[SPOILERS] naufragar is in for a penny

[naufragar]

I would've trip whipped 'mids to lib Astro, but this map is a balanced as a one-legged stool.










Just practicing my vet speak.

Edit: Password is cent.

[naufragar]

Old Fin Thought is onto their second page    so here’s some lurker bait.
 
Naufragar presents: A Newbie’s Guide to Picking a Leader
 
We must remember two things about fresh faced novices. They aren’t very good at the game, and they are going to die very quickly. Hopefully not axe rush on turn 20 quickly, but still. So the best traits for babes in the woods will a) have some kind of teeth to discourage casual snacking and/or b) start helping ASAP, preferably turn 1.
 
This means poor, earnest naufragar needs to avoid some traits that are actually quite good.
 
DEAD TRAITS! AVOID IF AT ALL POSSIBLE:
 
Philosophical: Philosophical in RtR is a great trait. Good food to beakers exchange rate via great people. Nice help getting Oxford up, and universities are lovely but very expensive, normally. We, on the other hand, will likely not be around to see the birth of the university, and we aren’t good enough to manage great people effectively. Bummer.
 
Spiritual: Another great trait. In the hands of someone dying to an avalanche of knights, a bit of a waste. We probably won’t have the luxury of swapping to caste much, given our need for Constant Vigilance. With newbish luck, those ten pantsless turns will be the relevant ones. So at best this probably saves us a turn switching to slavery.
 
Industrious: As a single player enthusiast, I enjoy Industrious. Wonders are fun and shiny, and different wonder attempts in different games give variety. Forges are painfully expensive for when they show up, so this lessens that pain. All that said, with me being amongst the bottom two players, ranked by MP experience, in a 26(!) player game, IND might as well just read “half-priced forges.” This is still an ok bonus, but we can hopefully do better than half a trait.

 
Our next category are traits I just feel kinda “meh” about. They’re fine. I’ll likely end up with at least one of these. They’re in this category because they either are a touch too late or they aren’t especially shiny, and I have an unhealthy addiction to flash.
 
TOTALLY FINE, NOTHING WRONG WITH THEM, BUT WE CAN GET SOMETHING COOLER, RIGHT?
 
Financial: Let’s get this out of the way upfront: I am not good at this game. As evidenced by me not getting butterflies in my stomach talking about financial. We all know that BtS Financial was the dopest dope that ever doped a dope. I’ve played around on the PB18 map with financial, and it was a bit awkward: Realms Beyond maps are so lush that in the early game cottages go on grassland (or flood plains) river tiles. Cottages on non-river grasslands comes a bit later after you’ve got your most high impact tiles already done, so Fin’s value in the earliest phase of the game is pretty much your calendar and mining luxuries. I’m open to having my mind changed about this, but I’m counting Financial as a later-game supplemental trait. Oh, and banks don’t exist for our game.
 
Organized: The very definition of an unflashy trait. Good dependable Org. It doesn’t make us any less appetizing to big bad neighbors, and it certainly isn’t an early game trait, so it’s got a lot going against it. On the other hand, Org leader plus courthouse UB is one of a few of my favorite things, so I’ll keep my eyes peeled for that. Org also counters the second attitude that the vets will take against neophytes: waiting for us to crash our economies and then coming in swinging with tech disparity. Tech disparity there may be, but Org is a nice help when you’ve over expanded. (The first vet attitude towards pretty young things is, of course, hit them firstest with the mostest.)
 
Charismatic: Obviously map dependent. If we have no luxuries, charismatic is all smiles. I suspect charismatic is a bit of a newb-trap, though. Chm wants you to grow big and work cottages and specialists and be lenient with the whip, all of which will make your eventual conqueror happy and full of capture gold. It can be used to accelerate whip cycles. All in all, this is an awkward trait for me to think about.

 
The rest of the traits are the ones we’re on the lookout for. These are the earliest of the early and the spikiest of the spiky.
 
KRILL/MARDOC, PLEASE GIVE:
 
Creative: I love creative. It isn’t valued as highly around here as I value it, and I look forward to learning the error of my ways, but creative does everything a greenhorn wants. It saves 30 to 60 hammers on border expansion. That border expansion makes sloppy dotmapping more forgivable. It gives cultural defense to the pink dots that need it most, and (and this one is never mentioned) it gives just that little extra vision without putting a fog-buster right in the path of a sneak attack chariot. Losing the 50% library discount makes me very sad, but this is still a stellar trait for what we need.
 
Protective: Pro is good. Plenty of people have explained why it’s good. Cheap granaries are great. Promotions and walls are good. This trait might even direct a neighbor to hit someone else instead of us. We like Pro.
 
Aggressive: Not quite an instant pick, but getting there. It isn’t a turn 1 advantage, but everything else it does is useful in so many areas. Need deterrence? Have free promos. Need border pops? How about building a barracks to pop ‘em while making shock axes? And while we’re at it, why not reduce maintenance. Just because you’re a happy little Agg leader. Yeah, I like this one.
 
Expansive: Ugh. I am Not A Fan. All the discounted buildings in the world wouldn’t make up for the loss of the granary. And that worker discount is deceptively awkward. It’s only hammers, when the majority of your worker production will be agricultural or animal food resources. One CAN chop or whip workers but, as opposed to chop/whipping settlers, which trades forests and pop for stuff, hurrying workers trades forests and pop for the potential for stuff. All that said, it is the turn 0 advantage trait par excellence. So yes, I am not so much of a luddite to turn my nose up at Exp.
 
Imperialist: But this one. This is the one we want. This is basically an autopick no matter what comes with it. People around here hate on my boy Augustus and in my hands Suleiman’s potential would be criminally squandered. Nevertheless, no matter how much I don’t want Phil/Ind/Spi, if I draw Imp with them, I’ll agonize (and I do mean agonize) for a good long while.
 

And now, gentle reader, you too know how to pick traits for your chummy self in these shark infested pitboss waters.

[RefSteel]

Here are the choices we rolled for you - when you've decided whether to keep the civ or reroll it, and which (if either) of the leaders you want to keep, post the inforrmation here to let us know.

Options:
Stalin (Agg/Ind)
Ramesses (Ind/Spi)
Carthage

(I fear we didn't consult your preferences, but I do see Agg on the list!)

The essential form of the BFC may be relied upon, though we might still make superficial changes e.g. to whether the trees are deciduous, conifers, or snowy, and we might imaginably even rotate the whole thing 90 degrees or something since the surrounding terrain is still being finalized. The corner tiles may yet change, and the fog is a fabric of lies, but at least you've got your start!

Also, in case it's not obvious due to the resource icon partly blocking the yield icons, note that your elephants live in a forest.

[naufragar]

Thanks Ref. I said it in the tech thread, but I'll say it again, I'm really glad to play here and I'm grateful to you and the rest of the map crew for taking the time to make the map.

Re: picks: Please re-roll both the civ and the leaders.


Dear potential lurkers, if it's not obvious, we'll chat about why at the end of the pick phase.

[naufragar]

Testing image sizing and upload.

Also how in the world you draw rivers??

[RefSteel]

Your second-round picks:

Mansa Musa (Fin/Spi)
Julius Caesar (Imp/Org)
Germany

[naufragar]

Helloooooo nurse.

Please lock in Julius Caesar of Germany. Ref et al., you are beautiful, generous people.

And I'll describe that generosity shortly.


Edit: A question for lurkers because I don't want to admit my ignorance publicly. Is tech cost (just base beakers) calculated via map size w/o regard for number of players and number of tiles? Like, will huge map tech costs be the same with 2 or 20 players and with 100x80 tiles and 200x160?

[naufragar]

So. Julius Caesar of Germany.

First I have to admit I’ve already made my first multiplayer civ4 error.    When Ref posted my picks, I glanced at a whole lot of bland and declined. Along the way, my brain didn’t even register that my settler was standing on wines.    Huh? Blame single player. Settlers aren’t supposed to start on resources, dammit! I had a brief moment of panic that I had sent away the perfect combo for a plains hill wines start. From rerolling first picks to noticing error, it took all of twenty seconds.

Luckily I don’t think anything changes. It did set me off on a nasty train of metagame speculation. Why do I have extra commerce that I won’t unlock any time soon? Are other starts more commerce rich and this is for balance? Do I have the wines for a luxury, and I won’t have any other luxuries for a while? Paranoia wasn’t helping, so I decided to just ignore the wines forever. When I reach monarchy, it’ll be like a little surprise present for myself.

How did picking go? Stalin and Ramesses don’t have early game econ, so that was an easy no. Carthage is a fine civ, but I couldn’t spy any water, and I felt I could be a little bit more aggressive using my first round to search for something fun. Round two would’ve been the crunch round, in which I might’ve had to chose between mediocre options just to avoid being forced in the final round to play Huey Long (Org/Ind) of Louisiana (Fishing/Mysticism).

But then the saintly, stately, and most of all timely game arbiters gave us Mansa Musa/Julius Caesar/Germany. I already told you that I’m not a fan of RtR Fin and I’m just not good enough to leverage Spi, so Mansa Musa’s out. Julius Caesar, on the other hand, is probably my fourth choice out of all 52 available (behind Imp + Agg/Pro/Cre in whatever order). Party time.  

I’m also elated to have Germany. The unique unit and building are too late to matter, but we’ve got the tech that unlocks our food resources and mining for a sprint to bronze working. Mining is kinda cheap, so the thought crossed my mind that maybe one of the pre-pottery techs would’ve been better, but I’m just going to go with my gut on this one and certainly not risk losing two relevant techs on a reroll. If I’ve missed something or made some dramatic mistake, please let me know. The picks are in and now we move on to figuring out just what kind of version of settle in place and go worker first for fifteen turns we do.  

[RefSteel]

Edit: A question for lurkers because I don't want to admit my ignorance publicly. Is tech cost (just base beakers) calculated via map size w/o regard for number of players and number of tiles? Like, will huge map tech costs be the same with 2 or 20 players and with 100x80 tiles and 200x160?

I just noticed this edit now, ages and ages late; sorry about that! Yes, as far as I know, the only things that affect tech costs in this mod are difficulty (Monarch) and nominal world size (Huge). The actual numbers of tiles and players don't matter for purposes of the total beaker costs of techs.

[naufragar]

Thanks. I should have all I need to start scheming and dreaming, then. Current lurkers and historians of the future, I won't be posting micro plans or anything like that. I'm using the thread mostly to think out loud but also to keep a record in case my civ's a witness to anything interesting. Since micro plans are an inherently iterative process (one doesn't take sand from the beach and produce a data probe), I probably won't post anything micro heavy unless asked or if I find something especially cool. (This also means people won't notice immediately when I get bored and start playing from the gut...)

...the effort and results RefSteel and Cornflakes are putting in is really great, and I think this will be a much better map than anyone would expect from 2 first-timers making Civ4 maps. I think the time they're putting in is worth it.

And I believe it. I don't know how much care went into the start layout, as opposed to just balancing for food/hammers/commerce, but things like the river making roading the pigs less efficient, my food on opposite ends, it's making the start interesting to think about.

figuring out just what kind of version of settle in place and go worker first for fifteen turns we do.

Not that anyone would be on my case for it, but obviously the plains hill we start on (and we're definitely settling in place) cuts that time to 12 turns. If we swap from the floodplains to the forested ivory when borders expand, we shave a turn off. For those wondering about my distaste of RtR Expansive, notice that Expansive only saves one turn off that first worker. (Which is considerable, but still.) (And while I'm at it, Creative does not save a turn. Would be kinda funny if it did.) The tricky thing really is going to be techs. Right now I'm deciding between Wheel or Bronze Working first. Wheel first probably makes absolutely zero sense, but if I go BW first, I think there's at least one, maybe two, wasted worker turns. We shall see. I'll be honest with you. I'll probably start going over Huge size openings reported here for "inspiration."