The UN hath suggested we begging talking about what civ we should choose. Let the debate begin:goodjob:

Definately a finacial civ.

Catherine or Isabella...

Financial and both have a good early mid game UU.

Stolen from http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/civilizations/.

Aggressive
*Free Combat I promotion of melee and gunpowder units.
*Double production speed of Barracks and Drydock.

Creative
*+2 :culture: per city.
*Double production speed of Theater and Colosseum.

Expansive
*+2 :health: per city.
*Double production speed of Granary and Harbor.

Financial
*+1 :commerce: on plots with 2 commerce.
*Double production speed of Bank.

Industrious
*Wonder production increased 50 percent.
*Double production speed of Forge.

Organized
*Civic upkeep reduced 50 percent.
*Double production speed of Lighthouse and Courthouse.

Philosophical
* :gp: birth rate increased 100 percent.
*Double production speed of University.

Spiritual
*No anarchy.
*Double production speed of the Temple.

Spiritual and organized seem like a more of a "nice to have, but not necessary" type of civics.

Expansive's +2 :health: would be good to have, but only in certain situations.

Industrious is only for us if we're building beaucoup of wonders.

The above list of civics is on my "meh" list. This leaves aggressive, creative, financial, and philosophical, with creative and philosophical on the bottom of my final civics list.

Aggressive might be necessary. There's talk of a fourteenth site entering, creating two games of seven. Military will become a must, and aggressive's free promotion will be vital. Financial let's us pump out the :commerce: , allowing us to maintain a high :science: rate.

Thus, how does the Inca sound? The Quechua is a 2 :strength: replacement of the warrior, plus it gets a 100% boost against archers. This unit will ensure safety for the early early game.

How far did the Civ3 ISDG go in terms of tech? If it is a kind of game where people are eliminated quickly, than this will work well, but if this tends to go where everyone goes for tech instead of war, a longer lasting UU should be desired more. Another side of the argument, which is more what I would say, is that unique units arn't worth as much as the bonus that we can get from financial and Agressive.

Remember thought that we only get the promotion bonus for Melee units, not all units.

The first [c3c] ISDG got to the early medieval ages. Of course, in that game, only the top three got to move on to the final round, so the sooner the three eliminated the other two, the better.

I think incans a re a good choice but theres a fair chance some other team would want that so we need to have a good backup or 2 in place :)

I think Agressive and Financial sound good.

Incas sounds good. But we should think about second (and third) choices. I think we should try to get aggressive. The following civs all have aggressivness:
Montezuma: spi & Jaguar.
Napoleon: ind & musketeer.
Alexander: phil & phalanx.
Tokugawa: org & samurai
Genghis Khan: exp & Keshik
Kublai Khan: cre & keshik

I just dont like Incans..if you are not fighting before bronze working is found whats the point in having a UU. I would prefer something a bit later than a warrior UU.

Now if war startes on turn 10...then Incans it is.

it might be useful for some team that leaves their capital undefended or defended by a single warrior though....

That is true, have another suggestion? What is most important, certain traits or a good UU?

I think Montezuma and Kublai Khan sound like good backups.

the only scenario where the quecha is more useful than a warrior is when battling archers, and I don't forsse us fighting many archer wars with a 4 strength unit (after bonus).

Personally, I like Kublai. Creative will allow us to get away with not immediatly founding a religon

Which victory are we after? I think most will try domination victory, but I don't think anyone will be able to fulfill it. If someone comes close to complete it, I am pretty sure people will gang up against that person. If we chose this, we must have aggressive.

Diplo victory are even harder, there we need to coerce people into voting for us. And even if we try to do that, some will probably backstab us in the end.

If we try for score, bashing of the others is a requirement. Probably the simplest in this kind of game.

Space race, first we must see to that no one wins before the space race, then we must build fast. We will need industrious.

Culture victory, will require us to have creative. This is hard, but no one will think about it.

we should really decide which victory we want before we chose civs. If we chose victory now and focus all our energy towards that victory troughout the game, we have a serious chance to win this thing. Or atleast die trying :)

Kublia's free culture is great too. With that, we might be able to place a city or two to block off a peninsula to ourselves.

The game is going to boil down to wiping out the prerequisite number of sites to advance to game two. That's why I suggested aggressive. Financial gives us more gold to upgrade the Incans' quickly obsolete UU, which is why I submitted them as a choice.

Advance to game 2? Exactly how many games are there? And how many carries on to the next round?

There wuill be this, the prelimenary round and then the teams go onto the finals (aka Game 2)

Culture victory, will require us to have creative. This is hard, but no one will think about it.

Every culture victory I've ever won has been a non-creative civ. In fact I don't even use the creative trait. To be honest, the best trait for a culture victory is financial IMO, with Industrious and Philosophical tied for second.

Edit: A culture victory would probably be extremely hard with human players. They'd see what we were doing and take measures.

I guess choosing our civ will depend on a few factors. Financial gets a big advantage on a map with lots of oceans or lakes. An agrressive civ is a must if we are on Pangea with the possibility of removing 2 or 3 foes quickly and moving on to the next round.

I am have been slowly seeing the wisdom of the INcans choice. While they are wasted if you decide to research BW right away and hook up copper...no one is forcing you to actually hook up the metals( in all of your cities either). But if you persue other avenues such as a run to any of the first 3 religions it can be used quite effectively...in fact if you were to run the first early religions and get 1 or 2 you could use the financial trait to really reap the gold from the shrines. Then your UU can be upgraded to a stronger sword or axman, instantly creating an army of city capturing ability.

Financial is good even without rivers and lakes (though I prefer rivers). Once that cottage grows to a hamlet you start making the additional gold. IMO Financial is the best trait.

One thing I'm worried about is the team that picks (is it Ceaser?). With the Prareteans (sp?) we should expect a quick attack very early.

BTW, when do we need to have our civ picked out? With the new mention of the Demo game on the front page we're getting a high influx of new players. I hate to pick something early when we haven't heard from our new players yet.

Why arnt we considering Romans, them praetorians are very powerful and could enable us to win.

Every culture victory I've ever won has been a non-creative civ. In fact I don't even use the creative trait. To be honest, the best trait for a culture victory is financial IMO, with Industrious and Philosophical tied for second.

Edit: A culture victory would probably be extremely hard with human players. They'd see what we were doing and take measures.
Actually, I think every victory is hard to achieve. Every one will keep an eye out for leaders.

The game setup is most likely: 2 games of 7 teams of which 3 advance to the next round. That means you don't have to win, you just need to make sure you are in the top 3 of your game. Usually that means that 4 teams get (virtually) destroyed

So something with a good city defending UU such as Mali might also be usefull...

The game setup is most likely: 2 games of 7 teams of which 3 advance to the next round. That means you don't have to win, you just need to make sure you are in the top 3 of your game. Usually that means that 4 teams get (virtually) destroyed

So than the final game will consist of 6 players, as in the best three from the two previous games. Interesting and looking forward to this. Hopefully RL will slow down more soon, or at least when this finally starts.

No, we should be going out and attacking them so a good UU could be usefull but having a civ with the best and greater # of units could be another option.

Why arnt we considering Romans, them praetorians are very powerful and could enable us to win.
Everyone will probably want us dead before we're able to build those deadly units.

A civ where we can hold our own, but at the same time, slide under the radar might be best. Either that, or we'll have to threaten us some allies! ;)

Of course we ally with someone. :)
Band up with someone and start bashing the weak. Not nice, but higher odds for both to reach the final. especially if we streamline our research together with them.

I agree that Aggresive is a must.
But then Creative, Financial and Organized all are good.
Don't forget that Organized cuts half of your Civics maintenance which is biggest part of your expenses later on when you have more and bigger cities. So if you save on expenses, you can rise the science rate as well. On higher difficulities (when costs are higher) it gives you more than Financial (that one's benefit doesn't change with difficulity).
All that said, I would suggest Tokugawa.
Question are: Will that game go up to medieval era to use Samurais? What difficulitiy will the game be played on?

The game probably will get to the medieval era. The teams decide what difficulty the game'll be played on, and from what I've heard, noble makes for a good multiplayer experience.

How about a poll soon? Which alternatives do we want in it? Incas, romans, Kublai Khan and Tokugawa, do we have anymore?

Why don't we have a poll to see what types of trats we want and then we pick some leaders from that and thus we can have a representative of the types of civs that we want. We can add to that list some civs that have good UUs so that we have a nice representative voice.

Here are all the civs suggested so far:
Russia (Catherine)
Spain
Incans
Aztecs
Mongols (Kublai Khan)
Rome
Mali
Japan

classical, if you'd like, you can do the honors of making your poll. We can use those results combined with the above to make a top five.

No, we should be going out and attacking them so a good UU could be usefull but having a civ with the best and greater # of units could be another option.


Think this is a good way to go, we are never going to win a cultural victory, a diplo victory, and the game will finish before space and histograph, therefore we need to able to go out and attack first, destroy people :)

Think this is a good way to go, we are never going to win a cultural victory, a diplo victory, and the game will finish before space and histograph, therefore we need to able to go out and attack first, destroy people :)

Not neccesarily. If by picking (for example) Mali our opponents dont want to attack us because of the Skirmisher, and they dont see us as a threat (no one sees mali as a threat) we can research to a lead and use better units to attack enemies. I like Mali, in case you havent noticed.

Mali is an intersting choice... you have to defend early to get your lead..problem is if multiple people attack or you go against Immortals then your advantage is gone.