Leader/Nation Discussion

[Viva_Chingon]

The beginning. Ground Zero for the Theater of Destruction...

I like making money. I also like pounding my enemies into the ground. I like to build Stonehenge early for the easy culture and land grab value. I like to sling shot Metal Casting for the production bonuses and a run for The Colossus. I like to grow quickly and I like going for the Domination Win.

I like Victoria (Financial / Imperialistic).

 

[Theoden]

There's no reason to give ourselves a disadvantage, so I think we should strongly consider choosing one of the financial leaders.

 

[civplayah]

I actually don't like financial leaders. I just don't see much point in one. I like leaders that can build things easily, like Isabella, Sulleman, Julius, Joao.

 

[Viva_Chingon]

What kind of things? Do you usually go for a religion?

Some things to consider:

In this game, if we don't do it ourselves, someone will likely try using the Oracle in a Slingshot Maneuver. At the very least, since we have plenty of time to detail that later, in order to position ourselves to either have the best chance of doing or blocking a Slingshot, I like Wang Kon of Korea (Financial, Protective, starts with Mining and Mysticism).

As I mentioned above, let me elaborate why I like Victoria. For one, English is my native language, so it's nice to understand what people are saying. Second, in BtS she is now an Imperialistic leader and receives +100% to GG emergance and 50% faster production of Settler. These are two things that play into the game at both the early and the late game (settle early, lots of GGs late).

I only elaborate because I had a hard time understanding what Civplayah meant by 'build things easily' (not to dog on you, man). I thought it would help others understand some of the possibilities with these players without searching the forums.

Most of all, as for the leader, I think it's not a game breaker if we somehow pick the supposed 'worst' leader in the game (whom I don't know). Let's go crazy and pick someone who the other teams will think sucks. All the better when we whip 'em up.

 

[remake20]

The English sounds good. I don't know about a leader. On the second MTDG for civ three my team had a poll on which civ to play as.

 

[Theoden]

Just to clarify, I think Victoria (and Elizabeth) are quite viable leaders for multiplayer. Whether Victoria's imperialistic trait gives us such a big advantage depends on the map type - archipelagos, for instance, reduces the importance of early settler-spamming.

Sure, picking the worst leader could also be fun. The 'problem' here is that the bad leaders all have quite decent UU's and/or UB's to make up for it. I can imagine Montezuma or Saladin being among the least powerful leaders, though I don't have much experience with either of those two in BtS.

 

[Viva_Chingon]

Actually, I Victoria used to be more powerful before they fixed the Military Academy before Military Science with GG bug. For this reason, I've barely played Elizabeth.

How does the Philosophical trait really kick your civ in the pants? I hardly ever choose this, so need a little schooling.

 

[civplayah]

I agree, we should massive rush the Oracle. With Great Engineer or money, right after we research a tech that leads to lots of other techs.

 

[Theoden]

How does the Philosophical trait really kick your civ in the pants? I hardly ever choose this, so need a little schooling.

Philosophical is great trait for early slingshots since you can effectively get great people in half the normal time. Continuing with a NE city it helps generating a lot of e.g. scientists to bulb techs earlier and get a technological advantage that can be levied into a general gameplay advantage.
However philosophical is not a trait to generate substantially more great people, due the diminishing returns on great people generation. Sure, you'll get two or three more, but the real strength lies in getting a certain great person that much earlier and making a slingshot succeed rather than fail.

 

[Viva_Chingon]

I see...that's why it always takes forever to get my first Great Scientist w/Vic. Thanks for clearing that up, Theoden.

When comparing apples to oranges, I guess it is best to see which tastes better?

I would say that I think (nearly) constantly getting Great Generals out of being at war is a valuable thing -- as the more you fight the tougher you become. I anticipate lots of this. In the case of getting the early Great People...I imagine this is a pretty awesome thing but haven't seen it in action.

I'm really interested in hearing what some of the other team members (who haven't chimed in) are thinking in relation to their ideas about leaders.

Additionally, there seem to be three overlapping things here that we haven't yet connected to dots to.

Leader/Nation - most likely will influence General Strategy.
Team Name - may or may not be influenced by Strategy / Nation / Leader.
General Strategy - most likely will influence Leader Decision.

I'm trying to keep these three things in mind right now...so that the Leader/Strategy items dovetail while I think the Team Name will just be a veneer, anyway.

 

[Memphus]

Any leader you can win with. Victoria jsut happens to be one of the easiest.

Leader / Nation can influence your strategy in single player, but doesn't in multi player.

 

[civplayah]

IMO, you can with well with Julius because his Legionarres are the best until macemen, which sometimes come along slowly to some people.

 

[General_W]

I agree with Civplayah - those Legions are tough to beat. I love playing rome for that reason alone.

However - I think our decision will be best made by considering what traits we want FIRST - and what UU we like as a secondary consideration.
After all, if we end up on our own island - then having Legions is way less useful. It also makes me a little nervous, when we can't be sure we'll have iron.


Here's a helpful guide to the traits:



If we want to play a real aggressive militaristic game, I'd vote for a Civ/Leader with some combination of Aggressive, Charismatic, Imperialistic, or Organized.

If we want a more peaceful type game, it's hard to pass on Financial (unless we want to try a Specialist based economy? I have very limited experience with this, and wouldn't suggest it unless we have a team expert on it)

So I'd vote for Financial combined with Organized, Industrious, or Expansive.

I'm not as big a fan of Philosophical as most people, unless I'm going to try some kind of hybrid or specialist type economy.


Perhaps if we focus on what game style (peaceful, aggressive, hybrid) and therefore what traits we want – that will help us narrow down our list of top Civs?

 

[Memphus]

looking for an expert on the SE? he's right here....that said even the best SE can't comete with a decent (not expert) CE....so SE is out.

As for militaristic...good in theory...but unless you are going to war in the first 2000 year it won't help all that much.
==>Charismatic is much stronger than agressive due to cheaper promotions and the bonus!

That said....one key is the unique building...units are one things...buildings win you the game.

The discussion should continue but an extremely strong multiplayer character is the Vikings....depeant on map type....landing from the sea and crushing cities is huge and their building, a powerful lighthouse will let you reign the seas in terror.

I'll put up my top 5 tmrw with the pro's / con's of each as well as the easiest to win with based on our opponents from what i can tell already

 

[1889]

I don't have a lot of Demogame experiance, but I'd be willing to bet they are all ultimatly decided by war. From my PBEM experience that war usually comes latter in the game than it would against AI opponents. So when picking a leader/civ I think we should be aware that the game will reach its climax in a war with early gunpowder units. For that reason we may not get our moneys worth out of early or late game UUs like Keshiks or Panzers.

Redcoats are quite good units, but personally I've never conected with the financial trait. I do happen to like Churchill's charismatic and protective traits though.

I also think a very effective strategy could be developed from Ragnar. Financial and Aggressive traits and if we really are aggressive we can make very early amphibous attacks. I think far too many civ players ignore their navies for far to long.

P.S. I think one of the requests to the map maker was that every one should be able to have contact before opics. That means that everyone is in range and galleys should be able to circumnavigate netting an additional plus one.

 

[azzaman333]

My top 5 choices would be Montezuma, Hatshepsut, Mansa Musa, Hannibal, Brennus, in that order.

 

[Viva_Chingon]

Then there's also the matter of which direction we want to go with early tech...do we want a religion? Do we want an early wonder (Pyramids, Stonehenge, Oracle)?

I've found that it is easy to start right away with knowledge of mining (researching bronze working first while building a worker to chop rush settler, warrior, etc).

What about Lincoln or Roosevelt? The UU and UB are late game (Industrialism for Navy SEAL and Refrigeration for the Mall) but have huge bonuses. The Navy SEAL replaces Marine and gets additional 1-2 First Strikes. The Mall replaces the Grocer and gets additional +1 from Musicals, Singles and Movies as well as +20%. The Pentagon is available at Assembly Line (which leads to Industrialism) and could be coming online about the time we start pumping out SEALS...though I think this would only work if we wanted to sit back, build out and defend ourselves until we were ready to exterminate the sub-humans as you might with a colony of household cockroaches.

 

[azzaman333]

I much prefer early, easy to spam UBs over late ones, especially for MP.

 

[IamJohn]

What about Lincoln or Roosevelt? The UU and UB are late game (Industrialism for Navy SEAL and Refrigeration for the Mall) but have huge bonuses. The Navy SEAL replaces Marine and gets additional 1-2 First Strikes. The Mall replaces the Grocer and gets additional +1 from Musicals, Singles and Movies as well as +20%. The Pentagon is available at Assembly Line (which leads to Industrialism) and could be coming online about the time we start pumping out SEALS...though I think this would only work if we wanted to sit back, build out and defend ourselves until we were ready to exterminate the sub-humans as you might with a colony of household cockroaches.

The problem with America is that their uu and ub arn't going to be available till the modern age, and from what I've seen if we do get to the modern age it'll be too late to be terribly relevent. MP games just end too early, descending into chaos and death.

From what I read/heard about the first MTDG it really seemed like tech was the key factor to winning- so that should probably be the focus here, so imho finacial would be good trait to have.

From looking at things that way (and not caring about UU) it looks like Victoria, Wang Kon, Ragnar would be good choices.

If we play on a high difficulty level then we also might want to think about Hannibal and Pacal, since that would countervail the happyness or health penalties at least partially.

 

[Joe Harker]

Personally i find Victoria the easiest leader to play with, the extra settlers really help (me at least) and the financial trait is also very strong, Redcoats are a good strong UU and judging by the last game and the current civ 3 game wars tend to take place mid game, so a UU in that sought of time period would be really good, and 15% more gold from stock exchange is also a nice little bonus.