Civ Choice

[Dominae]

By the way, you can counteract the non-Org -2gpt Upkeep on Emperor+ by getting Gold from Tribal Villages, which IIRC is much more common on the higher difficulties (techs and units are more rare).

[Blake]

Good points, vote changed to

1) Alexander
2) Saladin
3) Qin


Alexander is an excellent leader, he can focus on military and allow the great people to prop up his economy. Capable of great dual-focus and unpredictable play style - there is no "obvious" alexander strategy. The phalnax is sure to help deter others who might be thinking about mounted harrassment.
(Okay, I just really love Alexander, so screw strategic voting )

Saladin rocks being very flexible even if there is no great synergy between his traits, other than prehaps in using Great Prophets to yoink religions. His traits do mesh well enough anyway. On the other hand if I were the Arabs neighbours, I'd probably want to kill or bully them, especially if they too-aggressively pursue religion, there is very little to be said for Arab military prowess and they are the kind of civ that just gets stronger if left unmolested.
Part of my motivation for wanting Saladin is for learning - I feel my play with such a civ is weak.

Qin has some fantastic synergy, one problem with Industrial is that you need to get to the techs in time to actually start and finish the wonder, and there's no better trait than Financial to make that happen. On the other hand, Industrial is STILL very much for a gamblers game, especially in such an intensely competitive game. While Qin may have the strongest hand of the industrial civs, he can still easily lose out on wonders due to others having marble/stone, others lightbulbing techs, great engineers plonking wonders and so on. I prefer to not gamble rather than go with a best bet.

[Arrian]

Interesting points in favor of Alexander.

-Arrian

[Aro]

I'd say the same. Tempted to change my vote too...

[Arrian]

I'm sticking with Mansa and Qin, but I could easily switch my third place vote (Elizabeth) to Alex.

-Arrian

[Aro]

Same here, with Saladin in first... (I really love SPI trait)

However, I could change my second or third vote to Alex.

1. SPI/PHI : Saladin : Camel Archer (knight)
2. SPI/FIN : Mansa Musa : Skirmisher (archer)
3. SPI/EXP : Isabella: Conquistador (knight)

Of course, I would listen to everything you experienced folks have to say... And I'll probably change my vote two or three times. So, I'll hold my second and third vote for a while, and see.

[Theseus]

I've been thinking about this a lot... I gotta tell, ya, I am deathly afraid of an early attack by a neighbor.

(As in, if I were on another team, I'd be friggin' yelling and screaming about the PTWDG: "Ya mean Vox suprise attacked with IMMORTALS and still got their hat handed to'em?" )

And the idea of defending with mass Warriors doesn;t cut it for me... that may work in SP, but I figure it'd be more like chum in the water in MP.

So, what to do? The gamble on horses and fastmovers is just too much. So, that leaves Spears and Archers and their equivalents. The more I think about it, the more I want us to know if we have iron or copper ASAMFP, so that if we don;t we can field Archers of some kind instead.

Pointy-tipped food for thought.

[Solomwi]

Elizabeth is definitely stout, with FIN/PHI. If the game makes it to riflemen, redcoats are fun to go slogging with. Mining's usually a good one to start with, and lets us get a jump on Theseus' worries, but fishing can be hit or miss. Still, that's a pretty small downside for a lot of upside.

I'm kind of nullifying Arrian's potential switch above. I'm really intrigued by Alexander, but could easily switch to Elizabeth for third place.

[Krill]

Originally posted by Theseus
I've been thinking about this a lot... I gotta tell, ya, I am deathly afraid of an early attack by a neighbor.

(As in, if I were on another team, I'd be friggin' yelling and screaming about the PTWDG: "Ya mean Vox suprise attacked with IMMORTALS and still got their hat handed to'em?" )

And the idea of defending with mass Warriors doesn;t cut it for me... that may work in SP, but I figure it'd be more like chum in the water in MP.

So, what to do? The gamble on horses and fastmovers is just too much. So, that leaves Spears and Archers and their equivalents. The more I think about it, the more I want us to know if we have iron or copper ASAMFP, so that if we don;t we can field Archers of some kind instead.

Pointy-tipped food for thought.

The other problem with fastmovers is that they, well, don't get defensive boni. So yeah, we would want BW for copper, so we can send our first settler out to get some if we don't have it near our capital. Mining would of course help, and Mansa and Lizzie start with mining, but Saladin, Alex don't. That pushes me closer to Mansa, as Mansa is just, well, safer in the early game. One of the things that would push me closer to PHI though, is that with all of the extra GP that we could create could be turned into extra beakers for techs.

Um. I think that would be one of the things we could try to do with a PHI civ, right? Grab Stonehenge/Oracle early, and under what circumstances would a great priest grab CoL as the free tech? Myst would be a requirement, Saladin starts with Myst, and so could try to get an early early religion the normal way, but Alex could try the GPr route...food for thought...

[Blake]

One thing to note is that Henge will PROBABLY go to an industrial civ, especially one with mining.

Philo civs, while benefiting immensely from henge, are not in a strong position to get it. Like if Ghandi is in the game - forget about Henge.

Oracle would probably be feasible with Saladin though, for other leaders I don't think the risk is worth it, unless there is good reason to believe we are in a strong position to get the wonder.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Theseus
I've been thinking about this a lot... I gotta tell, ya, I am deathly afraid of an early attack by a neighbor.

(As in, if I were on another team, I'd be friggin' yelling and screaming about the PTWDG: "Ya mean Vox suprise attacked with IMMORTALS and still got their hat handed to'em?")

And the idea of defending with mass Warriors doesn;t cut it for me... that may work in SP, but I figure it'd be more like chum in the water in MP.

So, what to do? The gamble on horses and fastmovers is just too much. So, that leaves Spears and Archers and their equivalents. The more I think about it, the more I want us to know if we have iron or copper ASAMFP, so that if we don;t we can field Archers of some kind instead.

Pointy-tipped food for thought.

Mansa Musa.

(Starts with Mining, Skirmishers.)

[Arrian]

That's essentially how I came to pick him #1 as well. Decent (not great) early UU, solid, fairly flexible traits.

-Arrian

p.s. Should we try and wrap these debates up and post our team choices on the main forum?

[Dominae]

Yes, please, before we all decide to change our votes again!

[Arrian]

Ok, shall we do a run-off poll with the top three choices (to determine order), or should we just go with the order they're in now?

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Blake: the problem with ORG is that this game will probably not be on higher levels, we'd need to have a very sizable amount of cities to really gain from it. I'm sure we can play such a game, though, so if we end up with ORG we'll do just fine. But for me at least, there's no real need to do so.

Wrapping up the discussion: I don't think that would be fair to the newest members: some of us had a week to discuss this, and form an opinion. Others just joined... keep it open for the moment, who knows, maybe we all change to something else.

The way it is looking now, there is no need to repoll with only the first few choices: Mansa gets picked by 10 members, Saladin by 7, Qin by 5. Even if only 3 choices are allowed, it's most likely that people will still pick the same order...

DeepO