Leader Selection

Thought I'd start a thread so we can start gathering suggestions on leaders for our monarch to decide on.

Personally, There is always a ton of warfare in a multiplayer game, so we should definitely think about taking either agg or chm (or both). As for the other it really depends on the style of game we want to play, if we want to run a CE, I'd take FIN and go with Ragnar or Hannibal. for a SE, Lincoln (but booooo on the super late UB and UU) or Alexander. lastly, for some other flavor, maybe ghandi for a no anarchy specialist economy.

Thoughts?

No Opinions on this? I'm sure our king would have his favorite leaders, but suggestions couldn't hurt.

I got two trains of thought, what works best in multiplayer and how merlot should be represented

Unfortunately, Financial is largely considered the top trait in multiplayer. In the last game, four out of five teams were, and in this game I'd expect much the same, at least half, maybe 4 teams will be financial, lord parkin's team almost guranteed. Another top tier trait that I would personally consider is Imperialistic. So long as the playing field is level, something lost in high level single player games, you simple get more cities. You get a lead in that department and that lead builds on itself. That said, I'd consider Victoria as being the overall best multplayer civ, so long as she doesn't get dogpiled or Aztecked or whatever. (Expansive also lends a hand to rapid expansion, especially if provided with enough trees.)

But for Merlot, I see other cosiderations for choosing a civ. The first one that came to my mind was Julius Caesar - even without the praetorian, org and imp can peacefully put of a empire to be respected. But then i went to Charlemange. Could work, though may have trouble keeping economically. Brennus was another idea, but I think this needs a little more thought

For multiplayer, Financial is indeed powerful and hard to pass up.
The cottage economy is the most straightforward way to play (vs a specialist economy) - and unless we have a real expert on running a specialist economy on our team, I'd strongly advise the monarch to pursue a cottage economy.

Now - just because we're going to run a CE - doesn't mean we have to be financial... it just helps.

As Slaze mentioned - Victoria is widely regarded as a top MP pick, and for good reason. If we don't try to get Victoria, I'll bet one of the other teams does. It's been a long time since I played a MP game with more than 4 teams where SOMEONE didn't pick Victoria.

That said - one of my personal favorites in MP games is Hannibal. Fin and Charismatic - he can get bigger/more productive cities in the early game (when happiness is the big issue) and he gets a nice little military bump with the lower XP advancement costs. I find it's a nice mix between domestic and militaristic advantages. If you can snag Stonehenge, it's seriously awesome. Downside is that while the Cothon is awesome - it's expensive and only really useful if you've got a map with lots of water and friends to trade with. The UU (Numidian Cavalry) can also be totally killer... but if you lack horses early on, you quickly lose the window of opportunity where the Numidian Cav's are good.

Another all-time favorite of mine is Darius. (Financial, Organized) - He's a late game powerhouse - but the incredibly awesome Immortal UU helps you survive the early game. It's really the middle where you risk getting dogpiled.

If we opt to NOT pick a financial Civ, it's hard to beat either of the Caesars - I just love Praetorians. Julius is the better general gameplay pick (with organized) - but Augustus with his industrious trait can grab a bunch of the awesome early wonders without as much fear of getting wiped out for it (thank you, Praetorians) - and then multiply the usefulness of those wonders by churning out Great People (thank you +25% Great People from the Forums). I've also found you should never underestimate the value of the half-price forge. That's a huge boost for everything.

So yeah - those would be my top recommendations. They're not in any particular order.



Note: For any new members who are not familiar with it already, you really should go play around with the Civ4 BTS Leader Picker application. Makes it easy to see all the trade-offs.

slaze said:

But for Merlot...

Click to expand...

Basing our strategy on our ForumTeam flavour is not something I ever intended personally. That said, I recognize that the King has a higher thought and will follow his will dutifully.

My advice, until the King shows me the fault in my thinking, is that we choose the strongest option in all situations regardless of our Role playing.

I never wanted to be that "lame RPing" guild that is inevitably in every single online game you play. You know the one. They are busy fumbling in old English while you are PK'ing them.

Rather I wanted to be this monolithic, feared establishment that just trashed over the old order and made people go, "huh, maybe the way we do it could use some tweaking because some of this seems really fun!"

So, for example, down the road we may have the ability to settle a square that gives us access to wine, or another that gives us an overall better position. Again the flavour of house Merlot would be to settle the wine. i would rather settle the better position.

I suppose I could sum it up like this - Winning the game is better for RP then any other thing we could do. I look forward to writing long treatise about our glorious victories. "The sun never sets on the Kingdom of Merlot" and such other propaganda. So if taking on Ghandi, Roosevelt (just mindless names - not suggestions!) or some other leader we all associate with very-non-monarchy ideologies gets us there, so be it!

That's my 2 cents when it comes to melding RP with how we play the game - which is inevitably a big part of leader selection.

Personally, my favourite leader is Saladin.

However, I understand that in multiplayer, Spiritual and Protective aren't the best trait combo around.

And whilst the Madrassa's priests can be helpful, once you have a holy city the only real use for the great prophets is lightbulbing...

Plus, whilst camel archers need no resources and have a 25% chance of withdrawal, there are far better UU's out there.

So, whilst he may be a very amusing leader, if anyone's honestly considering using him, i'll have to be the first to talk you out of it.