[SPOILERS] scooter's PB53

[scooter]

There are two reasons I love this picking method.

1. I don't have to learn the changes for every civ, just the 5 I pick and the 5 the others pick
   
2. When I inevitably lose, I can blame the leader/civ selection I was given.
   

Obviously there's no way I could have won when The Black Sword was given the best leader choice! Surely it wasn't his significantly higher skill level.

[pindicator]

A scooter game! I just recently noticed you're playing 50 too. But now I'm in on the ground floor. Hurray!

[scooter]

A scooter game!  I just recently noticed you're playing 50 too.  But now I'm in on the ground floor.  Hurray!

Played. The game just wrapped yesterday. Turns out I'm very rusty! Anyway, getting in on the ground floor is always a good idea. I can't promise I'll do well, but I can promise I'll do a decent job of documenting what a washed-up Civ4 player looks like in action.




Also, I've looked at my choices:





And after thinking about it for like 5 seconds.... I'm totally going to end up taking Pacal, huh.

[scooter]

It's hard to know where to start with breaking down my choices when a new mod is involved. A lot of the changes are similar to RtR, but also quite different. I'm going to list out my options and try to highlight the main changes. There are other changes that indirectly affect things, but I'll focus on the more direct changes first. Here's my leader choices.

Ragnar (Fin/Agg)
Frederick (Org/Phi)
Pacal (Fin/Exp)
Shaka (Agg/Exp)
Wang Kon (Fin/Pro)
Tokugawa (Agg/Pro)
Mehmed (Org/Exp)
Montezuma (Agg/Spi)
Peter (Exp/Phi)

Here's the breakdown of my number of options along with changes to vanilla in this mod.


Agg: 4 - +1 happiness on Barracks and +100% production of Jails
Fin: 3 - +1 commerce on land tiles that have 3+ commerce, +1 commerce on water tiles that have 2+ commerce, +100% production of bank
Exp: 3 - Remove Worker bonus, add +100% production of Aqueduct
Org: 2 - No changes
Pro: 2 - +75% trade route yield (like Harbors do)
Phi: 2 - +150% GPP instead of +100%
Spi: 1 - No changes (civic changes indirectly buff this a little bit)
Imp: 0 - +100% production of Stable
Ind: 0 - No changes (100% wonder multipliers are nerfed to 50%, which indirectly buffs this. Cheaper Metal Casting also buffs this.)
Chm: 0 - +100% production of Monument, +100% production of Colosseum
Cre: 0 - Reduce Library bonus from 100% to 50%, Remove production bonus for Colosseum

I gotta admit, I was secretly hoping to score the shiny new PHI/IND. I have no idea if it would actually be good, but it sounded fun. I hope Cornflakes picks it, especially since both those traits are buffed here. Philosophical and Industrious on their own were two traits I was somewhat interested in here, but I didn't get many of those choices here. My initial feeling is that Aggressive seems pretty weak, but our presumably smaller map here buffs it up a little bit. I'm still a bit inclined to rule it out, but I won't do that just yet. Financial I think is probably back on top in this mod. It's still slow to get going, but the two staple turbo traits from Vanilla in Exp and Cre both got nerfs, so I think it actually may have improved relative to those. It may depend on how much riverside/water I see.

Vikings - Unchanged
Ethiopia - Unchanged (sort of - see Charriu's note below)
China - Unchanged (sort of)
Mongolia - Unchanged
America - UB: NEW Immigration Station - Harbor replacement, +3 Great People Points, +1 happy from Hit Musical, Singles and Movies
UU: NEW Minuteman - Musket replacement, Starts with Guerrilla 1 and Woodsman 1.

VIKINGS. My old friends never let me down. I will always preach that they're a criminally underrated civ, and they got no nerfs here. China is an old favorite of everyone for good reason, and they are technically unchanged. I think the Cho-Ku-Nu is by far the best UU to not get a single nerf, and that alone is pretty noteworthy. They technically got a very minor nerf in that Agriculture is 33% cheaper now, which means less of a benefit to starting with it, but China may be the best all-around choice here still. Ethiopia is OK I guess, and Mongolian Keshiks have always ruled, but those civs are otherwise unchanged. Finally, America. The Harbor-replacing UB has some interesting synergies I'll get to later, and the Minuteman is interesting, though as always the timing is difficult to make work.


This is getting a bit long, but this is a good start. Next, I want to start pulling apart what synergies might exist for me. I also have read very little from the existing CTH game, so maybe I should check in on that to get a feel for what's worked and what hasn't.

[Charriu]

Ethipia has a hidden change. Their UB does no longer obsolete. In fact no UB obsoletes anymore.

[scooter]

Alright, I'm going to throw a bunch of synergies I see against the wall and see what sticks.


* Organized Vikings. I think it's kind of a bad trait, but paired with Mehmed, this is an interesting choice. Mehmed lets me get the Granary/Trading Post pairing at half cost, and I get cheap Harbors too if coastal trade routes prove to be strong here. Plus, it's an excuse to play Vikings.


* Protective China. Protective I think is a pretty weak trait in this mod, but CKNs are one of the best units in this mod, and Protective makes them extra terrifying. In addition, I've got two interesting traits available to pair with this. On one hand, I've got Aggressive available if I want even scarier CKNs, though that likely means playing a bit from behind the growth curve and relies on having a neighbor that's prime to eat. Financial/Protective on the other hand has some economic juice. Protective's big new boost here is the trade route yield. This is meaningful, because your trade routes generally start at 2 commerce/turn immediately, as I understand it. Pair that with Financial, and while your growth curve might struggle a bit, you've got a tech powerhouse that leads up to a killer trait-boosted UU.


* Philosophical China. This is a fun variant that is arguably scarier, and anyone who watched my PB50 game will immediately know what's up. The best part is that it's way easier to pull off in CTH than in RtR. The method here is to get Metal Casting early (300b in CTH versus 450b in vanilla), and use it to build a Forge and run an Engineer. This will result in an Engineer in 14T. Then, use the Engineer to bulb Machinery, and boom, you've got yourself Cho-Ku-Nus a full era before longbows start appearing. Peter would probably be the choice here, as Expansive would let me keep a good growth curve while pursuing this play, which is essential to making this work. It's a bit gimmicky, but if done right, it's awfully hard to stop. It still takes awhile to get Metal Casting, so the opportunity cost is not trivial, but the payoff can be immense on a cramped map.


* Peter of America. This is all about that UB. The UB is a Harbor that generates 3 GPP/turn. Expansive Harbor boost means I can built it at half-price, and it'll generate 7.5 GPP/turn instead of 3. That frankly sounds kind of busted if there are sufficient locations for coastal cities here. For your first city to build one, that's 40h in exchange for a great person 14T later, and you still get to have a Harbor too. I was slightly confused as to how this worked exactly, so I PM'd Charriu, and he was fine with me posting his explanation in here. Here's an abridged version of our conversation that started with me asking if those 3 GPP were Merchant points.

No, those are neutral GPP meaning they don't count towards any kind of GPP. Should you get a Great Person only via neutral GPP you will get a totally random Great Person.

Whoa. That's interesting. So, let's say I ran a city up to the great person threshold, and for sake of round numbers, half of the GPP are Merchant, and half are neutral. Does that mean my odds are 50% merchant, 50% random (so what, 60% Merchant), or is it 100% Merchant in that case because I generated another type?

No it means you will have 100% odds on a merchant. You could even put 1 Great Merchant point in there and 99 neutral and would still get 100% Great Merchant.

That sounds amazing. Anyway, on top of this, the traits are very solid regardless, and the UU is a reasonable cherry on top. I'm going to be quite sad if my start is land-locked, because the best power options I see are all dependent on water being mildly prevalent.

[Charriu]

* Protective China. Protective I think is a pretty weak trait in this mod, but CKNs are one of the best units in this mod, and Protective makes them extra terrifying. In addition, I've got two interesting traits available to pair with this. On one hand, I've got Aggressive available if I want even scarier CKNs, though that likely means playing a bit from behind the growth curve and relies on having a neighbor that's prime to eat. Financial/Protective on the other hand has some economic juice. Protective's big new boost here is the trade route yield. This is meaningful, because your trade routes generally start at 2 commerce/turn immediately, as I understand it. Pair that with Financial, and while your growth curve might struggle a bit, you've got a tech powerhouse that leads up to a killer trait-boosted UU.

You are correct about starting with 2 commerce trade routes as long as your city is connected to the capital. In fact every trade route will start with 2 commerce at least. With a bigger base trade value you can expect to profit more from trade in the later eras.

[Charriu]

* Philosophical China. This is a fun variant that is arguably scarier, and anyone who watched my PB50 game will immediately know what's up. The best part is that it's way easier to pull off in CTH than in RtR. The method here is to get Metal Casting early (300b in CTH versus 450b in vanilla), and use it to build a Forge and run an Engineer. This will result in an Engineer in 14T. Then, use the Engineer to bulb Machinery, and boom, you've got yourself Cho-Ku-Nus a full era before longbows start appearing. Peter would probably be the choice here, as Expansive would let me keep a good growth curve while pursuing this play, which is essential to making this work. It's a bit gimmicky, but if done right, it's awfully hard to stop. It still takes awhile to get Metal Casting, so the opportunity cost is not trivial, but the payoff can be immense on a cramped map.

You still need Iron connected and Archery for the CKN, just saying.

[scooter]

* Philosophical China. This is a fun variant that is arguably scarier, and anyone who watched my PB50 game will immediately know what's up. The best part is that it's way easier to pull off in CTH than in RtR. The method here is to get Metal Casting early (300b in CTH versus 450b in vanilla), and use it to build a Forge and run an Engineer. This will result in an Engineer in 14T. Then, use the Engineer to bulb Machinery, and boom, you've got yourself Cho-Ku-Nus a full era before longbows start appearing. Peter would probably be the choice here, as Expansive would let me keep a good growth curve while pursuing this play, which is essential to making this work. It's a bit gimmicky, but if done right, it's awfully hard to stop. It still takes awhile to get Metal Casting, so the opportunity cost is not trivial, but the payoff can be immense on a cramped map.

You still need Iron connected and Archery for the CKN, just saying.

Of course. I should clarify, I'm comparing to RtR crossbows, which in PB50 were basically Cho-Ku-Nus because they picked up the collateral feature for some reason. In that, Construction was required in addition to Machinery, which pushed the timeline on Crossbows back significantly. Here, no such Construction requirement exists, so the same play can be done far quicker.

[pindicator]

I'd think of PRO like this: you know how early on you want to get those foreign trade routes or a city on an island to get all your trade routes to jump for 1c to 2c? PRO gets that for free at the start, and then can jump up to 3c. I don't think it's a too big of a spoiler for pb52 to say that we're at turn 80 and I've just recently reached the threshhold where FIN would get me more commerce than PRO each turn. So PRO gets it faster, but FIN of course will overtake it later in the game. So I agree it's weaker than FIN, but it's a sneaky good buff. EDIT: Because it gives you the commerce ealier.