So, Dutch Suleiman or Justinian, if I've followed what you've previously said correctly?
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[SPOILERS] scooter Reruns Bluey
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(February 15th, 2024, 22:22)Zed-F Wrote: So, Dutch Suleiman or Justinian, if I've followed what you've previously said correctly? Yeah, I came really close to locking Suleiman Dutch, and then I noticed that I went this whole time before realizing EIM are nerfed in CtH. That made me hesitate. I guess the other hesitation is that I wonder if the Galleon Window will be pretty small here. Chemistry is easily bulbable (more easily than Astro tbh), so how long in reality is the time period where players have Galleons but don't yet have Frigates? Because that is the only window where you're getting serious mileage out of EIM, and even then better-promoted Galleons can cope against them just fine. I just am not sure I'm gonna get that much from them. Dikes are great, but is the game decided before they come online? The other glaring issue is that picks are trending more bloody than anticipated. Nobody in the first snake picked IMP or PHI at all, instead we got Vikings (naval blood), Brennus (Knight blood), and Saladin (CKN blood I bet). Of course, that would push me towards Mongols, however there's no Horse visible at the start, which makes me think they're not super close in an attempt to dull Horcher rushes. It's ok, but nothing special ultimately. America sounds great, but can I cope with a builder-y civ when it looks like everyone else is trying to murder me?
Alright, I picked Suleiman of America. I decided to stick with my guns here and pick what I think is the best economic combo on the board and not try to react too hard to the other picks happening. I considered Justinian and Nebu pretty seriously, and I also considered Mongols/Dutch/Portugal/Germany/Russia pretty seriously. I think basically all of those choices would be good, so I won't get into them too much unless there's a specific question. The most painful part of this pick is passing on Spiritual. I basically felt it was going to be painful to be without PHI/SPI/IMP, and I was gonna have to skip one, so I decided ultimately I really ought to pick 2 of them. I had made up my mind this afternoon I was taking Gandhi if it was there, and then it appears Yuris took him right before me.
So, Suleiman. My reasoning for these two traits goes like this. Imperialistic makes getting settlers out way easier. If others don't take IMP, I should be able to take the growth curve lead. I'm counting on a population edge to be my "military trait" here. The main issue with the increased settler cost is how high it pushes the whip cost. Whipping 6 -> 3 for settlers always feels pretty good, but that normally only requires you to invest 10h into a settler. Now it requires 58h to get there. So then you have to decide whether you want to slow-build for a few turns AND triple whip, or if you want to push up to an 8 -> 4 whip, which itself is a tremendous cost and probably not very good. Basically it's really hard for non-IMP players to produce settlers anywhere except the capital. IMP sidesteps this entirely, which is great. It's not just about the hammer savings though - new cities contribute way faster with Granary/Lighthouses, so they snowball harder than they do in Ancient. Don't sleep on the increased GG generation speed either. GGs can win entire wars once the boats start mattering. Philosophical just gives you so many choices. The trait is already very strong in this era, but CtH slightly buffs it to 150% GP rate. This means a specialist produces 7GPP/turn, and my UB provides 5 GPP/turn. One obvious option is to start in Caste, run Merchants, bulb Bureau, then Anarchy-revolt into Slavery/Bureau. With PHI that requires just 15 specialist-turns, which is pretty easy to get in 3T of running 5 Merchants. There's also the question of how to tech in this game. PHI is by far the best teching trait here. For starters, the first few GP convert food into beakers unbelievably well, so it's just very efficient. Also, bursting techs at this stage of the game where there's huge power spikes all over the place (Lib, Astro, Guilds, Chem to name a few). There's also less obvious things that show up here. Given that cottages will take awhile to pay off, it sort of makes sense to make your capital a monster science city and let your other cities go for hammers. PHI is great for this. You can generate an Academy very easily, and you get cheap Oxford via discounted Universities. It's easy to imagine a hybrid approach where you bulb the easy techs to bulb and work through the others with an uber-cap. Finally, there's other low-key perks such as the cheap Monasteries. Finally, America very obviously is meant to be force-multiplied by PHI. Mjmd has been insisting for awhile that America is mega broken in CtH, and while I've been a tad skeptical, I've been open to the idea he might be right. I'd like to see first-hand! The fact that they aren't discounted by Creative here is a small negative, however you really only need them in cities where you intend to spawn GP, which in practice is usually only a few cities. I'll probably do the Merchant CS bulb, but after that I'm probably gonna want to build a Library and try to casually spawn a few Scientists in the background while I REX away. Overall I'm banking on the idea that this will give me the best growth and best tech, and that will be powerful enough to offset my lack of inherent prickliness. No idea if it'll work! The lack of Spiritual will hurt, and the lack of a UU will hurt, so I guess we'll find out if it's a good tradeoff. 
Sticking with your guns worked out last time, let's see if it does again. If we don't get immediately punished for REXing too much with a blank UU, should be fine.
I had been thinking maybe HRE or France as alternates if we wanted to get a bit less synergy from Rathaus or Salon in favour of better defensiveness with Landsknecht or Musketeers, but relying on 'build more/higher tech units than the other guys' could work fine too. Hopefully we don't paint too big a target on ourselves if we get out to an early lead. I do wonder if Yuris was also thinking of America. Russia is going to be blank for a while... Also, maybe Thoth will agree with you on wanting to pick two of IMP/PHI/SPI and take Justinian of Vikings. (February 15th, 2024, 23:34)Zed-F Wrote: Also, maybe Thoth will agree with you on wanting to pick two of IMP/PHI/SPI and take Justinian of Vikings. Would have been a much better choice than what he actually picked. You know, as long as he doesn't start close to me. Overall, incredibly spicy draft, and not really at all the direction I thought things would go. 3/5 wanted Spiritual, and none of them wanted Justinian (!). Industrious was outright skipped despite nobody having it, a Forge being a likely first build in a lot of cities, and a lot of wonders available. Really we had multiple traits I discarded as "bad traits" picked while Industrious/Organized/Financial were all ignored. It's very interesting. Civs left out that you would expect to be interesting here include China, Dutch, Portugal, Germany, India, and Arabia. I think some of these picks look quite bad, frankly, but we will find out. Yuris has the combo I like the most, FWIW. I look at stuff like what Thoth and Commodore picked, and I wonder how they expect to tech? Do people think this is Modern/Future where it's just a wargame or something? Or is this just Viking Fear? I'm skeptical. I know I slandered Protective earlier in this thread, but I actually think Pindicator's choices here are a really inventive way to split the difference between blood and tech. Conqs are excellent here, and Protective + Citadels suggests a trade route focused economy, which isn't a bad idea. I would expect him to consider snagging GLH.
February 16th, 2024, 11:28
(This post was last modified: February 16th, 2024, 13:00 by scooter.)
I noted that the draft for this game was "spicy," so I was thinking about how to best preview the leader/civ choices. The obvious choice was to make similarly spicy previews. So instead of serious analysis, I'm instead going to roast them all. So prepare yourself for the meanest things I can say about these selections. Don't worry, I've recruited someone to do me at the end.
Thoth - Boudica (Agg/Chm) of Vikings ![[Image: uiU8wx1.jpeg]](https://i.imgur.com/uiU8wx1.jpeg) when you remember commerce exists This pick is as if someone watched PB73 and totally misunderstood what the good part was. Here's the thing that's important to understand about naval assaults: the boats are only as good as the units you are able to put on them. And as best as I can tell, Thoth plans to put Axes on them. What is Boudica going to do, tech better units? Viking 3-4 move Galleys with Chm/Theocracy are quite strong, but they aren't exactly game-breaking when Caravels can be had in a flash, and Galleons can be had before you've finished building settlers. Galleons are the spot where Vikings really power spike, but man, you have to have a plan to actually tech Astro. It's really expensive! Win Liberalism? LOL. Bulb it? Yeah pick Vikings and ignore Civil Service for awhile, great plan. So realistically, by the time you actually do get Galleons, the techers will have Frigates, and by the time you get Frigates, someone will have SOTL. Good luck with that. Oh no, I'm so scared at what your Zerks will do to my Rifles, someone save me. Speaking of Boudica, let's check the spreadsheet to see how she's performe- oh right, terrible. Never won anything and has a real argument for worst leader in the game. Boudica is the leader you pick when you have no illusions of winning and just want to kamikaze your neighbor. She's ruined more Roman Empires than any barbarians ever did. She's the embodiment of using CG3 Longbows to defend against Cavalry. She's the goon on the hockey team that's just there to fight. She's the basketball player with more career flagrant fouls than points. She's the guard dog whose only brain activity boils down to "see bad guy, bite bad guy, get treat." Boudica: for when you really want to finish 4th in a 5 player field. WHO'S NEXT. |
