[Spoilers] Dtay's first PB: When you play a game of CIV, you win or you die

[dtay]

Hey, I'm pretty new to the site though I've been on and off lurking for a while. This is my first pitboss, but hopefully it should be an entertaining ride.


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[dtay]

Reserved
Password:

alchemy

[retep]

I'm here!

So dtay have you play with the mod before?

[dtay]

Not extensively, some months ago I started a game with it on Emperor and played through the start of a game (didn't stop playing for any real reason that I can remember, just didn't load it up the next day or something).

Any advice on which changes are most important to take into account compared to base BTS? My sense is the changes to worker-techs at the beginning (hunting for instance) and the trait balancing are the most significant ones.

Also, glad to have you on board!

I'm here!

So dtay have you play with the mod before?

[BRickAstley]

LEADER/CIV:

The process voted on to use for leader/civ generation is as follows:

Day 1 - generate 17 random pairings and post in team threads. Team responds yea or nay. Yea leaders/civs are removed.
Day 2 - repeat for all nay teams. Again, yeas are removed.
Day 3 - double nay teams are auto-assigned

Your first generated Leader/Civ combination is:

Alexander of Germany

Please state in bold in your thread whether you want to keep or reroll this combination. If you do not keep it, you can have up to 2 more combinations generated for you.

[dtay]

My current thoughts on the first leader/civ combo:

Starting techs: Agriculture and the Wheel. This is a great set of starting techs in base BTS. Its relative strength is somewhat less I believe in the RBmod since the beaker cost of fishing and hunting has increased and hunting enables pastures. Still a very strong starting combination.

Traits: Agg/Phi. These traits are little-changed in RBmod, adding +100% Stables production to Agg. Agg also received a indirect buff from the addition of +1c to Barracks, giving us a different way to pop borders. Barracks now require 60h, effectively cut in half to 30 for us, equal to monuments.

I think this means we can be ok about foregoing a religion or stonehenge (both difficult to get in an 17-18 person game) and not feel bad about ourselves for building otherwise worthless monuments to pop borders (or waiting until libraries/temples and chopping them out, or w/e).

Phi is unchanged from base BTS, I consider it to be in the top 4 traits base (tier 1 financial, tier 2 exp, creative, phi). Not really sure what to say besides its a pretty good trait, generally mroe useful in the midgame than early, and I think its pretty good.

Unique Units/Buildings: Both are pretty late in the game, the new Kannon and Assembly Plants. I doubt this game will get to Assembly Plants, though they're ok/fine if we do get there, allowing me to get my factories up faster (extra engineer slots seem less relevant). Kannon's are also pretty late, though more plausibly relevant than Assembly Plants. Similarly, they are also just built faster.

Immaterial affinity: I almost always play as germany in my first few games of things like EU3 or Heart of Iron, and also think Alexander the Great is historical awesomesauce. Should these things influence my pick? Well... no. But still...

Overall Thoughts
I'm very much on the edge right now, I think this is an ok combination, we could veto it and do worse, we could veto it and do better. I think right now I'm leaning towards "keep it", since any obviously awesome combinations (or any civ/leader who's good enough to justify a combination on their own) will probably come off the board round 1.

Any thoughts retep? If not, I think i'll post my official acceptance later tonight.

[dtay]

I missed that aggressive now provides -25% city maintenance. Not game breaking, but intriguing. Still overall pretty undecided but leaning towards keeping.

[dtay]

Ok, officially Keeping Alexander of Germany.

[retep]

Sorry for not being around I was felling kinda sick today and I had to go to the hospital.
Alexander sounds okay though.

[dtay]

Not changing my choice, but i somehow misread the starting techs for germany when I looked them up. They're actually hunting and mining (I think I looked at France's starting techs, which are right before Germany on the list and are notably the Wheel and Agriculture).

I think this actually is pretty equal to Ag/Wheel in RBmod. Ag/Wheel def have the edge in normal BTS, but since hunting allows pastures now Ag/Hunting are closer to equal, and I think I actually like mining more than the wheel.

So sticking with decision to keep Alexander/Germany. An ok combo a best, but I feel like the average combo-quality on each reroll will be less than the roll before it. Trying out the much changed RMmod Agg is also compelling.