[Spoilers] Easy Meat - Dreylin swims with sharks and tries not to drown

[Dreylin]

Yeah so...

In keeping with the title, and with apologies to any vegetarians out there, I'm thinking of going with a meat theme for my naming convention. Having lived in Brasil for 3 years and visited many churrasco steakhouses, I could probably get away with using the Portuguese cuts, however since Ichabod is actually Brasilian I think I'd better stick with an English (or maybe American) set.

And I'll lobby the mapmaker for a Cows start ... or I'll have to look for something different

[plako]

Screenshot:

[Dreylin]

So I guess that we're going with Sheep ... Scrag End for the Capital?

So I've pretty-much decided on leader; I think I'd like to try the altered IMP, and reviewing what I'm playing in other games (non-ToW) I'd really like to not have to bother about border pops, so I'll take CRE. So we'll (try to) have:

Should be alright, mackoti seems to have a preference for IND leaders. (although as a backup Augustus wouldn't be bad)

For civ, I'm definitely not going with one of the aquatic civs. I had been thinking about India, but the starting techs are dreadful for this start so I'm unfortunately ruling those out. Similarly my desire to try Arabia soon doesn't fit with this start. Nothing's jumping out at me from the tweaks list except maybe Russia for the Research Institute (& it's been a while since I've run around w/Cossacks). Zulu is also tempting with Ikhanda reducing maintenance to enable more REXing. Both have decent starting tech combos for this start, and nothing else is jumping out at me, so I'll probably pick one of these.

[Gawdzak]

What are your opinions on the new traits? Any chance for you to try one of the those if Cathy's taken?

[Dreylin]

I did take a look at them while I was considering, but I just couldn't get excited about either of them.

A moot point now regarding Cathy, but I will take another look at them and see whether I can see the potential ... and if anyone complains about me delaying the picking, I'll blame you!

[Commodore]

Why you people hate on Greece, I'll never know...

[Dreylin]

Should be alright, mackoti seems to have a preference for IND leaders.

Can i change my pick for IND/fin?

[spacetyrantxenu]

Why you people hate on Greece, I'll never know...

I can provide a reason. Some other time, perhaps.

[Dreylin]

Why you people hate on Greece, I'll never know...

Not sure who I'm being lumped in with here as "you people"....

Took a better look at Greece; good starting techs (though I do have to remember that this is not RtR and I do still need AH to Pasture those Sheep), early game UU that reduces the need for unit diversity is a bonus, and the souped-up Colosseum. Question is whether the souped-up Colosseum improves it enough to be worthwhile building. Hmmm, well maybe if it's a half-price CRE Colosseum it would be, yes.

OK, so I've added Greece to the list of potential civs.

As for AGR & PRO; as I said, neither got me excited on the first brush past, and reviewing I can say that I'm seeing more potential but maybe still not getting excited.

As I read it, the PRO hammer bonus is going to affect Plains Hill Mines and not much else until later in the game (and during GA?) so early-game it has the ex-EXP bonus to Workers & WB. This is a pretty big benefit, but here I'm going to go back to what I said earlier about wanting to play something different than I'm playing in other games, and I have those benefits in PB22. (On the other hand (again) it would reeeally help getting going on this start....)

AGR seems to be mostly a late-game benefit based on my impression of the Happy-cap limits faced in the early game - to maximise it you clearly want cities to stay above size4, so it feels like it would work against Slavery (or at least diminish the benefits of both). Ultimately though, I think my reluctance to try this is that it's so new that I don't really have a good enough idea of how to work it order to emphasise the benefits.

And this brings me back to an overriding desire I have: to make a good showing and be competitive in this game. There are some giants in here and I don't think I will want / have time to dive far enough into sandboxing to compete with them, but I do want to not be a road-bump on the way to one of their eventual victories. So I want to play with the "safer" more familiar options. I did ask Seven if he wanted to suggest combos that he wanted to be tested and he demurred, so I don't really feel any obligation to select one of the tweakier options.

Having said that, I'll add PRO onto the consideration block as well. And where does that get us?

Well, from being close to decided on Catherine of Zulu, I now find myself looking at:

Catherine or Charlemagne
Zulu or Greece or Russia

Good job guys, guess my picks are going to be delayed even longer!

[Ruff_Hi]

Shepard's Pie should be a nice capital name.