So after some trouble adding this picture, I hope it will go more smoothly with any coming screenshots and pictures I will need to explain what is happening and where we want to head with it.
I think the best point to start with analyzing and preparing for this game is by looking at the first know information about it.
The game settings will be:
Game Speed: Standard
Difficulty: Prince
City states: 10
Map size: Small (for up to 6 players)
Map type: Pangea
Start: Balanced
Resources: Abundant (still in discussion)
Age: new
Rainfall: standard (still in discussion)
Huts: no
Barbarians: yes
After running a testing game based on these settings, I believe I can expect the following type of map
World Age: New
The many hills slow down movement and even investing in a scout seems dubious if you do not have a cleared and flat area nearby. However once the scout is out, he sometimes can profit from its three movement points to climb a hill and decend it on the other side again. However the "new" setting gives some security against rushes but also provides plenty of defensible terrain. Also there are more mountain ranges and this creates more choke points which and easy to defend locations. For a Sparta roleplayer, there should be plenty of options to live his fantasy.
It also means that there are plenty of hills, shifting the production difficulties more in a direction of food difficulties as building farms on hills is not available until civil service. This means that food resources and the available flat areas are more influential on the city site selection than they are on standard maps. On the other hand there will probably prime production locations which are about to be settled later as they will not have sufficient growth in the early game. The last city type is a defensive city blocking choke points, which is completely depending on the terrain but as long as it can build an encampement and walls, it will probably be a good idea to build it if there is a need and location for it.
Resources: Abundant
As this is still in discussion, I won't cover it to much, but the above screenshots show an abundant resources game. I really like this setting as it opens more potential decisions about farming (improvement of the tile) a resource and harvesting it (instant gain but loss of the resource) which can neatly be combined with policy cards and district placement. It also places more food resources and thus combines nicely with the restrictions created by the new setting. Abundant also pushes certain pantheons above others as they are based on certain resources, especially GOTOS (God of the open Sky) and OT (Oral Tradition) as they give culture per pasture / plantation on certain resources respectively.
Rainfall: Standard
We discussed a bit about using the wet setting here, but finally canceled it as people were questioning the dominance of LORAM (Lady of the reeds and marshes) pantheon which gives 1 cog to each Marsh, Floodplain and Oasis. The wet setting creates more of these, especially marshes as well as more forest and jungle so it would have further slowed down the movement and thus the rush probability. I think it would have been interesting to play on wet with LORAM as I believe we would have seen a strong push to LORAM and a quite different game from the current one. This setting also gives more room towards chopping forests and jungle in combination with policies and districts.
Even on standard there are plenty of forests and jungles on the map and the LORAM benefitting tiles tend to accumulate in certain areas, so I believe it will still be among the better pantheons. Not having the maximum number of forests will mean that scout movement will be less slowed as well and will increase the importance of the Alpine promotion (no movement cost increase for hills). The above mentioned food strain for certain city locations will probably a bit stronger at the beginning of this game as there will be less floodplains, oasis and marshes as they are right from the start good food locations.
Barbarians: on
In my opinion this should be a standard setting, as it increases tension in the games and is essential especially for early Eureka's and Inspiration's and it forces choices to be made.
There is a certain danger of beeing held back by excessive barbarian spawns and there is almost always at least one player who is not disturbed by barbarians to much. However I believe this game is about choices made depending on circumstances and how to further benefit from these, so if you are forced to build more military to fight off barbarians, you can either turn your military to a city state or player afterwards or build up with a bigger safety and thus maybe improve the policy and building choices you take later on.
Huts: off
This just decreases chance in finding them and getting the better contents or the worser, I think it is a good idea that we turned them off to take this chance out of the game. If they were kept on, there would have been more emphasis on scouting as the only mean to find more huts, but I believe the city states are enough of an encouragement to scout so I voted against huts.
Ideas and conclusion
If the map setting stay the same, I will question a first build scout strongly, as I now know that it will encounter many areas where it will effectively have the same speed as my other military units. However if I see a large flat area right next to my starting location, I will probably build one and send my warrior throuh the slow going landscape to investigate that area.
The forest and jungle density around the capital will also have an impact on the early builder choices, as each jungle is as good as a farm until feudalism and each forest as good as a mine until apprenticeship. It could be that we will delay the first builder depending on the capitals BFH (big fat hexagon).
The terrain setup is slightly disfavorable for rushing very early and will very likely slow down fighting, on the other hand it will provide lots of defensible terrain and thus encourage to play a builder game. This is actually a double edged sword, as I believe the others will come to the same conclusion and thus will maybe be lower on military than they would be on a more open map. I have not yet decided against a rush strategy but will evaluate my builder capacities later on and then figure which strategy I will prefer.
The pictures above were taken in a testgame with the aztecs with an very aggressive 3 Jaguar Warrior opening. It worked out fine as I was able to kill the scouting units of Spain and India early for builders and then could push on spain to take their capital. However the distance and terrain were clearly not in my favor here and any player would have been either prepared on time for the rush or I would not have had builders early enough.
For new city spots the production/food ratio is very important as each city should easily be able to reach 4-5 population before focussiing on production, as this is the neat area were the amenities optimization takes place. After this 4-5 population they can work as many hill tiles as possible. Based on this the cities will be able to foster our empire while beeing high potential late game locations when the technologies come in to further grow these cities.
Summary:
- Double verify scout first/worker first in regard to a military unit
- Map is builder encouraging/slightly anti rush
- Map is slow, positional mistakes are punished hard and a failed rush or bad rush due to bad target selection can be severly punished
- Map contains many instant gains (harvest/chop)
-> technologies to use these may be prioritized
-> instant defense builds possible (walls/units)
-> strong encouragement to optimize policies into overflow which means rushbuilding is possible for everyone
Opponent Analysis As I am relatively new to RB and just read a couple pitboss and PBEM games, mostly for CIV 4 and CIV 6, I will not be able to evaluate the players capabilities in details. However, I believe it is a good idea to get a general feeling for your opponents and an expectation of their likely behavior. Bacchus I mostly read from/about him in the PBEM2 game as the dedlurker of The_Archduke, as this game is still going on and there is the possibility of The_Archduke reading this thread, I will refrain from going into a more detailed analysis of how he is consulting him.
I believe he will be a very thorough player, with good preparation and long term and short term planning. He seems to have a good grasp of the game and a structured approach to decision making. As he is also the originator of PBEM3 I assume he is highly motivated to win this game.
His CIV selection is in my opinion the best, as he has 2 very strong choices at hand, see below.
China/Qin The early game power of China is currently being demonstrated by Woden in a very thorough and well described way. I give some spoilers away in my analysis as I believe it is detrimental to my decision making, so please, PBEM2 guys, refrain from reading the spoiler areas of CIVs in your game.
I really like his approach risking a couple of wonders by delaying them until the moment where he:
1. was safe enough to build them
2. Had already enough infrastructure in place to not fall too behind by sacrificing several Builders for this purpose
3. lowered the required amount of Builders by optimizing the Feudalism usage as well as the Pyramids bonus
4. showed off with the 1 turn PETRA
5. still took the important wonders in the right moment to make sure to achieve certain goals (like Stonehenge to deny the first Great Prophet to Alhambram)
Inspired by his game I played a couple China games myself and was convinced of its strength. The main difficulty lies actually in building the excess Builders necessary to rush the wonders without sacrificing the remaining build up. I believe going for the wonder sling as Woden did is actually a mainly low risk play as his variant ensured his safety while giving him versatility in the Builder usage. In case of an early rush China needs to be prepared but typically can react swiftly by using existing Builders which were created for the wonder sling for emergency units and infrastructure instead.
As I have written in map analysis, our chosen map slightly discourages rush strategies and offers many possibilities for harvesting and chopping resources. This directly benefits China as it will allow a safer start and more options for emergency builder usage.
China also has the only unique tile improvement I ever successfully used, as it gives +4 Defense for a unit on that field and +2 gold and +2 culture and +2 tourism if it has 2 adjacent wall segments. Each wall can only have 2 adjacent wall segments and it needs to be built on the current border of your territory, but it is a strong tile improvement for deserts (where there are none other possible) and at choke points to further increase the Chinese defensibility.
On top of that, Woden is right now hitting the Chinese sweet spot with Crouching Tigers being available boosting his walls to an insane damage against current area military. The Crouching Tiger comes in just at the right moment for the Chinese, as it is about at the end of their wonder sling capabilities when people have prepared or are preparing wars against China to stop their runaway. With the lowered range of 1 field but the strength increase to 50 instead of 40 for their shot, they are a more defensive unit than the Crossbow. The Crouching Tiger is one of the few unique units not replacing its vanilla counterpart, which means China can still build Crossbows for the added range.
His strategy to prepare now for coming invasions shows that he is well reading the game but I believe that he was also expecting this development and was seeing China's strength at this period of the game. I believe it will be difficult for the coming 30 turns to have military gains against Woden as his defenses are still dangerous for Musketman.
All this said, I believe China is a good choice for this game due to the very likely build nature of the game and China's inherent defensive capabilities. The only way to stop China from the wonder sling is actually an early invasion forcing him to use his builders for other purposes. However this will almost certainly lead to an unwanted situation for the war waging party, as the remaining field can pull ahead and even try to steal some wonders. This strategy is only beneficial if major war gains can be achieved.
China will likely try to go for a cultural win, thus another way of playing them is to develop a strong culture yourselves and try to catch up during the later stages of the game. All the other winning conditions are still quite viable as well but more late game oriented.
Germany/Frederick Singaboy was at the border of showing off the German powerhouse Hansas enabling the strongest production Industrial Districts potential in the game.
I actually believe that all players, including Singaboy, are underestimating his position, as he has plenty of lands with rivers to settle, even still one Kilimanjaro location, where he can build his insane Commercial Hub / Hansa combination.
If you push the cities to a minimum distance, it not only gets easier to gain all the tiles necessary for a setup of Hansa Craziness, as most of them go from 3rd ring to 2nd ring, it also enables further optimization of districts to and double usage of existing resources to increase the general benefit
If Singaboy gets some time to build up and create even only two cities with the Hansa craziness he will end up with 4* 5 production Hansa's without counting any neighboring resources (+2 for each CH and +1 for 2 neighboring districts)
He needs to play a very defensive game staying below the radar in order to get a grasp of the game again.
As he was just gravely set back at that moment, it might be that Bacchus wants to show their real potential in this game.
Their unique unit is lacking as it comes late and is a naval unit which will not have a strong impact on a Pangaea map I assume.
Their additional district eases the early use of Hansa's and is a important factor in their general strength, however it mostly comes into play into the mid game. There is a nice combination with the DS pantheon (Divine Spark) as it makes Germany to a Great People powerhouse with more than average districts.
The key to Germany is using their innate +7 strength against city states to grow the German empire faster and deny the benefits of City states to other players. This is their only real way to pull ahead in the early game and people generally tend to take the city state benefits instead, which are the strongest in the early game as well. To be honest, I am myself undecided on what is the better strategy for the CIVs who are easily capable of conquering city states early.
Never forget that Germany has one additional military policy slot, which is very strong in MP games as there is always the need for some military interaction.
Generally speaking, Germany is a standard starter but will get very strong when the Hansa's come into play and keep its strength then as it can easily achieve a high production basis from which they can try to for a Scientific or Domination win. A cultural win is not off the books, but not necessarily the main focus for Germany.
Rushing them is a danger for them as for any other standard developing civilization, they want to play the long game and thus I would be more confident if Bacchus takes Germany than China, as I believe I can easier keep up with Germany's production than with the wonder sling.
India/Gandhi India is in my opinion one of the weakest CIVs in the total 15 CIVs which were available. Their main focus is a religious victory based on others spreading their religion to India. They have a strong Faith bonus for others founding religions and not being at war with India. They are clearly aiming at a religious victory.
And there is their main weakness, they are relying on others playing the religious game themselves and most of their bonus are reliant on others founding religions but in a MP game you are only founding religions to win a religious win yourself so directly competing with India. The other reason to found religions is to defend against a religious win, which comes in later and is counterproductive to India's early oriented Faith bonus of +5 Faith per other CIV with a religion not at war with India. Their unique tile improvement, the Stepwell is oriented in early religion as well and I perceive it as just bad as it is a slightly better farm without counting for the farming triangles of feudalism (I assume that).
The Varu is a stronger but slower horseman lowering neighboring units strength. It upgrades into the Tank! doubling its strength and jumping 4 ages, which means these guys would be around for quite some time and would be severely outdated.
Their most beneficial trait is the increased war wariness keeping them safer than other CIVs, however multiplayer games tend to have well prepared lightning strikes so it is mainly a deterrent to keep others from declaring war as they can then just refuse to make peace and pull the other one with them to the ground.
I would be strongly surprised if Bacchus is taking India, my guess will be China.
Ichabod I actually do not know enough about him, but from the organization thread I assume he will have a well established C&D department and will not be prone to surprises outside of potential misunderstandings of the game mechanics or displayed information.
His selection of CIVs is quite difficult as I think they are all close by but I feel all are a bit one sided.
England/Victoria England is actually a CIV I am undecided on. My perception is that their abilities are midgame oriented with a slight touch in direction of a cultural win by the increased number of Archaeologists (for that the Terracotta army is very important for her). The reason I am undecided is that I believe the push for the cultural win comes in to late and takes production for Archaeological Museums away from her other and in my opinion bigger threat the military campaign on another continent.
Especially on Pangaea, where typically several continents are combined with land borders, she will be able to push out units with newly found cities and captured cities as long as they are on a different continent than her capital. Her early game and midgame strength will strongly depend on the layout of the map's continents and her accessibility of "colonies" on different continents.
Her mid game attack will likely start with Military Science as she will then be able to build her Redcoats (which are a bit hidden on the Wiki, as they come with Lizzy herself and not the English in general) which are strength 65 (vs. 55 of a vanilla Musketman) and will get additional +10 on a different continent (any continent without the English capital). This is the strongest and most applicable CIV based military bonus and it combines very well with her free units due to conquering (steamrolling) cities or founding cities.
They also have the Royal Navy Dockyards as their special district replacing the harbor. Again, this does not look extremely useful on a Pangaea map, but the RND is a strong district as it gives +2 Gold if on another continent, always a trade route, even if combined with a commercial district (since Spring 2017 patch) and increases naval movement by 1 for English ships built there. Combined with the Seadog, England's official unique unit, it makes England to a mid-to-late game powerhouse on the seas, as the Seadog can capture enemy ships and perform costal raids on any improvements being to close to the cost.
I believe England has a solid game strategy in identifying early continental borders and then pushing a mid game invasion based on Redcoats. Their main winning condition is domination and they should be safe in the early game as well, when they happen to have a continental divide close by due to the free units given when founding on a new continent.
All in all, they greatly depend on the initial location but will be able to push an extremely strong late game economy based on a very large number of trade routes. I would not like to see them in the game due to the feared strength 75 midgame push.
Catherine/France I have a special connection to France, as my wife is French and already played them and against them in Hot Seats with me. We were having a good laugh at watching the animations and mimics of Catherine and realizing that my wife and her were disapproving each other in an extremely similar fashion. Kudos to Firaxis at their character generation
So France, similar to England has a strong midgame unit in the Garde Imperiale, however it is the Redcoats counterpart, as it receives its bonus on the capital's continent and thus it the prime counter to England (completely accidentally I assume )
The French benefit from a heightened awareness of other players' doings, which is nice but as has been seen so far is currently done via C&D departments instead. No player so far sent even an delegation to increase their diplomatic visibility with other players. For those of you unaware what diplomatic visibility does, it gives you certain information in form of a text message at the beginning of your round. The information given depends on the diplomatic visibility level and can range from CIV's in question trading with others, over founding cities, over preparing for wonders towards starting and finishing space race projects.
This, as well as the additional spy, might come in handy in the mid-to-late game in order to better track the happenings on the map, but is essentially a bonus which is in my opinion unnecessary for everything besides the very endgame and the spaceship projects.
Now coming to the good part, France has a 20% benefit on Medieval, Renaissance, and Industrial era wonders, which are among the best wonders in the game such as Ruhr valley (+30% production for the city) or Forbidden City (an additional wild card policy slot). On top of that they have a unique tile improvement, the Chateau, giving culture and appeal (important to build seaside resorts for a cultural victory and to increase housing bonus from neighborhoods) and becoming culture powerhouses if next to Wonders (+1 base, +2 for a Wonder,+1 cold for a luxury resource). Their drawback is that they have to be build next to a river so they are limited in their placement options.
All these are directing France clearly towards a cultural victory based on a late wonder sling in the midgame further pushed by the Chateau's. France gains a quite defensible position as well by its Garde Imperiale, so if you look closely at it, it is a mid-game China and I would love having France in the game as a counterweight to the Chinese cultural pressure from the early game. Comparing it directly with China, I believe China is clearly stronger as it snowballs earlier and will very likely reach the midgame before France.
Greece/Pericles We are currently seeing the double Greece in PBEM2 and there is a chance for a repetition in this game. The reasons for Greece's popularity is clearly the additional wildcard slot, which is a huge benefit and strongly influences their early game. Greece will, without other influences, very likely be able to grab the first pantheons and still have a good production base as they can slot both economic early policies from the beginning.
Although I clearly prefer Gorgo of Pericles, I believe both are viable. Pericles bonus of earning +5% culture for each city state he is suzerain of sound good, but it is easy to counter by fighting him for the suzerainty or conquering the city states which is anyway in the priorities of other players. Furthermore this bonus is only starting to really pull him ahead, when there is a good cultural basis for this multiplicator which he needs to lay down with his cheap Akropolis. However, at that point in the game, we can expect to see only few city states on the map, as their initial utility ran out and their strategic importance, mostly based on location and denial, led to their occupation.
In PBEM2 the adjacency bug of the Hoplite (giving him+10 strength adjacent to any friendly unit) was already encountered as well as its ineligibility for the Agoge policy and the first Great Generals. It is an interesting unit but no way as strong as other early game units.
Perikles should probably go for a cultural victory based on his cheap Akropolis and his innate Surrounded by Glory culture multiplicator. However there is no innate tourism bonus and thus he finally ends up being a counterweight to any cultural victory. Else he has all victory options open but has no particular benefits to them besides the free wildcard slot.
Overall I do not want Ichabod to select England, as they are in my opinion the scariest option to have as a neighbor. Further his selection of France or Greece will hopefully put some control on anybody going for a cultural runaway and thus prolong the game. From the perspective of my analysis I have a hunch that he is going to take France over England, although I believe his shot at the game would be better with England.
Rowain I am not able to say anything about Rowain, so I will just talk about his CIVs
Again a difficult decision ahead I believe, as all of them have a certain merit although I see a clear winner, I believe that is my perspective and not a very common one.
America/Roosevelt The late game CIV, not only do they have one of the latest unique units with the P51-Mustang, they also have a late game unique building with the Film Studio. While the P51-Mustang is a better fighter with a higher range and faster promotions, I made the experience that Airfights are rarely happening (at least against the AI) and mainly about Bombers ruining the battlefield below.
The Film Studio enables the Americans to go for a late cultural victory as it hugely increases the tourism pressure of their cities with it. If there are some seaside resorts or other means of tourism present they might try to go for a surprise late game cultural victory.
The difficulty for them to get there is actually the early-to-mid game, as they have few benefits then. Majorly it is a +5 combat strength on the home continent to be better on the defensive and discourage early wars. This actually is a huge benefit but it is dependent on the initial layout of the continents if they can bring it to pull its weight.
In the mid-to-late game they get the Rough Rider which is a culture generating heavy cavalry. It gets an innate bonus on hills and is nearly as strong as a tank on these.
They also gain all the government legacy bonuses in half the time, which further pushes their late game proficiency.
While I believe America is a good CIV, I believe it comes into play to late for a MP game and will be mainly on the defense until then. With the given map settings it might be a good pick after all.
Brazil/Pedro Brazil gains large benefits from having rainforest tiles nearby and they will always start with rainforest nearby. However this means that the will be very likely anywhere around the equator and thus have a higher likelihood of being in between other players. For them the Chitchen Itza is a prime goal, as they will likely want to keep rainforest around for the adjacency boni of their districts. They have a shot at building it if there is the right Greatengineer at hand and they can acquire it before others even have researched apprenticeship. In order to that they need to build their unique Street carnival district and its project, as it is giving Great engineer and Great artist, musician and writer points and thus they can land the earliest Great engineers possible.
Their unique unit is the Minas Geraes, a earlier battleship, which is huge but sadly very likely with few impact on a Pangea map.
Brazil tends to go for a cultural victory based on hopefully Chitchen Itza and the many great persons they can pursue with their projects. Instead of lowering appeal, rainforest increases appeal for Brazil giving it more potential for seaside resorts in order to achieve a cultural win.
Luckily rainforest provides food boni so that their growth is not hindered to much by leaving the rainforest tiles. I assume Brazil would have majorly benefitted from a wet setting for this map, as there would have been more rainforests as well.
All in all I believe their cultural game is the weakest for this game of the other valid choices and thus they should be avoided.
Russia/Peter There is my secret preference of this pick. As Brazil, Russia has a biased start as it always starts close to tundra and thus either to the northern or southern border for the map. This ensures that they always have one safe direction and are more likely not to be wedged between other players.
Russia is the only CIV which can really use tundra, as it gets +1 faith and +1 cogs on otherwise mostly useless tiles and non-improvable tiles. Especially hills and river forests get quite productive if the city can sustain its food from the non-tundra tiles.
As a counterweight to their tundra heavy starting location Russian cities get 8 tiles in their second ring upon founding. This is, in my opinion, one of the best traits in the game, as these 8 tiles will be the best 8 tiles in the second ring available ensuring that they always should have good tiles to work on. This will happen for every city, so their selection of available city spots, especially in regard to early food and production, is a lot better than for all the other CIVs.
With your capital bordering on tundra, it is sure to be a backline location when you settle your other cities in the more lush directions and benefit from the large coverage of their cities.
Which is the main reason for Alhambrams starting difficulties in my opinion in my opinion.
Alhambrams strategy to use the Lavra, the Russian holy site district giving Great Artist points and starting the religious pressure is a sound one but he was emphasizing to early and to heavily on it and was countered and significantly slowed by Woden's Stonehenge
Their unique unit, the Cossack is a very defensive cavalry best used to defend to major territory gains of Russia. With them u can even defend against tanks if you are on defensive ground in Russia's territory.
I believe as Russia you should throw down one or two early Lavra, to accumulate faith and start the religious game early forcing the other to divert resources to the religious threat and then start to build up your lands and use the additional terrain you have to establish a better production base and more control than the others. For me Russia's religious game is better used as a threat to cover for Russia's heavy expansion.
Russia can effectively threaten religious and cultural victories while it grows and grows.
My choice would have been clear, as I believe that Russia's expansion game is strong and it has the means to deter the others. As I have no knowledge of Rowain, I will make a random guess that he is not taking a CIV from PBEM2 and goes with Brazil instead, as America comes to late into the game.
Suboptimal I have not read about him before on this forum, so no "guesstimation" from me, besides that he might lack the fine tuning and micro management knowledge as he said that he so far is playing only on Prince difficulty.
His selection of CIV's is actually surprisingly solid, at the beginning I thought he drew the short straw, but I see all of them on an equal an competitive level. It will be hard to guess his final choice.
Arabia/Saladin I considered Arabia bad before as it is another CIV with a religous focus and it seems to be easy to defend against a religious win. However I realized that their real benefit is their versatility, Arabia can completely ignore religion at the beginning of the game and set up a well build Campus and Theatre district based economy.
The Madrasa as the University replacement will give them a science boost and Faith on top of that.
At some point in time, they will be given the final Great Prophet and found their religion, this is the point in time where they want to build holy sites in their science and cultural hubs to really benefit from the huge +10% science, culture and faith multiplicator coming from Saladin's leader ability. For this they can use the accumulated Faith in order to directly evangelize their belief and get a religious building.
With the Mameluk they have a fast healing Knight at hand, which is a very dominant and cheap to upgrade (from the War chariot) midgame unit, discouraging any early-to-mid game attempts to conquer them if they prepared with enough War chariots.
Although they lack the clear focus, they have actually a very viable shot at a scientific victory while being able to prevent earlier culture or religion based victories. If Arabia is in the game and running on a decent economy, I expect them to pull away with science around the time Madrasas come into the game.
Egypt/Cleopatra Cleopatra, the queen of the Nile river, is in my opinion, slightly worse than the other two as she largely depends on available river tiles in her territory to use her main bonus of +15% production for wonders and districts. Although this is true for all wonders, she will likely have to compete with a wonder slinging China for the early wonders and a 20% production boost for the Medieval to Renaissance wonders in France.
The Sphinx, their unique tile improvement, give +1 culture and +1 faith and additional +2 faith for adjacent wonders, which is typically the least important resource in a MP game. Thus it is very likely only a valid build on desert areas, next to the Pyramids, this is actually an achievement if I remember correctly.
Besides this Egypt is actually in a good early game state. There certainly will be rivers around her and thus she could try to grab early districts and push this (slight) benefit further. I am actually not a big fan of the Maryannu Chariot Archer, as it replaces the War Chariot with a ranged unit incapable of conquering cities and being able to be upgraded into Knights. On top of that they are quite production expensive but also half as strong as Crossbowmen are.
She has another strong side with her trade routes to other CIVs, including city states, giving her +4 gold. This is actually huge as in the midgame she will easily have 7-10 trade routes benefitting from this bonus, however the domestic trade routes offering production and food are typically more important as these two resources are normally needed everywhere. Furthermore Cleopatra gives everybody else having trade routes to her +2 food and she receives +2 gold, which enables other to abuse her cities for their own purposes.
I believe she is the weakest pick of the 3 over here, as she has potentially to compete with 2 better wonder building civilizations and using her benefit only for the districts will not cut the deal for her.
Egypt has no clear preferred victory condition besides pulling ahead based on wonders and districts similar to China but doing this less efficient.
Greece/Gorgo Please read my part about Greece above at Ichabod. As I said I clearly prefer Gorgo over Pericles, but I believe both are viable. Gorgo has a clear early cultural advantage which probably only beaten by Rome's free Monuments. Oledayvy is showing how to use her properly and that she is better than pericles, as she gives a clear early game advantage.
However there is no innate tourism bonus and thus Greece still ends up being a counterweight to any cultural victory. Else it has all victory options open but has no particular benefits to them so it hangs between the chairs and needs to pull away in the early game or use their free wildcard policy slot extremely well.
In total, I hope he will take Arabia with a culture and science based early game as I believe that is the strongest pick for suboptimal and of the stronger ones for this game. From my perspective I would like to see Gorgo as an early aggressor and cultural counterweight. I believe he will go with Gorgo as there is a good and well described example being played by Oledavy and thus he might orient himself based on that.
Summary
My best guess:
Bacchus - China
Ichabod - France
Rowain - Brazil
Suboptimal - Greece/Gorgo
As you can see I am fully expecting cultural powerhouses, the strongest of them with good defensive technology right at the moment they will likely need it the most. China is clearly the strongest choice if they come in the way I assume but there is a full game to play and starting locations, relative positions and barbs will have a major word in the game itself as well.
Our choices Sorry for the delay, here are my thoughts before making my CIV choice. I realized ingame that the 3 leaders I got for choice show directely next to each other in the CIV menu as they are sorted alphabetically by leader name. Is this coincidence or fate? I will continue in their ingame order then.
Japan/Hojo
Japan is offering a seemingly mixed bag of tools for us.
They have a mediocre medieval unique unit with the Samurai, which actually is a good unit sadly hidden behind a bad technology you normally not want to research nor you want to build the unit required for the technology's Eureka (kill a unit with a Spearman). However the Samurai is not bad offering a melee unit between the Swordsman and the Musket which has the benefit of always doing full damage independent of its current health status. Sadly it is not possible to upgrade Swordsmen or Warriors into the Samurai.
However the point where the Samurai would be available is a very important point of the game, where the first real wars are to be expected or already ongoing and if one can manage to land the technology, they are a good tool to use until you get Muskets.
Their special building is an Electronics factories, replacing the normal Factory and giving +4 culture on top of the +4 production. Sadly the +4 culture will not be provided to other cities within 6 tiles as the production will, on top of that the Factory bonus does not stack so multiple factories are only necessary to cover all cities with the bonus. Although it is a nice bonus as the factory is a building you will definitely build in a way to cover all your cities, you probably won't build it everywhere and I am not sure that the +4 culture are enough of an incentive to build them.
The late point in time when it will be available is a further point why this Industrial district improvement is unlikely to majorly impact the game.
Let us come to the good stuff, the japanese bonus is Meji Restoration, which means that all districts will receive a +1 bonus from neighboring districts (instead of +1/2 bonus). This actually means that Japan is encouraged to place its districts in hubs and that they are not dependant on geography for district adjacency bonuses. This means independent of mountains (for Campus and Holy Sites) and Mines (for Industrial Districts), it is theoretically possible to reach a maximum of +6 on any district, even on the Theatre District, which has no other adjacency bonuses than other districts and wonders and thus is the hardest district to maximize.
As you can combine the districts of multiple cities in one area, it is actually quite easy to achieve substantial bonuses to your districts, similar than Germany is doing that for its Hansas. Although Japan will not reach the same bonus levels than the German Hansa, it is capable of boosting all its districts this way and thus can adapt very well to the game situation.
Their leader benefit looks extremely situational when you start to read it, but you need to look at it fully to be able to judge it. First you read that it gives +5 strength when fighting on coast or on shallow water, which is hard to utilize but a nice benefit people might forget about. However on Pangaea, it is unlikely that this will have a major impact for the game.
The second paragraph however is synchronizing very well with Meji Restoration, as Japan produces Encampments, Holy Sites and Theatre districts in half the time. So Japan is not only easily able to provide adjacency bonuses for its districts, it can also build some of them in half time. Let us have a look at what is possible with these districts then.
Encampment:
Gives +25% experience gain for units build there and creates a defensible position. Japan can build them very fast and thus create a tremendous defensible position.
Cannot be placed next to a city site, which means if you place it in second ring, you will have two positions with at least +2 bonus in between.
Generates Great General points, Japan has a unique shot at acquiring the first Great General if it pushes for Bronze Working early and then directly constructs an encampment.
Holy Site:
Faith generation (Mountain +1, Natural wonder +2, Forests +1/2, Districts +1 (only Japan))
Enables building holy chain buildings
Buy Missionaries, Inquisitors and Apostles
Found pantheon and religion, Japan again has a unique shot at acquiring the first Great Prophet if it pushes for Astrology early and then directly constructs an Holy site. However this is competing with the early push for an Encampment, on the other hand it is unlikely that all players will push for a religion so there is a decent shot at acquiring one when building this district slightly later.
Theatre district:
Culture generation (+1 Wonder, +1 Districts (only Japan))
Enables cultural building chain buildings
Build Archaeologists
Coming later than the other two, this district pushes the culture game and helps defending against a cultural victory, keeping up with cultural dominant CIVs. It also will help pushing out a cities borders faster and thus claim more area for the Japanese Empire.
All in all is there a surprising early game pushing ability in going for an early Great General and maybe an early Great Prohpet as well. Japan should be able to hold its position against cultural CIVs as well. The longer the game goes, the better the Japanese economy will be due to the increasing adjacency bonuses provided by building more and more districts. A seemingly balanced faction which could be nice into this expected setup of cultural heavy factions.
Aztecs/Montezuma
The Aztecs have the only starting unique unit with the Eagle Warrior. It is strength 28 instead of 20 of a normal Warrior and will still be relevant when there are Swordsmen on the field. It has one of the best abilities in the game in creating Builders out of killed enemy non-barbarian units. This means you can farm city states or other CIVs for builders and thus build other things in your cities.
They also gain the ability to rush 20% of a disctrict with a Builder charge, enabling them to build a district with 5 charges (so a Feudalism slotted Builder). This means that the Aztecs are able to build multiple districts at the same time while still building something else at the city with some micro management.
Together with the Eagle Warriors ability, the Aztecs are a powerhouse if they can manage to create a constant stream of early captured Builders. As there is a disadvantage similar to the one China experiences, Builders go up in cost based on the number of already built Builders and using them for districts will slow down the city improvement. So if the Aztecs do not manage to create many free Builders, their early game will not be as dominant as it could be.
Their unique building, the Tlachtli, is a joke as it needs a district you normally do not want to place in the early game (Entertainment district) besides for building the coliseum next to it and its bonus is additional faith and Great General points. Why not build an encampment or a project in an encampment instead if you need the Great General?
On top of that the Aztecs are the least likely amenity starved CIV, as they gain their luxury resource benefit for 6 instead of 4 cities and thus can sustain a wider empire than normal further reducing the need for an early Entertainment district.
For the later game they have one really nice benefit in that each unique luxury resource they posses gives them +1 strength to their units. I believe on a small map there will be 12 luxury resources, so they could gain a maximum of +12 strength for their units. Realistically I believe +3-+5 is achievable for the medieval period where most of the early warring will take place and a +3 - +5 strength bonus is a quite substantial bonus
With the Aztecs we see the last remaining rush faction, as Sumeria and Scythia have been banned from this game. They can be extremely early game dominant if given easy access to city states or players for Builder farming.
As stated on the map analysis, this game does not provide ease access to others, or at least there is a chance that it takes a substantial amoutn of time to find and attack the next victim for the Builder generation. On top of that attentive players will be able to delete their units before the Aztecs have a chance to kill them in order to avoid free Builders. Around the time the real wars take place will be also the time when the Eagle Warriors become obsolete and thus the free Builder generation will be significantly harder.
Even if I manage to find an eliminate a neigboring player, I am not sure that the other players will not have gained a lead in the meantime and will slowly pull ahead in the game. To avoid that I would need to immediately switch to builder mode afterwards and hope that the war efforts were not to straining to catch up with the others.
I believe the Aztecs are a strong CIV but for this game I do not believe that I will be able to gain enough momentum with them in the early game especially considering the increased time for early invasions due to the map settings. I will not take them for this game.
Kongo/Mvemba
The Congolese are a unique faction in that they cannot build Holy sites nor receive Great Prophets. I actually believe that there is one Great Prophet slot less available if Congo is in the game which could be a nasty surprise during a multiplayer game.
So what are Congo's strength then when they are unable to win a religious victory?
It is an insane push at a cultural victory. Let us go into Kongo's details.
Kongo's bonus is called Nkisi and gives it +2 food +2 cogs and +4 gold on top of the 4 culture from each relic (huts or dying religious units when having the Mont St. Michel wonder), artifact (archaeologist can collect them in the mid-to-late game) and sculpture (provided by Great Artists).
Additionally their Great Writer, Great Artist, Great Musician and Great Merchant points are doubled and their palace has 5 slots for great works of art.
Kongo can crazily fast push out great persons after building a theatre district and a comemrcial district. While the Great Merchants will provide bonuses for Congo's economy, the Great Cultural Guys will push Congo's culture and tourism in a crazy way (+4 for both for each great work). Especially when being able to land the DS (Divine Spark) pantheon giving +1 GPP for Scientists writers and Prophets (doh) and/or the Oracle (giving +2 to all GPP in that city).
Although there are actually two downsides I see for Congo.
First the Great Artists sometimes creates sculptures but mostly create paintings in my experience and thus it is hard to benefit from the first part of Nkisi, especially without being able to find an early relic in a hut, as they are disabled. Archaeologist come in late in the game and will provide more of a finished to Congo as they are typically already leading towards a cultural victory by then.
Second the number of slots to present the great works is limited and although Congo can display the first 5 in its palace it will likely end up with more great people than work slots and have to push for further slots. This however will make them prone to invasion or at least lacking in other economical directions and thus presents a kind of a gamble.
Their unique unit ist the Ngao Mbeba, a Swordsman who can ignore jungle and forest for movement and line of sight and is more defensible against ranged attacks. This guy would be pretty nice for this map and even better if we would have decided for the wet setting. He offers a highly mobile and difficult to dispose of unit for the classical area and benefits from the first Great Generals. He comes at the right time and with the right abilities and although he is weaker than the Legion from Rome, I believe he is on par with it in terms of utility.
Their unique district is the Mbanza, an early neighborhood boosting the housing by +5 and adding +2 food and +4 gold, it is needing a jungle or word to be placed. It also builds an apostle of the city's religion if there is any (like the Theatre districts), this is the sole mean for Congo to defend against a religious victory peacefully.
The Mbanza comes in earlier and provides a very good housing bonus resulting in Congo pulling away in population in the mid game. As a result Congo's science and culture generation based on population will start running away earlier as well.
All in all Congo is a very strong faction with a strong emphasis on a cultural victory and culture generation. But due to the Ngao Mbeba and the Mbanza, domination and science victories are also alternative although slightly behind the pure cultural force Congo can present. Their main disadvantage lies in their difficulty fighting off a religious victory peacefully.
Decision
As stated during the reviews, I already excluded the Aztecs based on the expected map geography.
While Kongo and Japan both look like strong builders, Congo clearly has the edge in going for an early cultural victory and a better unique unit than Japan. However I believe Japan's abilities are better rounded to defend against and go for any victory type.
As I am expecting a culture heavy game the early cultural win perspective of Congo is less appealing to me than the all round capabilities of Japan thus I have decided to go with Japan.
Thanks for the feedback, I just send Sulla my choice but did not have the time to update the thread today. I will do that hopefully tomorrow during my lunch break. I can say that I believe I went with an unorthodox decision process and likely ended up with an unexpected choice.
On the other hand we had 3 very different CIVs for choice with very different strengths and strategical goals. I would have liked to get your input on my choice but just could not post my analysis on time.
Any guesses?
She was moving a lot but was born near Paris and finished school in Reims. By now her parents are living near Cannes which is very nice for our vacation opportunities.
Sorry for the delay in updating my thread, I had a lot of work this week and did not come around to give some more feedback here.
Yeah the people are sometimes unfriendly and way to many tourists. But it is a beautiful area and if you travel there outside of vacation time you can enjoy it.
Where are you from in France?
and feel free to entertain yourself in the waiting room.![[Image: QW7LZbI.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/QW7LZbI.jpg)
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