[no players] Novel beginnings, standard outcomes: Map and Lurker thread.

[zakalwe]

Perhaps a better way to go about this would be to have some kind of extended snake pick (or auction, even) where the items to be picked included starting buildings as well as traits and civs. That would be more self-balancing.

[Sian]

I don't like the idea of giving someone elses UB and does it really work even? At least when capturing Barays are converted to Aqueducts.

from playing around with the world builder, i've noticed that UB's artificially added directly into a city, stays even if the owner of the city is unable to build it ... And the owner would still be able to build the standard building or UB even if another UB is allready there

So say, if Egypt starts with a Mounument, they would still be able to build a Obelisk in the city

If the city is captured though by another player, it reverts into the original building

[Commodore]

Interesting, Sian, that does open things up a bit. Discussing things a bit with Gaspar, the problem with the specialist-slot buildings is Phi more than anything else. So why not just destroy the slot building if taken with Phi? You can still be Alex or Gandhi here, just without the Observatory or Temple:

Aggressive: Observatory
Charismatic: +2 population and a monument
Creative: Baray
Expansive: Harbor
Financial: Customs House
Imperialistic: Lighthouse (assuming they work when manually added to a lake city)
Industrious: Coal Plant*
Organized: Supermarket
Philosophical: Colosseum
Protective: Levee
Spiritual: Islamic Temple

*Yes, a Coal Plant until Assembly Line is just a -2 health malus. The other aspect of this is that I remove stone and marble from the game. Still considering this one, I like what it does for early wonders, but it hurts Moai and the Epics quite a bit.

[plako]

French Salon is still broken even without Philo. Why is Industrious punished whereas even Financial is getting bonus that might even be improved via choosing Portugal. Do you think it is by far the best trait in this setup? Not a fan of Baray or any other UB in this list. If they want Baray they should choose Khmer. Supermarket is also pretty lame and probably will only be combined with America. Of course this might be ok since they won't ever be chosen voluntarily .

[Commodore]

French Salon is still broken even without Philo. Why is Industrious punished whereas even Financial is getting bonus that might even be improved via choosing Portugal. Do you think it is by far the best trait in this setup? Not a fan of Baray or any other UB in this list. If they want Baray they should choose Khmer. Supermarket is also pretty lame and probably will only be combined with America. Of course this might be ok since they won't ever be chosen voluntarily .

Well, Ind getting the punishment would be dependent on the stone/marble thing.

For Portugal: If someone is willing to take a miserable UU (given no deep water), questionable UB, and marginal starting techs for boosting two of the starting tiles by +1...I'm okay with it.

Baray was just an idea, we certainly can go back to the Barracks without issue.

Supermarket is indeed lame, but a Prince/toroid with salt water makes Org plenty strong. America, or really any Ag/Fishing start, will probably not be picked given Agriculture's hit to the whales.

[NobleHelium]

A negative building is a terrible idea. It's just bad philosophically, people don't like penalties. However I'm not sure the coal plant is actually 2 unhealth...I think the unhealth might only activate when you actually get access to coal. Still, I would never put that in, and I wouldn't use UBs either, particularly because you can build the regular building in the city later.

[Commodore]

Okay, so much as the more interesting options are more interesting, we are left with:

Aggressive: Library
Charismatic: +2 population and a monument
Creative: Barracks
Expansive: Harbor
Financial: Customs House
Imperialistic: Lighthouse (assuming they work when manually added to a lake city)
Industrious: Courthouse
Organized: Supermarket
Philosophical: Colosseum
Protective: Levee
Spiritual: Islamic Temple

With Gandhi, Alex, and Lincoln of Egypt getting their specialist slots killed.

[NobleHelium]

Charlemagne of the Dutch, obviously... (Edit: I guess that doesn't work because Agriculture removes the whaling boats.)

Harbor has the same building restrictions as lighthouse. I'm not sure how I feel about putting illegal buildings in the city, but I suppose you're running out of ideas at this point. And how exactly would you "kill" specialist slots from say the Islamic Temple? Also, that might automatically add Islam to the city.

[T-hawk]

However I'm not sure the coal plant is actually 2 unhealth

It is. Any access to power inflicts -2 unhealth on a city. An active coal plant (existing factory, access to coal, and no other source of power) is 2 more. These two effects are often confused for each other, but they are separate and cumulative and not at all documented well in-game.

[Commodore]

Well, the crude expedient Gaspar and I discussed was just killing those particular buildings. But in the end I guess early prophets/scientists are far less scary than early engineers/artists.