[SPOILERS] Cornflakes - Do lurkers prefer candy instead of popcorn??

[Cornflakes]

Personally I like Caramel + cheese popcorn ... either mixed or double-coated   although an authentic carnival kettle-corn is great as well.

Civ options:

TheArchduke: Mali, Cree, Kongo, Nubia, Japan, Mongolia, England
Alhambram: Hungry, Georgia, Canada, Greece, Korea, Sweden, Ottomans
Scooter: Inca, Mapuche, Norway, America, France, China, Persia
Cornflakes: Phoenicia, Zulu, Brazil, Scotland, Macedonia, Poland, India

[Cornflakes]

T30 Civ Comparison

Civ	Cities	Pop	Techs	Civics	Gold	Faith	Districts	Military
India	2	6	3 (+7.3/turn)	2 (+4.9/turn)	220 (+6.2/turn)	2 (+0/turn)	0	47
Japan	2	5	2 (+5.2/turn)	2 (+2.9/turn)	20 (+12/turn)	31 (+4.2/turn)	1: (1) HS	30

[Cornflakes]

Civ/Leader intro screenshots:

Phoenicia
   

Zulu
   

Brazil
   

Scotland
   

Macedonia
   

Poland
   

India
   

I'll put more thought in, but needed to get this down so I can refer back to all the option in one place.

[Cornflakes]

Here's a brief summary and quick thoughts on my options ... no real stand-out top-tier civ in my list and I could see myself going a couple of different ways here.

Phoenicia - The Cothon is essentially the power of Phoenicia. Half price districts are always great and help with achieving the discount on other districts, and +50% settler and ship production sounds sweet! Problems: (1) Cothon is unlocked at Celestial Navigation, which is dead-end > usually a late classical target (or later). A direct beeline to unlock Cothon misses out on classical military and leaves me open to rush or choke. On an islands map Phoenicia wouldn't have that issue of contending with an early rush. (2) the 50% production bonuses are additive with the discount cards (confirmed) meaning it is only +33% for settlers and +20% for ships with those cards in place. Alternatively you could see this as opening up another discount slot and just use the Cothon bonus instead of those cards since most of the time only one or two cities would be building settlers or ships at a time. The UU ship is too early to make much of an impact. On the other hand, a small map with 4 players will have a lot of room. I could settle conservatively toward others and aggressively pump out settlers for the mass expanses of wilderness, and that actually tempts me so I'm not outright crossing Phoenicia off the list. But with only 4 players in the game it likely will be decided before the mass expanses have time to develop.

Zulu - The entire power comes online late Medieval, with no economic traits to get you there. Shaka would require dedicated attention to the economy throughout the ancient and classical eras in order to hopefully remain relevant until reaching Mercenaries. At that point, the ability to directly build cheaper corps (which also get +5 strength) essentially means that every unit is a UU for Zulu at that point. The Impi UU itself is uninspiring as a Pikeman replacement (due to the general weakness of anti-cavalry). At least you can upgrade into the UU, and they are much cheaper, and they get double flanking (+4/unit) but not double support. The half-price Encampment district is nice-ish except that your half price district doesn't grant any economic benefits. It's not really useful for using the discount mechanic since it eats up a district slot for no economic gain. At least you lock down the early GGeneral(s) and can defend from a rush. But you probably don't want to be rushing yourself in order to stay on the Mercenaries trajectory. This has some appeal similar to Brazil I played in PBEM 11 (no real economic trait, but powerful MG UU at the end of a long "beeline").

Brazil - Nope, been there done that. The Brazilian UU is truely dominant on the seas if you can get there, but I've already played and want to try something new.

Scotland - Not much there except for the GScientists and GEngineers that you'll generate. Sounds very vanilla and uninspiring

Macedonia - Rush or bust. Either win by Medieval or fizzle out. Not really the type of play that I'm looking for this game.

Poland - The relic ability looks strong but is almost impossible to trigger. The Encampment culture bomb is nice for acquiring tiles, but Russia gets that many tiles for free with no investment. Winged Hussar is irrelevant. It is expensive, can't be upgraded into, and is Medieval which means it can't be build at a discount with the ancient policy card ... but the policy card that gives it the discount is on the bottom of the Civics tree while the unit is unlocked at the top of the Civics tree The entire power rests on the trade-route-boosting UB, and the wildcard slot. But unless something other than a military policy is run in that wildcard then that portion is irrelevant. Religious conversion using a fort could maybe provide an outside shot at religious victory but I just don't see enough here to inspire me [EDIT: more useful is probably Crusade ]. I'd rather take one of my other options. Really it is the UU that is disappointing. If it was unlocked at Reformed Church at the same time as the discount card then it might be a little more interesting. I'll cross this off the list.

India - India seems like a well rounded civ to me. Varu is a terrifying unit on land. Expensive for the early game but unlocked early and the strongest of the Classical units, and maintains relevancy throughout the Medieval and beyond with the -5 aura (which unfortunately no longer stacks ). Movement is slow but on defense I don't think that there is any more powerful unit in the era. The stepwell is a little weak early, but once housing caps start slowing growth it can keep you growing vertical. The Stepwell's high food and housing might allow you to run some specialists. The extra missionary charges make spreading your religion internally a breeze. May make religious victory slightly easier but the challenge as always would be keeping missionaries alive. Late game bonus in the doubled war weariness from Gandhi. No strong economic traits but the Varu supports the economy through deterring aggression and allowing focus on more buildering. Basically this is a flexible civ: Option for early warring if the opportunity presents itself, protection from invasion, mild economic bonuses.

And with that, the list is cut down to Phoenicia, Zulu, and India for further musings.

[Cornflakes]

How practical is Phoenicia if I don't have a coastal start? If the map is anything like PBEM 15 then I could be a significant distance from the start to where I would need to found a couple of cities before pushing to the coast. I played a quick-and-dirty sim of such a situation to see. But before I walk through the issues, let's look at the actual numbers of the settler and ship production discount.  

   

If my math is right ... The discount on settlers is only 25%, comparing the Cothon Savings vs. the cost with just the policy card in place. The ship discount is 20% compared to just running the 100% discount policy (aka build 5 get one free).

Here is what needs to happen for an inland start before the Cothon can be constructed and start taking effect.
1) 2nd city ... can't count on a good 2nd city site to be coastal. 3rd city ... might be coastal but can't count on it (or picking up 2 sea resources even if it is coastal). 4th city should be able to be coastal and pick up 2 sea resources. It seems like GS spawns more sea resources than vanilla [although this is a custom map so that depends on Woden's resource distribution not the script]
2) Worker techs > basic defensive techs (archery + HBR) > Celestial Navigation. Can skip the BW>IW line as long as I have access to horses because archers plus a horseman or two will be enough to deter aggression, especially since I would intentionally settle conservatively.
3) City #4 that is settled on the coast still has to grown to get Cothon constructed in reasonable timeframe. Does it need any other infrastructure before pumping out settlers? In my test game I planted my coastal city with double hill banana and it still took me 25 turns from unlocking Cothon to complete the first settler, and that was with cash-buying the lighthouse. I wasn't optimizing or anything but it just reinforced how slow production is from newly settled cities.

I could re-base traders to the new city to help with early growth and production, which I didn't do. But that is a lot of investment and planning dedicated to working around Phoenicia's ability. And this pigeonholes me into finding and developing a coastal empire early rather than remaining flexible to the in-game situation. Also, the ship production bonus will not be very impactful on a single-landmass setup. Sure I can own the seas, but that doesn't matter much when my end-game rival will be the opponent who has gobbled up a neighbor and owns a large chunk of the interior. Given the same roll of civ options on an islands map I would be very interested to try Phoenicia, but it just doesn't fit here.

Therefore we are down to Zulu vs. India

[Woden]

Here is your start...



Edit:Added yields to screenshot

[Cornflakes]

Thanks Woden! Tile yields are appreciated

Can't complain about this start, plenty of production now and into the future! Forest hill deer is one of the better tiles to work early game, behind forest hill spices (6 yield!) and jungle hill banana (with all the production available here I'd rather have the 3 food from the banana). Rice will provide food as we grow, and the irrigation eureka. 1NE on the plain hill with deer 1st ring is probably my best option.

Starting build order I still favor Warrior > [settler + builder in some order, depending on terrain] > Scout. I've detailed previously the advantages of warrior first but I'll put a summary here. The two options to compare with are (1) slinger, and (2) scout. 
(1) The only advantage of slinger first compared to warrior is achieving the Archery eureka (worth 20). Downside is that a slinger independently is not capable of taking on a barb camp independently without luck and good terrain. More often than not I was forced to retreat a redlined slinger back to the capital when confronted by barbs. In PBEM 11 my warrior-first play enabled me to successfully plunder early barb camp spawns on both sides of my capital, without triggering an eruption, while still escorting my settler.
(2) Scout first is a trade-off between expansion speed and exploration. For the cost of delaying your first settler + builder by about 4 turns you can slip in a scout before the warrior and gain some additional early map knowledge. Personally I prefer to get the first settler + builder out early and then build the scout while still waiting for Craftsmanship to slot Agoge for more military. Two warriors are enough to meet any immediate city states and defog enough territory for intelligently settling the 2nd city.

In the past I almost always skipped the Archery eureka and straight-up built archers rather than upgrading from slingers. Now in Gathering Storm with the upgrade costs increased it cost 60 gold for the slinger > Archer upgrade vs. 20 extra cost with Agoge for just building the archers. That's a 3:1 ratio which is not great. I'd rather spend the gold purchasing a builder or monument to speed development of a new city, or saving for sword upgrades (or later Mercenaries-boosted medieval attack).

[Cornflakes]

I'm going to lock in INDIA (GANDHI) as my civ/leader for this game.

I want the flexibility that I can get from India with multiple avenues to pursue. Classical/medieval warfare, peaceful development, religion, easy golden age though Stepwell + Varu (that I can time the era points to hit for either Classical or Medieval eras).

[Woden]

India confirmed. Good luck!

[Cornflakes]

I have to admit, I am pleasantly surprised and quite pleased with some of the changes in the Gathering Storm (or more accurately in the June and September patches post GS release).

- Lumbermills unlocking at Construction and offering +2 production makes chopping and mining no longer the one right choice. In fact, my current thinking is that construction beeline is more advantageous that Apprenticeship for the mine boosts. I can take my forest hills and boost them to 1/5 output with a single builder charge. Whereas chopping and mining would take 2 builder charges to get to 1/5. Plus Construction can be reached without unlocking any additional districts which allows for planning around the discount mechanic. And the forests will be there for chopping later in an emergency or into a wonder.

- Battering Rams and Siege Towers now only work for melee and anti-cavalry!!!!!!! This is huge and deserves that many exclamation points. This change should have been made 2 years ago way back by the 2nd or 3rd vanilla patch. Mounted units were the one right choice, and the only reason to ever use melee was the ability to upgrade from warriors into swords while horsemen had to be scratch built. The biggest gripe I had with combat was that horsemen could fly across the map and use a single battering ram (which had already used all of it’s movement points) to attack a city, even if the battering ram was on the complete opposite side of the city with no movement points remaining. Now at least the battering ram has to be used by melee and there will have to be some consideration for what unit mix is brought on an assault. For me as India my varu will feature heavily but those no longer work with battering rams. Slightly (very slightly) sad in a way but this was a much needed change.

- Medieval walls now negate battering rams while Renaissance walls negate Siege Towers. This also is a welcome change. It always felt weird that all the effort and production to build the later era of walls just added a little extra HP that took maybe one more turn to crack. Now facing a ram-accompanied invasion, putting up Medieval walls will be an effective counter. I can’t remember where those later walls are unlocked on the tree since I have literally never built a walls past ancient.

- Great person points get converted to faith when there are not of that type available to recruit. Practically this only matters for GProphet points, but this is a minor buff to Holy Sites and the HS buildings. A couple extra Faith per turn adds up and there are some nice ways to use faith now, other than just missionaries and apostles.

- Lighthouse now grants additional +2 housing when adjacent to city center. Nice buff to coastal locations, albeit still requiring some investment to pay off.

- Veterancy military policy now also affects harbors and harbor buildings! Nice buff to those district there with the +30% bonus. With commercial CS bonuses now applying to harbors as well, this makes the harbor at least as appealing as a commercial hub, if not more so (at least that is my initial reaction). This is another buff to Phoenicia but not enough to change my mind.

All-in-all some good changes since I last played a PBEM.