[SPOILERS] Team EggHeads: DMOC and TeddyKGB (Now Lurker-Friendly!)

[DMOC]

Yeah, that's been one of my concerns. I've honesty been doing more reading of spoiler threads here than reading strategy articles geared for the SP-community.

[dick76]

Hi I now came home from vacation and I'm ready to join. Can you write what's in question (the essentials).

[DMOC]

Hello, dick76. I'm not sure what you mean by "write what's in question" but I'll assume you mean the important stuff that's been happening so far. Here's a few of them:

-The snake pick is in progress now. The three teams that went first unfortunately took my top 3 leaders (Pacal, Darius, Willem), so we'll just have to make the best of our situation.
-The rules for this game are posted in the sticky in this subforum where we're going to make the snake pick selections.
-In the second and third post of this thread, I made suggestions on the top civs and leaders that we should consider, and later on I ran some sims to see the benefit of having fishing vs no fishing. My conclusion is that I don't think starting with fishing is necessary, so we shouldn't put too much weight onto the civs that start with that technology.
-The start is posted here, of course, and I would strongly suggest moving if our scout reveals more riverside grassland or forests on turn 0. Even without food, a capital 4-4 of this location will be strong due to more chop and cottage potential.
-This is a full diplomacy game so we'll be communicating with the other teams often about deals, NAPs, etc. Thus, I've set up an email at dick76dmoc@gmail.com that we'll use for player correspondence.

Since this is full diplomacy, this game will take a lot of time since we'll be sending emails and chatting frequently, in addition to getting our micromanagement plans sorted.

[DMOC]

We're up in the snake pick! To recap, here are what the teams ahead of us have chosen:

8. Team Eagles & Condors - Kurumi / HBHR (with Oxyphenbutazone dedlurking) Pacal II (Fin/Exp)
10. Team Dinosaurs - Whiteye / Raptorous Darius I (Fin/Org)
3. Team Master and Margarita - Slaze / Maga_R (with Jovan Kukic dedlurking) Willem (Fin/Cre)
6. Bowsling / Aivoturso Mansa Musa (Fin/Spi)
1. Team Orgynized - Lord Parkin / Arkipeller / Magno_uy (with WilliamLP and Dp101 dedlurking) Huayna Capac (Fin/Ind)
2. Team Blame Caledorn - YossarianLives / Caledorn (with Scooter, Old Harry and Cheater Hater dedlurking) Inca (Quecha and Terrace)
4. Team Care Bears - Yuufo / Bisons India (Fast Worker and Mausoleum)
7. Dick76 / DMOC - ???
5. Team My Little Marathon Cannibal Pony - Classical_Hero / Halvgud
9. Barteq / Geo (with Harami dedlurking)
9. Barteq / Geo (with Harami dedlurking)
5. Team My Little Marathon Cannibal Pony - Classical_Hero / Halvgud
7. Dick76 / DMOC
4. Team Care Bears - Yuufo / Bisons
2. Team Blame Caledorn - YossarianLives / Caledorn (with Scooter, Old Harry and Cheater Hater dedlurking)
1. Team Orgynized - Lord Parkin / Arkipeller / Magno_uy (with WilliamLP and Dp101 dedlurking)
6. Bowsling / Aivoturso
3. Team Master and Margarita - Slaze / Maga_R (with Jovan Kukic dedlurking)
10. Team Dinosaurs - Whiteye / Raptorous
8. Team Eagles & Condors - Kurumi / HBHR (with Oxyphenbutazone dedlurking)

Unfortunately, the teams above us made some really good choices --- they got the best leaders and two of the best civs as well! In addition, all five leader picks are Financial, which kind of puts us in a tough position, since if we give up Financial, we'll likely be among the minority of teams in that regard, and will have to make it up somehow.

So here's what I'm thinking. I've got a list of my current top 3 civs and top 3 leaders of the remaining options (in no particular order):

Civilizations:
-Byzantium
-Egypt
-Ottomans

Leaders:
-Elizabeth
-Sury II
-Zara Yaqob

The biggest thing we need to deal with is whether we want a leader or a civilization. My inclination is to pick one of the leaders now because I still think that the benefits in leader traits is more important than the UU or UB that a civilization could provide. (There's also a greater pool of solid civilizations remaining than solid leaders.) So why Elizabeth, Sury, and Zara? I'm including Elizabeth because in my opinion, she's the best Financial leader left, and there's going to be a significant drop off between her and the next best Financial leader, since after her, such a leader's secondary trait would have to be Charismatic, Imperialistic, Aggressive, or Protective. Not a good list there, and Philosophical is definitely great because it allows us to get our first Great Scientist quicker, which leads to a faster academy and a snowball effect. Philosophical, however, is comparatively less useful in this kind of multiplayer game since one of its biggest benefits in single player is that we can get high value from Great Scientists with the techs they bulb and the techs we get from trading.

Sury II is also a straightforward candidate, since he combines two traits geared for early expansion. He's not the best from an economical perspective, but will the benefits in early expansion help to counteract this? It's also worth pointing out that our capital will likely not have very many riverside tiles, which means the financial trait will have less of a benefit as compared to if we had mostly riverside tiles. Also, if we do end up moving the capital, Expansive will help if we don't have fresh water. Zara would be my other top option. Creative and Organized are the only traits that speed up production of three buildings, so Zara has the interesting ability to speed up construction of six total buildings (the library, theatre, colloseum, lighthouse, courthouse, and factory!). This affords us lots of versatility in coming up with synergy between our leader and a civilization (i.e. by getting a trait that speeds up a unique building). If we pick Elizabeth, for instance, her trait combination only speeds up Universities, which are replaced by only the Korean seowon. Korea's not a bad civ, but I'm not sure if they belong in the upper tier. Still, the Expansive trait is probably superior to the Organized trait, so my overall conclusion is that Sury II may be a little bit better than Zara here. I'm completely unsure on Elizabeth vs. Sury II at this point, and I'll probably go to sleep thinking about it (it's 1 AM in my time zone now). We could also theoretically pick a civilization, but there will still be good options when the pick comes back to us. Please let me know what you think, dick76, since we should agree on this before making our picks official.

[DMOC]

All right, after thinking about it a bit more, I would suggest we obtain Sury II with our pick. I just believe that the early benefits of the Creative and Expansive traits will outweigh the loss of Financial. We don't have a superb cottage capital (seven grassland tiles if we settle in place, but NONE on rivers) and the more I think about it, the more Philosophical remains a second-tier or third-tier trait in no tech-trading multiplayer (depending on if Financial is in a tier of its own or not) due to the lack of tech trading ability. It's great in deity single player with tech trading on, since with one bulb of Philosophy, I can become the tech leader, but here ...?

I also feel that with all the land we're supposed to have, the ability to get faster production on workers and faster border pops will help us get more land, which can make up for the lost commerce from Financial. Not to mention with Creative and Expansive, we've got a great shot at picking a civilization whose unique building is sped up by one of those traits.

What do you think?

[dick76]

I first played this type of game, but I think an interesting idea . I do not know much English, but I hope you understand the basics. Can you write me how to log into the game to see more detail. I agree with you that the creative leader is a big bonus.

[dick76]

Sury II is good choic

[DMOC]

I first played this type of game, but I think an interesting idea . I do not know much English, but I hope you understand the basics. Can you write me how to log into the game to see more detail. I agree with you that the creative leader is a big bonus.

We need to first finish the snake pick before we can log in.

We can set our password to get in the game as the same password for the dick76dmoc@gmail email.

Sury II is good choic

Yes, I agree with Sury as our leader choice, for the reasons I explained earlier. I'll post this in the general thread shortly.

By the way, if you don't feel too comfortable in English, then I'm fine with handling most of the diplomacy among other teams. This is where we will hopefully set lengthy non-aggression pacts (NAPs), negotiate civilization borders, etc.

Last thing --- what civilizations would you prefer? With Sury II as our leader, I would really be interested in trying out the Byzantine civilization, which has a superb unique unit and a unique building that gets sped up by our Creative trait.

[DMOC]

By the way, since we're going to be working together, I think it'd be best to take our time playing the turns OR working together to get a plan going before we actually play the turns. Ideally, if there's any important decision to make (e.g. where to settle a city), we'll have reached a consensus on this together so that whoever plays the turn knows what to do. As I mentioned in the previous post, our next important decision is to pick our civilization.

We should also post in this thread if there's a time we're going to be away from our CIV computers, so the other turnplayer knows he has to play in that case.

[TeddyKGB]

Hello! I want to be your DedLurker, but I'm spoiled till now.

I've posted question if I'm allowed to do that in LurkerTread, waiting for the reaction of veteran players. If they ok with it, I'll post my request in TechTread to see if no player veto it.
Of course, I'll do my best to keep my spoiler knowledge out of discussion here.

Are you ok with me as a DedLurker?

Good luck to you both anyway.