Leader / Civ Picking Thread

Sommerswerd

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I guess now is a good time to start talking about what leader we want. The game will probably be unrestricted leaders (meaning you can pick the Civ, and the Leader seperately) and we will almost certainly be selecting via snake pick. Snake pick means you get a random order to pick either your civ or leader, then you pick the other in reverse order. For example, if you get first pick of your Civ, then you get last pick of your leader. It's how fantasy drafts usually work;).

Here is a link to a BTS Leader Picker program on CFC. It lets you choose the combination of traits you want and tells you what leader has them.

This is an excellent article on Leader Traits in PDF format here on CFC. Its called Self Actualiztion, Axemen and You by Sisiutil. Anyone wanting info on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the different traits should definitely check this one out.

I thought of making this thread a poll, but there are way too many choices for that. Maybe we can poll when we narrow it down to a few choices.

Here is A CFC chart displaying all the Leaders w/descriptions of their traits/benefits and Civilizations along with their UUs, UBs and starting techs.
 
Unrestricted leaders, right?

I'm having visions in my head of Hammurabi of Holy Rome, and knock out some neighbours early on. Cheap rathauses and Combat I Landsknechts? Yes please.

However, the pick order will make a huge difference. If we are last, we can take a leader and a civ that compliment each other (Napoleon of the Aztecs also comes to mind - can you say whipping?). If we are first, we should probably go straight for a strong leader like Elizabeth or Hannibal straightaway.
 
I really liked hannibal this last go around (and elizabeth before that). I'm one of those boring guys that prefers Financial. Pacal would be great too.
 
The problem with Hammurabi of HRE is that it is truly situational. If we play on higher difficulty, then ORG Rathouses are great, if we play on Noble, they are almost useless. And counting on just one unit to make our kill and succeed or fail in the game is highly risky. Landsknehts require quite expensive Engineering technology, which prerequisite is Machinery and the single unit which totally obsoletes the Landsknercht comes with Machinery. So each team who is run competent seeing they have HRE as neighbor will run for xbows and if they have economic traits opposed to our military and semi-economic ones, they will be at Machinery long before us.

My opinion is we must invest in known strong economic and growing traits. So I think any combination of FIN, PHI combined with EXP, IMP, IND can be decent choice.
 
Right now I think my favorite combo would be Hannibal of England- Financial/Charismatic, Redcoats/Stock Exchange.

We could start with oracle gambit to leverage happy cap like Quatronia did last game. We could then peak and make our move when we have redcoats like Kazakhstan in BTS MTDG I.
 
I do also prefer cottage economy in my single player games. Mostly since it requires so much less micro management and the turns will be much shorter. However, since turns in MTDG will anyway take several hours, running specialist economy will not slow the game down at all, really. CE is also much more vulnerable to a stack of rampaging pillagers or a large scale sabotage campaign than SE is.

So if our turnplayers are up for it, I'd prefer running SE unless we get perfect CE start of course. Obviously running SE would make PHI one of the strongest feats. For the second feat I believe any but protective would do. Though I'm not really sure of usefulness of Creative in multiplayer either.

As for a Civ, I think an all around strong civ like Rome or England would be a good choice. Though, Rome likely would have an obvious drawback of very suspicious neighbours.
 
The issue with an SE, however, is that we will fall behind late game. SEs are for quick victories, which I can't foresee happening. Switching mid-game could be an option, though.

I think the other thing we need to do is look more at unconventional civs, i.e. ones that have late UUs and UBs, like America and especially Germany. In a normal game, the game has already been decided by the time you hit the modern age. The MTDG is obviously a different animal, and I can see assembly plants helping us secure a space victory or panzers mauling enemy armour units.
 
My opinion is we must invest in known strong economic and growing traits. So I think any combination of FIN, PHI combined with EXP, IMP, IND can be decent choice.
This. We have to have either FIN or PHI. Otherwise we should go with Joao for IMP/EXP.

The only other thing on my mind was using a SPI leader to run a powerhouse EE (like what won BTS MTDG II), however, anyone who reads AMAZON thread will be expecting that so I don't think we can depend on that this time:(. Also with espionage nerfed (by disallowing the CSM), which seems likely:rolleyes: since everyone is drinking the RB Kool-Aid:sad:, EE will be less powerful (still very powerful, but just a little nerfed)
I think the other thing we need to do is look more at unconventional civs, i.e. ones that have late UUs and UBs, like America and especially Germany. In a normal game, the game has already been decided by the time you hit the modern age. The MTDG is obviously a different animal, and I can see assembly plants helping us secure a space victory or panzers mauling enemy armour units.
What about the idea that a UB or UU that you always build and build early (like Terrace, Mint or Ziggurat) will help you all game, and that a small benefit early and all game helps you exponetially more than a big benefit later in the game?

Or a UU that you can use to your advantage all game (like Fast worker) or for an early advantage (like Dogs)? Aren't early benefits always superiour to late ones?
 
I actually like the idea of mid-game switch. For that I believe Elizabeth would be a perfect candidate.

One thing to consider about is also long term benefit of the UU. E.g Oromo Warrior, in top of being relatively good unit by it self, starts with two first strike. So it upgrades to an awesome rifleman/infantry.
 
Fast worker is being believed to be the best UU in many Civ4 communities. Other very strong UUs for MP are considered to be War Chariots, Impis, Cataphract, Skirmishers. Oromos are OK, Panzers too.

About UBs, for supposedly long games, such as the current MTDG3, those worth considering are Terrace, Hippodrome, Ger, Baray, Ikhanda, Mausoleum, Hammam, Ballcourt, Dike.
 
Still - while the terrace would have been somewhat useful in the early game, the extra culture jut doesn't compare to the extra engineers and production of the assembly plant.
 
The rule of "the earlier-the better" in Civ applies with full power. Those hammers saved from not needing to build a monument in each city empire-wide, may have the potential of giving you way bigger benefit trough the "snowball" effect than the increased production from the assembly plant in the late game. And 2 more engineers isnt that big of a deal at that time.

Of course, we must consider what type of map we will have. If we have land map, then this is one, if we have water map, it requires completely different UU and UB considerations.
 
hey guys,
most of you probably don't know me and I asked metra for access to this part of forums to throw some 2c here and there based on my single player knowledge gained in S&T part of forums and of course I wanted to lurk this kind of MP game, since have 0 experience with it.

I read some reports of Sullla about some RB games, so I have at least some picture how the games are run.
(that's for my introduction :))

now about the question of Leader/Civ...my 2c is this:

SE economies tend to be strongest with couple of limitations:
1) you need mids
2) you need the ability to broker techs
3) you need (obviously) food.

In MP settings it bears some very big disadvantages off the bat:
1) tech trading/brokering is either banned or done on different rules then in single player thus traditional bulb paths (Philo->Edu->Lib/PP etc) are much weaker
2) mids are costly... we talk here about 500 hammers without stone, 250 with stone without industrious leader easilly converts to the "10 axes wonder"

I would prefer some financial leader, for example Willem with creative/financial offers very good early game with cheap libraries, easy border pops
Pacal is certainly interesting too with expansive/financial

As for civ...

I would say India for Fast workers, which are probably the strongest UU in game, is very good option. They can be even abused for some roading in enemy territory

Skirmishers are ultimate classic era defender and stellar choker I guess.

Dunno if you will see starting location before picking civ, but I would choose civilizations with good starting techs, like agri+tw, agri+mining.

Imo UB's are mostly nonfactor...they usually don't make that of difference compared to UU and starting techs.
Of course Sacrificial Altar can be different world, but I think jaguar and starting techs are a bit too weak.

edit:
I saw in game discuss thread that there probably won't be tech trading... one special note about this

if the game speed is slower then normal the espionage becomes stronger and stronger. The discount mechanism is static 5 turns on all speeds (so if quick speed then espionage is nerfed)
Beelining Alphabet and using esp slider can give some cheap techs from neighbors especially if paired with religions abuse...but not sure how much the single player game experience can be transitioned into MP here...

OneLeggedRhino posted some spectacular games with Espionage in S&T, but they were on marathon speed, which probably won't be appliable here.
 
Welcome onboard!

And right to the business.

The problem with using strong espionage to steal techs is mostly because of the human psychology. You can steal once, you can steal twice, but in no time there will be a lot of axes knocking on your door. You can steal from enemies which you are already at war of course, but there the return is not so good.

And what if the victim just stops teching until it cripples you enough?
 
Welcome vranasm!

About starting techs... Obviously the strongest combo is Agriculture+Mining, however, IIRC only one civ has this... China. So unless we are going to use China, we need to forget about that combo and pick a civ that starts with either Agriculture or Mining

actually imo agri+tw is stronger since it opens pottery above AH and TW is more expensive then mining, but that is my opinion, both combinations are strong.

Was thinking about rolling some test map with Willem of Egypt to see how it goes... Hatty is considered one of strongest leaders, so would like to see how the financial "hatty" plays.

Is there set the maintenance difficulty (noble/monarch/immortal)?

I have a feeling that "sullla" team will do everything for india...

edit: early access to BW can play more important role then in SP I admit, so this is just opinion of SP player
 
The problem with using strong espionage to steal techs is mostly because of the human psychology. You can steal once, you can steal twice, but in no time there will be a lot of axes knocking on your door. You can steal from enemies which you are already at war of course, but there the return is not so good.
Unless you think outside the box. What if we were to forge a tech trading alliance where trading is done with espionage? It could work like this:
  1. Teams A and B create a Great Spy and zounds of normal spies.
  2. Teams sychronize their teching relatively far in the future. Both keep EP:s towards the other player to the minimum.
  3. Team A dumps the Great Spy to team B's city and uses all EPs gained to steal unresearched techs.
  4. When team A's EPs are spent, team B repeats the process.
This is completely untested method as I just came up with the idea. Obvious drawback compared to tech trading is that trading is not instantaneous. So for limited period of time there may be unwanted gaps in the tech tree. This also requires a trustworthy ally and at least NAP until "trade" is complete.

Compared to normal tech stealing this method would be much cheaper if the teams can agree to keep EP as close to zero as possible before the exchange.
 
Whether you build espionage on a player over time or "Spybomb" them, the imbedded discount is still affected by the Spypoints you create. So this would be a really good deal for the first player to steal all his tech, but when the second guy goes to steal his, he will find that the first guy has a massive spypoint "tax" built in from all the spypoints he got using the Spybomb. At very least you will have much less of a discount.

The best way to steal tech cheaply is from a Civ who is not running much espy. That way your imbedded discount will be very high. With two Civs co-operatively stealing, both will have really crappy discount ratios.

Another thing to consider, is that the only way to get an early Great Spy is with the GW, and theres only one of those. Otherwise you have to wait for CoL.:( So the tech stealing partner wont be able to steal anything until he 1. Techs all the way to CoL and; 2. Runs a spy long enough to get his GSpy. Remember that in the meantime, you cant build any Wonders of any kind because that will pop out an earlier Great Person and push your first GSpy far far into the future. A second great person GSpy without GW takes a really really long time to get.:(

Another unrelated thing I forgot to mention... I doubt this will be a water map, but Dike is almost too good to be true on water maps:D Moai statues in every city?!?:faint:
 
well it is in a sense academic discussion :).

When we're at academic thoughts... Sumeria is considered king of EE's thanks to the Zigs at PH...

vultures + ziggs paired with some better economic traits could be worth consideration

edit:
for example Darius (fin/org) came immediately to mind
not to say sumer has one of best starting techs ;-)
 
OK, I was not aware that it is life time generation that counts. I thought that it was the current EP levels. Kind of ruins the idea :sad: Plus I have no idea whether you'd get more tech points by this method or just rushing a tech with the GP.
 
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