[59] Miguelito and Rusten move stacks to berimbau rythms

[Rusten]

I do think Exp is pretty weak now, but at least it has a consistent benefit. We know we'll get at least something out of it. I'm high on Pacal because I'm increasingly convinced a pure economic trait in Fin is necessary, not because of Exp. You haven't ran any sims yet, but when you do you'll immediately notice the implications of huge size (and emperor to boot). Things take a lot of time. Spi/Imp can hang with the rest of them in a smaller PB, but for this game I'm not sure it's enough.

If this was a 7-10 player pitboss on normal map size I'd not consider Pacal nor the new Fin version, but on huge emperor I think it's necessary. Already seeing so much grass river also boosts it a bit. Fin is probably overnerfed and will not see (much) play in smaller games with a snakepick, but this PB is not normal.

There's also a synergy of sorts in that cheaper granaries speed up the important Fin lighthouse.

[Miguelito]

So, the way we played Justin in PB54 put a heavy emphasis on foodhammers, and we started cottaging rather late, and only at two cities (of 9 in our homeland). This was motivated by the food poor map and your conclusion to go for a serfdom economy. It worked out, but we were struggling with commerce between few cottages and a lot of cities until we got the caste/rep combo going. Still went broke for like 20 turns during the war later on, although we managed to recover.

So this one would need to be played differently. Scale back on the landgrab (still keep up of course), and invest the hammers saved on settlers into additional workers to develop an early cottage core / work those cottages instead of mines. Later support with caste and maybe serfdom, cycling in and out of slavery, depending on what the rest of the map looks like.

Does that make any sense? You've had me nearly convinced to lock in Pacal like 3 times already, but somehow I have a bad feeling about swallowing all those nerfs with a happy face.

[Rusten]

Yeah. Instead of farming river and then replacing farms with watermills later on I think we should commit to cottages early to a much higher degree. Possibly rush-buy with Kremlin to win the endgame. I imagine much less cycling between slavery and caste/serfdom than the previous game. Probably only for golden ages and specific periods.

[Miguelito]

Not sure if I'm following, are you talking about the game with Pacal or Justinian here, or either? I'd think the cottage focus is correct for both at least early on. With Justin i would think we do want to cycle in and out of slavery a lot. Windmills and at later sites watermills should still be very much worthwhile. Can also see bureaucracy/vassalage cycles, and OR/Theo to go with it.

And again, we are not sure yet if our wider surroundings look as lush as the starting zone.

[Rusten]

I mean that with a Fin leader the incentive is to cottage river right away, not farm first and then compensate with improving to a watermill later. I can certainly see benefit in Spi, I would've loved Asoka or Mansa Musa, but for this format I'd just keep Pacal.

[Miguelito]

also would have loved those two, we can still send back the leaders and hope Ichabod had one of those besides JC :P (really not serious)

bonus point for Spi: If we get a civ with mysticism, that's likely more useful.

How profound would your disagreement be if I went for Justinian?

[Rusten]

I think you're making the game much more difficult for yourself if you pick Justinian, but you have the final say in all things.

However, I do want to reiterate that there's no way to get BW for the first settler, so Imp does nothing there. It's not the best game for it, IMO.

edit: I'd also be very quick to send back a civ with myst, unless it had some other big upsides. With starting techs so expensive it's a very bad tech.

[Miguelito]

ok. keep Pacal, reroll civ.

bit sad for not going for the meme pick though .

[Lewwyn]

You may choose to accept or reject again. After this you will have one more round if you reject. For civilizations. in the third round any civ twice rejected will be removed from the pool.

Second round choices:

France

[Miguelito]

Hm. Same suboptimal starting techs. I would have preferred two of agri/hunting/fishing/mining, but I am not that much against wheel - as I said I think a second city off the river SW of the elephant is likely imo. Rusten made a sim with these techs and I understand it came out ok?

Somewhat useful UU (would be better wtih Spi for draft cycles but that's water down the bridge). What do you use it for, stack defender for knights that gets defense boni? Well I guess muskets also have the benefit that the target ideally does not have the pinch promotion yet, and it's the first two mover that ignores walls.

The good thing about the UB is that you probably want to build a number of observatories anyways. The free artist is underwhelming, but at least it's free GPP. Rusten mentioned culture victory, where it would surely be helpful.

Not very excited tbh. Otoh if we send it back we could get a mysticism civ.

To metagame this:

For civilizations. in the third round any civ twice rejected will be removed from the pool.

So we have 2 more civs than number of players. Which means that in the third round the pool will contain at most 4 civs, which were not included in one of the first two rounds. So I suppose no more than 4 people sent back their civs?