Smackdown Starting positions

[Krill]

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.

I always loathed the usage of the tall and wide concepts, they only pertain to growth of an empire, not the final state once all of the land is settled. All Ziggaruts are going to do is enable one civ to continue to expanding prior to CoL by managing city maintenance, so one civ can get a few more cities compared to a game without Sumeria. I don't see how assigning Sumeria to either leader will change how the settlers and military get produced (after all, slavery is going to be the primary method of production for most cities), nor how culture is produced in the border cities. All that really matters is that Mehmed makes 95% of the workers wanted and can keep Lizzie at something approaching 100% science (excepting late game Kremlin though I expect the game to be over by then).

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.

Lighthouses are over rated if not FIN, not like Mehmed wants to work coastal tiles, and even coastal cities can scrounge land tiles (cottage sharing!) to work whilst slaving out infrastructure on a 6 > 3 cycle. Lighthouses aren't usually must haves either, unlike the granary.

One other point...anyone considered EP usage in this game? I know I haven't, but I'd still want a lot of court houses down in the long run...

[novice]

I'm not really sure what you're arguing in favour of, Krill.

[Krill]

Lizzie should be paired with Sumeria. Even if she isn't going to take up 90% of the available land like Darius is going to, she still needs to get enough cities to get OU down, and it makes more sense that she gets those cities down sooner rather than later to grow cottages (provided the tech rate stays solid). Sumeria will allow her to do that. Lizzie can do everything Mehmed can do, she is the more versatile leader, so provided she can be kept at 100% science she should keep on adding cities. Both leaders need enough cities to get the full sets of NW up, but beyond that which civ gets more cities should be made after the game has started and there is enough knowledge to make the decision at the time. That decision shouldn't be made before T0.

[mackoti]

My resoning its very simple: with Org sumeria we can get courthoses faster and get profit on that faster.Probably will have even more cities in the beggining then Lizzie and getting a courthose for city 4, 5 could be very useful, getting espionage on others fast its very handy.And with Mehemed cutting expenses(building courthose) can gave more money to Lizzie which then can expand more, and more than that will be cheaper for mehmed to cut expenses then for Lizzie.

[zakalwe]

Ziggurats come earlier than courthouses. So that's why they might be nice for the funder - gives him something economically useful to build early on. The techer can build libraries so he already has an early economic building.

Tech rates may be fast enough that this doesn't matter. Then again, maybe not, and like Mackoti says we would be more flexible about our tech path if Mehmed gets Sumeria.

[zakalwe]

Cross posted with Mackoti. I agree with him.

[Ichabod]

I vote for Mehmed/Sumeria and Lizzie/Rome, if my vote counts for something.

[Krill]

Can't give money to Lizzie until Currency is in, around T50 (according to Seven but seems about right). The starts are 10 tiles apart, gifting cities and workers isn't logistically difficult. For Ziggaruts to be useful Mehmed needs to expand past 3-4 cities; he might not need to do that prior to CoL, and keeping Mehmed costs low with fewer cities means more gold available to give to Lizzie anyway. Lizzie with Zigs has greater flexibility to play the map than Lizzie of Rome.

Don't know where the resources are, if any are even close by, and don't know likelihood of warfare so can't ignore need to Construction or HBR prior to CoL.

[novice]

Uh-oh, Krill played the "boring" card again, just like he did with two Fin leaders.

Lizzie of Rome = OCC variant
basically just want to keep her focussing on infrastructure and an uber capital whilst Mehmed does everything else
It's like the most boring possible variant I can think off, because I have only played SP OCC games for the past 5 years.

Could be fun for others though.

Anyway, dinner...

[SevenSpirits]

I am fine with switching the civs. Basically it's admitting we are not spending as many hammers on buildings: Mehmed won't be building as many markets as early, and Lizzie won't be building courthouses when they first become available.

I don't think the Priesthood vs Code of Laws thing makes much difference. We are rushing for a fast Currency, right? And no early religion? I can't imagine us sitting on Currency + Priesthood and NOT teching CoL. And it's also hard for me to imagine us not getting first to CoL if we want it, with the FIN academy start.

However, I don't think there's any question that Sumeria is more useful in the hands of Mehmed than Lizzie. Question was how much, and also how much better Rome was for our funder (I guess we've decided "not much").