I don't have anything to say yet but I was the only one without a thread so here we go.
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Reference
Dreylin/Ipecac/Ruff - Montezuma (Agg/Spi) of Viking (Beserker, Trading Post)
Adrianter/Old Harry - Shaka (Agg/Exp) of Rome (Praetorian, Forum)
Caledorn/Plako - Julius Caesar (Imp/Org) of HRE (Landsknect, Rathaus)
Elum/Mackoti - Augustus Caesar (Ind/Imp) of Persia (Immortal, Apothecary) [Agriculture, Hunting]
Grimace/Wetbandit - Mehmed (Exp/Org) of Korea (Hwacha, Soewon) [Agriculture, Mining]
Whosit/Gavagi - Washington (Cha/Exp) of Mongol (Keshik, Ger)
It looks like we're heading toward a snake pick with seeing the start(which we probably should put our vote in). Any thoughts on what you want to play? I think there's a couple of civs probably worth picking over a leader but not much point discussing that until we see the start.
Alright, I'll project a bit on the RtR changes. I haven't played it at all, in SP or MP.
The change to Financial is pretty drastic. I interpret it as shifting the centers of commerce away from rivers & floodplains to the coasts. If we were playing base BTS I'd naturally leap for any Financial leader, but now a lot more traits and combos look more interesting.
Aggressive looks great, especially with the change to Barracks. I've never been good at early rushes, which is when the Promotion aspect of Aggressive is most useful, but it still looks really cool. Part of it is, since it's undergone the biggest changes, I want to see it in action!
Expansive and Creative were slightly toned down but still look good, as usual. A shame about the Granaries & Libraries but I always appreciated the cheaper workers & easy culture parts of those traits better.
Philosophical got a marginal bump, but enough to make it intriguing. Since the change to FIN decreases the appeal of cottage economy, a specialist economy with early Academy seems like a good way to compensate.
Imperialisic , Charismatic and Protective... still don't grab me. Adding the production bonus to custom houses is meant to appeal to Portugal, I believe? Without EXP, IMP feels pretty lacking.. no use to quicker settlers if they're working undeveloped land. Protective is still protective, charismatic is still charismatic.. Don't want to seem close-minded but it's hard to think of a situation where I'd say, "damn, I wish I elected for Protective instead of what I've got now."
I'm not keen on Charismatic because it seems to occupy a very narrow niche. In early game, it's not the happy cap that limit my cities' growth, its the lack of workable tiles as my workers are improving new and newer settlements; by the time I'm ready for my cities to grow vertically, that's when I should have HR, which makes CHR's happy bonus redundant..
Spiritual is as it is in the base game, though I have soured my opinion on it after a Pitboss I played on another forum as Musa. A religious focused game is just too much risk for too little reward. You are racing to claim a religion/the Oracle against players who could be on the other side of the map, with no way to know your chance for winning until you actually win or lose. Then you have to pump out missionaries, but a HR garrison bonus provides quicker happy, so you're just working a lot for little marginal boosts to research/culture, and have to build more Wonders to improve them.. etc.
Industrial and Organized as in base game. I like ORG better, but IND looks good when there are no/few competing IND civilizations around. So I'd have to see how the snake pick looks before making a judgement call.
so with that all said, the leaders I guess I'd be interested in most are..
Agg Exp for maint reduction and workers -- Shaka
Cre Exp , just a good pick -- Sury
Cre Org, same, but better midgame than early -- Zara
Exp Org -- the pretty predictable Uber Mehmed pic
Org Agg for Maximum maintenance reduction-- Hammurabi
Phi Org / Phi Agg, each for similar reasons -- Alexander or Frederick. I haven't used much Phi or Agg much so would be fun to give it a shot.
Interesting stuff, I think I value the traits a bit differently than you.
I had Aggressive ranked in the top half for PB22, but I'm not so sure anymore. I think it's very dependent on the size of the map , since that has a big effect on both of it's main features: city maintenance and promos. And for pitboss size maps, I think that means it's not so great. This map is quite big also, around 300 tiles per player, though less land tiles of course. On the other hand, it is toroidal, which means more maintenance.
I definitely think you're underrating Pro and IMP, particularly compared to Exp. Assuming we build stuff with hammers, Imp is 37h per city, while Exp is getting 15h per worker and 7h per workboat. I'll admit I probably underbuild workers but I still doubt you should end up with 2 workers per city. Exp has a couple of other stuff thrown in, but you really shouldn't be building lots of markets early anyway IMO. Then Pro's 1/2 priced granaries get 30h per city and snowball a little better than the other two bonuses. Also, I think Pro/X Inca will almost always be the best pick.
I still don't know about charismatic. I really feel I need to play it myself to value it properly.
Another point that's been drove into me recently is just how hard it is to keep up when you don't have 1 early game trait. I think having 1 of Cre/Imp/Exp/Pro would be important. I think I like Zara or Sury best of your options listed.
Most of the time, I tend to pick more based on what traits I'm interested in than purely on what's the best. And the spread is fairly low in RtR, so that you can do that without handicapping yourself, so if you really want to pick some trait(s) I'm happy to go with it.
Picking 100% competitively, I think I'd go Inca + Pro/whatever is left or Imp/Org as my top picks.
Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
Looks like we need Hunting ... and that's it! Of course we don't need to start with it, we'll have time to research it anyway before the first worker, but it's one of the most expensive techs anyway, so not much reason not to take it. Fishing is pretty junk, being the cheapest tech and useless for this start. Need some very good uniques to justify it. All other techs are probably reasonable, Myst and Mining are cheaper than the other 3. What are our options?
One point is that if we start with Imp we need a relatively early BW.
Hunting/Mining civs:
Germany, Russia, Ethiopia, Khmer
Not amazing, I guess Ethiopia is my favourite.
However it looks to me that we can afford one tech away from the Mining -> BW path and still hit BW in time.
Hunting/Agri
Zulu - always very good
Persia
Mongolia - Hunting/Wheel- Wheel is probably better than Agri, I don't see a reason for any farms here.
Mali - Wheel/Mining
China - Agri/Mining
Korea Agri/Mining
-Less beaker totals, but all 3 civs have some good uniques.
Assuming we don't pick Imp, going pottery first could also be an option. That opens up all the options at Agri/wheel:
France, Babylon, Egypt, Ottos, Sumeria
Or we could go religion first with Hunting/Myst:
Aztecs, Celts, HRE
I'm not so sure we can win a religion race, given the lack of a lake to speed things up. But Aztecs and HRE have some good courthouses anyway.
Finally we have the two wild card picks which seem like they could be quite viable since we only need Hunting:
Inca
India.
EDIT: I attached the sandbox I created. It helps get an idea of the tech timings.
