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(July 12th, 2019, 23:27)Charriu Wrote: Anything special you want to do this game. Any civ/trait preferences?
I’m going to give the long answer for this one. Put on a helmet, wall of text incoming.
We are not playing on a standard RB map (well, we might be playing on the new standard RB map, seeing as now three of the most recent five games have used this formula for their maps, but I digress). We are playing on a lightly balanced Big and Small map, which is quite different, and I think that those differences make some options notably stronger.
Financial: Imagine a map on which every player has access to plenty of river tiles. On such a map, a non-financial player will plant their cottages on river tiles and get +1 commerce from the river right away, while a financial player will put their cottages on non-river tiles and get their +1 commerce bonus only after ten turns, which means that in the initial cottage-placing phase, the financial player is actually at a disadvantage. Financial only provides a benefit when both players improve their tiles with farms and workshops. When that happens, the non-financial player will need to place many of their improvements off-river because they already used the river for cottages, but the financial player will have plenty of river tiles left, so they can place their workshops and farms on those. The commercial benefit of financial doesn’t really happen on cottage tiles, it happens on the other tile improvements that get +1 commerce from their position on a river that in a non-financial civilization would have been occupied by a cottage.
The problem is, that bonus is pretty weak in the scenario described above, since it comes later on, when a single extra commerce unit is proportionally less valuable, and it comes scattered all around wherever there are rivers rather than where it is most helpful, which is in the core commerce cities where you will build all the multiplier buildings. My conclusion is that financial is weak when there are enough river tiles for non-financial players to build all of their cottages on rivers. It is stronger, and gives a quick, direct, concentrated advantage, when even non-financials must build many of their cottages away from rivers, and on a natural Big and Small map, no one can count on having very many river tiles.
The other half of why financial is better on Big and Small maps is the coastal half. On Big and Small, there are a lot of little islands and peninsulas to settle, and many settlements established on those won’t have enough land tiles to work only, or even mostly, land tiles at full size. The jump from two commerce to three commerce for coastal tiles is a pretty big deal for those cities. It can also sometimes be important for cities with lots of land tiles, if those land tiles are a horrible tundra/desert/plains wasteland, and horrible wastelands do sometimes appear on natural Big and Smalls. Just ask Lewwyn…
Creative: I think that on maps with more food tiles, creative tends to be worse. This is because the more food resources there are, the more ways to settle for food resources first ring there are, and the more likely it is that you will be able to work out a dotmap of cities that do not need their borders to expand any time early to be good contributors. Creative players may still be able to settle so that their cities are better early contributors, but the difference is not so large. On the other hand, the fewer food resources there are, the more restricted settling choices are, since there are fewer ways to settle for the first ring food you need. Non-creatives may be forced to settle cities that are pretty terrible long-term or otherwise don’t have much going for them besides the fact that they have first ring food, while creative players just cut the knot and have no such hard choices.
Earlyish Military Advantages: Early military advantages can only be said to have helped if they made the difference in some sort of conflict with another player, but that conflict doesn’t need to be one that involves units fighting and dying. It could just be a contested city that you get away with founding without even fighting at all because the other guy decides it isn’t worth trying to push back (INSERT PRO, BABYLON, ETC. HERE), or something like that. On Big and Small, we may have our own private island, so an early military advantage is not guaranteed to be of use for claiming our immediate surroundings, but one could certainly be helpful for taking over all the little islands and peninsulas that we can only reach by sea, of which there are probably going to be a lot. Galleys are slow and their capacity is small, so quality is better than quantity for those missions.
That is what I have for now. I think that each of those things is worth considering closely, but it is by no means what I have decided I want to go with for sure. Additional opinions are welcome!
EDIT: I somehow neglected to mention in that entire wall of text that I would like to play one of the newly changed civliizations, but I will need to see our start before thinking much about which one.
Of course a lot comes down to our starting position, especially with Financial. Also worth mentioning is that the naval side of the game has also changed quite significantly since your last PB (PB40). PB42 was the first with the new naval stuff and enough sea to make it matter. Would be worth checking back those threads there.
There's also a change around circumnavigation, that I don't find in the changelog. Will ask Krill about that in the main thread as it is only fair that everybody knows about it.
Pre-sandboxing impressions:
Moving the settler one tile east is tempting because of all those floodplains in the fog, but I think that the short-term delay from losing the turn and the plains hill is too much for it to be worthwhile.
A civilization with two of Hunting, Agriculture, and Mining will have the fastest start, one with only one of those techs will have a slower but probably still acceptably fast start, and one with none of those techs will be the slowest, likely too slow for us to consider picking.
Seven riverside commerce tiles are in view already, several more are visible on the edge of the fog, and the river may not end there. Finanical looks a lot less appealing than it did an hour ago.
The tree type indicates that we are not that near the equator, and it looks like the forests in the fog to the south are a different kind, so we are probably in the northern hemisphere.
The fact that our capital is completely inland makes me think that we may be on a Big with land neighbors rather than a private Small, but I wouldn't bet on that yet.
I agree with settling in place. The turn is too valuable and we can not get a faster start out of this than plains hill and two 6 yield tiles.
If we want the fastest start possible we want expansive or imperialistic. There looks to be good land to settle with lots of food and decent production. I like imperialistic better for this position.
However the limit on expansion will probably be economy. A problem we might run into on a lightly edited map is likely lack of happiness, especially before monarchy which means fewer cottages worked in our mainland.
An easy way to avoid that is to pick a charismatic leader. Another way is to pick the buffed Aztecs. They get their Altars at priesthood now which should help with both happiness and economy much faster than before it the old Ziggurats and Altars in baked into one very juicy unique building that helps with economy/production/happiness/.
Apart from Aztecs I think China, France and Inca would be good choices on this map but they are not really new and interesting.
Mongolia might also work even if they would need a suboptimal tech path if we want to really make use of them.
"Mongolia: Hunting/The Wheel. UB: Stables replacement: Ger. +1 culture, +4XP to mounted units, requires Archery, +100% production with horse, no trait production modifier. UU: Horse Archer replacement. Keshik. +1 free strike. Ignores terrain movement costs."
If we are restrictive about civs because of starting techs and wanting a changed one I think we should chose civ first.
Traits that look good are Imperialistic, Aggressive, Protective and Charismatic. I'm not that into creative, expansive, organized and financial as we start inland by a river.
Too bad we lose one of our few forests by settling in place. Well can't have everything.
Being the first in pick order the question is what do we desperately need: Civ or Leader.
Looking at traits I think the following:
Imperialistic: Great for spreading our wings in the beginning. The custom house bonus might also see its use later.
Charismatic: Happiness might be useful, good military bonus and it has a great synergy with Creative for those early libraries.
Creative: In addition to what Magic wrote, there still the case that we might settle quite a few islands with low production. This will help get those potential 2nd ring sea resources up and running.
Aggressive: Overall good especially if we have a neighbor on this island.
Protective: Was nerfed compared to in the past. Still good for the granary, but then again not useful if we would get Inca or Babylon.
Organized: Still a good trait with low effort, but would be cooler if we start directly at the coast.
Expansive: There will most likely be enough health and we have few forests in our initial BFC. Yes the workboat and building bonuses can be nice, but it's still not the ideal start for this trait.
Philosophical: Would be better with even more food and takes a bit more attention to the Great People side of the game. Depends on if we want this.
Financial: With all those rivers it's less appealing. Still this is Big and Small so there will be coast at some point.
Industrious: A lot depends on the implementation and if Krill decides to put in any changes. But as it is right now I doubt it's useful for us.
Spiritual: I doubt you want to go this route, with a heavy focus on changing between civics, right?
I tend to the first four traits and therefore would like a combination of those. With that in mind we would have 5 potential leaders (Boudica, Catherine, Cyrus, Genghis, Kublai)
So looking at civs and coming from PB42 I'm thinking the following:
A combination of Mining, Agriculture and Hunting would be best, like you already said.
Potential early conflict with a neighbor would need a good early bonus.
You wanted something and I would like that too
Something with a little bonus related to naval warfare can't hurt.
Some synergy with our traits
So with that in mind the following civs could be a fit:
China
Dutch
Ethiopia
Portugal
Babylon
Germany
Mongolia
Persia
Maya
I think there are a lot more interesting and viable civs to use, so it would be best to look for an ideal leader first.
China
Dutch
Ethiopia
Portugal
Babylon
Germany
Mongolia
Persia
Maya
Dutch and Portugal have late bonuses and start with fishing which does not help with this start I would remove them from the the list. I would add Aztecs, France Native America, Khmer to it.
I feel like China, France and Aztecs are the strongest and if we want one of them we will need to pick it now.
Leader traits. I think the best combinations can cover all three bases. Of the traits that we rate highly for this map.
Fast expansion: Pro, Imp, Cre
Economy to sustain it: Agg, Cha, Org,
Military edge to win: Pro, Agg, Cha
Then Cyrus, Genghis, Churchill, Tokugawa, Khublai all fit the bill.
![[Image: Go3THxE.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/Go3THxE.jpg)
