[SPOILERS] Lewger goes for the Bigwyn

[Lewwyn]

Civilization makes fools of all!
I line them up to see them fall.
To stand above I must be strong,
but we'll be low before too long.

To rise again from cities ashes
like beauty queens in bright blue sashes
I'll try to scream like William Wallace,
Freedom is life in anarchy lawless.

[Bigger]

so beautiful

ok mardoc, where's our screen shot?

analysis of starting leaders/civs coming soon

edited in so I don't have to keep hunting for it in the original thread:

Commodore - Gilgamesh of the Khmer
Azza - Napoleon of Rome
Pindicooter - Huayna Capac of Zulu
Merohoc - Augustus of Arabia
Ichabod and the Brick - Genghis Khan of the Vikings
Plako if RBmod - Louis XIV of the Aztec
Xenu - Churchill of Portugal
Catcheetah - Suryavarman of France
Lewger - Qin Shi Huang of the Netherlands
N-core - Mansa Musa of India
Serdoa - De Gaulle of Maya

[Mardoc]

so beautiful

ok mardoc, where's our screen shot?

analysis of starting leaders/civs coming soon

Lessee now, who are you again?

These guys, right?




Or was it this one:


Edit: oh, yes, forgot the disclaimer. No promises implied by the screenshot, but I'm probably too lazy to start over .

[Bigger]

I think we'd be better off with the top one, tbh.

is that a hut on top of the cows? And I assume we're getting a warrior, not the scout (we don't start with hunting) - or did we decide to do scout starts and I missed that?

[Bigger]

well this is about what I expected from the B&S starts's I rolled. we start with fishing and agriculture, which we will both use quickly. other than the cows, we have forests everywhere (which I also expected) so we will likely have to start mining --> BW. It also looks like we are PROBABLY on the main continent, or at least a largish continent, so we likely don't have to worry about being Scootered.

SIP seems obvious here - we get all 4 shown resources (3 of which we can hook up with our starting techs), we are on the river, and we are on a PH. fun for easy decisions. I guess we can move the scout/warrior 1 SW first before we decide for sure.

[Bigger]

ok, so reference. Here is the list of changes for the RB mod (note that Krill may make more changes before the game starts):

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=3623

Here are the players in this game:

Commodore - Gilgamesh of the Khmer (CRE/PRO, ballista elephant unique unit, starts with hunting & mining)
Azza - Napoleon of Rome (ORG/CHA, nerfed prat unique unit, starts with fishing & mining)
Pindicooter (pindicator and scooter) - Huayna Capac of Zulu (FIN/IND, impi unique unit, starts with hunting and agriculture)
Merohoc (merovich and ad hoc) - Augustus of Arabia (IND/IMP, camel archer unique unit, starts with mysticism and the wheel)
Ichabod and the Brick - Genghis Khan of the Vikings (AGG/IMP, beserker unique unit, starts with hunting and fishing)
Plako - Louis XIV of the Aztec (IND/CRE, unique unit jaguar, starts with mysticism and hunting)
Xenu - Churchill of Portugal YUCK (PRO/CHA, unique unit carrack(caravel), starts with mining and fishing)
Catcheetah - Suryavarman of France (CRE/EXP, unique unit musketeer, starts with the wheel and agriculture)
Lewger - Qin Shi Huang of the Netherlands (IND/PRO, unique unit east indiaman(galleon), starts with agriculture and fishing)
N-core - Mansa Musa of India WOW (FIN/SPI, unique unit nerfed fast worker, starts with mysticism and the whell)
Serdoa - De Gaulle of Maya (IND/CHA, unique unit holkan, starts with mining and mysticism)

ok, I lied Lewwyn - there are actually 5 IND civs, including us! ouch! only 2 financial civs, 3 cre civs, 1 exp civ, and 1 spiritual civ!!! which I guess is good since we have none of the top 4 traits .

traits by civ - 5 IND, 3 PRO, 2, CHA, 2 IMP, 2 FIN, 2 CRE, 2 IMP, 1 AGG, 1 SPI, 1 EXP, 1 ORG. so yay, we have both of the 2 most common traits .

[Lewwyn]

I hope we pop a tech from that hut... We can do that with a city settlement right?

5 INDs... and 3 start with Myst. I guess I'm glad we're not Serdoa.

I say we rule out Stonehenge and Oracle as goals. Instead focus on GLH. 1 worker>grow with WBs>settler>worker>chop/build lighthouse>Chop GLH. Something like that.

Only issue is we're not likely to land a religion+no CRE+no Stonehenge. Slowbuilding monuments?

Is a second scout or a warrior better in this scenario? With Huts I mean.

Hunting might trump mining>BW with that riverside cow. We're looking at a 7 yield tile there.

[waterbat]

IND PRO! is that really 12 forests in the BFC?

[Bigger]

A rank of starting civ/traits. First, mostly ignoring player skill:
There are 3 clear "haves" here:
1. Mansa of India (Nakor, Tatan) - This is so incredibly good for random civs. India is the best civ, even with the slight rb mod nerf. Mansa is my favorite leader even in Vanilla (I generally think EXP and especially CRE are overrated, and I love spiritual). I personally think financial was not nerfed nearly enough, but CRE and EXP were heavily nerfed while SPI was not nerfed at all. This makes Fin and SPI the #1 and #2 traits, imo. so this team has the best civ and the top 2 traits (as I rank them, anyway). hmm, good for them.
Now SPI doesnt really take off until the late medieval era (philosophy, nationalism, and liberalism) and is really only maximized in times of war - which is not Nakor's strong point, so he's probably still less of a threat than Scoot/pin and probably won't be an early runaway. But with this combo just about any team would be a threat, so...
2. Huaynac Capac of the zulu(scooter, pindicator) - Another Wow combo. Fin will help them beeline to wonders they want the most, IND will give them a big edge to get them. really Huaynac will neutralize our IND trait on all but the very early wonders, even without the other 3 IND civs out there. Scooter is also an excellent wonder-whore so IND in his hands is quite scary. The imp is a great unique unit for them - it makes early rushes very difficult unless they are lacking copper, and by the time impis are obslolete it may be too late . Threat level: very high
3. Suryavarman of France (catwalk, slowcheetah) - Also an excellent combo. Surrey is perhaps not as strong as in vanilla, but still quite good, and #3 and #4 traits are miles ahead of the rest of the field. 2 moving muskateer is also a very strong unique unit.

All 3 of these civs have very strong leaders and very strong unique units too. There is a big drop off (and probably room for debate) here, though

4-9 is a buncha mediochore crap. Roughly, and without thinking about it too much, I'd say

4. louis of the aztec (plako) - they face the same problems with IND that we will, and cre is not super here, but its better than CHA, IMP, or PRO
5. napoleon of rome (azza) - org/cha - org might actually be decent with monarch difficulty. happiness will be a problem with the B&S map, too, so CHA may be useful. even with the nerf praet will be useful
6. genghis of the vikings (brick/ichabod) - Agg/Imp & beserker unique unit. Ok, their economy won't be that good, but this just screams warmongering. 2 warmongering traits with good synergy plus a unique unit just made for this map. If they can tech parity to get beserkers in play they'll be scary. That is an IF, though.
7. tough call but I guess Degaulle of maya (serdoa) only because CHA rates slightly higher than IMP here (very slightly due to happy problems) and holkan is certainly better than the camel archer
8. augustus of arabia (merovich and ad hoc) - imp/IND only ver slightly worse than 7, both bad
9. gilgamesh of khmer (commodore) - I put him here because he shares the crappy PRO. but with cre and a decent unique unit (if he can get ivory) maybe should be higher.

Here there is another big drop off to the terrible combos
10. Qin of the dutch - PRO/IND. Ind would be nice, if there weren't 4 freakin' other IND. IND is the most common trait here . And PRO is just bad, even with the significant buff it got in rb mod. Granary is nice, but I'm not sure it was necessary to remove 2x castle or the drill promotions. PRO is so bad it needs whatever it can get. To top it off we have a naval unique unit. Really the only thing we have going for us is that we aren't Xenu!
11. Churchill of the portugesse. (Xenu). Poor xenu. I think this combo is here only to make us realize that it could be worse. CHA/PRo is much worse than PRO/IND in a vacuum. with 5 IND civs it could be said CHA is better, so we're actually pretty close. But portugal is much worse than the dutch, so i have to rank him below us.

Taking skill into account:
1-3 clearly have much better combos than the field. Catwalk and slowcheetah are both very green and shouldnt be too much of a thread. Nakor is an excellent empire builder and wonder whorer, but seems to fall apart consistently when it comes to war, so not too worried. So basically, this is Scooter and Pindicator's game to win.

But let's see what we can do to screw them up

[Bigger]

Waterbat: It looks like we are going to attempt a run at TGL. Best to make use of IND trait early before Scooter runs away with it. The Oracle is a trap here - 4 civs start with mysticism, including 3 INDs. more importantly, while forges & workshops will be nice, the collosus is probably not good for us, as we cannot afford to delay astronomy.

Stonehenge probably a luxury we can't have unless stone is really close to us. maybe the same with pyramids. even with the nerf TGL will be strong on this map, and maybe with the nerf we will have an easier time getting OB's.