Civ Choice

[UnOrthOdOx]

God, there's games on Monarch I'ld happily buy a missionary from my neighbor and spread it to the rest of my cities on my own.

That said, I have a hard time seeing this game get the difficulty level where such a thing is needed purely for happiness.

I think it would be more interesting in our allowing other teams to pay us to distribute their religion through our lands.

I'll respond more thuroughly to EN's post when I get time this afternoon.

[polarnomad]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
I think it would be more interesting in our allowing other teams to pay us to distribute their religion through our lands.

Hehe... Now there's an interesting idea.

[rush]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
I think it would be more interesting in our allowing other teams to pay us to distribute their religion through our lands.

I am not sure if the concept of spreading religions in a MP will work. Who will want to give the competition +1/+2 gold per turn ? Unless there is an exchange of religion, or he wants to go into free religion civic.

And would helping other teams to spread the religions to our target be abusing the "trust" the target gave us in giving us access to their land ?

My preference is to play Financials Civ. Always seem to do well playing them, even without finding a religion.

Hm... edited. I just realise you are talking about spreading religion to our land. That's fine. In fact, we can also help them to spread to their land too if they prefer to use their cities to build more important infrastructure buildings.

[polarnomad]

Originally posted by rush
In fact, we can also help them to spread to their land too if they prefer to use their cities to build more important infrastructure buildings.

Wow, this is taking the concept of making money to new levels!

Vox: Hey Mercs! Here's 300G to spread our beloved Islam through your lands.
Mercs: Insh Allah!
Vox: Oh, and while you're at it, how much for you to build 6 missionaries and spread the word to other cities in our vast domain?
Mercs: Well, let the merc team consult, but I'm sure we can find a fitting price, our brothers of the faith.

Taking this one step further, we could even spread someone's religion to their enemy's lands...

[UnOrthOdOx]

Taking this one step further, we could even spread someone's religion to their enemy's lands...

I don't think so.

Not without open borders, and I foresee this game not seeing many of those.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
The main issue behind our renting units isn't their promotions, it's that we spend the time and gold to produce them.

I absolutely agree. This is why I'm not 100% sold on Aggressive being a given. In fact, were it not for the cheap barracks, I'ld suggest avoiding it.

We want to be able to make as many marketable goods as we possibly can. Spi would be a big help, as Missionaries are just as sellable as Units - Usuff/Hered, OrgRel/Theo and the early switch to Slave would merit such a trait.

Early religion is going to be a crap shoot IMO. Either allot of teams are going to go for it, or few teams. Even given only 1/2 teams going, there's only 3 religions.

I'ld much rather see us go slavery straight off and start on cranking units.

That, and we're going to need to increase our borders and get happy faces in ways other than Conquering and Claiming resources.

Hence my view of Creative and utilizing theaters. Free border expansion, usefull lux (sorry, "culture") slider.

What techs would we need? Starting close to Horse Riding, Bronze working or Monotheism (Hey, Missionaries are sellable) are the goals, so Mining, Hunting and Myst are the go techs.

Only agree on 2/3 there. Mining, hunting. As I mention, I don't think we'll be wanting to roll the dice on religion, nor do I believe OUR religion will be sellable. As mentioned in the thread, spreading someone ELSES religion, however...

Selling Religions could be damn useful. If we can get 2 of the 3 early religions and then somehow grab another (Oracle -> Code of Laws?), the price of our missionaries will skyrocket.

I am very much against attempting to beeline and grab 2/3 religions. This would put off our capability to build usefull units, and we, of all teams, need to consider defense first and foremost. We will be the biggest 'threat' in the eyes of a number of teams as a neighbor.

I am going to throw Philosophical out there as a possible trait though.

Specifically, I would toss out Frederick and Elizabeth as strong candidates.

Frederick, like Catherine, starts with hunting and mining. Creative/Phil, allows for early exploring from the free scout, Bronze beeline for pop and chop strategy to get an extra settler or two coupled with creative to close off an area all to ourselves. Phil can quite adequately solve cash problems on it's own merrit, getting some merchants, scientists, or prophets joined in the right cities. The one downside is an extremely late UU.

Elizabeth being Phil/Fin would basically amount to us not needing concern ourselves overly about gold. Probably amount to us being capable of supporting the most troops with this combo. Starts with Mining, and fishing. And don't put fishing too low, either. It does lead to galleys quick...a means to deliver our troops...

I would just love to see at least one GP auctioned this game. For pure hilarity it will make of the public forum.

[inamirrordarkly]

I just got done playing a game with Kublai Khan and the early border expansion due to Creative was very impressive.

[polarnomad]

So, which civ are we going with then? I would like to focus my single player games on whomever we choose.

[polarnomad]

Since it looks like the "preferential" civ selection method is going to win, I've decided to post my vote.

5 Kublai Kahn
4 Catherine the Great
3 George Washington
2 Tokugawa
1 Huayna Capac

[troglodyte]

Said by UnO in the Analyzing tech tree thread:

"Chances are very good we will have at least one resource of bronze, ponies, or Iron."

I have had the experience, several times, of playing Mongols, Spanish and Russians and not having ponies. This does tend to obviate the UU, and you usually have to be a bit aggressive to convince the other civs to let you have access to the horses. I cannot see that the other teams will give us horses if we don't have access to them to start with. Can we take this chance? I've never been without at least one source of the metals within easy reach, and if we crap out and get horses instead of metals, at least they are useful to whatever civ we play.

It may be better to take another civ that doesn't have reliance on horses, but with good/appropriate leader traits - and I leave that to the experts to convince me.

[polarnomad]

IMO, UUs are overrated. I don't think I have ever been too concerned about not being able to produce any particular civ's UU.

My choices for civs in this game are not based on UUs.

[troglodyte]

Originally posted by polarnomad
My choices for civs in this game are not based on UUs.

Okay, fair enough. Actually, I didn't think that they were, anyway, my point was more general. I do realise that the UUs only give a short-term advantage and this window does close rapidly.

Although I do agree in general with your feeling about the UUs, we may need to think a bit about UUs as we are in the business of selling units - the more useful the unit, the more demand. Redcoats, Musketeers, SEALs etc may be more useful than Praetorians, Quechuas, Skirmishers etc., and this means that we may need to look at which traits/units would be most useful vis-a-vis other traits/units.

I personally would go with Washington or perhaps even Rooseveldt as the Fin/Org or Ind/Org with a late UU that we get earlier in the end-game than other mid-to-late UU's may give our clients that last minute advantage they are needing to win/settle scores etc. Money can buy you guns and butter, and the cheaper UU at that late stage may be useful to us.

But the arguments in favour of Creative are also quite compelling.

I personally do not have strong opinions on which civ, mainly because I don't really know enough about it to comment in great detail. Trogs will go with the consensus.

[UnOrthOdOx]

I really see Creative as nearly neccessary.

I would rank civs:
Catherine:
For reasons mentioned above, and the UU is a very good time for Mercs. Early UU's will not be able to be hired out.
Frederick:
Creative, and creative use of Philosophical will solve both gold (and therefore troop numbers) and border problems. Panzer is a little late, but hirable.
Kublai Khan:
Aggressive will entice folks. Creative again to help with the borders. We'll need to focus on gold allot in the infrastructure. UU will be marginally usefull, coming a little early, might be hired for tech though.
Huyan capac:
Self explainatory. Bad UU for Mercs.
Elizabeth:
As I said, I think this translates into the most GPT, therefore the most troops.

[Kloreep]

That actually looks like a pretty good list to me, UnO. I'd probably swap Kublai and Frederick, though.

Re: Organized, I don't think it's the best trait. The cheap lighthouses may come in handy, but courthouses and the civics reductions primarily help civs that have already grown large. It's traits like Creative and Financial that I think would help us grow large and powerful in the first place. Between Organized and Financial, I've come to prefer Financial.

[snoopy369]

Please send a list of civs when you can