[PB81] naufragar is a rock. He is an iiiiiiiiiisland.

[Rusten]

Free tech? Didn't know about that.

[Tarkeel]

It's something I'm trying out to make more civs viable.

[Rusten]

Did you go worker first? Did you go agriculture on the way to AH?

I don't think chopping is better than improving 6-value tiles.

[naufragar]

I’m away from my computer, so can’t replicate exactly. Believe I went work boat first into worker. Grew on max food while building a warrior but worked hammers at the end so growth to size3 coincided with the warrior completing.

I believe I went AH->BW with no pit stops.

[Commodore]

Relevant to your civ pick and your user name, Chrome now has a "translate from Portuguese?" pop-up in this subforum.

[naufragar]

Huh. I wonder what happens if you take Google up on their offer, Comm? I do enjoy occasionally getting Spanish Youtube ads. (I don't speak Spanish.) Makes me think the AI apocalypse isn't here quite yet.

It's something I'm trying out to make more civs viable.

And now it's the time of the game where we peer into our crystal ball to see what people did with Tarkeel's gifft:

Greenline: Wang Kong (PRO/FIN) of Persia
Superdeath: Catherine (IMP/CRE) of Byzantium
Xist: Tokugawa (AGG/PRO) of Sumer (Vulture/Ziggurat)
Giraflorens: Qin Shi Huang (PRO/IND) of India (Fast Worker/Mausoleum)
Mjmd: Julius Caesar (ORG/IMP) of Zulu (Impi/Ikhanda)
Naufragar: Boudica (AGG/CHA) of Portugal (Carrack/Feitoria)
TBS: Pericles(CRE/PHI) of America (Navy SEAL/Carnegie Public Libary)
Dreylin: Willem (CRE/FIN) of Rome (Praetorian/Forum)


Let's just go by snakepick order for now.
Greenline: Wang Kong (PRO/FIN) of Persia
This is a civ that isn't often picked. Persia's benefit in CtH 5.0 is its trade-route-boosting market. Greenline leans into that UB with the Protective pick. Persia's unique unit, a chariot that gets defensive bonuses, is surprisingly good. I was incredibly annoyed by them in Amicalola's hand in PB64.

I can't say that this pick lights my fire. I get idea of leaning into econ with Pro/Fin, but I think I prefer Org to Fin here. Persia's techs (Hunting/Agriculture) are pretty weak in this accelerated setup since they're both cheap, so Persian value has to come from its uniques. Idk. Extra money's never a bad thing, but it's hard to get excited over this when Greenline could've gone Org plus a civ with a unique courthouse. (I was considering HRE before realizing that Portugal was the winning pick. )

Last note: this is a civ that wants an early circumnavigation, putting them on a path towards Optics and defending against my Carracks.

Superdeath: Catherine (IMP/CRE) of Byzantium
I think somebody even mentioned banning Byzantium because of the tech acceleration. Eh. I'm not a Byz believer. Since you're going to build knights, you might as well build Cataphracts, I get it. But depending on a knight beeline just seems dicey. I'm on vacation so I'm not going to do that math, but my guess is that anyone remotely as developed as the Byzantine player can defend pretty well with spears and catapults. Now, if you have a development edge, I could see cataphracts being the margin that turns a close victory into a rout.

I love Catherine. She's my favorite leader in Civ4. Lately, I've been playing games on poorer maps, where Imp is nerfed into the ground. Since this is a Tarkeel map, I doubt this'll be the case here. I think on this map and in Superdeath's hands, Catherine will do fine. (More on this later.)

Last note: If this civ/leader pairing doesn't manage a knight conquest, it's toast. Since nearly every other player went Protective, Catherine will get ridiculously outscaled in the long term eco game.

Xist: Tokugawa (AGG/PRO) of Sumer (Vulture/Ziggurat)
I'm just going to say it: I think Sumer is overrated. Their ziggurat-courthouse comes earlier and is cheaper, so it saves you a bit more money on the long haul, but it comes with the gigantic noob trap of coming earlier and being cheaper so you start sinking hammers into courthouses way too soon. The vulture isn't actually that terrible. Having a strength 6 axe makes them much better against mixed catapult/axe stacks. Xist, coming from the German deity-difficulty games, no doubt is cognizant of axe/cata defense.

The trait pairing makes sense. There was lots of Protective picks, and that seems right to me. Four player continents means domestic trade rockets up in value. Plus the pangaea script doens't guarantee domestic island routes. Agg is taken so Vultures don't have to fear axes. Makes sense.

Last note: this is one of the few picks in our game that seem to naturally go for religion. Otherwise, the religious game seems pretty wide open.

Giraflorens: Qin Shi Huang (PRO/IND) of India (Fast Worker/Mausoleum)
Our only Industrious player. Fast worker + Industrious usually guarantees a wonder. (Cf. Mjmd in PB75.) The already solid India is helped massively by an accelerator tech. Good choice for this format. Note again the high valuation of Pro. I think I like this pairing. Needs skill to pull off, but we'll be cautiously optimistic.

Last note: Despite starting with Mysticism, I don't particularly like a religious play for India here. My start, for example, needs 3 different food techs. Mining/Mysticism would have to sacrifice a lot of food to go for an early religion. We'll see.

Mjmd: Julius Caesar (ORG/IMP) of Zulu (Impi/Ikhanda)
If there's one complaint I have of Mjmd's games, it's that they are anti-flash. Fair, playing Nebuchadnezzar with India was interesting, but everything else is like Vicky of India or Julius Caesar of Zulu. Booooooring.

That said, it's boring because it's effective and efficient. If I were the kind of player who wanted to win games this would be the kind of pairing I'd choose. Org plus Ikhanda is enough savings to give the combo late-game legs. Imperialistic Impi are terrifying in the early to mid game. Great pick. Total snoozefest.

Last note: Why didn't Mjmd pick America?

Naufragar: Boudica (AGG/CHA) of Portugal (Carrack/Feitoria)
The best combo in the list because it comes with the best plan: intercontinental armada assault with amphibious macemen. It's simply unbeatable.

I think somebody once accused me of "backwards-working justification." I really wanted to play Boudica this game. I've never done it, and I think Boudica has been mishandled the last few games I've seen. So I wanted to try my hand. The trouble is that I suspect the mean old lurkers put me on the veteran continent, where Boudica gets outscaled by the clever plans and economic combos of the other vets. So in order to leverage Boudica, we need a way to tormet the newbies. I worried about telling Tarkeel my plan when he asked because all he has to do is increase the distance between the continents, but I doubt he'd do this.

Last note: It's actually really hard for this combo to get Nav1 on its carracks.

TBS: Pericles(CRE/PHI) of America (Navy SEAL/Carnegie Public Libary)
If not for Boudica/Portugal, I'd be playing this exact combo, so I think it's the best in the game right now. Rusten is right about everything and especially right about America. It's stupid busted. If TBS effortlessly grinding us into dust is that it takes to revert the civ back to its glorious Woody1/Guerilla1 musket version, so be it.

Look, this isn't complicated. Phi America gets to do whatever it wants with ease, and everyone else has to work to keep up. I played Phi/Imp, but I think Phi/Cre is actually better for that midgame push when you want 5+ different cities producing great people with minimum turnaround time.

Last note: I signed up for this game to play against TBS. Can't be mad when he does TBS things.

Dreylin: Willem (CRE/FIN) of Rome (Praetorian/Forum)
This is another pairing that doesn't light my fire. I don't hate it. Praetorians are a phenomenal tool. On a Tarkeel map, Creative is rarely the wrong choice. Fin is fine, although given that we're on continents, I probably would've prefered Org for the lighthouse discount?

It's solid. It covers all the bases: econ, border popping, defense. And covering all the bases is good. I just want something shinier.

Last note: Dreylin was last in the snakepick and could've seen that the early wonders & early religion races were wide open. If I were him, I would've leaned hard into this.

Gotta say, I don't think Tarkeel's vision of enabling more civs was really realized.

[naufragar]

Now it's time for some filthy metagaming.

When Tarkeel posted everybody's starts, I got to the forum within the hour. The only one who had commented in his spoiler thread was Greenline. This meant that, with the exception of Greenline, I could see the order that Tarkeel posted the starts. They went Superdeath->Xist->Giraflorens->Mjmd->Naufragar->Dreylin->TBS. Don't know where Greeline fell in that order.

Here's the filthy metagame moment. I'm betting that Tarkeel lumped the starts together by continent. I'm betting also that Greenline is in the greens continent. Given those two assumptions, I'm betting that the players on the Greens continent are the first four starts that Tarkeel posted (Superdeath, Xist, Giraflorens, Greenline) and the Vets continent are the last four (Mjmd, Nauf, Dreylin, TBS). This makes some intuitive sense to me. The only eyebrow raising thing is placing Dreylin ahead of SD, but someone in the tech thread (Tarkeel?) said there had been some debate about two players. Makes sense that it was those two.

What does this all mean for our game? (And remember I figured this out assumed this before the pick phase.) Well, if SD is nowhere near me, my potential neighbors are all buildy boys. Any of them could pull off a rush, but I don't see them tending that way naturally. They're also all good enough that I wouldn't trust myself to rush them. (Accelerated Maya dreams had to be put back on the shelf. )

So I assumed my continent would be a pretty buildy one. I assumed that the other players were good enough to punish any mistaken aggression and to capitalize on any neighbors who were aggressed upon. Lastly, I assumed I couldn't win a sim city match against the likes of Mjmd and TBS.

So how do I win if aggression is dicey and I'm not good enough to out-build? (Look at my oceans of humility. ) Events, dear boy! I didn't want an early game combo because I didn't think that was the winning window. I didn't trust the ultra late game stuff against this field. I needed something that could be dynamic in the post-knights, pre-nukes era where my continent would be decided. Thus I rationalized Boudica, whom I had already decided to choose.

I didn't want to play Spiritual for a variety of reasons, and I thought Creative was too early-game focused. This meant I was going to pop borders with Charismatic half-priced monuments. Given all that, I wanted to stay as far away from the mysticism line as possible. It's just monuments as of now.

Once I devalued Mysticism, the civ choices narrowed extremely. I wanted some combo of Fishing/Mining/Hunting. (I would grab the 3rd with the free tech choice.) There are some great civ choices in here: America for one; Rome for another. America is the right choice, but we avoid it because we're too hipster. Rome's Praets are not correct, given the assumption about aggression on my continent. I started looking around for something interesting, and I settled on Portugal. If the vet continent settles into a staring contest, we can torment the newbies. If the vet continent gets exciting, we've got Boudica.

Feitorias won't matter.

[Tarkeel]

I think somebody once accused me of "backwards-working justification." I really wanted to play Boudica this game. I've never done it, and I think Boudica has been mishandled the last few games I've seen. So I wanted to try my hand. The trouble is that I suspect the mean old lurkers put me on the veteran continent, where Boudica gets outscaled by the clever plans and economic combos of the other vets. So in order to leverage Boudica, we need a way to tormet the newbies. I worried about telling Tarkeel my plan when he asked because all he has to do is increase the distance between the continents, but I doubt he'd do this.

In general I try to stick to my vision regardless of what the players say. But then I'm the kind of RPG player to walk into a trap that I as a player sees but my character doesn't.

Gotta say, I don't think Tarkeel's vision of enabling more civs was really realized.

I think my other idea for variety is better, but it didn't get much traction last time I proposed it: Have a single round of bans before the snake-pick.

[Rusten]

I’m away from my computer, so can’t replicate exactly. Believe I went work boat first into worker. Grew on max food while building a warrior but worked hammers at the end so growth to size3 coincided with the warrior completing.

I believe I went AH->BW with no pit stops.

I think you should try worker first and compare, especially with the free tech which solves some commerce issues. I don't know which is better, but it feels like the extra worker turns are valuable as we get important techs in time (AH, BW).

Agriculture is very cheap and gives a discount on AH, so if you have time to fit it in first I would try to do so. Most likely city #2 or #3 will need it anyway.

[Tarkeel]

First draft using Hunting as our free accelerator tech:

Did you lock in Hunting?