[spoilers] Commodore and Dtay: Saladin of the Gael

[Commodore]

We're so gonna get kilt...


Final picks:

1. Gawdzak - Wang Kon of Inca
2. Donovan Zoi - Mehmed II of Zulu
3. Retep - Boudica of Mongolia
4. Luddite - Victoria of India
5. Elkad - Alexander of Sumeria
6. Wetbandit - Julius Caesar of China
7. GermanJoJo - Justinian of Aztecs
8. yuris - Darius of Persia
9. Grimace - Roosevelt of Khmer
10. Commodore - Saladin of the Celts
11. Thoth- Sury of France
12. Krill - Joao of HR

[Commodore]

For reference:

Forests and fallout may vary.

[Commodore]

From my 22 thread:

Snake Thoughts, volume 1:

Whoa. So we're actually running a snake pick for the first time in years in RBmod and I have no heavy preferences. At all. Seems incredible, doesn't it? There are definitely some aversions I have, but in general I'm going to pick a good combination and try to win this sucker through good play. Novel, ain't it? I have some thoughts on the various traits, though...I'm going to order them from “earliest” to “latest”, rather than any strict power ranking, because the mod does a good job eliminating the most egregious of the offenders, both overpowered and underpowered.

-Expansive: This one is probably one of the most changed traits; its core early benefit is intensified greatly, however. +35% to workers and work boats is just tremendous for start speed...a fishing start looks a lot better with expansive, and you have to work hard to not get a faster worker out of the bonus here. As long as you're building workers and work boats, the hammer savings of this trait are going to be very impactful. Later on, the trait gets quite the hodge-podge of boosted buildings; on aqueducts this translates to benefits in the factory era, while harbors are great in the trading-heavy Pitboss environment and markets plus grocers are solid if unsexy boosts. Good trait!

-Imperialistic: My head and my heart fight about this trait. The simple benefits of +60% on settlers are obvious and far-reaching during the (often long) expansion portion of the game. The great general emergence bonus is always nice latter on, and although cheap custom houses aren't the be-all, end-all, in RBmod's Free Market trading game they are definitely worth building. But...kind of dry, overall. Useful trait!

-Protective: Cheap granaries are a game-changer. Anyone who's played BtS expansive knows how huge they are. Cheap walls, better defenders...are fringe benefits at best by comparison. Useful when you use them, but you don't actually want to be defending behind walls much. Still, granaries also make Protective a strong contender for “main” element of your leader pick. Workhorse trait!

-Creative: How do you feel about eliminating a major potion of your gameplay? Being able to plant without having to plan for the culture problem is just huge. There is nothing like it. Creative also gets a tremendous early game boost for being able to ignore Mysticism and the religion tech lines; if you want those wonders or Monarchy that can be annoying, but otherwise, son, you should be making a beeline for Currency anyway! The cheap buildings are definitely minor; theaters are cheap anyway, coliseums (unless UB) are fine but meh, and observatories are super-late typically. But it's still a hell of a power trait!

-Aggressive: Boy this one got a work-over. The cheap barracks with culture is nice, allowing a mysticism delay...but you still don't want to spam barracks early, so it's not like fire-and-forget creative. -25% maintenance is a powerful benefit early on, although in the end of all things you're still wanting courthouses and their ilk. The cheap drydock is good late, for what its worth. Late-game, there is no trait more massively influential than Aggressive for military conflict; easy access to commando, amphibious, and the gamut of counter-promotions makes your gunpowder units unholy terrors of the battlefield. I like Aggressive quite a lot. Fun trait!

-Charismatic: The first benefit of Charismatic is incredibly powerful; a straight up +2 happy for free everywhere skews the whole game at times. More efficient 1-pop whipping, bigger early cities...a modicum of discipline is required but good use of Charismatic can be every bit as snowball-boosting as creative culture or protective granaries. But it takes effort. The military impact of the trait reverberates all the way down the line as well, particularly in XP-hungry naval combat. Other prettier traits get picked a bit more, but not because of any weakness here. Excellent trait!

-Industrious: I don't know how I feel about this trait, to be honest. I don't much like it, but I get an impression that its good for me. Forges are an essential infrastructural building that cost an arm an a leg to build...when I'm not industrious, I tend to be criminally slow about building them. And make no mistake; Industrious is about forges...it helps with wonders, but not nearly as much as planning, preparation, and tech path do. Industrious does create a sort of mental block at times, as other players go “Ind guys' got it, not going to bother”...but wonders are much more minor than forges. Interesting trait!

-Financial: Financial is a good, good trait guys. It was; it still is. For all that, how the trait is good has definitely shifted. The lack of riverside bonus means Financial is quite strange in how it improves its tiles, for one; the Financial player focuses on farms and watermills along most rivers while cottages sprout on dry tiles. This works out to a very growth-focused early game setup, at the price of cottages coming online a bit later than normal. There are two other times when the Financial tile boost is handy; in the early game, Financial coast is wonderful for tech rate. Then, late game, Financial likes to grow into the “cracks” with fishing villages much much more efficient than with all other players' coast-working settlements. The cheap banks are a very strong boost, making Banking a lynchpin tech for Financial players, biasing Financial toward rifling lines and upgrading in general. Again, Financial is still a very powerful trait, but it is much slower to yield its full benefit. Phenomenal trait!

-Organized: Old Faithful keeps on chugging. Death and taxes are still universal constants. Murphy's Law still rules the battlefield. Organized is still the premier economic trait. I like that; good to have some consistency in your life. Lighthouses, courthouses, and factories are fantastic buildings to get half-off, and the “always on” savings of Organized help from the first settlement onward. There is nothing sexy at all about Organized, but I never regret having it; nobody ever does all game long on any non-childish difficulty setting. It's dull at times...but still the best trait.

-Spiritual: Here's another trait that hasn't changed in RBmod. Except somehow, it is much better. Spiritual is still nice for switches and swaps, but the civics you can pick! Serfdom, Vassalage, Environmentalism, the column swaps are all much better now. I'm still at a loss for how best to evaluate this most flexible and interesting of traits, but I do know it is stronger late than early, and late it is just amazing. Transformative trait!

-Philosophical: Okay, so here's good ole' Philosophical, just a bit more. Still the snowball-boosting wunderkind, helping shrine and bulb and probably allowing a hard-to-manage fourth natural golden age...there is a lot tricky you can do with Philosophical. If I get it, though, I'm going to be just using it for pure Writing-Academy-Education line path. I'm very curious to see how “screw trickiness, just push Great Scientist” goes in one of these games. When I'm playing with my novel airship and axeman army, I'll let you know. Speed trait.

So, who shall I pick? I...don't know. But I know I don't want a repeat, with the exception perhaps of Bodacious. I like to have an early trait paired with a late trait...but sometimes two late or two early just work well enough with each other that that ideal can get tossed out the window. Here's my pick list, traits shown early to late:

Saladin (Pro/Spi)
Hammurabi (Agg/Org)
Justinian (Imp/Spi)
Boudicca (Agg/Chm)
Hannibal (Chm/Fin)
Qin Shi (Pro/Ind)
Churchill (Pro/Chm)
Pericles (Cre/Phi)
Alexander (Agg/Phi)
Gandhi (Spi/Phi)
Asoka (Org/Spi)
Wang Kon (Pro/Fin)
Suryavarman (Exp/Cre)
Genghis (Imp/Agg)
Pacal (Exp/Fin)
Sitting Bull (Pro/Phi)
Sulieman (Imp/Phi)
Cyrus (Imp/Chm)
Julius Caesar (Imp/Org)
Catherine (Imp/Cre)
Stalin (Agg/Ind)
Shaka (Exp/Agg)

As you can see, the key to RBmod leaders is that all leaders are viable. Are they all equally strong? Well, no...but they are close enough that other factors begin to matter more than the straight traits. Synergy is overrated, typically, in Beyond the Sword, but here in the wild and wooly RBmodland, it is all the difference in the world.

Anything else is all about the start techs the start calls for and then a leader that compliments the civilization. For example, if I can afford a mysticism start, then Cre and Agg leaders are less attractive; a big aspect of their early appeal is how they can avoid mysticism and the religion lines for culture. Anything that sets up for a super-early pottery likes Pro; fishing starts get a lot of benefit from Exp and Fin. UU and UB syngery considerations become much bigger a deal, like with Pro Terraces, Cre Ball Courts, and Phi Obelisks. This is all a wonderfully freeing experience, if almost debilitating in sheer choice. And this is after I winnowed literally half of the leaders in the game for purely arbitrary reasons!

So then, what about civilizations? Well, techs are still king; if you have grains and a deer, you need to plan on Agriculture in your start. There are very few civilizations in BtS that are chosen for raw UU/UB overpoweredness. And India, Inca, Vikings all have received significant nerfs...they're still valid civs, but no longer are they automatic. So I'm going to winnow the list for similarly arbitrary reasons, and organize the remainders by tech:

Agriculture/Wheel:
-Egypt (War Chariot, Obelisk)
-Babylon (Bowman, Garden)

Agriculture/Mining:
-Korea (Hwatcha, Seowon)
-China (Chucklenaught, Pavilion)

Agriculture/Mysticism:
-Arabia (Camel Archer, Maddrassa)
-Inca (Quecha, Terrace)

Agriculture/Fishing:
-Dutch (East Indiaman, Dike)

Agriculture/Hunting:
-Persia (Immortal, Apothecary)

Wheel/Mining:
-Mali (Skirmisher, Mint)

Wheel/Mysticism:
-India (Fast Worker, Mausoleum)

Wheel/Fishing:
-Japan (Samurai, Pagoda)

Mining/Mysticism:
-Maya (Holkan, Ball Court)

Mining/Fishing:
-England (Redcoat, Stock Exchange)

Mining/Hunting:
-Ethiopia (Oromo, Stele)
-Germany (Kanone, Assembly Plant)

Mysticism/Fishing:
-Byzantium (Cataphract, Hippodrome)

Mysticism/Hunting:
-Celts (Gaelic Warrior, Dun)
-Aztecs (Jaguar Warrior, Sacrificial Altar)

Fishing/Hunting
-Vikings (Berzerker, Trading Post)

I'm well aware I kicked the Mongolia starting techs to the curb; I'm at peace with that. So aesthetics; I like some civs more than others for completely irrational reasons. Japan is rarely viable, but if I can justify the Pottery-friendly coastal start techs, I'm definitely going that direction. I do have a desire to win; thus far it looks like the way to win a big RBmod pitboss is to be Aztecs. I'm all for them, their cheap courthouse and mysticism start supports a Spi leader quite well. Protective Inca is never not a consideration, and if it's all chopping all over in the start then fast workers might make a lot of sense. Basically...we'll see.

Exciting times here. Now let's see our start!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Ahh, the world when it was young and less full of food. And probably plains hill starts.

[Commodore]

By the way, Xenu?

For copy/paste purposes, that is:

List Randomizer

There were 12 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

1. Gawdzak
2. Donovan Zoi
3. Retep
4. Luddite
5. Elkad
6. Wetbandit
7. GermanJoJo
8. yuris
9. Grimace
10. Commodore
11. Thoth
12. Krill

Timestamp: 2014-12-29 22:01:49 UTC

I like how you pretend to have rolled that. Clearly you just ranked us all by skill and reversed the list.

But I think you mixed up Grimace with Gawdzak.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Oh yeah? Show us your tier list and prove it.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I know how these setup threads have gone in the past so I took the unusual additional step of providing documentary evidence of the random.org transaction. Which of course leads to skepticism, I mean why wouldn't it? When your forensic experts have analysed the image and determine beyond a reasonable doubt that the image has been altered, please let me know so I can come up with a quick lie to cover my tracks. Thanks!

[Commodore]

Oh yeah? Show us your tier list and prove it.

Okay. Well, I mean, no, far too many people on all of RB and I'm not made out of time, but ranking the players just in the field:

Tier 1: Winner Is In Here

-Krill:
Pros:
-Snappy Reporter
-Kind of a Civ4 Savant
-Determinator
Cons:
-Pessimist
-Overestimates Opposition
-Time Crunched At Times


-Gawdzak
Pros:
-Organizit
-Very Good
-Twitch Friendly So The Kids These Days Like Him
Cons:
-Overloaded With Games
-Big For His Britches
-Loosey-Goosey Planning


-Thoth
Pros:
-Bewbs
-Booze
-Hyperaggression
Cons:
-FFH2 Compliant
-Optimist
-Fixates At Times


-Us, naturally. I think? Maybe.
Pros:
-Great Reports
-Unflagging Morale
-Liberalism Lock
Cons:
-Liberalism Lock
-Roleplay Prone
-

Krill: hahahahahaha fuck you
Sent at 10:22 AM on Tuesday

Tier 2: Might Look Like Winners At Some Point



-Luddite
Pros:
-Veteran
-Planner
Cons:
-Rusty
-Wife Aggro
-Plans Might Not Actually Be All That Good


-Wetbandit
Pros:
-Friendly and Likeable
-Balanced
Cons:
-Lawyer
-Lawyer
-Lawyer


-GermanJojo
Pros:
-Pretty Good At Civilization 4
-Wins A Lot Vs. His Buddies
Cons:
-Emotional
-Abrasive
-In A Lot of Games


-Retep
Pros:
-Micromachine
-Wunderkind
Cons:
-Discouragable
-Bad Naming Schemes
-Kiss of Death to Games Finishing, Somehow


-Yuri
Pros:
-Unflaggingly Steady
-Universally Beloved
Cons:
-Ignores Power Graphs
-Ten Minute Turns
-Oh Well, Maybe Next Games...

Tier 3: Newbies And The Girls Who Love Them

-Grimace
Pros:
-Intellectually Capable
Cons:
-Still Pretty New


-Donovan Zoi
Pros:
-Clever Boy
Cons:
-Still Pretty New


-Elkad
Pros:
-Sane and Well-Adjusted
Cons:
-Still Pretty New

[pindicator]

For the love of god, pick a civ that has a sword UU or lets you build swords later in the game. After pb18 ... just build swords man!

[Commodore]

Actually, if I can justify it at all (pasture food), I really really really want Aztecs.