[Spoilers] Victoria of Korea - Mardoc and SevenSpirits

[Mardoc]

Obligatory mouseover prevention post

[Mardoc]

All right! We can finally talk without having to fill up our PM inboxes!

For lurkers other than novice, I'll copy over from PM some of our deliberations on leader and civ choice. novice already knows, of course, since he'd volunteered to be a dedicated lurker early and his name is easier to type than Brian's. Brian, I apologize for not including you earlier, but I only just remembered you're also a dedicated lurker for us!

SevenSpirits, novice, it looks like we're second on the leader/civ picks, so I'd like to decide what to do ASAP. I'd really appreciate your input on what we should go with; that seems to have as much impact on the game as dozens of turns of smaller decisions.

I think leader tends to have the most impact, so we should pick that first? Do you agree? And do you have any recommendations/requests?

In terms of style, I tend to prefer sitting back and teching/building, not rushing; MP might make me develop more of a military force than otherwise, though.

Which traits are most important for that sort of playstyle? I'm guessing Organized/Expansive/Financial, but you might have other thoughts. And those might be on the forbidden list anyway.

I won't be at my civ computer for another couple hours, so I'm just going off memory right now. I figure you might have a strong suggestion, but if not, I'll start by turning those forbidden lists into permitted lists and we can go from there.

I don't think we're likely to get much in the way of synergy, since one of our picks will be almost last, so we might as well focus on the individually strongest option for now.

Ideally we get our thread set up, then post the list of allowed picks, then have a good debate. On the off chance that this will occur soon, I'm going to delay thinking about it until then. But picking a leader first is probably better, yeah.

In terms of traits I would scratch off organized and say philosophical instead. But as it's not available with any of the Fin/Exp/Cre I'm not sure that's in our future.

I agree, leader should be picked first. The available leaders are:

George Washington - Expansive / Charismatic
Franklin D. Roosevelt - Industrious / Organized
Abraham Lincoln - Philosophical / Charismatic
Saladin - Protective / Spiritual
Montezuma - Aggressive / Spiritual
Hammurabi - Aggressive / Organized
Justinian I - Spiritual / Imperialistic
Boudica - Agressive / Charismatic
Brennus - Spiritual / Charismatic
Mao Zedong - Expansive / Protective
Qin Shi Huang - Industrious / Protective
Ramesses II - Spiritual / Industrious
Victoria - Imperialistic / Financial
Churchill - Charismatic / Protective
Louis XIV - Creative / Industrious
Napoleon - Organized / Charismatic
De Gaulle - Industrious / Charismatic
Frederick - Philosophical / Organized
Bismarck - Expansive / Industrious
Alexander - Aggressive / Philosophical
Charlemagne - Protective / Imperialistic
Huayna Capac - Financial / Industrious
Asoka - Organized / Spiritual
Tokugawa - Aggressive / Protective
Wang Kon - Financial / Protective
Genghis Khan - Aggressive / Imperialistic
Sitting Bull - Philosophical / Protective
Suleiman - Philosophical / Imperialistic
Cyrus - Imperialistic / Charismatic
Julius Caesar - Imperialistic / Organized
Augustus Caesar - Industrious / Imperialistic
Catherine - Imperialistic / Creative
Stalin - Agressive / Industrious
Isabella - Expansive / Spiritual
Gilgamesh - Creative / Protective
Shaka - Agressive / Expansive

I'd consider Agressive and Protective wasted traits, so omitting those we're left with:

George Washington - Expansive / Charismatic
Franklin D. Roosevelt - Industrious / Organized
Abraham Lincoln - Philosophical / Charismatic
Justinian I - Spiritual / Imperialistic
Boudica - Agressive / Charismatic
Brennus - Spiritual / Charismatic
Ramesses II - Spiritual / Industrious
Victoria - Imperialistic / Financial
Louis XIV - Creative / Industrious
Napoleon - Organized / Charismatic
De Gaulle - Industrious / Charismatic
Frederick - Philosophical / Organized
Bismarck - Expansive / Industrious
Huayna Capac - Financial / Industrious
Asoka - Organized / Spiritual
Suleiman - Philosophical / Imperialistic
Cyrus - Imperialistic / Charismatic
Julius Caesar - Imperialistic / Organized
Augustus Caesar - Industrious / Imperialistic
Catherine - Imperialistic / Creative
Isabella - Expansive / Spiritual

By the way, I consider you guys to be running the show, so don't feel like you have to hold up the decision making process if I suddenly go awol. The actual player(s) always have the last say as far as I'm concerned.

Here's a decision making aid; a spreadsheet listing all civs, starting techs, leaders, traits, etc. You can filter on starting techs, traits, banned in PBEM11 or not.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=...y=CLD-q-4C

Here's the spreadsheet in list view, filtered to only show available PBEM11 leaders:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/lv?key=t...erpage=250

I'm thinking Isabella, Washington, Huayna Capac and Victoria are the most attractive leaders.

I consider Expansive the most versatile and useful trait. It doesn't have much synergy, but that's okay as we'll be second last to pick a civ. (I guess it synergizes with Carthage.)

Egypt is a very good and available civ but will probably be selected by someone else.

The second spreadsheet, the filtered one, is private; I'm not allowed access to that one by Google. If you want just SevenSpirits and I to have access, you could grant it to MardocSeven@gmail.com, an account I made last night

Nevertheless, I can get a fairly good idea what you're talking about from the first one and my own version.

I'm thinking Isabella, Washington, Huayna Capac and Victoria are the most attractive leaders.

I consider Expansive the most versatile and useful trait. It doesn't have much synergy, but that's okay as we'll be second last to pick a civ. (I guess it synergizes with Carthage.)

So it looks like the debate from your perspective is Expansive vs Financial? They'd both be very nice traits; I'd lean more toward Financial, but could be persuaded. Since we're second, we can guarantee getting whichever we prioritize. Of course, the secondary trait difference may outweigh the difference between the two.

SevenSpirits values Fin/Exp/Cre, which seems to be the RB consensus as well, but the only available Creative leaders are either Imperialistic or Protective, which seems a steep price to pay! So I'd agree on leaving them out of consideration.

You left Bismarck off the list; that suggests you really don't value Industrious? I had thought it was more valuable than Imperialistic, at least; it could be parlayed into Stonehenge for a ghetto Creative, for instance. That relative ranking will affect the Huayna/Victoria preference as well, so I'd be curious to know your reasoning. Is it an MP thing?

Finally, with the toroidal world wrap, that seems to increase the value of Organized. Is that enough that we should be considering it, or do you think the consensus on keeping difficulty low as a result outweighs it?

Regardless, it looks like we're pretty much all on the same page - Financial or Expansive, avoid Agg/Pro, which leaves us with those 4 you listed and potentially Bismarck as well.

I wouldn't veto Bismarck, but I guess I value Imp more than Ind, yes. I'm not sure how steep maintenance is on toroidal prince, if it forces us into a 3cc then we should consider Ind and Org before Imp (and Exp?). I'm just going on instinct, and if toroidal prince is similar to cylindrical emperor, I'm not too concerned. I like Creative too, but as you point out, all the good creative leaders are banned.

Not sure why the second link is private, but if you open the first one and select View->List view, you get the filter version of the spreadsheet.

We really need that PBEM11 forum...

I started thinking about civs. If we rule out the ones starting with hunting and the banned ones, we're left with America, Arabia, Babylon, Carthage, China, Dutch, Egypt, England, France, Japan, Korea, Natives, Portugal, Spain and Sumeria.

Babylon, France, Egypt and Sumeria all start with Agriculture and The Wheel. A plan that came to mind was to pick Huayna Capac and Sumeria, go for a quick pottery, then beeline priesthood after bronze working, and Oracle Metal Casting. That gives us double speed forges, financial cottages, and early ziggurats to battle maintenance costs.

After cutting out anyone who is not at least one of Fin/Exp/Cre/Phi:

Code:

Victoria - Imperialistic / Financial
Huayna Capac - Financial / Industrious

Isabella - Expansive / Spiritual
George Washington - Expansive / Charismatic
Bismarck - Expansive / Industrious

Louis XIV - Creative / Industrious

Frederick - Philosophical / Organized
Suleiman - Philosophical / Imperialistic
Abraham Lincoln - Philosophical / Charismatic

IMO Ind/Spi/Imp are the next tier down.

Cutting out Org/Cha leaders as I think they are worse:

Code:

Victoria - Imperialistic / Financial
Huayna Capac - Financial / Industrious

Isabella - Expansive / Spiritual
Bismarck - Expansive / Industrious

Louis XIV - Creative / Industrious

Suleiman - Philosophical / Imperialistic

Cutting Huayna as he was just picked, and other Ind leaders because I don't think we should get into that fight now (being the only ind leader would be good, but that was unlikely before and it's impossible now):

Code:

Victoria - Imperialistic / Financial

Isabella - Expansive / Spiritual

Suleiman - Philosophical / Imperialistic

I think Victoria is the best choice. Isabella is probably good too. (Though also, I am her in my other game.) Suleiman is just worse than Victoria.

Victoria was actually my pick for best first choice overall, so I would be happy to get her second.


As for civs, there are unfortunately less than 6 good ones in my view. With the best excluded, the main benefit of the civ we pick is probably going to be the starting techs. To that end I would be happy with:

Egypt (relevant UU), Babylon (OK UU), China (best techs - mining in place of wheel), France, Sumeria (UU is possibly a drawback) in that order.

It's possible we may not get any of these, which is too bad. But the differences between civs are much less than the differences between leaders at this point, so we should definitely pick a leader first. I'm good with taking Victoria with no further discussion. Otherwise, make your case.

Cool, sounds good!

Imp is not as nice as Exp but it should still save us about 30h per city very early on, just like the granary discount. We will just have to chop out our granaries and whip settlers, I think.

I agree with your logic, and was leaning Victoria anyway, but I thought I might have been missing something. Guess I wasn't! Submitted Victoria.

I definitely agree we shouldn't get involved in a wonder race with Ind civs.

Egypt (relevant UU), Babylon (OK UU), China (best techs - mining in place of wheel), France, Sumeria (UU is possibly a drawback) in that order.

It's possible we may not get any of these, which is too bad. But the differences between civs are much less than the differences between leaders at this point, so we should definitely pick a leader first. I'm good with taking Victoria with no further discussion. Otherwise, make your case.

Hopefully we have a little time before we have to pick a civ, but regardless I don't want to think too hard just to discover everyone else had the same ideas.

I'm happy with Victoria, too.
And since HC got picked first we didn't have to get into the discussion on what's better, Ind or Imp.

I still think Sumeria would be kind of nice to offset the maintenance costs of our settler spam.

If we get none of the civs SevenSpirits listed, we'll just think outside the box. Carthage, Dutch and Korea are options. (In that order).

Cool, sounds good!

Imp is not as nice as Exp but it should still save us about 30h per city very early on, just like the granary discount. We will just have to chop out our granaries and whip settlers, I think.

I agree with your logic, and was leaning Victoria anyway, but I thought I might have been missing something. Guess I wasn't! Submitted Victoria.

I definitely agree we shouldn't get involved in a wonder race with Ind civs.

Egypt (relevant UU), Babylon (OK UU), China (best techs - mining in place of wheel), France, Sumeria (UU is possibly a drawback) in that order.

It's possible we may not get any of these, which is too bad. But the differences between civs are much less than the differences between leaders at this point, so we should definitely pick a leader first. I'm good with taking Victoria with no further discussion. Otherwise, make your case.

Hopefully we have a little time before we have to pick a civ, but regardless I don't want to think too hard just to discover everyone else had the same ideas.

I'd happily take Sumeria just for the techs. I don't think the courthouse cheapness is that relevant though. I don't think courthouses are a good deal for a long time if you're not organized or playing on a really hard difficulty. I don't know; maybe it pushes them above France. More likely we don't have to make that choice anyway.

I was just looking over them again, and I think Korea would also be fine. (Mining/Mysticism and a catapult UU. Not bad at all. I'd rather have Mysticism than Hunting/Fishing I think. Plus, we'd be Viktorea! Not quite as cool as Zuleiman but not bad. )

But I don't see the case for Carthage very well, or for the Dutch at all. Dutch UU/UB just comes too later to matter I think. So if it comes back and our better options are gone, do explain!

I'm happy with Victoria, too.
And since HC got picked first we didn't have to get into the discussion on what's better, Ind or Imp.

I still think Sumeria would be kind of nice to offset the maintenance costs of our settler spam.

If we get none of the civs SevenSpirits listed, we'll just think outside the box. Carthage, Dutch and Korea are options. (In that order).

Cool, sounds good!

Imp is not as nice as Exp but it should still save us about 30h per city very early on, just like the granary discount. We will just have to chop out our granaries and whip settlers, I think.

I agree with your logic, and was leaning Victoria anyway, but I thought I might have been missing something. Guess I wasn't! Submitted Victoria.

I definitely agree we shouldn't get involved in a wonder race with Ind civs.

Egypt (relevant UU), Babylon (OK UU), China (best techs - mining in place of wheel), France, Sumeria (UU is possibly a drawback) in that order.

It's possible we may not get any of these, which is too bad. But the differences between civs are much less than the differences between leaders at this point, so we should definitely pick a leader first. I'm good with taking Victoria with no further discussion. Otherwise, make your case.

Hopefully we have a little time before we have to pick a civ, but regardless I don't want to think too hard just to discover everyone else had the same ideas.

The Ziggurat is not only cheap, it comes at priesthood so you don't have to research the otherwise useless Code of Laws early. Maybe it's a SP thing, I often find myself overexpanding and limping to CoL and Currency - with Sumeria you can skip CoL.

The thinking with Carthage is that you start with Mining and your UB does something useful. On second thought Korea is clearly better, though.

The Dutch shouldn't be sneezed at - most Civs don't give much of an advantage - the Dutch civ does if the games goes on to the industrial age, which a lot of RB games seem to do.

Arabia is also an option - The Wheel / Myst, a library that can hire priests, and resourceless knights with 15% withdrawal chance.

Babylon is fine, but bowmen are pretty irrelevant. Korea actually has better UU and UB, and gives us a good shot at an early religion. China is fine too.

Looks like we have lots of options for civs; from those discussed earlier, these are still available: Korea, China, Babylon, Dutch, and Arabia.

These are our competitors: Egypt, England, Sumeria, France, and Aztec.

Should we go with Babylon, then? It was originally your second choice civ, and having an early UU ought to help us survive to the point where Financial matters.

Yeah I'm rethinking Babylon.

I think I'd pick China myself - the starting techs are so nice - but Korea's good too. (In the sole area of early religions I think China wins as we probably want Agriculture before the religion and it's more expensive than Mysticism. But Korea's unique stuff is probably a little better.) Mardoc, if you're good with either of those two, go ahead and claim it.

[novice]

Novice checking in. Let's hope that pm dump didn't scare all other lurkers away.

I think the snake pick worked out well for us, which it should with us having second pick.

1. Gold Ergo Sum: Huayna Capac (Fin/Ind) of ______
2. Mardoc: Victoria (Fin/Imp) of ______
3. plako: Suleiman (Phi/ Imp) of Egypt
4. Luddite: Isabella (Spi/ Exp) of Aztec
5. Tatan: Shaka (Agg/ Exp) of France
6. Amelia: Julius (Imp/ Org)of Sumeria
7. Adlain: Hammurabi (Agg/ Org) of England

Seriously, Hammurabi? England? I'm not sure what Adlain and Tatan are thinking. Surprised Tatan didn't pick Washington. Amelia, I understand her plan, but it's not going to work very well.

I expect plako and Luddite to be the top contenders here, with GES as an honorable mention.

[Mardoc]

Yes, it did! One of the only two Financial leaders, and with the probably higher value Imperialistic!

Yeah, Aggressive Redcoats don't particularly scare me; we'll either have already lost, or be well ahead by the time they come into the picture. Really the value of England is in Victoria/Elizabeth, which doesn't exactly apply here

Interesting that no one else wanted to compete for wonders; Gold Ergo Sum may run the tables there.

I think I see Amelia's plan - to expand like a weed using Imp, and to pay for it by Organized Sumerian Ziggurats? Why do you think that won't work?

[SevenSpirits]

Hello!

I agree with confusion on the bottom three leader picks. Hammurabi?? (And, it seems, some illegitimate offspring of Hammurabi and Joao.) But Adlain definitely got the worst of it, with the only bad civ pick so far. Anyway, it's too bad they did that instead of taking Bismarck. Or Suleiman (who was a reasonable pick for anyone but possibly the best one available for Egypt; what a deal for plako). So far I am most afraid of luddite, then plako, then GES, then the rest, then Adlain.

Anyway, on the agenda:

1) Naming scheme
2) Diplo signature

[novice]

I think I see Amelia's plan - to expand like a weed using Imp, and to pay for it by Organized Sumerian Ziggurats? Why do you think that won't work?

I'm sure Krill could make it work.

I'd say you need something boosting your empire during the initial land grab. Amelia has the traits for a killer mid game megaempire, but will have tanked her economy and fallen behind getting there. And her empire needs to be bigger than her opponents' for her to be competitive, so she must grab land aggressively. I guess she could do really well if the map has the same amount of land available as we saw in PB1.

[novice]

1) Naming scheme

In honour of our map maker - Bridge terms.

* Opening Bid
* Grand Slam
* Ruffing Finesse
* Squeeze Play
* etc.

Two-word names for easy abbreviation.

[SevenSpirits]

In honour of our map maker - Bridge terms.

* Opening Bid
* Grand Slam
* Ruffing Finesse
* Squeeze Play
* etc.

Two-word names for easy abbreviation.

A+++

[Mardoc]

Hello!

I agree with confusion on the bottom three leader picks.

At least they have the excuse of a lot of the good ones being gone; 20 leaders knocked out by that point. Although I don't think those were on any of our serious contenders' lists. Plus it's hard to object to Amelia, at least she was aiming for synergy, even if it might not work out for her.

But Adlain definitely got the worst of it, with the only bad civ pick so far.

Of course, Adlain has no excuse, only Egypt was gone for him!

Anyway, on the agenda:

1) Naming scheme
2) Diplo signature

I like the bridge terms, too! I don't necessarily want to start with the complicated ones, though; we could go for Trump, Game, Dummy, etc, before ending up there.

As for Diplo signature, my instinct is to be straightforward. A couple possibilities - if I'm sending it we're MardocSeven, if you're the author then we're SevenMardocs.

Or we could just sign our own names and be _____of Hoyle.

EDIT: On second thought, just fit the Bridge term to the city location. Our likely best site is Grand Slam, next best is Small Slam, a hotly contested border city can be Redouble...

[Mist]

Well then, let's see how my favourite warmonger gets along in his own game. Remember, if you don't do a rush on the right side of t100 I'll be deeply disappointed :neenernee

I'll be following your thread exclusively and incite mindless bloodshed and violence if you don't mind. Good luck with the game guys.