaced with PRODUCTIVE (PRO): +1h on tiles with 4h or more, +35% worker production, +35% workboat production

Do you have any ideas, Serdoa? I'm a bit loss about where to start...

[Ichabod]

If anyone else would like to dedlurk, I need all the help I can get against these players...

[Aurorarcher]

I'm willing to if you accept a player who's not very familiar with this particular mod though. On the other hand I'm interested in to see how these changes make the game different (I guess the idea is to get rid of banned/overpowered stuff?).

[Ichabod]

The map and settings for this game seem to be very close to PBEM 62. I'll make a comparison between ORG and new FIN to see how they'd fare there. My impression is that ORG will win, but we'll see... It's important to notice that Seven added the wharf building, that seems to work as a way to give FIN effect again to water tiles (what with nerfed FIN and colossus).

My first impression about Agricultural is that it isn't very good... Yes, you get bonus food, but not exactly when you want it the most (early growth of cities + early stages of the game). Seven said that he wanted a trait that gives food in the lategame, but I don't see that much benefit in it, since food alone isn't worth anything (as such, the game is about translating food into useful things). Overall, I don't like this trait.

PRO, EXP and CRE seems to be good early traits, to pair with a good economy trait (ORG or FIN). PRO was deemed to good in the previous version, with 50% WB and worker... Well, 35% isn't that much worse, so it still seems to be a top trait. EXP is still good, since quick granaries are always good and CRE nerf was very small.

CHA and PHI are interesting traits, in my opinion, but not good enough to warrant a non "gimmicky" pick. My problem with CHA is about timing: early game, if your cities can't grow due to happiness issues, you can just ger more cities workers. After the expansion phase, usually you'll have enough happy to grow most of your cities anyway. So, CHA has a very small window where you get a significant advantage over your opponents (after the opening, before calendar, something like that) and is hard to see how you could get a decisive advantage at that time, that will carry you through the rest of the game. PHI value gets reduced in a format with only 5 players, since there's always first to bonuses for everyone... But perhaps I'm not seeing something.

I'm interested in trying IND... Due to these two changes:

*Metal Casting Cost reduced to cost of Alphabet (from 450 down to 300).
*All wonders/buildings that had +100% production with a specific resource now only have +50% production with that resource.

Seven was extremely clever with that first change and it shows how much he understands of the game and game design as a whole. IND is not the "you need to oracle MC" trait anymore. MC is perfectly reachable without it, opening up forges as earlier than usual builds for someone that doesn't want to go through the annoying religious techs. CRE + IND gets a lot of value out of this, from what I can gather, allowing you to forgo the Myst line for a loooong time. CRE + IND actually snowballs really well, if you think about it...

I'm less inclined about picking EXP and SPI, because I'm playing them elsewhere, but I'm open to everything else. Opinions, Serdoa?

[Ichabod]

I'm willing to if you accept a player who's not very familiar with this particular mod though. On the other hand I'm interested in to see how these changes make the game different (I guess the idea is to get rid of banned/overpowered stuff?).

I'm also not familiar with it, as my analysis post shows. Seven wanted to make just minimal changes, so there's nothing too different. The idea is figure out by ourselves what works and what does not, while having fun.

Feel free to join the discussion as long as you like. If later you prefer to go global to lurk all the threads, no problem.

[Gaspar]

Checking in, because I like to keep my dedlurking experiences as absolutely frustrating as possible and what could possibly be more frustrating than playing against Mackoti and BlackSeven?

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Pick me for a dedlurker too! The first to open the thread gets them all, and you report well from 62

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Like mackoti is a great player, but not exactly the most... Exciting to dedlurk eh?

[Serdoa]

FIN: +1c on tiles with 3c or more
EXP: Double speed granaries and harbors, +2 health (no worker bonus)
CRE: only +1 culture in all cities (still +100% production of library, theater and colosseum)
SPI: unchanged
ORG: unchanged
IND: unchanged
PHI: +150% gpp, double speed universities
IMP: +100% GG points, +50% settler production, and double speed markets and banks
CHA: +3 happy in all cities, -25% XP requirements (no happiness from monuments or broadcast towers)
AGG: Removed, replaced with AGRICULTURAL (AGR): +1f in a city for every 4 population in it.
PRO: Removed, replaced with PRODUCTIVE (PRO): +1h on tiles with 4h or more, +35% worker production, +35% workboat production

Do you have any ideas, Serdoa? I'm a bit loss about where to start...

I've thought a little bit about the traits when I signed up. I don't think I've understood all implications already but my first reaction to those changes would be:

FIN: Slightly weaker then before. Instead of starting on a river grass cottage with 2/0/3 you start with 2/0/2. After 6 turns you are at 2/0/4 with the old and the new trait. Together with the wharf, which does get coast the bonus, that really does seem all the change there is to it. Losing between 6 - 13 commerce per cottage. That is a big enough amount early on that the difference to the old version should really be felt. At the same time, there is still no trait that does add research-potential like FIN. And quicker research means more "first to"-boni and stronger troops. Or - if the map allows it - FIN also can mean more expansion, as you are not as quickly broke and can much quicker recover.

EXP: Double speed Granaries are still extremely valuable. Losing the worker-bonus does hurt a little bit. But in the early game you often produce them via food anyhow, in which case that bonus isn't providing as much as one might believe. Being able to use whip-overflow to produce quickly a Granary - giving more whip-possibilities - is just great. The trait does have the old issue in not adding anything late game. Either you can leverage it to gain an advantage early or you could as well not have it.

CRE: Still helpful, especially on quick speed. Needing 5 instead of 3 turns to get the first border pop is not really all that important. More important is, that you don't need anything else to get your borders popped. If you don't have that, you are kind obligated to try for either SH or a religion. Or build Libraries and wait till they pop your borders (hint: bad idea most of the time). Well, monuments are possible as well. But they cost 20 hammers, which would already be a Granary with EXP. I also don't think much has changed in regards to border wars. It is a little bit weaker then before, but really, if you did fight a culture border-war, you had to build culture-buildings anyhow. What it does is giving you an early leg up in new cities. And that it does as well as before imo.

SPI: Same as before. If you know how to use it, it can be great. If you don't, it is shit. I think we rather have perfected to work without it, changing civics in GAs, which we try to have several of anyhow, and get them to line up with necessary civic-changes. The 1 turn you save early on for Slavery does help, but more in giving you a good feeling as it seems you are quicker than the others. But really that doesn't matter. The only point that matters with this trait is abusing civics as much as possible. I don't think there are enough changes to civics in this mod, to make it worthwhile. Cottages are still king here and so are the civics that are normally used for them. When you are in them, you won't change out of them anyhow.

ORG: Depends on the map-settings if it is good or not. I don't think it can keep up with FIN in the long run and it most likely can't even early on. Except for the big maps with many cities etc.

IND: The wonder-bonus is only important early on, later on it will often be decided by who reaches the tech first, not who has a bonus in build-speed. And Forges are indeed in theory now a viable path. Except it is still 300 beakers that are not invested towards Currency and therefore towards expansion. And even at 50% cost Forges are not cheap. If you don't have metals than they are not worth it for anything but a production-city. Which not all that many cities will be. I think IND still suffers from the old issue, that you have to more or less build your strategy around it, instead of it helping your strategy along, not matter which one you choose. That does make you easily readable for the other players and therefore more likely to fail.

PHI: 150% is more than 100%, but it does not change the actual issue: You only get a certain amount of GPs per game and PHI does not add all that many, even if you actively work for them. You get them earlier with PHI - but at that point you often don't want them or they are "wasted" by bulbing cheap techs.

IMP: Double speed markets and banks are saving quite a bit on the hammer front. Which is helpful as you want them in research-cities which often don't have much production. But if that is enough to make IMP better than FIN or EXP? It does make it better for certain - and I personally have come around to value IMP quite a bit IF you can leverage it into a city-lead. Which can be hard with the competition you are facing here. At some point you will clash borders and if you have overexpanded too much, you will get punished by those players. And if you can't keep the additional expansion that IMP allows, what good does it really do you?

CHA: 3 happy is good. Saves you going for a religion or some happiness-buildings. Or lets you grow bigger earlier. Or whip more often. If the map is lush enough that whipping heavily is a good option, CHA could be strong. On the other hand - it did have 2 happy originally and that wasn't all that strong, as most of our maps simply do provide 2-3 happiness resources early on. And with those you are often good for the time being, because you don't want to grow much bigger than 4-6 pop anyhow because of whipping.

AGG: The first of the complete new traits. With 16 pop that's 4 more food or two food-free pop. Which lets you grow bigger or work more non-food tiles. I can see that being helpful, but I think Civ4 is balanced around the food you can get etc. so that this might actually not make as much of a difference as one believes it should. Or maybe I'm completely wrong and it does. That's really a trait I would have to try a few times to see how it actually changes gameplay.

PRO: The second new one. I'm not sure how strong that trait really is. With 50% bonus to worker-building it obviously is strong. Every second hammer as another one. Build your city on a plains hill -> 3 hammers into your first worker. Work a 1/2 forest tile -> 3 hammers into your worker. You get up to 7 foodhammers with one pop. But with 35%? Now you are back to getting at best 6 foodhammers at the start.
Later on, the question is less about the worker-production and more about the additional hammer. But how many 4 hammer-tiles does one have normally? Plains Hill Mines. That's it for most of the game (workshops with guilds or even chemistry are the other one that comes to mind, and very late grassland mines with railroads). Not sure that the few hammers you gain additionally are really making enough of a difference. On average I would assume not more than 1 tile that yields 4+ hammers per city and is worked and realistically less. So it'll take 90 turns on Quick I believe before they have gotten you as much as you would get if you had IMP and would build Market and Bank. If every city has 1 such tile. That said, looking trough the list, it does still seem like one of the stronger traits.

All that said, I'd probably still would take FIN/EXP or FIN/CRE as my first pick. Depending on map settings and if those named are not available anymore FIN/ORG, EXP/ORG, FIN/PRO, EXP/PRO, ORG/PRO are all viable I believe.

[Ichabod]

I allowed Gaspar to ded lurk this thread, in exchange for an opponent analysis (and a new tier list). Because I'm a good guy like that.