[SPOILERS]PB46: (In Search of) Fine Foreign Dining, by Hannibal of England

[Krill]

Germany doesn't give any relevant city maintenance reduction in the context of being able to make guide court houses though. AGG gets 25% city maintenance reduction and you still need Courthouses. The only when pairing AGG with Germany that you push close to the 50% necessary to ignore court houses for that but longer, and even then, I think the reality is it will be about 40% because the AGG bonus is multiplicative with the building bonuses.

It's like the old Zulu. AGG Zulu could ignore Courthouses for a bit, but none AGG Zulu couldn't. And as for Stalin being slow...it's no slower than Hannibal of England.

[Krill]

I'm surprised Gav didn't pick Augustus... he seems like he would work very well with Germany, as a way to start strong with Imp and stay strong through cheap Werkstatt. The compounded city maintenance reductions plus a strong base would allow him to delay courthouses in favor of pouring tons of hammers into early wonders. Stalin has some amazing potential but will be very slow.

Pindicator's Exp/Fin combo reminds me of my ToW attempt at Victoria, what with all of the gold multipliers. It wasn't as strong as I had hoped. That said, he'll have a pretty damn good time if he gets Carthage. The Ottomans are still in the pool too. BaII could grab either of those two, or Sumeria.

I'm pretty shocked that the Vikings and Carthage are still unpicked.

At any rate, I think that at this point, we can be pretty sure we'll get at least a half-decent Fin leader.

Pacal is weird, because the overlap between EXP and FIN on the Market is worth about 10 hammers, it is essentially irrelevant. And if one is using gold to pay for costs, then stacking gold multipliers reduces the effectiveness of the previously built multiplier anyway. That's why I change the Stock Exchange bonus from 15% gold to 15% beakers, and Mali got the 10% beaker buff. But my god if he gets Pacal of Carthage, well played. Pin would probably be the big winner of the snake pick if he gets Carthage.

I'm actually not shocked that Vikings are left now, but I will be if Adler or BaII don't pick them.

What's your preferred Fin pick-order? Hannibal > Ragnar > Wang Kong > Darius > Mansa Musa?

Looking at what other people have picked, I'm only really worried about rushes from superdeath and TBW, especially superdeath. That guy doesn't know how to build, so he just invades people and then eventually dies. There's nothing we can do about superdeath though, he has Boudicca, so our only reply to him is to just 2v1 his units, and chop everything so he can't choke us. We are going BW first, and frankly copper and a food resource will need be our city 2 location if he is our neighbour. TBW is going to have AGG Rome, but IW can come much sooner now. Reply to him is again straight forward: axes and hit his units before he can hit our cities, otherwise it's no different to managing any other AGG leader.

With that in mind, I don't like PRO: The granary bonus isn't that great (compared to FIN/CHM and being able to use libraries to pop borders), and I don't see the promotions on archers mattering against the players we would need it to matter on. Colosseum help more in the mid game for us, and now Elkad has taken Churchill of NA he is the player that gets to roll 11XP Xbows off boats.

Ragnar will be gone before we could pick him, and I'm too worried about the happiness issue to pick him. The extra happy from CHM means we can whip the capital just so, so hard that if we don't get called the capital will manage all of our expansion needs by itself.

I'd probably rank Darius second, if only because we would have the option of shoving the lighthouse in really quickly and could completely ignore the workers at the capital. But again: we'd only save 30 hammers on a lighthouse, and this is roughly the same we get for using libraries to pop borders in other cities; in the capital Hannibal can still use a lighthouse and ignore workers, we just burn one of the extra happy face we have on the lighthouse whip rather than worrying about having to maximise overflow to get it.

CHM has one thing going for it, and I'm not sure how I feel about this: We don't need to sit in Vassalage for ever. We can't get triple promoted land units muskets, rifles or grens, but we can still grab triple promoted siege, mounted, maces and Xbow/Lbow if we have Vassalage. We don't need it for boat promotions after Drydocks, but no one can hit triple promoted boats without Drydocks or Customs Houses anyway, and we only need aharbour. But I'm focused on Emancipation: we can sit in that for as long as we need, the FIN bonus counters the lost commerce, and we get food. We can grow cities, and we can prep for a swap back into Nationalism when it comes to draft Redcoats.

It's Hannibal. That's who we're picking, and if either TBW or 2MetraNinja pick him I'm going to be livid.

[Krill]

Joey, are you able and willing to give an opponent run down on the Badgame crowd once the snake pick is done?

We're stuck waiting now, as I have no idea where Adler or 2MetraNinja are. Gives more time to TBS to finish the map I suppose.

[Krill]

It always pisses me off when, in a snake pick, someone doesn't recognise that they are up and then goes and wanders off.

It's just impolite.

I don't think I'll be able to post the pick as I doubt TBW comes back for the next 6 hours.

[Krill]

That's better.

[Krill]

Remaining pick predictions:

GeneralKillCavalry: Aztecs. Darius, but I really hope Joao. Mehmed is gone, as is Julius, PRO/ORG doesn't exist and there are two INDs already. PHI/ORG is weird unless you push for religion and immediate shrine. Given the happiness, ORG is just a no brainer, maybe Napoleon is the pick if Darius is thought to be too slow? But they should not need the happy if they prioritize the religion, shrine and courthouse happy. Either Nappy or Darius seem OK TBH.

Borsche: Persia. Shaka, Mehmed, Mao are all gone. Ragnar is up if you want to split the difference on the UB. Only two FIN leaders around. Peter is an option, but I reckon Sury is the pick with Washington as backup.

Commodore: Mongolia. He won't pick AGG or CRE, but he will want a quicker starting leader. Holy fuck, 6 EXP leaders picked? Only missing Peter, Washington and Sury and I expect the 7th EXP to go with Borsche? I can't work it out. Could be anything.

Old Harry + Hitru: Inca. Same problem, but not PRO or CRE. It'll be a perfect reaction. They'll look at PHI and they'll look at SPI because so few people have picked those traits. Mansa or Gandhi have a good shout here actually. I'd prefer Mansa as more open ended than PHI.

[GermanJoey]

grats on Hannibal!

I'm flabbergasted that Pind didn't grab Carthage, although Arabia is still an excellent pick. how the FUCK does nobody pick Carthage on a big and small map?!?? do people not understand how good the Cothon is? You're looking at 3-4 commerce per coastal city (which will be pretty much every city) when you first get it; that'll gradually turn into 6c-10c per city by the late game. IIRC in PB22 I was getting about as much bonus commerce from Cothons as I would've gotten from Fin.

I'm also very surprised on how many Exp picks there are. I think Washington isn't a great pick (the +2 happy from Cha and the extra happy from Markets are kinda pretty anti-synergystic) but Peter could be OK I guess. Borsche might want to just forget about pairing Exp with his UB and just pick a leader he likes instead.

Darius of the Aztecs is a strong pick, IMHO.

Badgame rundown:

- Borsche: he's played several games on RB, IIRC. Is a fairly solid player, although prone to whining and tilting, much like all badgame.net players. (including yours truly! )
- TBW: fairly solid all-around. Tends to like slower leaders... is never a front-runner out of the gate, but always seems to do well. Probably the least whiny/tilty badgame player.
- beardbeard: is a total fucking retard. I mean that in both the pejorative and the non-pejorative sense. Often decides to leeroy-jenkins on a neighbor at some point, (and once, on a non-neighbor) failing miserably. When he gets counter-attacked he'll either bounce to AI or try to give all of his units/gold to the invader's enemy. When we play diplo games, you can be 100% sure he is lying every time he speaks. In our current running BGPB12, he just lost a city to a 2-warrior "rush" and then immediately bounced to AI. T40.

[Krill]

I hope Superdeath and BeardBeard are neighbours on a small island somewhere.

Re: Pindicator, I wonder if start techs feed into it?

[Krill]

grats on Hannibal!

Every time I go back and look at that snake pick I wonder if we picked right. And then I look at the start and think I'm being ridiculous.

There is no right or wrong pick for this start. They all kinda suck, and they all have their plus points.

I still feel Hannibal is right though. IMP didn't seem to have any effect, it felt like we had to go worker into settler. EXP would have been fast to the work boat and size 2, saving 2 turns, then hits a brick wall unless you go worker into settler, or try some weird double worker play which this start doesn't warrant because there is nothing to improve and work. PRO doesn't get a granary any faster, but it would save 30 hammers into the settler, so really, PRO would have saved us 2 chops in the capital but we couldn't use the whip as hard as I'm planning. None of the other traits speed anything up. So I'm happy with Hannibal, FIN/CHM is probably the second fastest starting leader and given that Fishing/Mining are the fastest techs it seems short sided to ignore the benefits of the late game effects.

[Mardoc]

The world has gone mad.

I take it people have very different assessments on balance here than you do?  Anyone you think particularly won the pick or chose particularly poorly? (and why is it possible to choose poorly in RtR anyway   )