Civ Choice

[Theseus]

Hang on just a second there... I'd like to post a new thought. Gimme a couple of minutes.

[Arrian]

Ok... but let's maybe shoot for wrapping this up next week?

EDIT: crosspost with big T. Sure, man, get that thought out there.

I don't mean to seem overly pushy. It's just that the game was theoretically supposed to start on 1/15/06 (5 days ago). I favored 2/1/06 personally, but at this rate we will be lucky to begin then.

Since I'll be gone for most of March, I'd like to get things moving before then, that's all...

-Arrian

[Theseus]

Let's look at this from another angle: paranoia.

GROUP A - Hunting & Mining

Absent all other considerations, what would be the safest overall choice from a research perspective? Seems to me any leader starting with Hunting and Mining, thus providing the fastest avenues to all of BW, AH, and Archery (prolly in that order, as and if necessary).

So that points to the Russian and German civs. Unfortunately, I don;t think we'd be in love with any of those four leaders but one:

Catherine, anyone? Seriously, CRE/FIN is definitely playable, as far as I'm concerned (and I like CRE from a defensive perspective, both in terms of territory expansion and city defense).

GROUP B - Agriculture & Mining

Next would be those civs starting with Agriculture and Mining. Makes Archery a bit further off, but with the exception of Mansa, that's prolly okay. Of the Chinese leaders, I think we'd want to go with Qin, as already indicated in voting.

GROUP C - Archery

Well, it's not really a group... Mansa Musa. I guess here's where I come to on Archery: Whereas Archery is a dead end, and in SP it'd be a low priority, WE ARE GOING TO WANT IT SOON ANYWAY. This is aggressive MP, and we have a target painted on us. We gotta bet that somebody not too far off is gonna have horsies. So, to heck with it, if we're gonna research it anyway, let's go for it with gusto.
_____________

Not too much new there, but I wanted to throw in this viewpoint. I expect this'll be more important if we don;t get our first or second choice of civ (i.e., I'd seriously campaign for Catherine), but it also indicates to me a change in my own order of voting: Mansa Musa is #1 for me.

[notyoueither]

2nd post updated with voting for civ leader.

Current Voting for Civ Leader:

Mansa Musa 21: Arrian 3, dejon 2, DeepO 1, Krill 3, Aro 2, Dominae 3, Theseus 3, Solomwi 2, asleepathewheel 1, vmxa1 1
Saladin 18: dejon 3, DeepO 3, Aro 3, Dominae 1, Theseus 1, Solomwi 3, NicodaMax 2, Blake 2
Qin Shi Huang 11: Arrian 2, Krill 2, Dominae 2, asleepathewheel 2, vmxa1 2, Blake 1
Montezuma 8: DeepO 2, Theseus 2, NicodaMax 1, vmxa1 3
Elizabeth 4: Arrian 1, asleepathewheel 3
Alexander 4: Solomwi 1, Blake 3
Asoka 4: dejon 1, NicodaMax 3
Isabella 2: Krill 1, Aro 1

--

Arrian: 1. Mansa Musa, 2. Qin, 3. Elizabeth
dejon: 1) Saladin, 2) Mansa Musa, 3) Asoka
DeepO: 1. Saladin, 2. Montezuma, 3. Mansa Musa
Krill: 1. Mansa Musa, 2. Qin, 3. Izzy
Aro: 1. Saladin, 2. Mansa Musa, 3. Isabella
Dominae: 1. Mansa, 2. Qin, 3. Saladin
Theseus: 1. Mansa Musa, 2. Montezuma, 3. Saladin
Solomwi: 1. Saladin, 2. Mansa Musa, 3. Alexander
asleepathewheel: 1. Elizabeth, 2. Qin, 3. Mansa
NicodaMax: 1. Asoka, 2. Saladin, 3. Montezuma
vmxa1: 1. Montezuma, 2. Qin She Huang, 3. Mansa Musa
Blake: 1) Alexander, 2) Saladin, 3) Qin

[Dominae]

Archery is really not that good.

Even as Mansa Musa, there's a bunch of techs you want before Archery. We could theoretically go Bronze Working then Archery, chopping out a couple of quick Skirmishers, but do we really want to be that aggressive? This is not a 1v1 game...

[Aginor]

Votes tallied here to save notyoueither time:

1) Qin
2) Mansa
3) Elizabeth

Reasoning follows:

I'm going to argue quite a bit differently than I have on the forums here. In SP, where the computer has massive production advantages and hitting it early, hard, and in a predictable fashion wins games, this just isn't the case in MP. This game's still going to be won by hammers in the end IMO, but early rush is not necessarily the way to go about it.

I can only see Expansive if we plan to rush early - the cheap Granaries are indispensable to an early rush technique, so we'd be planning full-on warmonger aggression against the first thing we see. However, as others have noted, it's pretty obvious that this has to be your plan as an Expansive (doubly so with Rome) to good players. Worse still, early aggression and player elimination will develop general ill will among the remaining teams, as well as marking us as the largest (by land area) threat and thus everyone's primary target. As a consequence I suggest that we pass on Expansive.

As with Dominae, I'm not sold on Spiritual. I suggest that we change civics infrequently in order to maximize not being Spiritual, and thus get two full traits rather than trying to get our second one from aggressive civic switching. While we might learn more from running Spiritual, we're also a lot more likely to make mistakes with it, particularly in a democracy game.

Have to concur with many that Financial is probably the best trait. Anyone that does not plan to win the game as a pure warmonger probably has to have this. We may not necessarily be trying to maximize this trait immediately, but you can be darned sure that by the midgame we'll want it to keep up with all the other Financial civs still standing.

In this environment I value Philosophical much more highly...the specific tech turn advantage of it is much more valuable when you're facing opponents with equal starts. Without the cheating AI, we don't need gobs of units right away just to clear some living space for ourselves. However, there's an attendant risk to running Philosophical - if our powerhouse cities do get taken from us, we lose immediately. With Financial, we still have key cities that we cannot afford to lose but they are not AS vital to us.

While I agree that Industrious is probably the only realistic way to hit one of the earliest Wonders, I'm not sure that we will really *need* any of the earliest ones (Stonehenge, Oracle, Pyramids, Great Lighthouse). The Great Library is the only Wonder I consider absolutely non-negotiable, particularly if we go Philosophical, and building it is largely a function of outteching the other players early on. If we go Industrious, I'd say we're doing it for the early Forges rather than for Wonder output, and that we should plan our tech tree accordingly.

Aggressive would be nice, but isn't necessary. I think that we've dismissed Creative out of hand, and rightly so. Organized just isn't going to be much of an advantage in this game, in my opinion.

My true preference is Elizabeth, but I'm voting strategically for civs more likely to win, as I feel that we would greatly err in the long run by playing Saladin and missing out on Financial entirely. IMO if we're not going to run Financial, we'd be better off running something akin to the Mongols and playing an accordingly aggressive game (accepting the attendant risks to that strategy noted above).

Also, I note that there's a ton of us (27 actual members by my count, plus the two mods) but comparatively little voting going on. We appear to be last or nearly last in posting preferences in the main forum. Two things spring to mind:

1) Do we need to just go ahead and decide, non-votes not withstanding?

2) How can we best exploit having a ton more members than other teams in terms of division of labor?

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Aginor
1) Do we need to just go ahead and decide, non-votes not withstanding?

Yes, I think so.

2) How can we best exploit having a ton more members than other teams in terms of division of labor?

Many of our members explicitly said they would not be very active. I'm intrigued by your ideas concerning this team's organization (as per the Diplomacy Nazi thread); if it's a way of getting more people involved, super.

I'm guessing that many of the lurkers do not post more often because they do not want to get too involved/immersed. But perhaps if more people were posting it would be easier on everyone; thorough analysis is easier when you're not the only one doing it.

[Arrian]

Current standings:

Mansa - 23
Saladin - 18
Qin - 14

Monty is next with 8 and it drops from there. I think it's safe to say we have our top 3.

I say we have a (relatively quick!) discussion of the ordering of the three - removing all the other choices from the discussion and focusing on just these three.

My ordering:

Mansa
Qin
Saladin

I suggest a deadline for a final choice: Friday, 1/25/06 at noon EST. Slightly over 48 hrs.

Any objections/suggestions?

-Arrian

[Aginor]

Concur on the final three choices - it's pretty clear cut.

As above,

1) Qin
2) Mansa
3) Saladin

[Dominae]

1. Mansa Musa
2. Qin
3. Saladin

[DeepO]

I stick to my ordering:

1. Saladin
2. Mansa
3. Qin

Normally, we should end with the same tally as before, BTW. As more people voted for Mansa than for Saladin the first time around, Mansa will be relatively higher in their preferences. While the ratios in votes might change, the end result should not... or people have changed their minds.

DeepO

[Krill]

1. Mansa
2. Qin
3. Saladin

[Theseus]

1. Mansa
2. Saladin
3. Qin

[Dominae]

If some people did not vote for any of those three the first time around the order could change...

[asleepathewheel]

1. Saladin
2. Qin
3. Mansa