at last, greenline is playing the kind of game he wants to

[greenline]

while waiting on the setup, the most important question of all remains: what naming scheme?

two things came to mind:

seinfeld episodes
the folk music pieces that were arranged for civ 6's soundtract

[greenline]

So, with a pure random map, a pick has to hedge against real bad land. There are a couple civs I had in mind for this.

Inca. Mountain start bias gives you hopefully good spots for campuses, and terrace farms are an awesome improvement for turning shit land into high yields. I don't like this civ in single player because it can be a real headache balancing where you want your aqueducts to boost the terrace farms, but in a long running PBEM planning out stuff should be easier.

Germany. A common pick, but Hansas are the best way to turn useless flatland into hammers in the midgame.

Japan. Also good for turning flatland into a big blob of high yield districts. Has a bad start bias though.

I think I will pick Inca for the sake of variety, since they don't seem to have been played much.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Picking system suggestion:

1. Players pick the civ they want in their thread.
2. If there is a tie, I random.org who wins and inform the losers they have to pick again. They will be sure some other civ is on the map but that's okay because losing the coinflip hurts. If they try to pick another civ that already got picked by someone not involved in the tie, that pick is rejected automatically.

Repeat 1&2 until everyone has picked.

[greenline]

I pick Inca, in that case.

[greenline]

On second thought, is it too late to change my pick to Korea?

Terrace farms are situationally good, but the Seowon is more reliable for science generation and it can boost farms as well. Plus the UU is more fun.

[MJW (ya that one)]

There are two korea leaders. Which one do you want?

[greenline]

The default one, Seondeok. I don't think I have the expansion that enables the other one anyway

[greenline]

for future reference:

Yongle: All cities can use projects to convert 50% of production into food, faith, or 100% gold. Cities with 10+ pop receive 2 gold, 1 science, 1 culture per turn for each population in the city.

Tokugawa: International trade routes -25% yields. Domestic trade routes provide +1culture, +1science, +2gold per specialty district of the destination. Cities within 6 tiles of the capital receive 100% loyalty, +1 tourism after flight.

[greenline]

So, assuming I did not fuck up the settings when creating the game, here is what my start is looking like:





I was worried that the start would make me have to second guess myself on whether settling in place would be best or not, since I have to play the first turn to generate a save for the game  and I don't want to keep the game waiting any longer. But here it seems pretty clear SIP is the best option. SIP means I have a clear spot to build an aqueduct for a future industrial zone + dam megalopolis, and I get the free science from the geothermal fissure for a strong early game boost. Builder first also feels the correct move, as the wheat + sheep are strong tiles when improved. The third builder charge I might use on the truffles because the extra gold and amenity is not bad early.

I will definitely do some simming on this start later. I want to take this game more seriously than the past two. I might even break out a spreadsheet for the first time. But I am going to be away from my computer for the rest of the day, so this is where I have to leave things. Opponent analysis to come as well.

[greenline]

turns out I have some extra time today. opponent analysis and picks time...

greenline: Soendeok of Korea:

Well, I feel a lot differently about this pick now that I realize that the leader pass stuff was enabled. Absent the leader pass I would have rated Korea as one of the best picks for science, but after seeing the numbers on Yongle and Tokugawa I am Concerned, to say the least. So my gameplan at this point has changed a lot. My longterm science generation I expect to fall significantly behind Krill and CMF if I let then grow tall, so I instead hope to invade them after rushing key medieval techs. Probably Apprenticeship for Man At Arms and Machinery for crossbows. Serfdom will be the key early culture goal after PP for Feudal Contract, since I don't expect to get to mercenaries to do much mass upgrading. Don't know if I can throw a GG in there as well. Ideally I make contact with TheArchduke early on and signal a willingness to help him invade, since he has always preferred military action to peaceful building.

As for me going in as a player, I imagine people see me as a weakling given my bad performances in PBs 74 and 75. Even in 72 I bungled the military side of things a lot. Here I am hoping to do better on the military side with the 1UPT system, and do better on the economic side by simming and planning a lot more.

TheArchduke: Jayarvarman VII of Khmer:

This is a decent all around pick. Khmer gets +2 housing and culture bombs and adjacencies from holy sites, and probably gets guaranteed river goddess for an additional +2 housing and amenity. I expect Archduke to get first pick of religion given the other picks here, and being in a good position to do the monumentality settler faith spam. The Domrey is a decent UU hampered by the expensiveness of siege units early on without a boosting policy card, and the UB is also good for faith and culture (although, note the Yongle pop bonus absurdity, as the Khmer UB only gives 0.3 culture per pop!), if not always hammer convenient to build. Decent, of course, looks worse when you see the OP shit added in the newest DLC, so he may be at a disadvantage regardless.

TheArchduke is well known for warmongering, of course. I hope to enlist him as an ally against Krill and CMF rather than end up being a victim of his attacks.

Whosit: Trajan of Rome

Rome is a often picked good well rounder. +1 culture in every city from the first turn is nothing to sneeze at, and aqueducts that can go in every city are a good district to make cheap. Especially with the industrial district buffs making aqueduct + IZ setups quite valuable.

Whosit, on the other hand, has generally been a weak player, and I don't expect that to have changed. Maybe he will surprise us, but I expect him to fall off after the monument bonus wears out.

Krill: Yongle of China

Yongle's bonus seems completely insane to me. Korea was, in my eyes, a good economic civ because they could guarantee +4 science in almost every city (and this came at the cost of not having any super campuses that went above +4). Yongle here promises a minimum of +10 science, +10 culture, and +20 gold in each city as soon as it hits 10 pop! Now that will take some time to kick off, but once it does, it is like having the third Pingala promotion in each 10pop city, and with gold too! This is without even looking into the unique projects. I guess we will have to see how it works in practice - a silver lining benefit of us playing the DLC stuff is being able to judge how overpowered and need of a nerf some of these things are.

(One goal of me playing this game is to try and lay out the groundwork for changes for an RB Civ 6 balance mod. While I have plenty of thoughts already on what should be changed, I don't want to actually start changing anything without having played at least one MP game!)

Krill is a very good, experienced Civ 4 player. His Civ 6 history that I've seen is more mixed, although his most recent game with thrawn seemed to be well played. Definitely one to watch out for.

CMF - Tokugawa of Japan

Tokugawa also offers some really crazy sounding econ benefits. Now, Japan under the other leader was already pretty good, since you got 3 half cost districts and a +1 adjacency bonus that added up over time to some really powerful districts. Tokugawa seems to make this a lot better, since the bonus is tied to trade routes. Now new cities don't need to build up big district hubs, they instead can get +4 science, +4 culture, +8 gold trade routes with the capital as soon as they knock out a harbor or commercial hub with some chops. This one has less longterm potential than Yongle, but starts out stronger earlier, since you only need one district in the capital to get the pain train rolling...

CMF is a Civ 6 vet who has shown competence in both the economic and military spheres of the game. He is also the only one of us who is known to have had recent MP experience, winning the modded game convincingly. I place him as the most likely winner of this game based on the picks and history.