[Spoilers] Freddy is an Old Giza

[Commodore]

No BFC yet, but:
Old Harry

Frederick Egyptian
Hammurabi Persian
Zara Yaqob Spanish

[Old Harry]

No BFC yet, but:
Old Harry

Frederick Egyptian
Hammurabi Persian
Zara Yaqob Spanish

I think you missed the bit where I said:

As good as ORGANISED is and as much as I want to play it at some point I think it'll be too slow and so counterproductive for this game. If I get a chance to pair it with EXP I will but not otherwise.

So my choice is ORG with either PHI (Agri/Wheel), AGG (Agri/Hunt) or CRE (Fish/Myst) when I'm looking for the fastest start possible?

I'm not really interested in AGG or Persia, so lets see what the others have going for them:

Zara gets Spain
- Cuirassiers get +50% vs Melee and defensive bonii (guess I'm looking at a MilTrad/Gunpowder beeline)
- Citadel can go in a big commerce city or two for the extra trade route and then pump out high-XP siege for the rest of the game (and an Engineering beeline may actually be necessary depending on the neighbours)
- Fish/Myst is probably horrible, depending on tech costs and what food my start has
- If I'm right about sparse resources in my starting area CRE can help that difficult early dotmap

Freddie gets Egypt
- War Chariots have a pretty long lifetime and are cheap compared to the slightly-better HA
- Obelisk could synergise well with PHI and religion - a shrine would be handy in a game this size, but not game-breaking
- Agri/Wheel should be just fine unless I'm stranded on a one-tile island
- PHI, PHI, PHI, PHI. Oh, how I'm going to need to do some reading up...

Guess I'll need a starting screenshot to make up my mind. And wave goodbye to any hope I had of being able to read in-game signs.

[Commodore]

Old Harry
Hatshepsut Incan
Justinian I Japanese
Frederick Egyptian

[TheHumanHydra]

I guess Frederick of Egypt is the best raw combo, but I'm curious as to how Justinian of Japan's start looks, because I think you could use his traits well.

[Old Harry]

Thanks Commodore and all your many lurker minions! Especially thanks to whoever thought Hatty of Inca would be hilarious .

I guess Frederick of Egypt is the best raw combo, but I'm curious as to how Justinian of Japan's start looks, because I think you could use his traits well.

Agreed, with those sheep agriculture is an important start tech, although Phi/org is sooo slow.

spi/imp and fish/wheel should be quicker eventually, but would need to go workboat-first which I assume would be horrible.

I wonder if taking 1.5 cre/spi Inca would be such a dumb idea...

I also wonder if moving the scout SW would reveal some agriculture resources for a plains hill plant.

[GermanJoey]

Your sim:

http://media.rhizzone.net/civ/pb30.oh.Ci...wordWBSave

Notes:

1.) Your starting BFC is cut out of the full save as if using a cookie-cutter.
2.) Strategic resources that are hidden from T0 (e.g. copper, iron, etc) are stripped out of this save file.
3.) The map dimensions in the sim are the same as the live game.
4.) Game settings in the sim reflect the game settings for the live game. If a setting is incorrect in the sim, please report it in the tech thread.
5.) The easiest way to change a civ to go into the worldbuilder on T0 and give yourself different starting techs. Changing a leader requires editing the save itself but is actually very simple; please ask if you don't know how to do this.

[Old Harry]

Thanks Joey.

I'm a bit sad that my choice of ORG leaders went in the bin. But these new ones are pretty trolltastic, so that's okay then.

- Hatshepsut (CRE/SPI) Incan (Agri/Myst/Quecha/Terrace)
- Justinian (SPI/IMP) Japanese (Fish/Wheel/Samauri/Pagoda)
- Frederick (PHI/ORG) Egyptian (Agri/Wheel/War Chariot/Obelisk)

It looks like there are two tiles that could have an Agriculture resource if I plant on the plains hill, but for now I'll assume SIP. With the wine and crabs tiles we have the option of max food or max commerce for each leader. First question is how competitive are the starts?

For Fred going max commerce could involve going AH->pottery->mining->BW because a cottage on the wine nets 2 commerce due to the arrow bonus. This way he can have pottery and BW by t38, but the downside is the settler isn't 4-2 whipped out until t40. Going max foodhammer and slowbuilding the settler at size 2 gets it eot32 (or 33 with a warrior).

For Hatty going max commerce doesn't seem to work, but at max f/h she 4-2 whips the settler out eot33 due to SPI, however later tech is much slower as she lacks the wheel - pottery isn't due until t48 .

Justin's start is painful. To get the worker to sync to the Hunting->AH start we work 5 turns of clams instead of sheep and the worker is delayed to t17. But with a plains mine the settler gets slowbuilt and finished eot34. Pottery doesn't come in until t45.

So start techs have it for the first settler. I'd like to know how long the second settler will be, but without knowing the lie of the land for the second city that's tricky.

Given how much I've played SPI and IMP I don't think there is anything in the starts to dissuade me from Fred. He's also got a very flexible start - if all the second cities sites are terrible he can concentrate on getting tech going earlier, more likely though we'll be pumping settlers out of the capital as fast as possible.

How long do I have for a decision? I'd like to do a bit more mucking around tomorrow night...

[TheHumanHydra]

Do you need help simming anything?

[Commodore]

Do you need help simming anything?

The foaming rage of any poor sap neighboring HATTY OF INCA's culture?

[TheHumanHydra]

If there's one thing I'm good at in Civ, it's writing ragey, despairing posts (a trait a few of us share), so I can do that.