So, Which Boring Leader And Civ Do We Pick?

[oledavy]

@SevenSpirits & anyone else from another team still lurking this sub-forum, please do not read any farther in this thread

[oledavy]

For reference, what Commodore posted about the map:

Barring objections, it's a 52x52 Standard/Prince/Toroid, with all teams on the same landmass and both over-coast and over-ocean other landmass.

[oledavy]

So, with only five teams in the game, we're guranteed to get something good. Leader we probably want to consider ordered approximately according to their strength are:

Pacal
Willem
Sury
Mansa Musa
Huyana Capac
Darius
Isabelle
Bismarck
Gandhi

Civs we'll want to consider are:

India
Inca
Byzantium
Ottomans
Egypt
Khmer

oye.... :zzz:

At any rate, Khmer might be fun simply for the novelty value. Not having Ivory would screw us over pretty badly though. Since the map is Prince/Toroidal, with over ocean landmasses to settle and presumably a lot of coast, Organized - and especially Darius - may turn out to be really really good. We might also consider Holland and the Vikings when thinking about Civs. However, I don't see up picking either of them if we go first or second in the snake pick and can get India or Inca.

[pindicator]

Let's see, 52 x 52 means 2704 tiles, or 540 tiles per team. So even if the map is 50% water that is still a considerable amount of land to be had. That would make me think IMP has some value on the IMP-ORG scale, but then again we are talking about a map with significant water options and that is Prince/Torroid. Which makes me think ORG is better.

Oh, wait -- there are other traits?

Unless someone has a crazy strategy they want to pitch, I think we want to pick a FIN leader. There's no espionage and no tech trading - so there's no way to catch up from a tech deficit except commerce & bulbs, which makes FIN pretty mandatory. That means we're down to how we rank the FIN leaders. I would put them something like:

Pacal
Huayna Capac
Willem
Mansa Musa
Darius
Elizabeth
...etc

After HC it's IMO a bit of a gap to the Willem/Mansa/Darius group (I'm not a CRE fanboy), so if we don't have a crack at one of those leaders I would look at a civ and then pick up the leader that's left.

As for civs, we've got the usual suspects:

Inca
India
dropoff

So unless we're picking dead last in the snake pick, we're guaranteed 1 of Pacal, HC, Inca, or India. And if we do pick last then we get the benefit of picking both leader & civ at once. I don't think we'll have a bad pick available.


Edit: Cross-post with the captain

[pindicator]

oledavy, with leaders do you think we can afford to not pick a FIN leader? I know Sury and Bismark are strong in their own right, but in a map that is going to have a lot of water it seems crazy not to pick FIN. Going Bismark would make our economy dependent on landing a good economic wonder (Pyramids, Great Lighthouse, maybe Colossus), and Sury feels like a bit like a trap: get a good land grab and over-extend on a prince/torroid map. Not that Sury isn't good, just that this may not be the best map for him.

[oledavy]

oledavy, with leaders do you think we can afford to not pick a FIN leader? I know Sury and Bismark are strong in their own right, but in a map that is going to have a lot of water it seems crazy not to pick FIN. Going Bismark would make our economy dependent on landing a good economic wonder (Pyramids, Great Lighthouse, maybe Colossus), and Sury feels like a bit like a trap: get a good land grab and over-extend on a prince/torroid map. Not that Sury isn't good, just that this may not be the best map for him.

Yeah, we almost certainly want Financial Leader for this map. I just listed them because they're normally considered 'top tier' leaders.

Huyana Capac could be pretty cool - we chop out The Great Lighthouse, settle one of those islands Commodore mentioned for ICTR and bam!, there's our economy right there.

Alternatively, if we wanted to run a strategy like that to the max, we pick Roosevelt. However, that leaves us minus financial, in additional to lacking an early expansion trait. Furthermore, it would tie us to a single strategy, with all our eggs in the GLH basket. I'd prefer the flexibility of Financial to something like that.

We need to consider Industrious in making our pick. With only five teams, Wonders become less risky to try for, and IND correspondingly becomes stronger. Not sure we'd want to get it unless paired with financial though.

[pindicator]

With civs after India & Inca...

I like Khmer just for the novelty. The baray is a nice UB but doesn't get much play because the Khmer UU is normally banned and on top of that I don't think their starting techs are all that great.

After that it depends on your strategy. Do you aim to win this on the main continent? Byzantium becomes a winner in that situation. Do you want to monopolize ocean tiles and grab Portugal, Dutch, or Carthage? (Not Vikings IMO - the +1 boats probably don't make up for the bad starting techs in this game, but it will depend on the start.) Do we want to get an early land grab on the main continent and turn that into a late-game advantage?

I am leaning towards a plan to go after the islands and off-shore lands. Is it the most efficient? Maybe not. But it's thematic So please talk me out of it if it isn't the best.

[oledavy]

I am leaning towards a plan to go after the islands and off-shore lands. Is it the most efficient? Maybe not. But it's thematic So please talk me out of it if it isn't the best.

Eh...it's probably not. Though, to be completely honest, I really like the idea too. Picking Portugal, bulbing Optics, and then settling the overseas continent before anyone else would be really cool. I'd love to give Holland another go as well, see if I can make dikes work better this time around. However, it's very possible we're overthinking this. I recall in PB4, when Krill said that there would be a fair amount of water on the map - prompting both Nakor/Gaspar and Mackoti/Ioan to pick the Vikings and Holland respectively. Both of those turned into very very bad choices. It's easy to go wrong with a civ pick like Carthage/Holland/Portugal. Ottomans/Egypt/Byzantium are just a whole lot more versatile. Still, I'm not opposed to doing something off the beaten path if the team wants to.

[pindicator]

Yeah, Portugal was actually the one I was thinking about for that very reason. Then late game you have Feitoria + FIN giving those water tiles 3c ocean / 4c coast. You also get a Fishing / Mining start, which isn't great but isn't terrible either. Depends on the starting screenshot.

If you want to hedge your bets and still pick a civ that benefits from overseas expansion, I would look at Carthage. Numids are super cool awesome fun in military (just look at scooter's use of them in his duel vs Commodore, or how Commodore & Gaspar used them in pbem26 -- although not their strat as a whole!), and the Cothon is like a mini GLH, especially when paired with an EXP leader.

[oledavy]

Yeah, Portugal was actually the one I was thinking about for that very reason. Then late game you have Feitoria + FIN giving those water tiles 3c ocean / 4c coast. You also get a Fishing / Mining start, which isn't great but isn't terrible either. Depends on the starting screenshot.

If you want to hedge your bets and still pick a civ that benefits from overseas expansion, I would look at Carthage. Numids are super cool awesome fun in military (just look at scooter's use of them in his duel vs Commodore, or how Commodore & Gaspar used them in pbem26 -- although not their strat as a whole!), and the Cothon is like a mini GLH, especially when paired with an EXP leader.

Meh, Feitorias are nice, but they come rather late and are really expensive. Pacal of Carthage could be rather cool for EXP Granaries and Cothons. However, despite lurking PBEM26 and the Commodore vs. Scooter duel, I'm still unconvinced on Numids. I just don't think they're all that great. Carthage also has decidedly sub-par starting techs. Still, they wouldn't be an awful choice. We could do a lot worse *cought* Ragnar of Native Americans *cough*