[SPOILERS] scooter and Lewwyn troll lurkers

[Lewwyn]

If we want to play to win, Saladin or Fredrick are best I think. But Boudica would be fun. Obviously its not an ideal play to win pick.

[Cheater Hater]

Which two civs do you think will come back for the last pick?

[Bigger]

Looks like we actually get first pick. No question that it's leader first IMO since none of the civs are overwhelming. In that case I'm defintiely tempted to take Boudica. In fact, there's only 8 choices, let me just run them down. Generally, I think this will be a fairly aggressive game.

Boudicea - Agg/Chm: sounds fun
Hammurabi - Agg/Org: This would be my #1 choice if Org still had cheap libraries. Still a decent choice.
Tokugawa - Agg/Exp: If I'm going to take Aggressive, it probably won't be this one.
Cyrus - Chm/Imp: I actually like this. Imp GG bonus is always forgotten, but it's fun.
Saladin - Spi/Pro: probably the best here I think, but I'm concerned about its slowness. Especially when getting basically no choice of civ picking first.
Fredrick - Org/Phi - boringggg
Stalin - Agg/Ind - did it in pb5 so nope
Lincoln - Chm/Phi - slightly less boring than frederick

So ok, at a glance my top 3 preferences are Boudica, Saladin, and Cyrus in some order. Any thoughts?

Tokugawa is AGG/PRO

[SevenSpirits]

Tokugawa - Agg/Exp: If I'm going to take Aggressive, it probably won't be this one.

I'd like to think you're providing critical commentary on the fact that the trait called "Pro" has more in common with BTS's "Exp" than anything else, but I suspect you're just copying the mistake from earlier.

[Bigger]

Scooter responds to Q pointing his mistake with "good catch, fixed." Not only does he repeat the mistake, but he hasn't even fixed the first mistake yet .

Do you just really want to play shaka, or what?

[Cyneheard]

If we want to play to win, Saladin or Fredrick are best I think. But Boudica would be fun. Obviously its not an ideal play to win pick.

I'll DL here. Sorry pind.

Saladin > Freddy IMO. Saladin isn't exactly slow, either, given the competition - Pro = fast granaries, and we save a revolt turn early. Agg gets Agg warriors, and that's about it. Cha is pretty slow - you have to get to size 5/6 anyway to benefit, and by then you've got a granary up, at least a cheap one. None of these leaders are "fast" - the only problem with not being Agg is a warrior choke, but you have to 2v1 an early warrior choke anyway, so I don't think it's terribly fatal.

[scooter]

As always, best way to get comments is to have an irrelevant detail mistake.

Tokugawa - Agg/Exp: If I'm going to take Aggressive, it probably won't be this one.

I'd like to think you're providing critical commentary on the fact that the trait called "Pro" has more in common with BTS's "Exp" than anything else, but I suspect you're just copying the mistake from earlier.

I wish I had thought of this quick enough to claim this is what happened.

Scooter responds to Q pointing his mistake with "good catch, fixed." Not only does he repeat the mistake, but he hasn't even fixed the first mistake yet .

Do you just really want to play shaka, or what?

FINE I'LL EXPLAIN MYSELF. Hah. Q noted the mistake. I edited it. I hit save. Now, here's where you have to bear with me a little bit. You're not going to believe this, but RB has been a liiiiiiittle temperamental lately. Sometimes it sits there for long periods of time "posting" your edit or new post, and you can't quite tell if the change went through. That's what happened. I thought my edit saved, but RB trolled me . Then of course I copied and pasted, duplicating the mistake.

Saladin > Freddy IMO. Saladin isn't exactly slow, either, given the competition - Pro = fast granaries, and we save a revolt turn early. Agg gets Agg warriors, and that's about it. Cha is pretty slow - you have to get to size 5/6 anyway to benefit, and by then you've got a granary up, at least a cheap one. None of these leaders are "fast" - the only problem with not being Agg is a warrior choke, but you have to 2v1 an early warrior choke anyway, so I don't think it's terribly fatal.

You're right that marginalizing Saladin as slow is actually really inaccurate. I'm not interested in Freddy at all, it's too boring for me to pick.

So anyway, my desire for Boudica more stems because I think I want to take Aggressive here. I think Agg itself would be pretty solid here on a tight map with settings that are tailor-made for aggression, but the new -25% city maintenance is a cool perk too. So out of the Aggressive options, Boudica is preference.

So I'd say it's Boudica vs Saladin for me right now. I don't think I'm real interested in any of the other options.

[scooter]

Which two civs do you think will come back for the last pick?

This is a good question. Here's the options:

Available Civs
Celts - Hunting/Myst
Babylon - Agri/Wheel
Japan - Fishing/Wheel
Persia - Agri/Hunting
Arabia - Agri/Mysticism
Germany - Hunting/Mining
Russia - Hunting/Mining
America - Agri/Fish

None of these are overwhelmingly awesome. I expect them to be picked more or less for their techs. To me, all the Agricultures will be gone. So no Babylon, Persia, Arabia (techs changed in mod) or America. That leaves:

Celts - Hunting/Myst
Japan - Fishing/Wheel
Germany - Hunting/Mining
Russia - Hunting/Mining

Someone will take Celts for their UU on hilly terrain. That someone will probably be Commodore. He talks about Celts a lot, and always seems to want an excuse to take them, so I predict it will happen this time. So I think we're left with 2 of Japan/Germany/Russia.

And you know, I'm THIS far into the post, and I just now saw that these 3 changes happened:

Germany: UU is an 80h Cannon (instead of 100h)
Japan: UB is an observatory with +10% hammers
Russia: UB is a university replacement with +1 scientist

Um yeah I don't know. Someone will probably want to take those for a spin. Those are kinda boring changes. But then, the UU/UB changes made in RBMod are probably my least favorite. Since when did Rome really need a nerf when nobody who extensively uses Praets ever wins anything?? Whatever. I guess we had a big need to upgrade these from "terrible UU/UB" to "underwhelming UU/UB."

[Bigger]

russia's unique building gives a free scientist? thats pretty cool. maybe not as good as the RBmod salon, but still not bad.

actually I like all 3 of those changes - although you're right, none make those civs worth picking ahead of Agr tech. Maybe they are just whelming now, instead of underwhelming?

[scooter]

russia's unique building gives a free scientist? thats pretty cool. maybe not as good as the RBmod salon, but still not bad.

Yeah it's kinda cool. Though it's at a point in the game where that's not quite a massive boost.

actually I like all 3 of those changes - although you're right, none make those civs worth picking ahead of Agr tech. Maybe they are just whelming now, instead of underwhelming?

I actually think they are all improvements, I just don't think they are really exciting. But this mod basically made a lot of things less exciting, which is one of its drawbacks. The upside of course is the trait overhauls + slowing down of the game in general yields a much fresher meta in my opinion.