Who shall lead us to Victory!!!

[HitAnyKey]

So this is the thread for picking our glorious and victorious leaders, and the civilizations that they will command.


This is the part where I'm hoping our veteran teammates will be able to help with most with. 90+% of games that I've played and tend to play, I prefer the random leader stuffs...and that's simply because I have never spent the time analyzing the leaders and trait combos and all that jazz to determine what would make the best pairings.

The one thing I know is that I want us to get a combo that maximizes our starting techs, while also getting us useful UU's & UB's. I'm not sure what else we need to think about when picking the leaders. I'm guessing the traits are also important, huh? I probably all too often go for Industrious, since I'm kinda a wonder-freak at times. I really do like building and getting them.
I'm not a huge warmonger (though I do love a good war...just not necessarily great at planning them LOL), so my specific civ for the team I probably won't take one that has the Aggressive trait. I'm not sure if we really need the aggressive trait for our team in either case. I'd prefer traits and such that get us researching as fast as possible. All too often, I think I fall behind in research and city expansion and have to play a game of catchup in order to try to win.
I also always like to grab a religion and in an AW game, it's going to be very important...since you can't get missionaries from other civs that do get the religions.

[TheHumanHydra]

Ok, this is what I was going to talk about last night before we got talking about the settings (which was probably a good thing to talk about first!). All of the below assumes Always War with the Big Four banned.

I think we should have one civ that focuses on Serdoa-style massive expansion, then pumping out military, and one that focuses on teching up, getting us the units we will pump out. So one horizontal civ, and one vertical.

HAK, judging from the Demogame, I'd say you're better at running a high-hammers game, while judging from PbEM 46, I'd say I'm better at running a research-oriented game. So I'd say you should run the horizontal civ, while I run the vertical.

The vertical civ should obviously have the Financial trait, and I'm inclined to pair it with Organized if we can for maximum economic strength. The horizontal civ would probably benefit from traits like Expansive or Imperialistic, maybe Creative, maybe Aggressive or Charismatic if we feel we want a military trait. Possibly even HAK's favored Industrious, since the high-hammers civ would make sense as the one to build wonders, and getting forges up quickly in that civ could become a part of our game-plan.

As for civilization choices themselves, perhaps we should have one early-game and one late®-game unique unit? As for starting techs, I feel like I want to know whether we get to see the starts first before speculating. We all know Agriculture and Mining are the best ... Both civs sharing starting techs (I presume?) does give us a lot more flexibility in this regard.

[HitAnyKey]

So do any of our Vets have any input on the leader stuffs? We should probably get this discussion going somehow, now that we got the settings vote out of the way and are now just waiting on the other teams. Sadly, I really have no clue how best to figure out which leaders & civ combos we should consider. So that's where I think I'm going to be leaning on you guys the most right now.

[Old Harry]

Only just found this thread! I've subscribed to the forum now, so will spot others that get made...

Anyway I'm not a vet, but I've read a lot of stuff around here so can probably parrot a few good opinions. I agree with most of what Hydra says - I like the idea of a FIN/ORG civ, which doesn't expand too quickly and just concentrates on settling commerce locations so it can keep teching fast whilst being protected by the expansive civ. I think we want EXP for the expansive civ, it's too good a trait not to have, and I'm torn between using IMP, CHA or IND with it.

I tend not to go for IND normally, and both CHA and IMP are decent warring traits (where they will benefit both civs) but domestically CHA is a vertical trait and IMP a horizontal one (to a degree) so if we're going with Hydra's analysis we'll want IMP...

Of course we could pair ORG/IMP and FIN/EXP to allow workers and settlers to be produced by each civ and to let the IMP civ expand more rapidly...

[CFCJesterFool]

So do any of our Vets have any input on the leader stuffs? We should probably get this discussion going somehow, now that we got the settings vote out of the way and are now just waiting on the other teams. Sadly, I really have no clue how best to figure out which leaders & civ combos we should consider. So that's where I think I'm going to be leaning on you guys the most right now.

Depends. How do you want to try to win? If going military, what era do you feel most comfortably warring in? For example, if you like Cuir rushes, you can't go wrong with Spain. Ofc, UUs really don't matter too much (not enough to base your choice solely on them). I'd first decide on a strategy and then tailor the leaders/civs to best accomplish that goal.

[HitAnyKey]

So do any of our Vets have any input on the leader stuffs? We should probably get this discussion going somehow, now that we got the settings vote out of the way and are now just waiting on the other teams. Sadly, I really have no clue how best to figure out which leaders & civ combos we should consider. So that's where I think I'm going to be leaning on you guys the most right now.

Depends. How do you want to try to win? If going military, what era do you feel most comfortably warring in? For example, if you like Cuir rushes, you can't go wrong with Spain. Ofc, UUs really don't matter too much (not enough to base your choice solely on them). I'd first decide on a strategy and then tailor the leaders/civs to best accomplish that goal.

Well, it's been over 4 years since I've been in a game anywhere close to having a chance of winning something. The PB7 game really didn't last long enough for anything to come into play, and the Democracy game is essentially still in it's infancy. So I don't know yet how I want to try to win. LOL

Though I think normally, I'm not really a military conquest type. Yes, I know somewhere along the line some civs need to be eliminated via conquest but I'm not a huge military strategist. So I suppose I'm leaning more towards some sort of non-conquest win, or at most the one where you "control" the most. I think that's the Domination Victory.
I'm assuming the game will probably end by either Domination Victory or when teams simply concede victory who whoever looks like they would obtain such. How many games here actually do go all the way to an official victory condition per Civ rather than people conceding and the game just being called for that reason?

[TheHumanHydra]

Yeah, I kinda assumed this game, like most others it seems, would end in a concession once one team has achieved obvious dominance, both economic and military. I think war will have to be integral to our strategy.

[CFCJesterFool]

I think war will have to be integral to our strategy.

Which is why the question of *when* (i.e. what era) you want to go to war (to secure a land advantage) is a key question to answer. For example, an agressive leader would give you an edge if you wanted to axe/sword rush a close neighbor but would be quite useless if you wanted to go say knights (when an economic trait would be more useful in getting to Guilds quick enough).

[HitAnyKey]

I think war will have to be integral to our strategy.

Which is why the question of *when* (i.e. what era) you want to go to war (to secure a land advantage) is a key question to answer. For example, an agressive leader would give you an edge if you wanted to axe/sword rush a close neighbor but would be quite useless if you wanted to go say knights (when an economic trait would be more useful in getting to Guilds quick enough).

Personally, I'm not a big fan of early rushes. So I'm personally thinking of later game wars for the victory.

[TheHumanHydra]

Neither am I. Medieval or Renaissance for me.

It would probably make more sense to pick civs based on uniques in this game than in others because we share starting techs, am I right? We could try for some sort of Medieval/Renaissance pair, like Cataphract/Conquistador, for example.