[SPOILERS] Lewger goes for the Bigwyn

[Lewwyn]

Just to be clear I don't mind having you guys log into the game at any point really. Depending on times the turn rolls, it may take me a while to log in and if one of you want to log in and check stuff feel free to and then report back. It's actually preferable because then I get information about the situation before i log in. And just remember, even if I end turn, if any of the units that are sitting can still be moved after I hit end turn. So do be careful not to move anything or change city tiles. They are not locked in until the turn actually rolls. But otherwise, please feel free to log in and get a look at things, take pictures and bring things to the thread to talk about.

[Bigger]

ok, I replayed the turn. When I logged in i was greeted to this:



Krill was nice enough to found our city for us . I guess this was the work around to fix the "known civs" bug that we (and also Plako) were experiencing.



Gilgamesh is the oldest known national epic, and I named the Scout after its hero (Gilgamesh). Will this cause confusion, since there is a leader Gilgamesh in the game? I hope so . The second and third cities will be Iliad and Odyssey, and our ancient era soldiers will be named after heroes from that war.

As an aside, I find it odd that there is one mythological leader in Civ4, when all the rest are historical leaders.

Random irrelevant and redudant C&D info:

[SevenSpirits]

I'm going to enjoy this thread, I can tell.

[Lewwyn]

I'm going to enjoy this thread, I can tell.

Hoo boy... I think the last time you said that about one of my threads was FFH PBEM 14... where I ended up mapkilled.

[SevenSpirits]

I'm going to enjoy this thread, I can tell.

Hoo boy... I think the last time you said that about one of my threads was FFH PBEM 14... where I ended up mapkilled.

If you end up mapkilled here, you can blame me twice then. :P

[Bigger]

I'm going to enjoy this thread, I can tell.

Its good you realized this early. No need even to waste time reading the other threads.


Anyway, while sunrise was fighting the hurricane and we had a lull, I took the oppurtunity to play some SP with the RB mod, just to get a feel for the changes. I think we'll be at a disadvantage to the teams that played in Pb5 (scooter/pin, nakor, azza and commodore), so just trying to bridge the gap a bit.


First thing: we are playing on a large map (9 players) but with 11 teams. I think this is a mistake, we should have stuck with huge(which is meant for 11 players anyway). I rolled a dozen maps and it was always crowded. I would be shocked if our scout doesnt run into 2 other teams within 5-7 turns. Further, we may start to get boxed in after 5-7 cities. With this mod, imo, quantity of land will be just as important as quality of land (I'll explain in a bit), so we may need to consider settling agressively. and of course there will be lots of islands to settle (which will perhaps be not too difficult to defend post-Astronomy with our east indiamen - which will actually be a decent unique unit on this map). Anyway, early conflicts may be unavoidable, so we need to be cautious here.

2nd thing: civics and workshops.
The government and religious techs are largely unchanged. Police State has medium upkeep instead of High, but still will only receive spot usage and then likely only from spiritual civs, so not really relevant.
Labor: Serfdom has been significantly buffed, but I still don't see serfdom being used by non-spiritual civs, and even then rarely. Its not really efficient to build an economy around watermills and windmills when farms and workshops is so much better. SP still modifes workshops and watermills (+1 food), and unless you have extremely hilly land you're going to have more workshops than windmills.
Much has been made about the slavery nerf. Most of the nerf is for 2 or 3 pop whipping, and I mostly stick to 1-pop whipping (for overflow). This is probably a weakness in my game in vanilla civ, but it means I don't notice the slavery nerf as much. Slavery will probably be necessary pre-guilds.
However, Caste system is still a very viable long-term alternative to slavery for 2 other reasons: 1) workshop buffing 2) the cottage economy nerf
On 1: workshops are not available with metal casting. But more importantly, the +1 hammers the get with chemistry and vanilla now comes with metal casting. This means with Caste system and guilds (which is of course much easier to get than chemistry) they are at their full hammer potential! they actually produce more hammers than mines at this point (which catch up with a +1h bonus at replacable parts). mass farms can make up for the lack of food until biology and communism are discovered. This is why I think quantity of land will become important: any city with a small river going through it (and a food resource maybe) can become a production powerhouse with just metal casting, code of laws, guilds and civil service (for irrigation).

On 2: the cottage nerf, imo, is more significant than the slavery nerf. environmentalism and free speech have switched places. Free speech is largely unchanged, but it isn't unlocked until scientific method and is now an economic civ instead of a legal one. environmentalism fills its spot in the legal column. Its unlocked at liberalism, and is completely different - instead of the usual health bonuses its pretty much a specialist economy civic. (+1 coin per specialist, +1 commerce per farm or pasture. also +2 commerce per forest perserve, but eh, who cares about that).

This is pretty significant, I think. Well, for starters its a nightmare flavor wise. free speech as a competitor to free market makes no sense, as does environmentalism as a labor civ (and available pre-industrial age to boot). But I'll ignore that since that isn't the purpose of this mod. There's also now no civic that helps with health, but since the only play environmentalism really ever got was in SP one city-challenges, and this is a MP mod, that's not really important. I do think environmentalism needs to be renamed, since it really has nothing to do with environmentalism now.

Environmentalism is now the clear go to for specialist economy. It will be a great boon to whoever gets the pyramids, and maybe someone will try to land constitution with liberalism to attempt a mid-game specialist economy (not really a bad idea if you miss the pyramids and don't have an astronomy enabled unique unit as we do). I don't really see environmentalism being all useful for a non-specialist economy, however. With the nerf to drafting, I don't think nationalism is practical for non-spiritual civs, either - which just leaves vassalage and bureaucracy. Vassalage is buffed (it gives you free military units in addition to free units) but unless you are running pacifism or just have a really weak capital I don't see it making up for the increased commerce (and production) bureaucracy can give you - at least until our empire gets very large and we have workers and military units everywhere. We actually will have a very strong capital here, with rivers every where to buff cottages - I think we should cram a cottage into every non hill, non-food square in our capitals BFC and probably stick with bureaucracy the entire game, unless we run across stone and decide to make a run at the pyramids.

as for the economic civics: Mercantilism is unchanged, and probably only useful in always war games or if we become the victim of a massive trade embargo. For some reason I don't understand, free market has been buffed! In addition to the +1 trade routes, it gets a +25% trade route yield. This seems unnecessary, its not like free market sucked in vanilla. Thanks to the free market buff, I really think free speech is unusable here unless we find ourselves shooting for a culture victory (unlikely). You would just need an incredible amount of cottages to make it better than free market.
SP is still very viable. With the buff to free market, its going to be difficult to judge when the reduced maintenence costs of SP will make up for losing the significant economic boon of free market. But if we have several workshop/production cities up, the +1 food to workshops will tip the scales.

ok, I have more thoughts but this is already a significant WOT so perhaps I should break it up.

[Bigger]

btw Lewwyn, I didn't think to hit end turn when I played our turn. Its my first ever pitboss turn, so it didn't occur to me. If you want to log in for some reason be sure to do that, or let me know and I'll log in to do it. No reason to make the first turn last the full 36 hours. .

[Bigger]

ok, one other imortant change:

"Cost of Education, Gunpowder, Printing Press, Astronomy and Nationalism increased by 50%
Cost of all subsequent techs increased by 100%"

Tech trading is off, so turning research off ala scooty in pb5 isn't feasible. But we'll face the same issue when leaving the medieval era: techs suddenly get very expensive. Gunpowerder isn't too bad, since its such a cheap tech to start with, but the rest are torturous. The line to rifling is especially expensive. I think the settings in my sp are the same as our PB game, but even if I have something off to change costs the scale should be the same. so, some example tech costs:

paper: 966 (cheap, but now require a literature diversion)
philosophy: 1288
guilds: 1610
banking: 1127
divine right: 1932
education: 4347 (ow)
nationalism: 4347
gunpowder: 2898
astronomy: 4830
printing press: 3864
liberalism: 4508 (wow)
replacable parts: 5796
rifling: 7728
constitution: 6440
democracy: 9016
It just gets worse from there. physics and biology are both tremendously hard to research, for instance - same for the path to assembly line.

so what does this mean? Well, ridling requires a tremendous amount of breakers, so the age of macemen, knights, and muskets will last far longer than we are accustomed to. This is good, I suppose, for merohoc, brickabod, catcheetah, and even commodore for their unique units - it might even keep azza's prats relevant a lot longer. Less so for us - if we want to leverage our east indiamen to start conquering islands (if we have several good production naval cities it should be quite easy for us to maintain naval superiority) - we will likely have to do it with macemen, and not riflemen. Rifling just takes too long to tech.

And once the rifling age does hit I'm not sure it will end - I doubt the game will last long enough to see infantry (tech costs to assembly line are just way too expensive). I hope I'm wrong, just to see steam power be relevant - the Dike is such an awesome UB if the game lasts long enough for us to use it.

Also interesting is the liberalism race. If it is very competitive, someone will have to take a cheapish tech with it. Nationalism is actually cheaper than liberalism now - and frankly it is probably quicker to beeline nationalism if you are racing for the TAJ.
Astronomy is another likely target, and one we might end up shooting for - but again, liberalism requires 2 expensive techs (education and liberalism) to get one for free, while astronomy as 3 cheap techs as pre-requisites, so it would be much quicker just to research it. (that's ignoring the value of uni's, of course, it just depends on how badly we need east indiamen).
And astronomy is basically the same cost as liberalism. I think Scooty took astronomy in pb5??

Constitution is another possible target for someone wanting to do a specialist economy (representation + environmentalism) that missed out on the 'mids.

Anyway my point is a lib race is dangerous here, as you don't get a lot of value if you end up losing the race.


Btw, I think there is a lot of value in a specialist economy here. We'll want 2-3 commerce/cottage cities, depending on the terrain we have, and beyond that we'll probably want a lot of farms anyway - to prepare for workshops. I think a specialist economy would work very well with a workshop plan - you work specialists when you need the tech, then fire them for workshops when we are ready to pump out a military, or wonder, or whatever. its also would make the environmentalism civic very appealing, and it would make caste system extremely appealing as it would benefit both the specialist and workshop avenue of our economy.

So I'm hoping we find stone and the pyramids then become realistic. But even if we don't, it might be worth considering once we have teched liberalism and constitution.

[Bigger]

One last note:
I really, really like the spiritual trait in the RB mod. I value it higher than most of RB community even in vanilla, probably about equal to EXP and certainly higher than CRE. But its even stronger here: it would allow you to use caste and still shuffle in some whips from time to time, for instance. I really think nationhood is going to be hard to ever use without a spiritual trait. probably also pacifism outside of golden ages. (not to mention serfdom, theocracy, police state and even universal suffrage, which are all feasible temporary civics for a spiritual civ but probably not useable for a non-spiritual civ).

And honestly, I'm not certain - but considering FIN, EXP, and CRE were all nerfed, while SPI remained unchanged, I think SPI might even be the #1 trait in this mod. I actually think FIN won't be all that overpowering with the nerf - for instance, with all the rivers we have in our capital, it will have almost the same commerce output as a FIN civ in our place would. FIN's biggest advantage will just be that FIN civ's won't be as tied to rivers (and the 2x speed of banks).
In any case, mansa of India is far and away the best leader combo in this setup, imo. They are the only spiritual civ and 1 of only 2 FIN civs. And they have the best unique unit, probably. If I got to cherry pick my leader and civ I would have likely chosen mansa of India .
So even factoring in the possible skill difference between Nakor/Tatan and Scooter/Pin, I think the former have to be considered the pregame favorite. SPI is just so much better than 1 of 5 INDs here :/.

[Old Harry]

I like your analysis - I started a single player game too but haven't got far yet.

Consensus in pb5 was you need to get your happy cap up high, but scooter did well without (possibly due to wonders). Anyhow, this makes monarchy important if we don't have happy res nearby... but it sounds like you're leaning towards a specialist economy (which I don't play much/well) where rep would be better.