Thank you for the explanation. Ok, I've done a lot of play testing today and I think you were right and I was wrong in that maintenance will be a factor. Therefore, organised gets better as do Sumeria and Zulu.
There are quite a few leaders that I think I would be happy with at this point. Roughly in order: Huayna, Darius, Victoria, Catherine (over Sury? We can discuss!), Suryavaraman, Mansa?
However, I think that I may have come to a conclusion. I think we should pick Zulu. Here's my logic. Due to technology constraints, our early game cities will struggle to have much to build. Barracks are a tech-free option that will help reduce maintenance and therefore produce a tangible benefit. Sumeria get the cheaper, earlier courthouse which is really good but their starting techs are slightly worse and they require us to tech a couple of extra technologies. I do accept that one is really cheap and we may well want the other for the religion anyway though. If we did pick Zulu, that may even make Ragnar a really decent pick?
I feel like I might have persuaded myself into a poor decision through weak logic. With normal speed, the tech rate will be slow and I think a barracks is a decent hammer dump if it is helping what will be a significant problem. Maybe this is an irrelevant bonus due to rounding though and I am being silly. Is cheap barracks (giving 20% reduced maintenance) and an extra promotion worth losing Imperialistic? The Impi is a real nice unit too and with promotions, it's even better.
My current inclination is to pick Zulu with our first pick and then we can see how the land lies in terms of leaders but we're pretty much guaranteed to get a good one. If we pick a leader now, we'll likely just pick a civ for starting techs and have negligible further benefits.
There are quite a few leaders that I think I would be happy with at this point. Roughly in order: Huayna, Darius, Victoria, Catherine (over Sury? We can discuss!), Suryavaraman, Mansa?
However, I think that I may have come to a conclusion. I think we should pick Zulu. Here's my logic. Due to technology constraints, our early game cities will struggle to have much to build. Barracks are a tech-free option that will help reduce maintenance and therefore produce a tangible benefit. Sumeria get the cheaper, earlier courthouse which is really good but their starting techs are slightly worse and they require us to tech a couple of extra technologies. I do accept that one is really cheap and we may well want the other for the religion anyway though. If we did pick Zulu, that may even make Ragnar a really decent pick?
I feel like I might have persuaded myself into a poor decision through weak logic. With normal speed, the tech rate will be slow and I think a barracks is a decent hammer dump if it is helping what will be a significant problem. Maybe this is an irrelevant bonus due to rounding though and I am being silly. Is cheap barracks (giving 20% reduced maintenance) and an extra promotion worth losing Imperialistic? The Impi is a real nice unit too and with promotions, it's even better.
My current inclination is to pick Zulu with our first pick and then we can see how the land lies in terms of leaders but we're pretty much guaranteed to get a good one. If we pick a leader now, we'll likely just pick a civ for starting techs and have negligible further benefits.
