Forest Wilderness Challenge

[Quechua]

My thoughts overall, workers are devalued early, monarchy is devalued, code of laws somewhat devalued since courthouses are so expensive. Libraries for scientists are important.

Not sure why you say monarchy is devalued? I think CoL is indeed devalued, but it's because we can't use caste system. Every building is in a sense more expensive because we can't whip, chop, mine - I'm not too concerned about courthouses, myself. But I agree with workers being a little less important early and importance of libraries.

My thoughts are, imperialistic and organized (or creative if you're getting pyramids), and possibly industrious is the way to go for this. Imperialistic settler starts are definitely the way to get a leg up.

As I understand it, the settler production bonus is only for hammers not surplus food. Since you are likely building your settlers mostly from food resource tiles, and can't chop or whip, I would think imperialistic would give you very little. Organized and industrious both sound nice, but I think Creative would be huge for the land grab and cheap libraries/theaters. Don't know why you mention the pyramids.

Philo is always a strong trait, and financial isn't as great as usual, but water tiles are still nice. I usually like expansive, but it's pretty weak in this variant. Health isn't as much of a problem, and the granary has become pretty weak. (No whipping, and the production time negates the early benefit of quicker growth.)

 

[Quechua]

Oh, and I played past the war with Monte in the game I reported earlier (and I'm in another war with Alex), and I'm still in good shape, but not in quite as dominant of a position as I was at the end of that post. Not quite sure why there was no interest, that was a pretty high difficulty game, but ok.

 

[vicawoo]

Creative because libraries aren't cheap otherwise, and you can't run caste system. If you get pyramids, you can build cheap theatre's for 4 science/specialist.

Financial water tiles might be one of the best, in retrospect. I could see going trade route with great lighthouse and farms, as that requires no buildings.

Granaries aren't nearly as good as usual. If you have decent food, you'll probably reach the cap before you build the granary.

Monarchy is devalued early (unless you're using coastal tiles) since you don't have to work cottages, you won't be working a lot of specialists, and your extra grassland forest production isn't as large as a lot of mines/farms. Plus you'll probably be hoarding happiness resources just for the commerce.

 

[Quechua]

Oh I agree that creative is very good for this, even in Vanilla where you don't get the library bonus. I just didn't see the Pyramids connection. I'm not sure if an extra 6 beakers is much of a synergy, but I see what you mean now

I don't know if you ran into military trouble in your game. I had Monte and Alex both DoW me, and I really needed to work more forests to survive. I agree grassland is pretty terrible in this variant, but I was happy to raise the happy cap and get more plains forests (and I'd get really excited when a forest would spread to a hill or plains tile). I see your point about Monarchy though, I think it comes down to avoiding unfarmable grassland like the plague.