[spoilers] DTG thinks filthy casuals are ruining Realms Beyond

[picklepikkl]

Civ 4 already had a "censored" leader for a particular market -- Mao Zedong is replaced by Emperor Taizong of Tang in the Chinese edition, which is why the XML leader string for Mao refers to him as CHINESE_LEADER instead of by name.

(In case it wasn't clear: my statement was motivated by contempt for the acts of Mao and Stalin, not by desire to play as Hitler. I seek to diminish the former, not elevate the latter.)

(This is way off-track for the thread, though, and not especially productive since I certainly don't expect a fun historical sandbox series to change its tack any time soon. I was just griping.)

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Civ 4 already had a "censored" leader for a particular market -- Mao Zedong is replaced by Emperor Taizong of Tang in the Chinese edition, which is why the XML leader string for Mao refers to him as CHINESE_LEADER instead of by name.

(In case it wasn't clear: my statement was motivated by contempt for the acts of Mao and Stalin, not by desire to play as Hitler. I seek to diminish the former, not elevate the latter.)

(This is way off-track for the thread, though, and not especially productive since I certainly don't expect a fun historical sandbox series to change its tack any time soon. I was just griping.)

They are all in the same boat you're right, and a good deal of Eastern Europeans would probably hate Stalin more. In civ2 they put you as Hitler, in the ww2 mod but then of course it was just a name. I was initially surprised that it was von papen in road to war.

Bare in mind this is an English market game and we never really had the horrors of the other 2. Indeed Stalin was an uneasy ally of course. I remember once talking to a previous girlfriend about how I spent hours of my childhood playing civ2 ww2 scenario, and just the idea of playing as Germany in that shocked her

BUT Hitler just has this whole other level. The other 2 have not become rallying cries for complex issues and problems. No one posts about Stalin was right etc. It is that part of his legacy that makes it awkward to place a leader head IMO

(I imagine if one was done it to be like the pacal one literally exploding with rage and a bit of a joke)

[AdrienIer]

The only real game I know that features Hitler is hearts of iron, and they have a special edition for Germany

[DTG]

You get one freebie every 3 base hammers, and then another every 20.

Thanks. That's a nice way to look at it.

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1. Borsche - Mehmed II of Carthage
2. Gawdzak/Chumchu - Julius Caesar of Russia
3. GSorel/DMOC/Ichabod - Genghis Khan of Zulu
4. Nicolea Carpathia - Brennus of Korea
5. Elkad - Asoka of Sumeria
6. DTG/picklepikkl - Mao Zedong of Inca
7. OT4E - Bismark of Ottomans
8. wetbandit/ipecac - Winston Churchill of China
9. StarDoor - Shaka of Arabia
10. dcodea - Joao II of Khmer
11. NylesStandish - Wang Kon of Aztecs
12. pindicator - Suryavarman II of India

EXP x6
IMP x3
ORG x3
PRO x3
AGG x2
SPI x2
CHA x2
IND x1
FIN x1
CRE x1

A clear preference for EXP over everything else, which surprises me (despite contributing to that number). I certainly don't think EXP is twice as good as anything else. I don't even think it's the top trait.

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Great picks:

GSorel/DMOC/Ichabod - Genghis Khan of Zulu
DTG/picklepikkl - Mao Zedong of Inca
OT4E - Bismark of Ottomans

Aggressive Zulu and Protective Inca are both power combos. PRO Inca will have a faster start and will need to leverage that well, otherwise we'll fall behind. Luckily this is my preferred way of winning... and I'm sure that it also accounts for my choice of Mao > Qin or Sitting Bull. However, I should add that I think there will be a lot of land to grab (this being a Large Pitboss) and Prince difficulty will, I hope, reward IMP/EXP/PRO civs over the ORG/AGG crew.

OT4E's pick is really cool. He should be a shoe-in for Stonehenge, if he commits (and his micro is certainly good enough). After that, he has a big head start on the Colossus if this is a water map; if not, he can grab the Mids. Janissaries will be relevant when the map is full and people are beginning to make BIG MOVES™ via Guilds or Astro.

Very good picks:

Borsche - Mehmed II of Carthage
Gawdzak/Chumchu - Julius Caesar of Russia
wetbandit/ipecac - Winston Churchill of China
dcodea - Joao II of Khmer

I was tempted to put "Julius Caesar of Russia" in the great tier, because Gawdzak is likely to be a contender when Cossacks become relevant. But if we ignore that factor, Russia does not offer much in the early or mid-early game, and I think ORG is pegged back a bit by the difficulty level, despite my early desire to play as Julius. I'm glad the Aztecs didn't make it up to this team.

Mehmed of Carthage seems solid. Borsche seems solid. I don't want to attack Borsche.

Winston Churchill of China is obviously geared up for Chuk-Chuk-Chukkle fun. ipecac played Victoria of China in PBEM 66, but the game was lost before Machinery was available. That won't be a factor here. If we border them, we will either need to squash them early or make ourselves an unattractive target.

Joao II of Khmer will be REXerific, and then fall flat on its face if dcodea doesn't grow an economy. I'd say his leader/civ combo will need to play in a similar manner to our own, only it will be harder without PRO Terraces.

Good picks:

Elkad - Asoka of Sumeria
StarDoor - Shaka of Arabia
NylesStandish - Wang Kon of Aztecs

ORG paired with Sumeria limits the hammer savings on the Courthouse, and could therefore be seen as un-synergistic (or, rather, while you still gain from ORG savings on a building that you are going to build regardless, you miss out on the static benefits of another trait). I think that is a fair point in BTS. It's not difficult to 2–pop or 3-pop whip a 90H Ziggurat. In RtR, though, whipping is a bit weaker, so perhaps the early Zigs will prove very strong. The economy will not limit Eikad's expansion game, in any case.

Shaka of Arabia seems good and flexible. The Madrassa is much better in RtR and Shaka is a solid leader. However, an early shrine does paint a target on your back if you are not a vet or have a high skill level, so StarDoor will need to be careful.

Wang Kon of Aztecs has a very good leader in this sea of non-Financial leaders, coupled with a civ that has a very strong UB. The parts are better than the whole, but that is not to say that I dislike the pick.

Huh picks:

Nicolea Carpathia - Brennus of Korea

A SPI/CHAR leader as fourth pick seemed strange to me, and Korea isn't anything special, especially sans-Philosophical.

Dunno picks:

pindicator - Suryavarman II of India

Zoom zoom, there go the cheap Fast Workers. Okay, so you can get the snowball snowballing very early. However, one of the great advantages of Fast Workers is that you need fewer Workers than a regular Civ, because they can clear those Forests that much quicker. So I don't know if the blazing fast, early-game Worker game will result in large gains, or if pindicator will simply find that he is saving 35% of hammers building 3/4s of the Workers he usually would (though, I suppose, those hammer savings will just be spent elsewhere). The pick will probably prove to be "Very Good," especially as Sury is the only Creative leader.

[picklepikkl]

Nice to see our tier lists basically line up

Another thing worth considering: Mysticism starts. That would be us, StarDoor, NylesStandish, and pindicator. I'm not sure yet whether our gameplan wants one of the early religions -- we already have culture via our terraces -- but ease-of-access definitely ought to be a factor. I think Nyles and StarDoor are relatively likely to pursue early religions -- StarDoor has access to 30h barracks for culture, but that's a weak play, and Nyles would require monuments. StarDoor also has the Madrassa and thus a comparative advantage in producing a fast Great Prophet, and an early Shrine increases the strength of founding a religion (especially in a large game where there isn't enough self-founded religion to go around and you can't bank on starting near a founder other than the guy with a Shrine).

[picklepikkl]

I did some preliminary sandboxing using the updated version. The major thing I learned is that the positioning of our hills and forests is really, really awkward. Our sole bare hill is cut off from the obvious places we might want to move to access it such that getting there would require wasting an extra worker turn. This means that we have the problem of a lack of things for our worker to do after improving our first three tiles. The sequencing I ended up with followed my best-case assumption: that there would be a viable city site 3N of our capital or a tile east of that, to be able to share both the food tiles.

t0 SIP, worker, Hunting.
t10 worker begins pasturing sheep, The Wheel, quechua.
t14 worker done with sheep, farms corn
t18 quechua->quechua, Mining
t19 worker done with corn, moves SW and puts 1t into a road
t20 worker begins pasturing cows, capital swaps to settler upon hitting s3
t24 worker done with cows, moves E and finishes road
t25 worker moves to corn and roads, Bronze Working
t27 worker done with road, moves NE and roads
t28 settler done, worker FINISHES ROAD, settler moves to 3N or N-N-NE of capital, capital builds something (probably another worker to get city 2's tiles improved faster)
t29 city 2 founded with trade route to capital

Techwise, we really need Hunting and Wheel -- Hunting for obvious reasons, Wheel for TR with our second city and things for the worker to do. The issue is that then Bronze Working is still a zillion turns away (10 at 90% science after founding city 2 on t29). I know you said that we'd want BW before Pottery, but I'm not convinced unless it turns out city 2 has things to productively mine.

All that said, I certainly don't assign high probability that this is the best sequencing around -- if I'm being too ironfisted with my heuristics or missing something obvious, I welcome the corrections.

[DTG]

Thanks for updating the sandbox and running your tests. This is what I thought based upon my few attempts yesterday:

The micro to T10 is the easy part; the turns after that are more complex. After playing around with the test file I felt that, without more knowledge about our surroundings, it's hard to predict the best path... e.g. do we want a second Worker before a Settler? If so, then perhaps it will be better to Pasturize the Cows before improving the Corn ("wastes" a Worker turn, and will eventually lose 5FH from farming the Corn one turn later, but would give us a 7FH tile > 5FH for 5 turns... so a gain of +5FH, –1 Worker turn). There are also ways to get 1H of OF from a Quecha, to let 6H go into a Worker (CC + Cows + 1H).

I do not think it is worthwhile to mine and work the PH, *unless* our second city will be in that area and we can build a road as well. It wastes too many Worker turns for too little gain. A riverside PH would be a different story.

Commerce seems to be a big limiting factor in the very early stages. An early Fishing might help a bit with this, because we could grow the capital on the Lake at size 3. But this will only be worthwhile *if* our second city spot has a good seafood resource and will immediately begin a Work Boat. There is no way that the mediocre capital Lake can justify Fishing in and of itself.

Early BW is useful because it enables a quicker swap into Slavery, reveals Copper, and lets us chop. Pottery before Mining doesn't offer that much, because it is too early to be working Cottages and, without hammers from mines or whips or chops, we won't be able to build a Terrace at a reasonable pace (unless there is another Plains Cow).

I think we need Hunting, TW, Mining, and BW before we should consider a religious gambit. I also suspect Pottery will take precedence.

[Ruff_Hi]

When is this game starting?

[DTG]

When is this game starting?

Soon, probably 2–3 days. Want to dedlurk?

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I've played about with a Worker ---> Settler opening. We'd get the Worker on T24, and the Settler on T32. I can bring the Settler to 99/100H on T31, but no more. There might be a way to do it by improving the Cows before the Corn: I tested that less.

However, it did occur to me that getting a lot of OF from a Settler is a good way to leverage our EXP trait by turning the Sheep and Corn into temporary hammer tiles... e.g. if we complete a Settler on T32 with 113/100H, then we have 13OF + 5H (Cow + CC) = 18H = 24H into a Worker.

[Ruff_Hi]

Yep. But I refuse to shower or shave!