Smackdown Starting positions

[Ichabod]

After some tought i think we should pair Mehmed with Sumeria.

Can you explain why? I'm guessing that having 30h Ziggurats is too good to pass out. That is, we wouldn't build much 60h Ziggurats or 40h ORG courthouses early, so might as well combine the bonuses into a major bonus that actually gets used.

I was thinking that Rome UB is anti-synnergistic with the Techer civ (due to it being a gold building). But Rome's UB will be lackluster either way and we might end up building markets for the techer anyway, due to happiness reasons.

I'm not good at making choices, so I don't conclude much of my thoughts. Just trying to get the ball going on a more meaningful discussion than civ color (or at least making Mack and Seven post their chats so we can read ).

[mackoti]

I think having courthoses at pristhood gave us more flexibility,and we can delay for a whilie col if maps offer us something good(calendar resources) or a fast run to feudalism,and i think we will want to build those courthoses for Lizzie just later when cities are biger stronger having perhaps a forge and ORg religion.

[Ichabod]

I think having courthoses at pristhood gave us more flexibility,and we can delay for a whilie col if maps offer us something good(calendar resources) or a fast run to feudalism,and i think we will want to build those courthoses for Lizzie just later when cities are biger stronger having perhaps a forge and ORg religion.

And I think we won't be able to get CoL in time to get confucianism, further reducing its value. And, while we have a philosophical civ, we don't have a spiritual one, which makes Caste System also not that good. Our philosophical trait will be better to get a fast academy and more GPP in the long run, not so much to get burst GPPs with Caste (we'll need a GA for that) - and, of course, quicker Universities.

That's how I see things at least.

[Krill]

I think going with Lizzie/Sumeria gives greater flexibility; neither Sumeria or Rome have UU that matter if they are paired with either leader, nor is the Roman UB really worth much on either leader as well. Ziggaruts will allow one leader to expand more horizontally and keep lower costs, either meaning Lizzie needs less gold to tech at 100% and so could get a few more cities, or Mehmed can get a few more cities and still generate enough gold to keep Lizzie at 100%; on the surface it appears that it doesn't matter, but Lizzie with a few more cities and cottages (or specs) would be more productive than Mehmed with a few more cottages. Even if it only matters for, say, cities 5 and 6 on Lizzie, those settlers could be gifted from Mehmed.

[novice]

I chatted with Mackoti about this and I tend to agree with his idea. Basically the wide civ will want cheap maintenance reducers, whereas the tall civ doesn't really care early on but might want a market. Pairing ORG with Ziggurats gives us 30h ziggurats and 80h courthouses. Pairing ORG with courthouses gives us 60h ziggurats and 40h courthouses, so we lose 10h of synergy. But if we pair ORG with Sumeria we get the discount where we'll actually use it.

Reading Krill's post - yeah more cities with Lizzie will be slightly more productive, except they won't have cheap granaries... And Philosophical is good for universities, as Ichabod points out.

[Ichabod]

But why would the funder civ be the wide one? Wouldn't it be better to make the FIN civ wider (through city gifts from the EXP one), since it has a trait that directly improve tile yields?

[Krill]

That sounds like circular reasoning when taken with the idea that Lizzie must always run 100% slider.

[novice]

But why would the funder civ be the wide one? Wouldn't it be better to make the FIN civ wider (through city gifts from the EXP one), since it has a trait that directly improve tile yields?

I kind of envisioned a core of tall Fin cities that are emphasizing nothing but commerce, running bureau, and a wide exp/org empire surrounding/protecting it that just bangs out workers, settlers and units, runs vassalage, and has its workers improving both civs' lands. After all, not every city can be a commerce city, and it's usually your core doing the economic lifting, whereas your newer cities play support roles. Here, we're separating those roles between two different civs.

But that might very well not be the way to do this - we all know my macro button is broken.

[Ichabod]

Either way, the techer civ wants libraries and science multipliers, while having full price utility buildings, like Granary and Lighthouses. We won't have hammers for Ziggurats in those cities, not early, at least.

The EXP/ORG civ, on the other hand, doesn't have much to build after granaries when growing (not whipping settlers/workers), so we could get some ziggurats there.

[zakalwe]

How does the number-of-cities maintenance work? Is it much more expensive to have one large and one small empire, compared to two medium ones?