Last signup, and (almost?) last to create a thread. OFF TO A GREAT START. Reserved for future use. I got my screenshot directly, so that's incoming in the next post.
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[SPOILERS] scooter is fashionably late to PB54
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Alright, I should explain my approach for this game first. This is probably going to be a pretty casual game for me. I say probably because I'm a competitive person that has a hard time playing games like this casually. That said, time demands I take one of my games very casually, and let's be honest here, PB53 is the high rollers table. However, that game will end before this one, so I'd like to have some toys to play with that come online later in this game juuuust in case I'm still in contention by the time PB53 winds down. Expect updates in this thread to be a bit sparse by my usual standards. Alright, screenshot courtesy of Commodore:
 After playing PB53, whew. Where's the food? And what are those brown tiles? Anyway, I'm not going to pick FIN or PRO again just because I want something new. I want to play something a bit different than my norm here. I've got an itch to play Spiritual, so that's definitely on the table here. PHI, CHM, and IND are the other traits on my radar because they sound fun. Out of this group, I think CHM is probably the only one that will be highly prized by other players (maybe?), so I don't think I'll have a ton of competition at leader picking. Brennus, Gandhi, and Nebuchadnezzar are three on my radar at the moment. Let's go wild and pick a Mysticism civ too maybe? 
Alright, this draft from me was kind of a mess. Why Gandhi of Korea? Well... I went into this with three leaders on my mind - Gandhi, Nebuchadnezzar, and Brennus, and the order constantly changed. As for civ, I was pretty probably going to take Byz if it somehow fell to me (nope). Spain was vaguely on my radar, but that was first picked. I was pretty seriously thinking about Russia and then taking one of my PHI leaders on the way back. I felt this was kind of a memey choice, but I wondered how fast I could get to PHI Research Labs (Uni replacement now) via bulbs, especially if I could pair it with Nebuchadnezzar and get Pyramids. That sounded pretty fun. Imagine my surprise when Russia fell 5th.
The other problem is this start is kind of a mess. I have no food resources that I can pick a starting tech for at all. If I don't pick either Agriculture or Hunting, I cannot finish AH in time for my worker. The oasis does mean I'll get a little science boost. Commodore also informed me the incense is moving under the plains hill and the river being tweaked enough to give my city a 2/2/2 plant, so I've got some decent tech here at least. That still leaves me in a bit of a no mans land when it comes to picking a civ. Ultimately, I decided that what I wanted most was to play Spiritual, and then try to make the pieces fit around that. So I locked in Gandhi, and I figured I'd just make sense of whatever was left to me when it came back. To me that means a Mysticism start is important, because I do want to snag one of the early religions and get into Organized Religion relatively early, and a lot of players are taking Mysticism civs. So... what on earth do I pair with Mysticism? Agriculture would be best, but Incas are the only civ to fit the bill, and they're a terrible choice for me because I plan on using religion for borders, so having more expensive granaries is arguably worse than a blank UB. That leaves Hunting. There are 3 Mysticism/Hunting civs, and Celts/HRE were taken. That's fine, as Aztecs were actually my top choice here because I wanted to take the Sacrificial Altar for a spin. I took a quick 10 mins and tried it out, but it felt so awkward because 1) I still wanted Agriculture because otherwise the first worker had nothing to do after the pasture, and 2) Hunting doesn't actually help my start in any way, which slows my progress to a religion. So, what about Mysticism/Mining? I then open Agriculture-AH-BW, and then go get my religion. The downside is my worker has to kill a couple turns by prefarming the floodplains while waiting for AH to come in, but getting into Slavery sooner to whip my first settler generally felt like it made up for it. There are 3 Mysticism/Mining civs. Mayans were taken, so that left India vs Korea. I don't think the Indian UU is all that good anymore in this mod unless you are just swamped in forests. Korea's UB is kind of meh, but I do get it cheap with PHI, and the UU is a middling but decent UU, so I went with that. I think this is probably a pretty weak combo in the scheme of things, but I guess we'll find out. ninja-edit: good thing I didn't pick India. Turns out that had already been picked, but I didn't notice. 
A few misunderstandings there
- Inca UB has changed, it's now a standard granary that spreads irrigation around the city. - Nobody took Celts so far
Mods: RtR CtH
Pitboss: PB39, PB40, PB52, PB59 Useful Collections: Pickmethods, Mapmaking, Curious Civplayer Buy me a coffee
I must have mixed up India and Celts when I was crossing off prospective civs. Clearly I know very well what's going on.
 (August 29th, 2020, 11:20)Charriu Wrote: - Inca UB has changed, it's now a standard granary that spreads irrigation around the city. Somehow I missed this. That... sounds somehow even weaker. I have some thoughts about the current state of India and Inca, but I'll wait until the picks are done to post that in the CTH thread. Basically I think they might be basically blank civs at this point. India especially I think is worse than a blank civ the more that I think about it.
Looking forward to it
Mods: RtR CtH
Pitboss: PB39, PB40, PB52, PB59 Useful Collections: Pickmethods, Mapmaking, Curious Civplayer Buy me a coffee
Some basic trait/civ pick thoughts in the interest of some CTH analysis. Here is the raw trait pick counts in this game:
Quote:imp: 5 Imperialistic as top and Charismatic high up there as well doesn't shock me. Those were the most viable BtS traits to receive a buff in this mod, so the reaction seems to be to rate them highly. I think in general that's probably correct, but it's map dependent a little bit. This map will be pretty small, so I'm a bit skeptical of the settler bonus here. That said, part of the reason IMP is prized so much now is the Stable bonus is really a big deal when HAs are the consensus classical unit of choice. I think the map will favor Charismatic a good bit here because Commodore map means natural-ish which means less lush and likely less happy access. I think Charismatic was the best available trait on these settings, and Chm/Imp of HA/Knight UU the scariest non-Byzantine combination available. Financial on the other hand is somewhat surprising to see in second, but maybe some players are seeing even more water than I am. I argued CTH 1.3 Financial was fine as-is, and a planned nerf got removed, so I guess we'll find out if that was correct or not. I'm pretty skeptical of the trait and think it's middle of the road on most maps, so if I'm right, it was overpicked here. I'm surprised to see Industrious picked only once. I was really close to picking it, but I suspected it would be highly prized, so I didn't feel great picking it at the bottom of the snake pick. Now I slightly wish I did. The cheapening of Metal Casting really is a massive IND buff that doesn't get discussed much. I'm also surprised to see Expansive picked only once. I think it's still a very good trait, and the only reason I didn't consider it was due to wanting to play other things. Starting Techs chosen: Quote:Mysticism: 6 It's difficult to really analyze this because I don't know the other starts. For example, 3 Fishing civs were taken, and I have no seafood. That makes me think some of them do, reinforcing my belief that these starts are definitely not mirrored in any way or all that close. Zero Agriculture civs were taken, but it's so cheap now that it's hard not to blame people. The most interesting is Mysticism being chosen by 6/11 players, when in vanilla BtS that's the worst tech. I generally don't think it's good for the game for Mysticism to be a top tech choice. I'll migrate some of my thoughts on that over to the CTH thread at some point soon, but I think it needs to lose its commerce bonus. Lightning Round. Player-independent pairing tiers in descending order. I was ok with un-nerfing Phracts until I thought about it for a few minutes Justinian of Byzantine Oh yeah, that's the good stuff Augustus of Spain Cyrus of Mongolia Washington of Maya I can see it if I squint Gandhi of Korea Charlemagne of Khmer Well, it's not a total disaster Hannibal of Japan Ragnar of England Darius of HRE Pericles of Russia Should we let him repick? Victoria of India
I will address Mysticism in the next version. As soon as I have access to the full PB52 experience I will collect all the data to evaluate the change. I basically only need the turn everybody teched Mysticism for all the non-mysticism civs there. Those would be Jowy, Mr. Cairo, giraflorens, pindicator and Superdeath
Mods: RtR CtH
Pitboss: PB39, PB40, PB52, PB59 Useful Collections: Pickmethods, Mapmaking, Curious Civplayer Buy me a coffee
September 3rd, 2020, 12:39
(This post was last modified: September 3rd, 2020, 12:39 by scooter.)
 So when I logged in after the first turn roll, I noticed on the demo screen everyone had settled, which made me think I was the only one to move my settler. Then I noticed Elkad was still in-game and was the only one to end turn 1, and the top-5 cities screen had a 3960BC city on it. So there you go, Elkad and I moved our capitals, while everyone else SIP. Not being able to see score is weird, but I don't mind it. I like that this scoreboard is putting me on bottom for whatever reason. There's more water than I initially thought. That may be why we saw so many FIN picks. Still angling for a religion, but not at the expense of mandatory techs. Commodore tried to troll/convince me into blowing all that off and going for the Hydra. While that's a terrible idea, I'd be lying if I said I didn't at least sit and consider it for a good 10 minutes. While of course it would be a terrible idea, but it would also be a memorable one. I have a soft spot for memorable, terrible plans, but it's not meant to be this time. By the way, naming theme will be esports. Korea is essentially the birthplace of modern esports, so it's an obvious choice. What I haven't decided yet is how to actually name the cities. Should I name them after games that have been esports over the years, or individual players? Or some combination of the two? |
