Gaspar and Lewwyn listen to backseat drivers Brick and Noble

[Charriu]

Not especially minimum, but the goal is to stay close to BtS, so that the mod is quick to learn for everyone. Lokk in my signature for it.

[Lewwyn]

I’m impressed you guys are still playing civ.

What’s Close to Home? A minimum impact balance mod?

Hey novice! Yes, we are apparently still playing. Though it is a recent thing. A return to the familiar in this time of trouble.

CtH would be minimum impact and balance. It's a little less aggressive than rtr. It's interesting and a new variation.

[Lewwyn]

Some of you might be wondering, "What happened to CYRUS OF MONGOLIA! KESHIKS!" and you would be right to wonder. 

Basically Jowy woke us up.

I mean if we were guaranteed to start next to him we would go KESHIKS. But during a long discussion last night, we decided that we were going to have to play more... seriously. This game is ripe for a win and honestly if we're going to talk shit about Jowy we'd better back it up. Cyrus of Mongolia is doable and could win but is too reliant on killing an early neighbor and eating them to stay competitive in the long run with the picks that we are seeing from the field. We have no way of knowing whether we'll have him as a neighbor. Better to survive and grow into power that can beat anyone. We've decided to go with a combo that has more staying power + we have elephants in the cap. And we decided that cheap Barays (50h for +1F) is a pretty decent and interesting combo.

The chat convo was long so if you beg Gaspar or noble they might be able to take a few highlights for your popcorn pleasure.

[novice]

I think that's majority agreeing with the previously agreed to rule set, making it also the currently agreed to rule set.

Team Lewwyn if these rules don't work for you and you plan to leave the game, please do it before picking, so the replacement is not locked into your choices.

Why yes Lord Jowy! How gracious of you to allow us to leave if such rules do not suit! As has been said numerous times, though it seemeth to have slipped thine mind we were always happy with any of the rules that our esteemed group has decided upon together in the manner which has been prescribed. Our only concern was that such rules had never been officially agreed upon by all herein this game. We truly mean no offense to your lordship as we only endeavored to clarify and rectify this minor oversight. After all who can truly know a man's mind until he has spoken out that which is within it. But praise be! Our rules have been spoken fairly of by a successful quorum and there is no issue at hand that I can see beyond wonderous picking of the snake. Let us proceed forthwith! With all haste! Godspeed my brethren!

[Lewwyn]

Yeah I mean its pretty clear that our bringing up the settings was not a big deal at all, had not explicitly been stated as accepted by everyone and was a completely reasonable point of discussion. There was no harm in talking about it, but apparently its Jowy's game and we're all just living it. He got pissy and threw a temper tantrum. News flash when you start a game its not YOUR game anymore its all of ours. Some people have a hard time with that.

[Gaspar]

I’m impressed you guys are still playing civ.

As Lewwyn helpfully responded already, it would be far more accurate to say we are playing Civ again.

Some of you might be wondering, "What happened to CYRUS OF MONGOLIA! KESHIKS!" and you would be right to wonder. 

The aforementioned chat log is illuminating, but not especially entertaining, so its probably best that we summarize here.  Basically, I think we were happy to do the Cyrus plan as this is not a world class field and we were not feeling super competitive - the game originally was more of an opportunity for us to virtually hang out after all these years and I've been wanting to try Cyrus in CtH with all the goodies given to CHM and IMP.  Also, commando mounted coming off the line with a little bit of creativity sure sounds fun.

But then Jowy happened...

So I was basically thinking about the discussion in the CtH 1.5 thread and how scooter said he still though EXP was the best expansion trait.  And that got me thinking about how Pacal might still be the best leader and I thought it might be fun to try and prove it.  Taking advantage of Pacal requires a lot of micro strength but Lewwyn and Noble both are strong in that area.  We landed on Khmer as a consequence of Pacal - basically, picking Civs the way we used to pick them, based on start techs.  We determined Hunting/Agriculture and Mining were the best start techs for this start which left as Civ choices China (didn't want to play them as we've both done it plenty), Ethipia (meh), Germany (even more meh), Russia (equally meh) and Khmer.  Given we have ivory in the starting screenshot and given that they had a UB that was made slightly more viable by Expansive, they were the obvious choice.

So that's how we went from CYRUS OF MONGOLIA to a...

[Lewwyn]

Hmmm Gavagai gets Egypt. A bit scary, its a good pick. I don't want to start next to him.

[Gaspar]

Hmmm Gavagai gets Egypt. A bit scary, its a good pick. I don't want to start next to him.

Eh, CRE is overrated in base BTS and its worse here. Ag/Wheel isn't as good either. War Chariots are scary of course. I don't want to start next to Gavagai regardless, because he's intractable and aggressive.

[scooter]

So I was basically thinking about the discussion in the CtH 1.5 thread and how scooter said he still though EXP was the best expansion trait.  And that got me thinking about how Pacal might still be the best leader and I thought it might be fun to try and prove it.  

I saw your pick in the setup thread before seeing this, and my first thought was "hey maybe someone agrees with me."


Glad to see you guys take a more traditional vanilla BtS pick to have as a comparison point. Games so far have had people mostly just load up on the stuff that's new.

[Lewwyn]

Hmmm Gavagai gets Egypt. A bit scary, its a good pick. I don't want to start next to him.

Eh, CRE is overrated in base BTS and its worse here.  Ag/Wheel isn't as good either.  War Chariots are scary of course.  I don't want to start next to Gavagai regardless, because he's intractable and aggressive.

Agree about CRE not being as good as it was, I'm more thinking about the WCs for sure. I think CRE with Egypt, are you going to build those obelisks? SO while I think Egypt is strong I agree I would be using a different leader.