[SPOILERS] naufragar is not a number; he is a free man

[naufragar]

Be seeing you.

Password is

joe

[DaveV]

Looking forward to when you release Rover.

[naufragar]

Dave, between this and your fondness for Gene Wolfe, I think you have Good Taste.

[naufragar]

Well, let me not be coy. I'm gonna try to find city names from the hit 1960s TV Show The Prisoner:



The Prisoner follows the repeated attempts of a man, known only as Number 6, to escape from a surreal resort town known only as the Village. So long as Number 6 is in the Village, he is subjected to repeated attempts to break him in order to discover the reason he resigned from his top secret job. Torture is too boring for the Village's masters, so instead Number 6 undergoes...well... how do I say this? One of the plans to break 6 is to put him in a simulation of a Wild West town. Another is to trick him and others into correspondence courses. Yeah, this show is bonkers. The Prisoner isn't really about spies and secrets. It's not particularly subtle about being a surrealist drama about the condition of the individual in an increasingly quantified and managed world. What makes this so amusing is that one could be forgiven for thinking that The Prisoner, wacky as it is, is a sequel series to the straight-laced Danger Man ("Secret Agent" in America). You might be familiar with the theme song (Secret Agent Man), which has greatly outlasted the show.

Pseudo-edit: I'm only allowed to have 1 video per post so the rest have to be URLs. 
Secret Agent

There is a lot of Secret Agent. I haven't seen series 1, but I did watch series 2-4 before coming to the Prisoner, so I naturally saw Number 6 (played by Patrick McGoohan) as a continuation of Secret Agent's main character John Drake, also played by McGoohan. For what it's worth, Secret Agent and The Prisoner cemented McGoohan's place at the top of my favorite actors list. If you've never heard of Patrick McGoohan, fret not. Perhaps you've seen him in Braveheart, as the wicked king Longshanks:

Longshanks

Or, perhaps in the underappreciated gem Treasure Planet, in which he plays Billy Bones (the turtle-looking alien in the clip below):
Billy Bones

Yes, Longshanks and Billy Bones are the same actor.  I can't adequately describe how much I love to watch McGoohan, and I'm thoroughly tickled that after years of playing (a better) James Bond, they let him make his own show and he came back with high concept craziness. (He's also a really good shouter, which it feels like we've lost. Antony Mackie in Altered Carbon, looking at you.)

So yeah, come for the civ, little as there will be. Stay for the 60s British television.

[Lewwyn]

Your first Civ choice: India


Your first leader choices: Boudica, Joao


Starting screenshots will be posted in a couple days. You may wait to finalize a choice until then. You may reject or accept any of these choices. You will have a max of 2 more choices of civ and a max of 4 more leaders.

[naufragar]

Thanks, Lewwyn. I promise to whine about the map the appropriate amount, so you don't feel cheated of the mapmaker experience.    Still always love. 

So, some preliminary thoughts about the options. It's very hard for me to imagine a world in which I don't pick Joao of India. Boudica in CtH isn't terrible. Charismatic is decently strong. It's basically a grab-bag of goodies. The happiness bonus is central, but it helps considerably with border-popping (CtH gives Cha +100% monument production). It's also quite nice for warmongers with its XP bonus. (And for what it's worth, Agg/Cha is the best combo for commando-production.  ) Agg is fine. In CtH, it gets -50% unit maintenance costs. I have no clue how much that effect does. It could be busted; it could be worthless. I just have no idea. I trust Charriu, though. I think that even without Joao on the table, I'd re-roll Boudica. I like Cha, but not enough to select in the first round when paired with Agg.

Joao I love. Imp is my favorite trait. I don't think it needs a nerf (as TBS points out, the three "early game" traits of Imp, Exp, and Cre all save their players 30 hammers, and I've argued elsewhere that the boogieman of the Imp snowball is somewhat overstated). On the other hand, I admit my extreme bias. I love Imp.  In CtH, Exp loses its worker-production bonus, bringing the trait from "broken" to "good." Exp gains a +100% production bonus on aqueducts, but CtH lowers the cost of aqueducts to 80h, so it's not a huge deal. If we live to the industrial era, maybe we build an aqueduct. Ick. Basically CtH Joao is still Joao. He gets crucial early discounts and can pass the savings on to more settlers and workers. As with BtS, his speed comes at a time when there's not much to do besides expand, so it's easy to crater one's economy. This game is on Emperor difficulty, so let's see how I do.

India in this version of CtH keeps its Fast Worker unique unit (costing 60h) but with 2 moves & the Mobility promotion, rather than a straight three moves. It's a significant nerf: part of the usefulness of the Fast Worker was needing fewer workers per city, since they could zip around so fast. This new version of the Fast Worker synergizes incredibly effectively with Joao. They can move into forests and begin chopping on the same turn. India/Joao is quick, to put it mildly. India's techs are Mining/Mysticism, which is pretty meh. They aren't the worst (that would be Wheel/Myst), and I can stomach a Mysticism start in exchange for the Fast Worker, I think. At least, I say that now. In the Civforum pitboss, I played Mysticism/Hunting on Deity/Huge costs and that was miserable. I won't lock in the pick until I'm sure the start isn't completely contrary to what I've got.

Long story short: India/Joao goes vroom vroom. Will almost certainly choose them.

[Lewwyn]

Here is the starting screenshot. Let me know when you've decided whether to lock in either the civ or leader or what you'd like to reroll. Confirm in the next two days please. I will be rerolling for everyone that rejects either civ or leader or both once I have all confirmations for this round of selections.

Your start:

[naufragar]

Thanks for the start, Lewwyn (and the map in toto).

Let's lock in Joao of India.

[naufragar]

Uh oh. I'm almost off page 1. I better write some filler.

TBS in the tech thread points out that Emperor/Huge tech costs are brutal. Emperor beat Monarch in the settings vote 16-9. Can't just blame the Germans for that margin. I appreciate that people have different tastes, but high difficulty level multiplayer is just wrong.  It's got the same problem that comes from playing on barren maps: it strips away choice, and therefore strategy, from the players.

If your tech costs are enormous, you can't justify starting with Mysticism or a food tech that doesn't match your start. When playing base BtS, it exacerbates the value of commerce (and so, Financial). When tech costs are high, you don't get to deviate on tech choices later in the game. Detour for artistic techs and wonders? Dead to Ele/Cats. Put beakers into Horse Archery without killing a neighbor? Dead to Ele/Cats. For some reason tried to wait until Guilds for conquest? Dead to the guy who conquered a neighbor with Ele/Cats.

Now, I'm protesting a little bit too much. After all, I have picked a civ that starts with Mysticism, and I'm taking out my PB88 trauma (which was Deity, as Noble points out in the tech thread) on PB59. As I warned you, this post is filler.

[naufragar]

And I didn't mean to put fuel on the fire of "change the settings after picks have been given out." Should've kept my mouth shut. I've already figured out my opening for Emperor/Huge. Don't make me redo it.