Lo, I have made a tier list, in hopes of mortally wounding the feelings of my fellow players when they read my thread. I've ranked people based on the combination of player and combo, not separately. I'm decently confident in my tiers, but within the tiers, I admit things get fuzzy. Two general statements, both of which have been said before: 1) old games like this are now played only by people who know what they're doing 2) I'm glad to see new faces. It really makes me happy. If you are lurking this, yes you, and have never made an account or played a game, go for it! It's honestly easier than these threads make it out to be.
Naufragar- Augustus of Spain
Ruff-Hi - Hannibal of Japan
Miguelito - Justinian of the Byzantine
MrCairo - Ragnar of England
giraflorens - Pericles of Russia
El Grillo - Charlemagne of Khmer
Vanrober - Cyrus of Mongolia
scooter - Gandhi of Korea
superdeath - Darius of HRE
Elkad - Washington of Maya
Mjmd - Victoria of India
The Winners Circle in Order of Winningness
Miguelito/Rusten: Justinian of Byzantium
I like both of these players as people. Miguelito has actually been around for a while. He seemed competent in PB49. He just had the misfortunate of daring Commodore to bop him on the nose. I expect him to do well. He has one of the best traits for doing well, which is engagement. Rusten, on the other hand, is pure terror. His mechanics are some of the best in the business. And when I say “some,” I’m putting him in the TBS, Mackoti, Hitru, Old Tourist camp. If he has one weakness, it’s that he likes to play “comfortably.” He’ll use his skills to gain a comfortable gap between himself and his opponent and then hit them. So long as there are more profitable targets than me, I won’t worry about being his victim.
I said I thought Justinian/Byzantium had Rusten’s fingerprints on it. Rusten is always aware of bulb paths; it’s just how he thinks. He plays with “targets,” and Oracle into Metal Casting into Machinery bulb into Cataphracts seems very on-brand. Speaking of Cataphracts, ooooooh boy. Cataphracts. Byzantium in CtH is very strong. Mysticism+Wheel is just about the most beakers you can get from starting techs. I’m interested in what their start looks like. I don’t know what their worker does up until Bronze Working. I’m jealous of Justinian. Imp is going to be very good on a map that promises to be a tad tight. Imp/Spi is also great for buffing up Cataphracts: half-priced stables means Shock Cataphracts. For what it’s worth, a Shock Knight has a 30% chance to beat a Combat 1 pike with 25% fortification bonus. A Shock Cataphract, on the other hand, has a 65% chance to beat that same pike. Hold me; I’m scared.
Scooter: Gandhi of Korea
I bet Scooter grabs a religion, huh? I would guess that Scooter picked Korea for Mining/Myst and wanted to avoid Inca (nerfed to oblivion) and India (complicated). I wouldn’t be caught dead with Gandhi, not because he’s particularly weak. He just seems like the worst kind of micro headache. One wants to do all sorts of screwy things jumping in and out of Caste System. Gandhi’s strength is that, since you don’t need golden ages for civic swaps, you can save your 1- and 2-man golden ages for late game, like Knight push, Factory construction late. Or whenever they’re needed. Not much more to say really, he’s probably got the highest skill ceiling of any leader. What a nightmare.
Scooter is a super vet. He’s been playing RB civ4 since back when Pluto was a planet. He’s seen it all. His skills are sharp. I’m fine with neighboring the leader/civ combo. I don’t really want to neighbor Scooter. I respect the threat.
Mr. Cairo: Ragnar of England:
Somewhere in the course of his long career, Mr. Cairo got a reputation for passivity. This is undeserved, and people holding this opinion should read PB42. What he’s got is a love of building. I hope in my previous analyses of him I’ve made that distinction. He, like Rusten, likes a comfortable tech/production/whatever advantage over his opponents. You can’t argue with his record. He does very well, and he’s won a couple games, I believe. I have no idea what he’ll be like to neighbor. I’m sure it’ll depend on how good his land is. Also, I worry that one day he’s going to read all these people calling him passive and go hog wild on the next player he sees.
Fortunately, Ragnar of England is not the “go nuts” pick. Ragnar of England wants to draft Rifles. Ragnar of England with drafted
Rifles Redcoats is terrifying. Will he be able to get there? I hae me doots. Cairo is, like Ruff, betting on a watery map. Dry Financial in CtH feels weak. I know Charriu is collecting more data than Facebook, so perhaps he has some info on the comparison between Org and Fin?
Because my instincts say to pick Org every time. Agg I want to like. It’s better than people give it credit. It’s just sloooooooow. What Agg does is help you survive the axe rush phase, then it takes a nap, then it comes roaring back in the Commando/Amphib era. Cairo picked a slow combo. I hope that means he’ll be a placid neighbor.
The Perfectly Fine People in Order of Perfectly Fineness
El Grillo: Charlemagne of Khmer
I feel a little bad I don’t know more about El Grillo, but then I checked and see he’s only played a couple games, mostly a while back. He’s been around the block, however. Also, he makes some mean crosswords. He’s sort of emblematic of a lot of the players in the Civ4 scene at the moment, and I include myself in this: we’ve been playing and learning about civ forever and even if our skills aren’t particularly sharp, we’ve internalized so much unconscious knowledge that papers over a multitude of sins. Because I was ded-lurking in PB51, I couldn’t really follow that game, but by the looks of it, El Grillo played strong.
I already know I’m going to hate playing against his combo. I still think CtH Pro is busted, and Charlemagne was on my short list with Justinian. Imagine starting the game with Currency. That’s Protective. Sure, sure, there are intricacies. Overseas trade routes with Pro aren’t the same as with Currency. Foreign trade with Currency is stronger than Pro. All the same, Pro~=Currency. And then you can tech Currency on top of that. Imp helps you get even more trade routes. Charlemagne is amazing. Khmer is interesting. I hate the Baray with a passion. I could see it with Exp’s new discounted aqueducts, but otherwise it tricks you into building a facility you don’t want. The Ballista Elephant, by contrast, is stupidly broken. This is a marksman unit that assassinates knights, costs 60 hammers, and is buildable with Iron. The base version got nerfed to 7 strength, but the Khmer version is still strength 8. Good grief. If El Grillo can get to Construction in anything like a reasonable time frame, he can straight up murder a dude.
Elkad: Washington of Maya
Elkad is a vet about whom I know very little. In my defense, he barely reports.
Fair enough, we play to play, not narrate. So I can’t really say much about him beyond the usual veteran boilerplate. He’ll know the basics, not an easy meal, etc., etc.
Washington of Maya looks fun. I’m reading other CtH games, and people seem conflicted about the value of Exp. It’s still great. The worker bonus was the lesser part of that trait, honestly. I wrote somewhere else that workers get built with food, so the Exp hammer bonus is small. You can whip or chop workers, and plenty of times that correct, but you’re gaining the potential for stuff, rather than stuff. The granary is where it’s at. I also like new Charismatic. Just as a reminder for myself, a Holkan rush could be super, super deadly, especially to slower starts like mine.
Mjmd: Victoria of India
I was ded-lurking PB51, so I couldn’t really watch Mjmd there. No excuse for sleeping on him in PB52, however. In both threads, he’s demonstrated he is focused and detail oriented. He’s the new breed of newbie. Thoughtful, competent people playing a game 15 years into its lifespan. (As in, newbie has sort of lost its meaning.) I expect solid play out of him. (And I’ll read his earlier threads. They seem good.
I mentioned above how India is complicated. Let me be clear: I hate it. I don’t hate it because it’s bad. In fact, it might be amazing, but I still hate it. No Mysticism civ is bad, so it has good techs. It used to be that these techs compensated for a broken BtS unit, the fast worker. I have an ancient memory of reading RB back in the dial-up era, in which somebody made the comment that all the Fast Worker does is make sloppy micro more forgivable. That’s not 100% true always. Good players can generate value from it, but I’m a well-known worker-hater, who thinks that statement rings true. (Boo, Exp. Boo, India.) Adding 10 hammers to the Fast Worker seems like a necessary nerf because of buffed Mysticism, not the UU itself. BtS Victoria is, in my opinion, the strongest leader. (Stuff it, Pacal.) I’ve already talked enough about CtH Financial. We’ll have to wait and see how many coastal cities the Fin players can get.
Probably Perfectly Fine but Chance is a Fickle Thing
Superdeath/Jowy: Darius of HRE
Superdeath is just about the most known quantity playing in this game. He, like Cairo, has developed a reputation, and that reputation can cloud analysis. He attacks. This is true. He attacks early. This, too, is true. But he also builds wonders. In fact, probably a large part of Superdeath’s difficulties come from splitting focus between different priorities. I’m on record as saying I think there are times when he hasn’t been aggressive enough. Nevertheless, when he’s aggressive, he’s
aggressive. He rolls lots and lots of low odds combats, and, the nature of probability being what it is, he occasionally wins big. My reputation of Jowy was colored by games he played when he was a younger, brasher man, perhaps. His homecoming game, PB52, has been very sane. I worry about neighboring this team. They seem like the kind to attack you because someone else attacked you, regardless if they could profit on the attack. This is the worst kind of neighbor.
On the other hand, Darius of the Holy Roman Empire is a slow, peaceful combo, until Knights. They’ll roar and roar in the mid- and late-game, but if I can outpace them in the beginning, I’m not so worried. I could never play Darius: he seems so boring. But if Superdeath and Jowy can survive long enough, my opinion will go from “Darius, what a snoozefest” to “how are they at rifles when I’m at knights.”
Not Winning, Ranked in Order of Least Not-Winningness
Vanrober/GeneralKilCavalry: Cyrus of Mongolia
Like the Giraflorens/Pindicator pairing, a lot will depend on division of labor. Vanrober is green; GKC is mean. Actually, now that I think of it, I’m not sure how often GKC has been tested. He’s had some easy runs (PB45) and some rough draws (PB47). He’s engaged and does micro, which is usually enough to be worth taking into account. As with the Giraflorens/Pindi grouping, I suspect that the vet/beginner dynamic will cause both halves to be focused and keen.
What’s there to say about Cyrus of Mongolia? Expand as fast as possible. Tech to Keshiks. Build some stables. Kill people with Shock Horse archers. Put a pin into my next statement in case you need to pull it up to mock me later: Cyrus of Mongolia doesn’t really scare me. I’m a pretty conservative player, sometimes to my detriment, and if I see a horse archer threat, I trust myself to prepare appropriately. A dirty little secret of civ warfare that no one seems to mention is that the aggressor
always has the power to severely damage the defender. It’s just that often that damage isn’t profitable. Within that framework, que sera, sera. If we neighbor Vanrober, we build spears and put our EP on him.
Ruff-Hi: Hannibal of Japan
Financial got nerfed in CtH to +1c on land tiles with 3c and +1c on water tiles with 2c. Charismatic got buffed to provide 15hammer monuments. These two changes mean that Hannibal is still probably the king of the waves. The land portion of Fin is very weak without copious rivers (and if you’ve got lots of rivers, you’re fine for tech anyway). Japan doubles down on the naval aspirations Ruff has. They gained a new building called the tatara, a forge that gives +2xp to melee units. This is a little weird with Charismatic. A barracks plus tatara gives melee 5xp, which is enough for non-Chm to get two promos. A barracks plus an XP-granting civic plus the tatara gives 7xp which is enough for 3 promo’d Charismatic melee units. (Hello amphibious Samurai, we meet again.) I don’t really know how to evaluate this pick without knowing the map. If it’s archipelagic, the pick is good. If there’s a higher land-to-sea ratio, I don’t like this pick at all.
Ruff is quite the veteran. He’s been around since the we were playing correspondence civ games through the postal service. He’s not a hyper-competitive micro-fanatic, but he knows when to push. (He smacked Superdeath around in PB49, which is a feat that I and others have failed at.) I don’t remember him being a threat to win in any of the games I’ve read, but he’ll know how to do the basics of whip and cottage.
Giraflorens/Pindicator: Pericles of Russia
Giraflorens seems like a good guy and I feel a little guilty for being such a hands-off ded lurker in PB51. “naufragar’s teamwork skills need improvement.” Gira is very green, and if he’s the primary turn player, he’ll need to sharpen up quick to be competitive in this game. He is being lurked by the savvy Pindicator, who is a strong veteran. This pairing makes the players hard to rank. If Gira is only getting high level, occasional support from Pind, he’ll have a rough go of it. If Pind is an equal partner, this team is right up with the best of them. I suspect that Pind will have a lot of say. Gira respects him after the beating Pind delivered in PB52.
I don’t have many thoughts about Pericles of Russia. The Russian starting techs are great if you’ve got the resources to match. I loved the game I played as Hunting/Mining paired with Imperialist. Pericles I want to love. He gets you a Math bulb (or Academy) faster than any other leader, which in turn gets you Currency faster than any other leader. What you do with that, I’m not sure. Imp is my favorite trait, so I probably would have picked Suleiman, but Phi+Cre/Imp/Exp are all probably roughly equal. I’m decidedly neutral about this pick, I think, which probably means it’s pretty well-balanced.
All done. I'll evaluate myself later. But holy smokes, this took too long. And I have actual work to do.
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
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Where's Charriu or Rusten to give me an opening when I need one? These starting turns are always too much. Far too many possible directions, far too little brainpower to work out which is best.
Yup.