[PB74 SPOILERS] scooter's Bluey Adventure

[scooter]

We nearly had Emperor there as the vote was straight-up deadlocked which was making me consider rerolling even my leaders just to try to get ORG.

For leaders, I think I’m out on Pericles. I think this is a totally solid leader, but it’s a bit not fun sounding, and I think it might be the weakest of my three options. Less sure about that. I know some think CRE is really strong on CtH right now. I’m less convinced of that, but maybe there’s something I’m missing here? I should say, if I see a commerce monster capital, I will be a bit tempted to circle back to Pericles as the Academy -> PHI Universities -> Oxford path is definitely one very real How To Tech paths you can follow.

Washington and Elizabeth are interesting in the context of my trait evaluations. I think these are both B+ leaders. The problem I have with these leaders is they both have clear deficiencies that I’d like to cover with a civ - either by leaning harder into the leader synergy, or by taking a civ that covers off the weakness a bit. The problem is Japan does neither of those things, and locking a leader would mean not knowing the civ with it. That’s one subtle disadvantage of this setup - if you lock one but not the other, you greatly decrease your chance of synergy between leader/civ. While I said those two leaders are B+ leaders, Japan is sort of a C- civ to be honest. The starting techs are kinda rough, and the UU/UB are both fine, but not super exciting. Sure the Forge melee XP + Samurai is pretty good, but I don’t have a leader that really synergizes with that much, so eh.


So I went and looked at what my reroll chances are. Here is the list of Civs that were not rolled yet:

America
Aztec
Byzantine
Celts
China
Dutch
England
Ethiopia
Greek
HRE
Korea
Mongolia
Ottomans
Russia
Spain

This makes me want to reroll as I think most of these are better than Japan, some significantly better, so the odds of getting something better seems high. However, you have to filter that through the fact that my dice roll will include these and also all the rejects from the first round. I still think I’m going to reroll Japan unless I roll an obvious WB-first start.

The thing I have no idea about is what to do with leader. With Washington, I have to figure out a way to tech. With Lizzie, I have to figure out a way to not fall too far behind on expansion, and I don’t know what Civ I might draw. That’s making me consider just rerolling the whole thing even if I may not necessarily roll something as good as, say, Washington. Basically because you only get one Civ but you get 3 Leaders per draw, it seems best to be happy with your Civ and then pick the leader that fits it best.

[Krill]

Personally I'd enjoy watching you deal with the challenge of handling Lizzie.

[scooter]

I’m definitely a bit intrigued by Lizzie. I don’t really subscribe as much to the traditional belief that it’s super anti-synergistic. There’s a little bit of that yeah, but I think folks underrate the PHI cheap universities and how it unlocks Oxford faster, and if you have the traditional FIN cottage spam capital, it can really be strong. Or how PHI can get you an Academy easily if you have a good spot for it. Or how easier Great Person access makes for easier Golden Ages on your already stronger cottages.


Granted, there are caveats to each of those things, but the larger point is you have enormous economic power in both the mid and late-game with Lizzie if you can keep pace with early game expansion. That’s why I wish I knew the Civ paired with it. If I knew I had really well-fitting starting techs, I’d be happy to lock Lizzie, trust I can execute the opening well enough, and then see what I can do. I’m just a tad nervous locking leader knowing I have just 2 more chances at a Civ. Rolling a Myst civ on a certain type of start would be sort of disastrous with Lizzie I think. (Though a religion itself wouldn’t be the worst thing.)


You know what, I did say I was sort of looking for a mission in this game besides “attempt to win.” Trying to prove FIN/PHI are fine together sounds like a pretty good one. Tell Q/Mjmd/whoever to give me a river start, and I’ll do it.

[Krill]

If you get a bad civ for a given start, does the leader actually matter? Whatever happens you have to overcome the bad start techs, and the leaders that speed up the start generally fall off so you're screwed either way.

[Qgqqqqq]

I've already posted your isolated icicle of a start - but I suppose I can edit in a river.

[scooter]

Gotta just say the discussion happening in the planning thread is sort of insane to me. Debating map settings after everyone has already had publicly visible leader rolls is absolutely wild to me. How are we over 100 games deep and still doing stuff like this? (I don’t care enough to actually make a fuss about it, only enough to snipe about it in here.)

I've already posted your isolated icicle of a start - but I suppose I can edit in a river.

Seems fair.

If you get a bad civ for a given start, does the leader actually matter? Whatever happens you have to overcome the bad start techs, and the leaders that speed up the start generally fall off so you're screwed either way.

Yeah this is true. Besides all this, the neighbor luck will always matter more than any of this, but that just happens to be the thing not visible on T0.

[Qgqqqqq]

This is very obviously my bad in posting leaders so quickly.

[scooter]

This is very obviously my bad in posting leaders so quickly.

Nah, it seemed like Commodore prodded this into happening. Also I replied a few times too, but I thought settings were already locked because I wasn't tracking the spreadsheet because I didn't really care.

The problem with Commodore organizing a game is he just doesn't care about any settings except for the map must be Cylindrical and the map must look natural. So he doesn't really have an issue with combos rolled before settings are locked. Overall not a huge deal for this game, but just sort of an odd situation.

[Qgqqqqq]

[scooter]

Hm. Well, I said Japan will be tough unless there's Fish, but planting that Fish in the ocean is a tough one as FIN coastal Fish would have opened some things up. Japan gives me Fishing, but 11T to even net the Fish is pretty slow, so I doubt WB first makes any sense. And worker-first with Japan is also not ideal because I need to tech both Agriculture and AH, and I'm skeptical on these settings that I would be able to do that in time. I think the worker would probably end up just building a bunch of roads. I could chop a couple forests to speed things up, but then I need two more techs. It's also slightly annoying that I'd need Agriculture before AH, but the better food here is the AH food. I think this start is really hard to play without an Agriculture civ. Really skeptical I can play Japan here.

All the water suggests I should lock a FIN leader while I have the option. I've also got 3 grassland river cottages available to me. There are no luxuries in sight, so that gives a slight boost to Washington I guess. I am vaguely leaning towards locking Lizzie though as I think a FIN leader will matter a lot here.

The water also sort of limits the long-term upside of this city, but that matters a little less in a bigger game. The capital itself has 9F surplus, 10 with Lighthouse, 11 with Civil Service. Unfortunately the Fish is unshareable, and the Rice looks difficult to share. As a result, I practically have to settle either 3N or 3E to share at least one of them.


On first glance, leaning towards lock Lizzie, reroll Japan, but I'll have to take a look at the actual tech costs tonight to figure out what it's actually like.