GOTM-03: Pre Game Discussion

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/flags/civs0043.gif

This game MUST be played in patch version 1.52.

In addition, if any further patches are released before the end of February, you will have to complete your game in v152 and submit before patching.

Game settings:
Civilization: Japan (Leader: Tokugawa; Traits: Aggressive & Organised)
Rivals: 6 (Random)
Difficulty: Monarch
Map: Inland Sea
Mapsize: Standard
Climate: Tropical
Waterlevel: High
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Epic
Victory Conditions: all enabled

The starting screenshot is here:
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/gotm03large.jpg

Leader Traits
First up, Tokugawa is Aggressive and Organised.
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/leaders/leaders0023.jpg

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


The aggressive trait is (IMHO) great, as the combat 1 promotion unlocks other useful promotions, and you get a second promotion in the early game with just a barracks. Using this to give cover or shock to axemen or swordsmen can give you very powerful early units - especially with cover against AI's who love to use lots of archers for city defence! Considering that the barracks are also cheaper, taking early advantage of this trait is a warmongers' dream.


Organised:
Civic upkeep reduced 50 percent.
Double production speed of Lighthouse and Courthouse.

Maybe one of the weaker traits, especially in the early game. The early civics are fairly cheap, so the reduced upkeep doesn't provide much benefit. In the later game, cash-flow doesn't tend to be as big of an issue as in the early game, so again the higher civics can be supported with not too many problems.

Construction of lighthouses can be useful though - they provided one extra food / water tile, and helps grow a coastal city large enough that it can provide a good commercial boost to your civ. They require research of sailing to build them.

Courthouses are useful in reducing maintenance costs. To build them, you have to research Code Of Laws - this can be a good tech to get after early, especially if you have missed-out on one of the early religions (first to Code Of Laws founds Confucianism). In addition, to build the Forbidden Palace, you need to build 5 courthouses (and have at least 8 cities).



Unique Unit
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/units/unit0173.jpg

You unique unit is the Samurai; a replacement for the maceman. It has a strength of 8 and costs 87 hammers (in the epic game), which is actually exactly the same as the maceman. Also like the maceman, it gets +50% vs melee units, and becomes available once you have discovered machinery and civil service. A slight difference from the maceman is that it requires iron to build (whereas the maceman can make use of copper or iron).

The real benefit of the samurai is the two first strikes - this is a great advantage, and with suitable promotions, it can be a very powerful unit. Remember: As a melee unit, it gets the initial combat I promotion.

Starting Technologies:

Fishing
The Wheel.

Fishing and the wheel means that Japan can start researching pottery right away. The top-half of the tech tree is immediately opened-up, making a quick run to writing / alphabet viable. The downside is that this ignores the bottom techs, and the early religions. Still, there are many, many tech paths open to you!

From the first look it will be harder than so far:
1. emperor difficulty
2. just cows visible.

First move will be warrior to SW onto the hill, then ...

Thanks ainwood for the challenge.;)

Hey guys, never participated in GOTM but sounds like some awesome fun. Good time to join too, as Monarch difficulty is where I'm at at the moment.
I'm usually a builder, never go for conquest or domination, so trying it this way will be something new, but i'm sure i'll be able to adapt.

So yeah, looking a bit tricky so far, i prefer to have lots of food resources for my capital, but looks like i'll have to manage without. 1st move definititely for warrior SW onto the hill to get a good view of the surroundings. I know most ppl discourage this move, but i may be quite tempted to waste 1 turn and move the settler to the river, especially if there's more resources out that way. Hopefully the 1 turn wasted wont impact growth/expansion too much. Speed is epic, so 1 turn isnt as important as at faster gamespeeds.

Looking forward to it!

I'm going to practice on Monarch before doing the 4otm. I think many others will as well.

I think with Epic at Monarch, we'll have more losers and short games and people ready for the next 4otm early. And we'll have many more people taking longer because the domination/victory/loss will take longer (I assume).

Inland sea is a regional map so no world-wrap. Move the warrior SW to check out the river in the west to see if its worthwhile to move the settler that direction. 2 sq. SW is a plains hill on a river for example, but would lose the cow.

I found Inland Sea to be one of the hardest maps on Monarchy when I first got Civ4. On this map the Barbarians seem to come at you in brutal numbers even on default settings.

On Monarchy this early into Civ4 I would expect an awful lot of folks to be crippled or even obliterated by the barbarian hordes.

When considering whether to plant on the spot or move your settler, I'd like to remind people that a city on a plains hill has two hammers instead of one (is purely a bonus - food and commerce are as normal), and that plains hill comes with fresh water as well. Moving the warrior southwest onto that hill as everyone will do will no doubt make this choice clearer.

I find Japanese more challenging than most other civs, but aggression will provide some reprieve on a challening map like this.

All in all, this early on I think this will prove a pretty grim start for most of the GotM players and would expect most to be crushed or crippled into last place, just hopefully not enough so crushed as to not bother submitting their game.

After the GotM1 results with scores biased to Domination above all other game types, and given an aggressive civ in a commerce poor start of a totally land connected map, the popular strategy for GotM3 is a no-brainer. I'm gonna try swim against the current and gun for an early cultural win on this. Early for me being like 1950 :P

GL HF.

Some remarks,

With the Inland Sea and no world-wrap, securing your own corner in the world should be relatively easy. Early expansion is not a big issue, as there will be numerous good commerce spots to settle. I don't see why barbarians would be a big problem.

On the other hand, since domination will be a regular theme, it might not be a bad idea to stop your expansion at a couple of cities and start cranking out Axemen and getting city raider promotions. An early visit to neighbors and focused research on Civil Service and Machinery will naturally be a common.

Note: once you get the game running, look at the river. It will be flowing in the direction of the Inland sea. Might be wise to check and see if there are any sea resources at the end of that river.

It will be allowed to use HOF mod?

Courthouses are useful in reducing maintenance costs. To build them, you have to research Code Of Laws - this can be a good tech to get after early, especially if you have missed-out on one of the early religions (first to Code Of Laws founds Confucianism). In addition, to build the Forbidden Palace, you need to build 5 courthouses (and have at least 8 cities).



I thought the Forbidden Palace took 6 courthouses to build? [/Nitpicking]

Anyway, after missing GOTM2 to concentrate on exams this will be interesting. With only one cow in the capital I am tempted to move the Settler. Also not starting with Mining or Hunting will make coping with barbs early on a pain, as it adds about 12 turns onto being able to get to BW, and I expect I'll have to be far more careful about expanding than I normally am.

I'm expecting to go for a war early on with swords/axes, depending on if I can find iron. With only 1 resource I think it'll be quite likely that there'll be either iron or copper in our capital's starting radius. After Alphabet/CoL/Currency I expect I'll go for Civil Service and Machinery. Having Samurai does make the choice about whether to take Metal Casting or CoL from the Oracle harder, provided I can even get it built. After that I'll either have to research Theology myself for Theocracy, or extort it off another civ for peace to get that extra promotion.

This should be a nice challenge, and it will be interesting to see how many people manage to get a win here:goodjob:

I haven't tried SpaceShip or Diplomatic, so I'll be trying one of them this time. Though similar to colony above, I see the Samurai getting a bit of a workout early on.

I can't see settling in place. It just feels (looks) wrong on this one, but normally I love to settler in place. Hmph!

The tech has me in a quandry also. Considering making a beeline for Alphabet, but not sure if I want to go Pottery or Agriculture->Animal Husbandry. First is quicker, second is more useful and important for quicker expansion. I want literature and the Great Library to speed that tech pace.

In the previous IV GOTMs I started with a worker. If I build Pottery first and beeline for Alphabet that doesn't seem as useful, so I may start with warriors, which may help slow the barbs while they are on 'sentry' duty for future cities...or start with a barracks and build lots of early 'killer' warriors, especially if they meet a barb on the way to my closest neighbors.

I don't see getting many early wonders at this level, especially if I go for Alphabet quick as they may be built before I start trading for the techs.

Well, I think I'm rambling instead of providing a strategy, but lots to think about before starting this one.

I'm probably going to get killed by the barbs in the BC's, so i'll have time to play it.

Monarch level for my 3rd GOTM? Why not Deity - that would make things even more frustrating!
If your intention is to keep the community tight, or just to limit the number of submissions - you succeeded. I'm off! Nothing to learn here for me.

/Blue

Monarch level for my 3rd GOTM? Why not Deity - that would make things even more frustrating!
If your intention is to keep the community tight, or just to limit the number of submissions - you succeeded. I'm off! Nothing to learn here for me.

/Blue

You might as well play, since you cant get better if you dont try.

Inland sea with high water and lots of jungle (tropical) - that could mean a relatively small patch of good land, initially.
I kinda expect the starting location to have Horses inside its working radius, but the plains hill on the river looks very attractive.
The Great Lighthouse could be a good wonder to aim for.

Yet to win a game on Monarch, so this should certainly be interesting... ^^

This will be a hard challenge for me, having lost miserably at the Prince level GoTM02 within a few turns. However, having hit rock bottom the only way left to go is UP so I will at least give it my best shot, I only have what's left of my pride to lose. :mischief:

I've not played Tokugawa before, or Monarch, so I will definitely have a practice game ot two first just to get a feel for him on these game settings. I'm normally a builder but, with this aggressive civ and tough level, I will have to try very hard to develop more of a killer instinct and work on cranking out a lot of strong units in the early part of the game.

I notice the map is Tropical - this will mean more jungles which will not only hinder early exploration & movement but will affect the health of other cities after a short while if not cleared reasonably promptly. Researching towards Iron working will probably be an early priority and I think city numbers may have to be limited to just a select few in good locations (if possible!).

My first move on this particular game will be to move the warrior onto that SW hill to see what I can see before choosing a spot to settle.

This is going to be tough! If I can survive the BC years it will be an absolute miracle! I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry at the prospect of this game. :lol:

Monarch level for my 3rd GOTM? Why not Deity - that would make things even more frustrating!
If your intention is to keep the community tight, or just to limit the number of submissions - you succeeded. I'm off! Nothing to learn here for me.

/Blue

I suggest playing anyway, even if you feel this is beyond your capabilities. You'd be surprised at how much you can learn even when you lose.

Definitely move the warrior SW, as I'm sure everyone will do. Other than that I'm unsure. I like the inland sea map so this should definitely be fun. I've only played one Monarch SP game and that was an OCC, and it is extremely easy. I have a feeling that's more to do with the OCC part than anything.

Will definitely be more aggressive in this game due to the traits. Unsure what victory condition I'll go for. Need to do a few practice games.

That is, once I finish IVOTM2. :sad:

Will go Warrior SW of course before deciding on settler spot. If that doesn't uncover anything out of the ordinary.. not having hunting/agriculture will make that Cow +1F only for quite some time - especially as I'd prefer to go Mining->BW rather early to be able to chop. That renders the starting spot pretty much vanilla. I'll most likely head off SW...

My initial feeling on the terrain is that we're about halfway down on the southern hemisphere (or whatever that translates to on an Inland Lakes map) - but then again, I haven't played much with neither Tropical climate nor this map script, so I might be off. Practice games needed!

All-in-all: Hm. Hmm. This is going to be a tough one, even though I regularly beat Monarch.

Edit: Bad grammar...

Hmm, the second "dominators' dream" map in a row (epic, connected landmass, etc). Only this time with the level 1 up and the player getting a combat bonus (the AI getting a bigger bonus on everything else), it's pushed just that little bit more towards domination.

Alas, never having played monarch before and certainly not having time for practice games (grand total of 7 games of civ so far), and not being able to start this one til the 15th due to other commitments, I'm tempted to skip this one.

Should be a fun one. Should be a bit more challenging than the last couple GOTM's, but IMO monarch is still pretty easy. So I, for one, am glad to see the difficulty ramped up. I sincerely hope next month is emperor.

On monarch at least 50% of the early barbs will be archers with the other half warriors and a rare axeman. You can manage to defend your empire with warriors only but it would be quite difficult. I will research bronze working fairly early for chopping and if I find no copper anywhere near (and no horses either) then I will research archery. On lower difficulties I like to go with iron working when I find no copper/horses but I think that would take too long on monarch.

This game clearly favors a military victory. A high sea level inland sea map is good for warmongering. It's basically about 8-12 tiles between the edge of the map and the sea. That provides a nice narrow front so you can defend against attacks easily. Tropical is a good thing, since otherwise 2 out of those 8-10 tiles would have been tundra in the north and south of the map. On a temperate map the best land is in the east and west but I'm betting on tropical the best will be north and south with jungle in the east and west. The corners give the most room for expansion while the north/south/east/west can be cramped.

Toku's traits and UU are great for warmongering also. I think ainwood undervalues the organized trait. It really saves you a ton of money in a military game. You can afford to use the medium and high upkeep civics and you can get courthouses built in new cities twice as fast. The starting techs are somewhat of a handicap, though.

Expanding quickly is important because land will be tight. I'd use an outside in approach. You can relatively easily choke off your neighbors since the distance between the map edge and the coast is so short. Resources will also be fairly rare I believe. So my first priority while settling will be to grab as many as I can. If I go for a wonder it will be the pyramids, unless we have marble. Expect the Oracle to be built around 900BC. The oracle is a great boost but I find researching down the priesthood path to be a big sacrifice especially when it's not easy to beat the AI's to building it.

Oooh the Japs. I for one do like them, I usually go for a militaristic victory, and I let the computer select my civilization for me, and I usually do the best with the Japanese - those Samurai just simply carve up anything else in their era, while the organized trait allows you to conquer every moving thing while keeping your economy intact.

Time to try an inland sea map with high sea lvels to see what it's like then!

@GOTM Staff: I'm not seeing the barb settings. Do you mind informing us or will it be a surprise?

Any chance of having a second, easier GOTM? I got owned (by barbarians...embarrassing) in the last one. Same scenario, two or so levels easier.

i've only played tokugawa on noble difficulty and Japan has got to be one of my favorite civs. That organized trait comes in handy especially when COL comes in couple that with the aggressive trait and you got the perfect warmonger not to mention it's UU is awesome.

Still like i said i've only played Japan on Noble difficulty and i think I'll have to be ten times more aggressive in Monarch then i will on Noble.

BTW this will be my first Monarch game.

I haven't played a full game of civ4 yet, but i'll try to play gotm3 (well, i said that last time about gotm2, but didn't play. Hope it works out better for me this time). I am too lazy to start a test game and i don't know at what date do the AI usually complete wonders at this level. Maybe someone of the more experienced players can post a list of approximate dates of when the AI usually build the key wonders at this level?

The tech pace on Monarch can vary a lot, and the date at which wonders are built even more so, but in general the dates for some of the key early-mid game techs and wonder seem to be very roughly (based on Epic speed, which is what I normally play on):

Alphabet: 1AD
Mathematics: 100BC
Feudalism: 600AD (not quite sure, as it is one of the more random dates, and aggressive AIs go for it more)

Stonehenge: 1000BC (if not earlier)
Oracle: 800BC
Pyramids: 200BC

This is the most I can remember off the top of my head, but if you've never played on Monarch before I'd definately recommend a test game, as it's quite a bit harder than Prince

Considering I still can't win a game at Prince, a Monarch game should be interesting. :rolleyes: I'm going to give it a shot anyway, though. I'll probably go for a few practice games first. I've yet to try the Inland Sea map, but it seems really good for a tech-heavy civ - plenty of finance from all those water squares.

This is a stupid question, but what are the rule modifiers for Monarch vs. Noble? How many base happy citizens, etc? Thanks.

As for strategy, I'll check out the hill SW, like everyone else...

I may try a worker-barracks-warrior build, however that could earn me an early defeat if the barbs come a knocking. I think I'll settle one of the hills for the early production bonus.

City placement will be interesting, and dependent upon the barb activity. If I can, I sill stretch a few cities to control chokes...however if the barbs are very active then I'll have a hard time re-supplying choke cities.

I just played the greek world scenario and the barbs were absolutely crazy. And I wasn't playing on monarch. In fact, I had 6-10 barbs showing up inside my borders every few turns! Is this normal? Or are they just part of a trigger, and I expanded into their spawn point?:confused:

Anyways...it will certainly be challenging. I can appreciate why the better players would prefer harder difficulties, but this is only the 3rd GOTM. Aren't we trying to grow the community a bit? Personally, I would have rather taken another shot at prince before moving on to Monarch. I'm sure this will turn off quite a few players, and the number of submissions will be much lower. Unless that's the whole plan...;)

I read the previous post and I am surprised of a few things:

Lots of people are surprised about the difficulty setting while I was expecting it. Hopefully, there are going to be multiple class for the starting game to help the players who can't usually play on that level. Don't worry about difficulty settings, there should be an easier game in a month or two.

Lots of players complain about early barbarians and I don't know why. I never played at Monarch level, but at prince level or lower, barbs are a nuisance, nothing more. Animals can't go inside your territory, so you simply need to escort your settlers until they build a city. Once you get real barbarians, not animals, you should be able to defend your cities, even if you have to rebuild that farm 5 times because barbarians destroy it every time before attacking the city.

Most players say they will play test games. While that sounds like a good idea, I don't have the time to play that many games in a month. I still find that a very good idea and I will play it up to the middle-ages to get a good feeling of the implications of this setting, then start GOTM3. Of course, I should finish GOTM2 first... but I should finish it today anyway.

Finally, let me give you a very important advice: HAVE FUN! :D

Good luck to everyone! :)

This will be my first Monarch game too and considering I barely made it on Prince last game, it will certainly be challenging. But what the hell, I willing to try it!

I see a few posts talking about how awesome the samurai is but according to Ainwood's intro, it seems to be just like a maceman but with one free promotion. Is that it or am I missing something?

I see a few posts talking about how awesome the samurai is but according to Ainwood's intro, they seem to be just like macemen but with one free promotion. Is that it or am I missing something?

They require Iron, so if you only have copper, no Samurai. But Samurai get two first strikes, which is like having Drill 2...and Combat 1 because of agressive. At their time, they are normally going up against Longbows that start with one first strike...so it cancels that out, and gives you one first strike against them.

Crossbows or Knights are about the only danger to them during their era. But this is vs the AI, so you'll see more Longbows than anything else if you're on the offensive.

Warrior SW.

Comtemplate a settler move, SW, [SW | W | NW] seem possible. The traits here suggest a very powerful early mongering start so settling on the plains hill seems a fair sacrifice. Although you could be moving away from copper or iron as another poster mentioned.

I'll have to play an inland sea game before the start to get a feel for whats needed for domination, like last months this map may require a large amount of land. So its not really suited for domination (its not easy or anything) but the high land needed allows you to get a huge score.

Anyway, I figure my strategy will be early war then domination for teh win. High production cities with a bit of commerce production to get to the UU quickly. If its doable I'll begin mongering with axemen, although I expect Iron Working to be higher in my tech priority so I may have swords before axemen could be produced in number. I'll want to be settling some Iron in my first few cities to prevent any major problems down the road.
I may sidestep for Iron and delay Writing or Alphabet. The question with writing will be whether my capital can produce enough commerce to make the library useful that early.



As to the difficulty, I agree with zxe, while many experienced players may want emperor and above looking at the submission numbers alone tells me that there are as many new players to the gotm as there were for civ3 as its height. Beyond that the difficulty creates such a variance in strategy that all of them are fun, if your strategy is flexible enough to change.

Nice! Monarch... I lost the last GOTM, but just won an emperor game with Louis. I never did inland sea, nor Toku, but I'm defenitly going to warmonger.

Steps:
Get good spot for capital
Build 2 wariors while researching mining,
Build worker and build a mine while researching BW
Chop a settler, maybe two
I hope to have Animal husbandry by then, so I can get the worker to do something usefull
Get writing early for an early library
Go for code of laws... either through research or through oracle (depends on how many forrest I have)

Furthermore.... get enough workers, build axes in barracks, upgrade them when knowing what they are going to attack, get a worker along to chop courthouses.

I'll see from there on what to do :)

This is a stupid question, but what are the rule modifiers for Monarch vs. Noble? How many base happy citizens, etc? Thanks.

As for strategy, I'll check out the hill SW, like everyone else...

I may try a worker-barracks-warrior build, however that could earn me an early defeat if the barbs come a knocking. I think I'll settle one of the hills for the early production bonus.

City placement will be interesting, and dependent upon the barb activity. If I can, I sill stretch a few cities to control chokes...however if the barbs are very active then I'll have a hard time re-supplying choke cities.

I just played the greek world scenario and the barbs were absolutely crazy. And I wasn't playing on monarch. In fact, I had 6-10 barbs showing up inside my borders every few turns! Is this normal? Or are they just part of a trigger, and I expanded into their spawn point?:confused:

Anyways...it will certainly be challenging. I can appreciate why the better players would prefer harder difficulties, but this is only the 3rd GOTM. Aren't we trying to grow the community a bit? Personally, I would have rather taken another shot at prince before moving on to Monarch. I'm sure this will turn off quite a few players, and the number of submissions will be much lower. Unless that's the whole plan...;)

I don't know the exact bonuses the AI gets, but as for your other questions...

Greek Scenario barbs are NOT normal. That scenario is trying to mirror history. On normal Monarch games, barbs will be similar to Prince. The difference is that they become archers and possibly axes slightly faster, and spawn a little bit more. The key is that the more fog there is, the more barbs will spawn...because every fogged land tile (except mountains) have the chance to spawn them. So having more fogbusters, even if they can't cover every tile near you, reduces the chance and rate that barbs spawn.

Barbs can't even cross cultural boundaries for a while, so your first builds don't really need to be city defense. In fact, if you run an undefended settler out (I don't recommend it), you can actually found a city right next to a barb with no defender, and the barb will run out of your borders instead of razing the city. I don't know what time period they can start crossing into your borders, but you'll start seeing archers before they can attack your cities.

With Inland Sea, it's not that bad at all. You've got natural barriers at the edges, as well as the sea (and high sea level as well). There won't be that much area for barbs to spawn once you get up to three cities or so. Building a few extra units to station on hills and keep the FOW back is a great way to deal with them, although I normally just try and get Axes early.

As to the difficulty, I agree with zxe, while many experienced players may want emperor and above looking at the submission numbers alone tells me that there are as many new players to the gotm as there were for civ3 as its height. Beyond that the difficulty creates such a variance in strategy that all of them are fun, if your strategy is flexible enough to change.

How long do you want to wait for the higher difficulties? The game's been out for 4 months now. If I keep playing prince for more months I'm going to get very bored. I'd like to see an immortal game by the 6 month point and deity by the 8 month. I mean what do you think we should wait a year to play higher difficulties? The game shouldn't take that long to learn. I wouldn't mind if multiple difficulties were given each month but if we're only given one then I don't want them all to be ridiculously easy. I've played two attempts at the beta gauntlet 4 for the hall of fame and I'm already done trying. It's no fun to play on noble.

Barbs can't even cross cultural boundaries for a while, so your first builds don't really need to be city defense. In fact, if you run an undefended settler out (I don't recommend it), you can actually found a city right next to a barb with no defender, and the barb will run out of your borders instead of razing the city. I don't know what time period they can start crossing into your borders, but you'll start seeing archers before they can attack your cities.
Are you sure about this? Anyway, on Monarch (with raging barbs set at least...), the first barbs will appear around 2200 BC and they will be 50/50 archers/warriors. I have never seen a barbarian unit wait outside my borders but maybe it does happen on lower difficulty levels. On Monarch though, I think you will see them coming for your cities without hesitation.

The tropical setting could produce some nice patches of grassland near the center of the map after the jungles are cut down. I haven't played inland sea before but the fact that there is a desert square makes me think we are probably on the east or west side of the sea and since the river is to the west, we are probably on the east side of the sea. I will have to try a practice game to get used to the standard rules again.

Like everyone else I will be moving my warrior to the SW hill and taking a look for places to settle. I'd say there's a pretty good chance that there are horses, copper or iron in our starting city radius, but I have to at least see what is out there.

Well I see two possible plans here:

Plan A: Red which is in red and almost everyone would do,
it is the safe thing, a good start
1.Warrior shows the terrain just to be sure it is the right move
2. Bonus health for on the river, defensive and production bonus for the hill

Plan B: Blue Not a safe thing, I may be the only one to do this

1.Sending that warrior to the NE first he shows alot of land, and my guess is there is a hut in that direction because it is such an illogical move. In defence to this the staff who are probably cutomizing the map now know that everyone is going for the plains hill and so the terrain around there will be suitable
2. By putting the settler on the plainshill without the forest you are going to lose the river (and the health) but gain a chop. As well as the extra commerce for that plains hill.


With the difficulty being Monarch playing the Red move might be the best way to go, but the risky and potentially huge payoff way would be Blue

After having now extrapolated the map data, I think I might Go with the Blue move for the Warrior and the Red Move for the Settler.
Bah who knows it's my B-day this month Maybe i'll flip a coin :crazyeye:

The square SW, SW, S of the settler looks like a flood plain.

I just generated a few inland sea maps using this game's parameters, and loaded them into the world builder to see what kind of world I can expect from this game.

One thing I noticed is that all other civs started the game with four units, one settler, one worker and two military units, usually archers.

I understand they're supposed to get bonuses at the Monarch level, but does that mean they also start the game knowing Archery, or do they still have to research that to build more archers?

The square SW, SW, S of the settler looks like a flood plain.

Oops.. I figured that too by my map with River + Plains, and forgot to call it floodplains :blush:

I've never won a game on prince (or even come close) so I'll consider it a victory if I make it past 1AD.

Looks like the mighty 4otm god put us in the northern hemisphere again this time. Just from the screen shot, I think the best starting move would be to move the warrior SW and settler SW->SW/W. The plain forest hill looks really tempting with what look like 1(at least)-2 flood plains, 2 hills, jungle and most importantly a city square plain hill.

With no financial trait, I'll definitely try to grab the Pyramid and go for the specialist route. Barbarians might be a problem, although not as much as lake maps. I think an early domination win will be possible with Japan as their UU is probably the best city attacking unit in the game.

Are you sure about this? Anyway, on Monarch (with raging barbs set at least...), the first barbs will appear around 2200 BC and they will be 50/50 archers/warriors. I have never seen a barbarian unit wait outside my borders but maybe it does happen on lower difficulty levels. On Monarch though, I think you will see them coming for your cities without hesitation.

I'm positive. I play Emperor, level doesn't affect that they won't cross borders very early, but possibly how early they will do it. One thing that will affect it is how you fog bust and expand your borders, because if barbs don't show up near cities until later, obvioiusly by that time they'll go into your borders.

Try it out with worldbuilder. Place an undefended city next to a barb at 2200BC or whatever, and see whether he attacks the city, or moves out of the borders. In my experience, that early, they'll move out of the borders. I've even seen them fortify there and wait 15 turns or so, then move back in.

Maybe someone could help me here:

All the victory conditions ar enabled, which is nice since everyone likes to go their own way.

However I have looked back at past GOTM's from civ 3 and COTM and noticed that all the victory conditions are always enabled.
Will there ever be a GOTM which would have only one or two victory conditions enabled?
I.E. set us up for a Domination or Conquest win, but then disallow those victory condition?


Now When I was lurking in the SGOTM thier victory conditions are very 'unique'
I.E. to be the winner you must get an AI to win a certain way.

Will this ever happen for GOTM?

Just played a game with these settings. Started with pottery (there were some floodplains nearby), then mining, bronze working. Copper appeared nearby (great!)

Started with a worker, then barracks. Before finishing first military unit (starting warrior died exploring), barb archers appeared (around 2000 BC). Fortunately, they did not enter my undefended city. Produced some warriors, then planned to build/chop settler - but barbs already founded a city near my copper. Ugh. Sent out a warrior to investigate - three archers there.

At this point I abandoned the game :) I fear I won't do much better in the GOTM either. Oh well.

I guess I could try getting archers and claim that city (maybe) but I'll probably be in the ADs already. Or rather, dead. Something sucks.

A few points:

There are no target victory conditions mandated.
I will discuss with the HOF staff about the use of the HOF mod.
Barbarian settings are just the default - it is not a raging barbs or a no barbs game.
I am experimenting with different class modifiers - its not as easy to implement as it was in Civ3.
Re the difficulty - yes it is going up, but I try to design maps that are fair. We have to try to cater for all in these games, and it can be very difficult to get the balance right.

I.E. to be the winner you must get an AI to win a certain way.

Will this ever happen for GOTM?
I suggest we see if it ever happens this way in SGOTM first :eek:

I had a bit better luck that Crunch in my test game.

I'm aiming at getting alphabet ASAP and trading from there, trying to get Code of Laws first and found Confucianism (I'm not a huge religion nut, but C.O.L is also only 1 tech away from Samurai)

After a few false starts, I found that it was necessary to research Hunting -> Archery -> Pottery -> Writing -> Alphabet. You need archers early on, and pottery allows your worker to at least build cottages.

If you want pastures, then throw in Animal Husbandry before writing. This is probably a good idea. In a very few cases it may be worth going for Agriculture - it just depends if you have enough for your workers to do.

You definately want some un-forested grassland to place cottages on, possibly using ones with river access, although you may want to farm these later.

Something else regarding city placement - if your capital is on a river leading to the sea, you will be able to trade resources from VERY early on, with all the other civs with their capitals on a river leading to the sea. So if you can hook up 2 of anything (or if you want to trade a health resource) then you will be able to trade those. Early on this is mainly useful for building relationships, but an extra happiness resource would really help if you could find one.

I build warrior (for exploration), barracks, archer, worker, archers/settlers. Early on happiness means that the city maxes out at 5. Not much point building an early worker when all he can do is build roads. Your first two warriors WILL be killed by barbs eventually, but you should be able to contact the majority of the other civs first. I tried a few starts, and got 3-5 huts each time, which is certainly useful (especially when you get sailing!) Possibly send out an archer to explore further, but it's obviously better if they are escorting settlers.

I got to Alphabet before anyone else had Writing. I then traded for everything up to Preisthood/Monotheism using Writing. I had to trade Alphabet for Ironworking, but with more patience you can probably do better.

Frederick then beat me to C.O.L by 4 turns, so I missed out on founding Confucianism. Possibly hold Writing back for a few turns from the civs that are obviously good researchers. Also remember that as soon as you trade Alphabet to one civ, you are likely to lose your tech lead forever.

I gave up after this, but I would have had 4-5 cities when I completed Civil Service, and by placing these in high-production areas with barracks, you could have a significant Maceman army in the early A.D's. Might want to try for catapults too, asthe AI gets city defence bonuses fairly early.

After a few false starts, I found that it was necessary to research Hunting -> Archery -> Pottery -> Writing -> Alphabet. You need archers early on, and pottery allows your worker to at least build cottages.

A few wellplaced warriors should be enough to stop those barbarians. Researching archery is for chickens :D


Something else regarding city placement - if your capital is on a river leading to the sea, you will be able to trade resources from VERY early on, with all the other civs with their capitals on a river leading to the sea. So if you can hook up 2 of anything (or if you want to trade a health resource) then you will be able to trade those. Early on this is mainly useful for building relationships, but an extra happiness resource would really help if you could find one.

Is this so? I always thought you needed sailing and a coastal city for this. I'm very not sure though. You state below that you got sailing, did you have a coastal city too?

Your first two warriors WILL be killed by barbs eventually, but you should be able to contact the majority of the other civs first.
Not if you're careful with them. To only use those warriors for exploration, is pretty meagre compared with the devastating effect one warrior in foreign territory will have for that civilization's future (especially on a crowded map).

I tried a few starts, and got 3-5 huts each time, which is certainly useful (especially when you get sailing!)

I take it huts in our vicinity will be mostly removed in the GoTM. It would be a bit unfair if one player gets three maps of a beautiful inland sea, while another gets a scout (more huts) and a couple of technologies.

Hmm, actually I did have a coastal city, and got Sailing from a hut. Most people will have a coastal city early on this map, and possibly the AI will have researched Sailing once you get to alphabet - so it's still useful to have your capital on a river rather than next to a lake.

Regarding warriors, in 3 test games I never had a warrior circumnavigate the inland sea before getting killed. Eventually you need to cross open flatlands, and then it's just luck. If you stick to hills/forest, it'll take too long to meet everyone.

I think that an early war, using a single warrior, against someone with easily twice your production, and who starts with plenty of defence, on a crowded map, isn't a great idea. Although, if I see an un-escorted worker...

I'm aiming at getting alphabet ASAP and trading from there, trying to get Code of Laws first and found Confucianism (I'm not a huge religion nut, but C.O.L is also only 1 tech away from Samurai)
Remember: you need machinery as well as Civil Service.

Well now is as good a time as any to move up to Monarch level since I've gotten fairly comfortable on Prince. My last game I played as the Japanese, on prince, and got a domination victory on a balanced map, so I'm confident I can squeak out a win here.
The Japanese are built for warmongering, so I dont see any reason to try for anything but a domination or conquest win.

Probably I'll build the capital on the spot. If some important food resource is on SW I'll build my second city there.
I'll try to build Pyramids and Stonhenge before 900 BC if possible. Without stone I'll skip pyramids, betting on library and early academy.

with stone:
1 aggri --> HU --> mining --> BW --> myst --> masonry
and depending from copper and barbarians
1a hunting --> archery --> writing --> alphabet
1b writing --> alphabet --> math --> currency

no stone
2 aggri --> HU --> mining --> BW --> writing
no copper
2a hunting --> archery
copper
2b alphabet --> math --> currency

I'll avoid early war before alphabet in any case, even if I'll find any spiritual/expansionist/creative six squares from my capital....
This would be a very challenging game :>

For those that think that this is the wrong way to let gow a community: I hope that in the next GOTM we will see also emperor level, so I will finally learn how to beat it on standard map from your posts.

About the archers bonus I don't think that this lead to the knowledge of archery even if seems a no sense.

I take it huts in our vicinity will be mostly removed in the GoTM. It would be a bit unfair if one player gets three maps of a beautiful inland sea, while another gets a scout (more huts) and a couple of technologies.

I hope this is not the case. There are so many other random factors in the game that I don't see the point in trying to remove the randomness of huts. I mean the barbarians can be pretty random too, so why not remove them also? Huts and barbs are a part of the game and should remain a part of the game for GOTM.

I suggest we see if it ever happens this way in SGOTM first :eek:

Civ 3 SGOTM 9 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=139048)

I am not reading this correctly? :blush:

From my understanding the teams play as the Vikings, are at permanent war with India, but the goal of the game is to get India(AI) to win by space race.

Which in my opinion is a really interesting way to play a game of civ. You win by loosing the right way :lol:

SGOTM 9 is work in progress. No one's demonstrated that the goal is achievable .... yet ;)

SGOTM 9 is work in progress. No one's demonstrated that the goal is achievable .... yet ;)

Ok good then I am not going crazy/become illiterate :lol:

Even though I am not a part of that Game it is very interesting, can't wait until Civ4 gets one going. I Am following only one team unbeknown the them :devil: but It looks like alot of fun :goodjob:

As for on topic with this thread

I hope this is not the case. There are so many other random factors in the game that I don't see the point in trying to remove the randomness of huts. I mean the barbarians can be pretty random too, so why not remove them also? Huts and barbs are a part of the game and should remain a part of the game for GOTM.

Now I have no idea how hard this would be... or if It would be good or not, but if each hut had it's randomness taken away from it but not taking away the hut itself.
I.E. each hut was programmed so that when poped you got object X every single time, whether you or the AI poped it. But then again this could be hard to do since If I research tech X before popping the hut which contaiend that tech...:crazyeye:
In any case this would level the playing field as I am sure me popping hostile villagers versus Someone else poping Bronze Working would have a huge impact on the overall game.

As far barbarians it would be cool if they could be turned of, but in year Z the spawned 5 villages on the map and came from those and not random FOW places. This again would level the playing field for everyone.

On the other hand if too many of the random elements are taken away then so is part of the fun, and everyone could have the same score :lol:

This game may be easier than some of you think. I'm saying this because, by chance, I just played Tokugawa at Monarch, on a non-custom, panagea, standard-size game. I won by domination the early 1900's, and I'm not that great; won both GOTM 1 and 2, but not with any great score. In that game, I built the Oracle and Pyramids (don't remember if I had stone or marble; I have the save so I could look it up). I didn't have any happiness problems, of course with rep, nor any $ problems and pretty much won easily. (At the end, with the Kremlin, state property and universal suffrage, it's like "shooting fish in a barrel".) But, that may have been a particularly good map, I don't know.

In any case this would level the playing field as I am sure me popping hostile villagers versus Someone else poping Bronze Working would have a huge impact on the overall game.


There are plenty of other random factors that can have just as big of an impact on the game. AI's declaring war on you in 500BC or something would be one such example. My point is the game has randomness designed into it because a bit of randomness makes it more fun. I see no reason to remove it.


On the other hand if too many of the random elements are taken away then so is part of the fun, and everyone could have the same score :lol:

That's exactly my point. You can't eliminate all the randomness from the game, and even if you could, that takes almost all the fun out of it. The randomness is programmed into the game because complete predictability is not fun.

SGOTM 9 is work in progress. No one's demonstrated that the goal is achievable .... yet ;)I have been following that diablocal game somewhat, and yes an India Space victory is .... Do the spoiler rules pertain to non-participants in another thread?

Of course! SGOTM players do get out occasionally, and they don't want to find spoilers for their current game elsewhere on the site. It should work both ways, of course.

@Shillen

That is why I have plan BLUE for my warriors move(to find huts which won't be random), and the more I look at my map

Here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3635485&postcount=38)

I think that BLUE is the best chance of finding a hut, since so far 99% of people have said they would move thier warrior SW "just to make sure"

And from here the tendancy for the human mind after moving SW with the warrior would be to continue in a similar direction(Westish). If the huts are not "random" as you suspect then going the opposite way of what everyone typically would do should be the best bet for finding at least one. As only a lunatic(me in this case) would go NE with thier warrior on move 1 :crazyeye: (Either way I'll let you know in spoiler 1)

I still can't decide if I want to go with plan BLUE or RED with my settler though :cry:

@Shillen
I still can't decide if I want to go with plan BLUE or RED with my settler though :cry:
If there is a good resource 4 tiles W of the starting position of the settler and you settle on the hill plain without forest, you are going to hate yourself! Of course, there is a solution for that: move your warrior SW! lol!:lol:

I will be moving my settler 2 southwest to the plains hill on the river. One forest chop isn't worth losing 2 health over. I would have probably settled in place if not for DaveMcW's observation of a flood plain down there.

Also I'll probably stray from my normal start and build a warrior or two before my first worker. Since Toku doesn't start with mining or agriculture there isn't much reason to build a worker first.

I have been following that diablocal game somewhat, and yes an India Space victory is .... Do the spoiler rules pertain to non-participants in another thread?

ABSOLUTELY! While I am playing the CIV4 GOTMs, I am also playing Civ3 SGOTM9 (Team Wacken). I would not want to have to avoid all other threads on this site to avoid possible spoilers to our game.

Well, I haven't played a GOTM in about a year. That obviously means I haven't played a Civ4 GOTM. I've only completed one game of it so far and only got half way in 2 others before it crashed. With my RAM and video card upgraded I might give this one a go. As I don't have much experience, especially on this level, we'll see how that works out :lol:

ABSOLUTELY! While I am playing the CIV4 GOTMs, I am also playing Civ3 SGOTM9 (Team Wacken). I would not want to have to avoid all other threads on this site to avoid possible spoilers to our game.
I thought so. Wacken is great team; I enjoy following your team's posts.

I will be moving my settler 2 southwest to the plains hill on the river. One forest chop isn't worth losing 2 health over. I would have probably settled in place if not for DaveMcW's observation of a flood plain down there.

Also I'll probably stray from my normal start and build a warrior or two before my first worker. Since Toku doesn't start with mining or agriculture there isn't much reason to build a worker first.
I agree with all the above except the issue of settling in place w/o floodplains. This doesn't seem a particularly good start, especially as it could be a while to Animal Husbandry. This is a bit of a general question but people seem much more inclined to settle in place than I am--especially at epic. Am I missing something as it seems to me the chance of putting the critical first city in a better place is worth a couple of turns?

I agree with all the above except the issue of settling in place w/o floodplains. This doesn't seem a particularly good start, especially as it could be a while to Animal Husbandry. This is a bit of a general question but people seem much more inclined to settle in place than I am--especially at epic. Am I missing something as it seems to me the chance of putting the critical first city in a better place is worth a couple of turns?

If there were no flood plains in the site to the southwest then you could be looking at no food bonus at all. That will kill your expansion rate as building settlers/workers will take far too long. It's not worth the risk moving away from a food bonus when you don't know there's any food bonuses in the direction you're heading to. The starting location isn't that bad. The only real drawback is having to research animal husbandry. But you can turn that into a bonus by grabbing nearby horses. Once you have horses then you don't need archery. Of course copper is better than horses but you don't always have copper. In fact I've played 3 test games up to 1ad or so and only 1 of them had copper anywhere near my starting location.

Oh yeah and for my 3 starts the average dates on:
Stonehenge - 1200BC
Oracle - 700BC
Pyramids - 450BC

I used a different strategy in each game. My best strategy was the 2 warriors first (I had a plains hill start so that makes this strategy even better since you can build the warriors fast) then worker at size 2. Meanwhile I researched bronze working right away and chopped out the first settler. The early warriors made dealing with barbs much easier than my other two games. I got the entire map around my starting location revealed and set my extra warriors up in fog-busting positions so I probably only had to deal with half as many barbarians as I did in the other two games. I didn't have any copper nearby but I still didn't research archery. I went for iron working and there was iron by my capital but by that point barbs weren't even an issue anymore. I expanded rapidly (7 cities at 100BC), grabbing a nice chunk of land for myself, 4 happy resources, 5 health resources, horses and iron but no copper. After researching alphabet I'm behind a couple techs but have no doubt that I'll take the tech lead soon enough.

My second game I used an early warmonger strategy. That was the game I did have copper. I took out my nearest neighbor easy enough but my economy wasn't so great in that one due to distant cities and too many units for how small my cities were. Barbarians weren't a problem since I had lots of axemen.

My first game was my best game techwise (tech lead at alphabet) but I had a lot of trouble with barbarians since I didn't build enough warriors to bust fog and I didn't settle cities quickly enough. I also tried to build the pyramids since I had stone but missed them by one turn. I didn't do any chopping, figuring I could get them without chopping, but that was obviously a mistake. I stopped this game at 300BC with only 4 cities and expansion is already blocked off in one direction.

So like I said my warriors first/rapid expansion strategy worked out best. I don't think I'll be going for any wonders or religions. I can capture a religion since I will be going for a military victory. I don't think I'll go to war before catapults but we'll see.

If your goal is rapid expansion, it's good to head straight for bronze and build a couple warriors before the worker.

But if you are focusing on science, I think it's better to build a worker right away and grab Pottery before Mining/Bronze. Every floodplain should have a cottage ASAP.

Shillen--thanks for sharing the results and strategies for your games. As far as the first move goes, I wasn't suggesting settling in a worse spot--just that the risk of losing 2 (or even 3 or 4) turns seemed small to me compared with what looked like a mediocre start.

If your goal is rapid expansion, it's good to head straight for bronze and build a couple warriors before the worker.

But if you are focusing on science, I think it's better to build a worker right away and grab Pottery before Mining/Bronze. Every floodplain should have a cottage ASAP.

The only problem with early cottages is they don't give you food or hammers so you will build workers/settlers very slowly if you're working cottages. You'd end up having to do a lot of chopping to get them out. I will oftimes irrigate floodplains early in the game to get my empire set up as quickly as possible, then I can switch some of that irrigation over to cottages. I think even if you want a fast tech pace you're best off grabbing as many cities as possible first before going into cottage spam/research mode. I guess it depends on how many trees are nearby. If there's a ton of trees then you might as well cottage spam and chop like crazy.

My dilemma is the early warmongering. While my economy was in worse shape after taking out my nearest neighbor, it's hard to value the fact that I'll have 1 less civ to take out later on in the game.

edit: My next game I'll try a cottage spam approach to test it out.

If your goal is rapid expansion, it's good to head straight for bronze and build a couple warriors before the worker.

But if you are focusing on science, I think it's better to build a worker right away and grab Pottery before Mining/Bronze. Every floodplain should have a cottage ASAP.


Could you elaborate a bit on the rapid expansion scentence? At first I couldn't see the direct connection, although perhaps the warriors help scouting and the bronze helps to chop settlers. Or is there something more strategic that I am missing? (newbie, obviously...:blush: )

My first sentence was agreeing with Shillen's post above it. See that post for more details.

But if you are focusing on science, I think it's better to build a worker right away and grab Pottery before Mining/Bronze. Every floodplain should have a cottage ASAP.

On the other hand, like Shillen says, that will mean that chopping starts later. Provided there are enough forests, which it looks like, chopping a second worker and then a settler and then cottaging those floodplains will mean you'll catch up relatively quickly.

Regardles, contrary to my nature I'll go for agressive expansion early and consolidate when researching for Civil Service and Machinery, for a next (and final?) push. Then I'll try my luck with this whole 'milking' thing you guys are so hot about. (no cultural expansion is the key right?)

As for the huts, I didn't find any huts on my first GOTM, GOTM2, so I figured most will be removed, which I don't think is such a problem. You can, to some extend, influence whether a civilization declares war on you 500 BC, but not what the outcome of a hut is. Though I did notice with civ3 that when I first ran around the house naked and clicked the mouse with my left middle toe, the chance of getting a settler was much bigger.

Hi,

Although new to the Civ scene I am quite keen that the GOTM difficulty has increased again.

Before GOTM2 I was struggling at around Noble level. Now thanks to GOTM2 and reading about people's various tactics and strategies I find Prince fine. I find the GOTM as well as being great fun is ideal for improving your Civ skills.

Now onto GOTM3 I realise I may have been making mistake for some time with what people have been saying about barbs. I generally build a Warrior first whilst I send my original Warrior off to scout the land. Once my second Warrior is built I always fortify it in case of attack.

It would seem that this is unneccessary and I'd be better off sending my second Warrior off to scout/map too? I guess the trick is to know when to start fortifying.

I've just played a practise game with the GOTM3 settings. I was a bit shocked at just how early C.O.L was discovered in the game - at 860BC. I was trying to beeline to that Tech but I got beat anyway. Oh well - I guess the GOTM may turn out differently or maybe I'll change my strategy and try something different.

Looking forward to the 1st!

Boppy :)

I like Japan so i might make a brave attempt to actually finish this game so i can submit it for this GOTM :)

I'm a newbie to Monarch so I tried two test game starts with these GoTM03 settings yesterday.

First game: found myself on the east side of the map and soon hemmed in by other civs. Plenty of copper around (expanded to get 3), and an elephant on the NE boundary but no horses or iron which was a major disadvantage. I stopped playing this game at 660AD - glad to still be alive but not in a strong position. I expect I would have been attacked soon if I had continued.

Second game: located in the north this time and slightly better able to expand. Again, copper was not a problem and I eventually snagged an iron resource (yay!) but no horses. Again I had elephants and some good food resources but precious little in the way of happiness resources. Game stopped in 1030AD, having beaten off an initial assault from Washington. When he attacked my capital (with horsemen, cats and crossbows brought all the way up from the far south) I was a few turns away from getting the last tech needed for Samurai (they were a looooong time coming!) but eventually chop rushed a few just in time to see him off. A close shave!

My impressions, as a non-aggressive Noble level player:

1. Barbs are manageable if you are prepared: defend with archers then axemen ASAP and keep the fog of war back by posting units around your boundaries.

2. Religion is impossible to get. Adopting someone else's will most likely be required - a temple is essential if you have few luxury resources.

3. Tech trading is definitely the way to go, it's impossible to keep up otherwise. Civil Service & Machinery (for Samurai) take a LONG time to arrive but the Samurai are great units when you do get them. The research path needs to be thought through very carefully as the AI can do it so much faster on this level. Getting BW (for those all important axemen) and later Alphabet (for tech trading) are two key ones to aim for. Resources will dictate some of these early tech decisions - choose wisely!

4. It's very hard to beat the AI to wonders as well. Best not to bother if you don't have an accelerator like stone or marble (which I didn't).

5. You're unlikely to build more than 5 or 6 cities on this type of map before you're hemmed in so make the most of position.

6. You're forced into chopping just to keep your head above water.

These games are very grim for someone like me and I have to say I didn't particularly enjoy these initial trial games. It's not much fun when the odds are so unfairly stacked against you. I've proved to myself that I can stay alive but don't feel at all optimistic about doing much more than that, let alone get myself into a winning position. It's a struggle just to have enough defensive units, building a viable offensive force seems to be a very difficult goal, even with Tokugawa. :rolleyes: Having said that, I do still think I have learned a few valuable lessons from these games so it's not all negative. :p

2. Religion is impossible to get. Adopting someone else's will most likely be required - a temple is essential if you have few luxury resources.

Through self-research it might be impossible. The way people will found them is either via the oracle or by building some other wonder and getting the generated great person to found a religion for them.

3. Tech trading is definitely the way to go, it's impossible to keep up otherwise. Civil Service & Machinery (for Samurai) take a LONG time to arrive but the Samurai are great units when you do get them. The research path needs to be thought through very carefully as the AI can do it so much faster on this level. Getting BW (for those all important axemen) and later Alphabet (for tech trading) are two key ones to aim for. Resources will dictate some of these early tech decisions - choose wisely!

Tech trading is essential. That is how you take the tech lead by getting techs that the AI's don't know yet and trading them for multiple other techs and meanwhile withholding them from any civ that has nothing to give you. That's why I tend to be behind in techs by alphabet (since I hadn't traded any techs yet) but am not concerned about taking the tech lead from that point forward. So good point. Just like in civ3 if you don't make the most of your tech trades you will fall hopelessly behind in techs.

4. It's very hard to beat the AI to wonders as well. Best not to bother if you don't have an accelerator like stone or marble (which I didn't).

The AI's don't get any bonus to building wonders. The bonus they get is 1) researching the required tech faster and 2) their faster expansion makes it more likely for them to have stone or marble. But the player's advantage is in forest chopping. If a player really wants to get stonehenge, the oracle, or pyramids then they can do so with enough forest chopping. It's of course a lot easier with stone or marble.

5. You're unlikely to build more than 5 or 6 cities on this type of map before you're hemmed in so make the most of position.

Another good point. Like I said earlier an outside in approach is best on this map. Try to block your neighbor's expansion in your direction before worrying about the cities right next to your capital.

6. You're forced into chopping just to keep your head above water.

If you want a strong start then this is the advantage a player can leverage over the AI. I won't say it's required, though. I was recently in an SG (LOTR19 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=147428), which happened to be an inner sea standard map, epic speed) where we beat immortal difficulty and there were still quite a lot of forests left at the end of the game with lumbermills on them. So if chopping every tree isn't required on immortal it certainly isn't on monarch. But you definitely should do some chopping, if you don't do a chop every tree approach.

These games are very grim for someone like me and I have to say I didn't particularly enjoy these initial trial games. It's not much fun when the odds are so unfairly stacked against you. I've proved to myself that I can stay alive but don't feel at all optimistic about doing much more than that, let alone get myself into a winning position. It's a struggle just to have enough defensive units, building a viable offensive force seems to be a very difficult goal, even with Tokugawa. :rolleyes: Having said that, I do still think I have learned a few valuable lessons from these games so it's not all negative. :p

Generally when it's a great struggle to win it's not as enjoyable. But I have no doubt as you learn the game more and when you can get to the point that you beat monarch easily then you will not think that it's not fun because the AI's start with an advantage. In civ3 I could beat deity most of the time but I didn't enjoy playing on deity because it was such a struggle and I felt like I was forced into doing things I didn't like in order to win. Meanwhile on emperor I could play the way I wanted and still win every time. But I think that was just me. People who were better at civ3 enjoyed deity because it wasn't as much of a struggle for them. I have no doubt that eventually you'll be skilled enough at civ4 that you'll find monarch to be easy and you'll change your outlook on how fun it is.

Thanks for your comments Shillen.

Re. founding religions: I presume by this you mean using the Great Person to grant you (or hurry along) the next tech that will found a religion. (?) That's worth bearing in mind, thanks. I didn't get the required wonders and no sign of a Prophet in either of my trial games so this was not an option for me. When there are other, more pressing, things to build then accepting someone else's religion isn't so bad, really... it can give you the bonus of being the same faith as one or more of your neighbours and thus be on slightly 'friendlier' terms with them (which might give you a few more turns before they turn on you, I suppose, lol!).

As for ever finding Monarch easy and therefore fun... we'll see! I won't pretend I've ever been good at Civ3, let alone Civ4, but I do enjoy the modest level I am at. This is the first time I have joined a gaming community like this - I'm hoping that by attempting the GoTMs and generally reading about people's tactics that these ideas will rub off and help me raise the level of my gameplay. I'm a slow learner so time will tell! :p

goal
Domination. Date – primary. Score – secondary.

first movements
warrior -sw
If nothing significant, settler s sw.

I think moving in that direction is a good choice. Not only because of a hill plains. According to river location a good chance is that the lake is in the western direction. Somebody mentioned that we are in the northern hemisphere. If this is correct we are most likely in the northeastern part of our world (makes sense for Japan). Going towards the center is not a bad idea. Besides we know fishing and can take advantage of water resources straight away. I might move even further than those hills if I will see the lake with attractive resources. I may consider building a coastal capital.
Though moving away from the cow is against my civ3 instincts ;)

If nothing very interesting can be seen from that hill, I will settle. I prefer s sw over sw sw for two reasons:
1. Saving forest for chopping
2. sw sw spot gives 3 hammers which makes it very valuable spot especially during worker/settler building. This will be particularly important, if sw sw s spot is the only floodplain in the area.

Research
Mining-BW-Agriculture-…
I certainly will emphasize research in the top of the tech tree and will attempt to trade techs from the bottom of the tree.

Builds
If I settle on the coast, first build will be a work boat. If I settle on s sw, then I will build a warrior or maybe even barracks depending on exact terrain. Whether I will start my first worker at pop2 or pop3 also depends on terrain

Goody huts
I will avoid stepping on goody huts very early in the game. There is a little chance of waking barbs. My warrior has a little chance to stand against two barbs despite upgrade. I will step on goody hut only if a distance between a goody hut and my capital is similar to a number of turns required to build my next warrior.

Overall strategy
Emphasize growth and science in the beginning of the game. Start warfare with samurais and cats. Sounds as a very interesting combination. If I feel strong, I’ll go in both directions of our bagel-looking world.

Looking forward to this challenge. I missed 4OTM1 since I didn't own the game and was sloppy in 4OTM2 because I was in a hurry (started late) and hadn't had much practice. So, my main goal is to finally be able to take my time, think things through, and maybe play a little cleaner. I'm certainly not worried about scoring well, will be happy to finish with a victory.

Warmongering seems like the safest way to go. But somehow I am feeling an urge to try culture, mostly because it is something new for me. However, I'm still somewhat new to Civ IV and have never played Monarch (find Prince pretty easy though). I'm wondering if culture win with Tokugawa at this level is too difficult, would be really nice to have Philosophical or Financial traits. Also seems like 75K per city is a lonnnngggg way to go.

Any advice from the veterans? Is a culture win reasonably do-able under the 4OTM3 conditions, or should I stick to warmongering?

I wouldn't use this GOTM to try your first culture win. There are many things that can go wrong, and if you don't play a top-quality game you will lose to a spaceship.

The only thing that can go wrong with warmongering is choking on city maintenence, so raze early and often.

@Velvet-Glove
Confusionism is fairly easy to get. After getting some techs you really need (BW, agri/AH), beeline for writing (to get you set up with some libraries) and then beeline for priesthood. Build that oracle as fast as you can and there you go... Code of Laws (generally the choise at that moment for your free tech is COL or metal casting... hey.. great! They're both needed for samurai, so if you want that religion, get COL, if you want early forges to be able to build up your empire quickly, get metal casting). Some people even manage to complete COL before the oracle, in that case Civil Service is the choise for your free tech :)

The only thing that can go wrong with warmongering is choking on city maintenence, so raze early and often.

Maybe this answers one of my warmongering questions. How do you maintain your empire whenever destroying civs in civ4? My Maintenance goes through the roof and I fall behind in techs. :(

Do you just keep the major cities and expand them culturally?
Do you ever settle new cities?
Doesn't razing make any type of trade/diplomacy almost impossible?

I ask because I had a pretty dismal gotm1 time victory because I attacked 2 civs early and fell behind the leaders. It took me the rest of the game to "grow into" my new empire using Currency and specific civics.

What is the best strategy for conquering empires without dilluting the force of your own?:confused:

Well, I haven't played a GOTM in about a year. That obviously means I haven't played a Civ4 GOTM. I've only completed one game of it so far and only got half way in 2 others before it crashed. With my RAM and video card upgraded I might give this one a go. As I don't have much experience, especially on this level, we'll see how that works out :lol:
On second thought, I think I'll pass. I've been playing a game with the same perameters as this one, and I'm not enjoying it all that much. 1000 AD plus and I'm still fending off barbs with warriors. I know it's because of the choices I've made, but sucking so bad isn't very enjoyable.

In my test game, I got placed in the east. I decided to beeline for Iron working. Even though I didn't start with mining, I was the first to Iron working. I used a settler to get Iron, and started churning out swordsmen. I attacked China. When I attacked, China had only 3 archers guarding it CAPTIOL (I expected more guarding its capitol.) I took two of three cities of China and will soon take another, all without seeing anything besides archers. All in all a quick military rush can still work to take out on or two of you neighbors quickly.

Do you just keep the major cities and expand them culturally?
Do you ever settle new cities?
Doesn't razing make any type of trade/diplomacy almost impossible?


In both previous games I played domination. Below are my answers to these questions. Keep in mind that this may not be the optimal way. Perhaps raising is more efficient, but I am afraid in this case you are more likely to win by conquest.


1. I never raised a captured city.
2. Yes I do if I see that it will help to claim substantial amount of territory.
3. I am not sure that diplomacy and trading are important at the last stages of domination game.

No doubt I'm going two south west to the river shore with plains/hills. I always go to plains/hills if I can find them!

I retract any negative comments I had about pottery first cottage spam. I tested it out today. My capital had 3 flood plains and was on a plains hill. I researched pottery->mining->bronze working->writing->alphabet. I had alphabet in 1225BC! I think this was the first game I actually traded for agriculture and animal husbandry. I had 4 ciites by 960BC so expansion wasn't that slow, even. Although I didn't found any more cities after that since all the good locations were taken (Cyrus took my first ring away before I founded my 2nd city). From the time I discovered alphabet onward I had a dominant tech lead. I even managed to found confucianism through self-research. I also built the oracle without marble to get metal casting. Cyrus adopted confucianism from me and I had the shrine built by 300AD. By 400AD I had samurais and am ready to go to war. I'm up 2 techs on Mansa Musa and 4+ techs on everyone else. So obviously I found the pottery first, cottage spam extremely effective.

I retract any negative comments I had about pottery first cottage spam. I tested it out today. My capital had 3 flood plains and was on a plains hill. I researched pottery->mining->bronze working->writing->alphabet. I had alphabet in 1225BC!

It would be interesting to see whether you'd have done better chopping a second worker and then a settler first. Could you give me your initial save so I can test that out?

I retract any negative comments I had about pottery first cottage spam. I tested it out today. My capital had 3 flood plains and was on a plains hill. I researched pottery->mining->bronze working->writing->alphabet. I had alphabet in 1225BC! I think this was the first game I actually traded for agriculture and animal husbandry. I had 4 ciites by 960BC so expansion wasn't that slow, even. Although I didn't found any more cities after that since all the good locations were taken (Cyrus took my first ring away before I founded my 2nd city). From the time I discovered alphabet onward I had a dominant tech lead. I even managed to found confucianism through self-research. I also built the oracle without marble to get metal casting. Cyrus adopted confucianism from me and I had the shrine built by 300AD. By 400AD I had samurais and am ready to go to war. I'm up 2 techs on Mansa Musa and 4+ techs on everyone else. So obviously I found the pottery first, cottage spam extremely effective.

Interesting. I tried a variant of the Civil Service slingshot on a inland sea map with the same settings, but didn't alter the terrain, just played what I got handed. My start had corn for food, but no flood plains, so cottage spam wasn't a strategy I really considered. I didn't get to start on a plains hill either.

I chopped Stonehenge and Oracle in my second city, while my capital did the normal expansion builds. I couldn't use Marble/Stone, because I had to skip Masonry for what I planned to use the Prophet for (I guess I could have settled on top of it). I used Oracle to get CoL first, then used the GProphet from the two wonders to research most of Civil Service, leaving a handful of turns to do myself. If you know Masonry, then the GProphet gives you some other tech.

I got Samurai at right around the same time as you did. I had six total cities, but no shrine yet. But I had another GProphet coming shortly, sped up by using a priest + the wonders.

My main issue was that I had to delay certain techs for so long in this strategy, you don't have a lot of room to take detours with these starting techs and no commerce bonuses. I also didn't get Alpha until after Civil Service, and this caused some civs to do the "We fear you are becoming too advanced" thing.

I chopped Stonehenge and Oracle in my second city, while my capital did the normal expansion builds. I couldn't use Marble/Stone, because I had to skip Masonry for what I planned to use the Prophet for (I guess I could have settled on top of it). I used Oracle to get CoL first, then used the GProphet from the two wonders to research most of Civil Service, leaving a handful of turns to do myself. If you know Masonry, then the GProphet gives you some other tech.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I believe that even if you settle on top of stone/marble, you still need to develop Masonry before you can utilize the resource. It does save you from having to build the quarry though.

I've sometimes held on to Great People when the tech they grant me is useless. For example, if the Great Prophet can give me Masonry, one option is to research Masonry on my own, then the Great Prophet will offer you a different religion. Whether it's worth putting the Great Prophet on hold for those turns is a different question ...

I got Samurai at right around the same time as you did.

You had both civil service and machinery at 400AD? Or just civil service? I also had math, currency, construction, iron working, alphabet, monarchy, calendar and literature, though. Also over 400g in the bank.

edit: I attached my starting sav file. I didn't use world builder to make it like the GOTM map or anything, but the starting situation is pretty similar. I moved the settler 2 south onto the plains hill.

edit2: There weren't enough forests to warrant a second worker right away. I actually didn't chop much at all.

You had both civil service and machinery at 400AD? Or just civil service? I also had math, currency, construction, iron working, alphabet, monarchy, calendar and literature, though.

I had Civil Service, and Machinery by 400AD. Iron Working also, and those three techs allowed me to build Samurai. You got alpha much earlier than I did, and seem to have more techs overall. I had to research Alpha and IW on my own after Civil Service, then Metal Cast and Machinery. I traded for Math and Calendar.

Nobody had Currency or Lit. One civ did have Monarchy, and another had Construction, niether would trade them. I was up Metal Cast, Machinery, and Civil Service on everyone...but I think most of them knew the rest of what I knew.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I believe that even if you settle on top of stone/marble, you still need to develop Masonry before you can utilize the resource. It does save you from having to build the quarry though.

I've sometimes held on to Great People when the tech they grant me is useless. For example, if the Great Prophet can give me Masonry, one option is to research Masonry on my own, then the Great Prophet will offer you a different religion. Whether it's worth putting the Great Prophet on hold for those turns is a different question ...

Not sure about the resources. I know you can settle on resources to get the health/happy bonuses. I really never tried to use a strategic resource without the tech like this though, so I don't know.

As far as the Great Prophet, the specific strategy is that if you know Masonry, the Prophet wants to give you Monotheism I believe. And if you know Mono, I think it goes to Theology. So by holding off on Masonry on purpose, you can get something like 1350+ beakers towards Civil Service...which still requries a decent amount of self-research, but getting into Bureacracy early, and also a req tech for your UU...well, it's pretty powerful obviously.

I had Civil Service, and Machinery by 400AD. Iron Working also, and those three techs allowed me to build Samurai. You got alpha much earlier than I did, and seem to have more techs overall. I had to research Alpha and IW on my own after Civil Service, then Metal Cast and Machinery. I traded for Math and Calendar.

Nobody had Currency or Lit. One civ did have Monarchy, and another had Construction, niether would trade them. I was up Metal Cast, Machinery, and Civil Service on everyone...but I think most of them knew the rest of what I knew.

Yeah I think the problem was my only 4 cities so even with my built up towns you started researching faster due to more cities. The problem was starting next to Cyrus. He expands faster than any other civ and he's cultural so he always takes up all your land if you start next to him. On the other side the barbs founded a city so I basically lost 2 good cities to cyrus/barbs. I couldnt' capture the barb city because I didn't have iron working until very late and was busy building forges in preparation for samurai. I still think cottage spam is the way to go. Hopefully in the GOTM 1) Cyrus won't be next to us and 2) there will be more trees available to chop. I also lost a worker to barbs while I was chopping the oracle, which was extremely bad luck (was 1 tile outside my border).

edit: I actually did capture that barb city around the 400AD mark with a war elephant and a couple cats. That's where I stopped playing.

Shillen, to be fair...one of my cities was a barb city captured with axes, which had a gold hill and was my second commerce city. I just didn't have floodplains, and cottage spamming grassland at the start wouldn't be nearly as effective.

I started next to Inca and Germany, so no real early worries for me as far as expansion. I'm not sure what the deal was, but my neighbors seemed to expand very slow towards me. Maybe they filled out their corners first, or had issues with barbs, I'm not sure...but something seemed off.

I think the Civil Service slingshot is nice, but would work much better in a different situation. The main point of it is to get into Bureacracy to amplify a commerce heavy start, which I didn't have (even getting an Academy early as well if you're Philo). So even though I got CService very early, it didn't do much for me. I still needed IW/Machinery for the UU, and my capital didn't have a lot of commerce to boost...the shields were nice though.

edit: I attached my starting sav file. I didn't use world builder to make it like the GOTM map or anything, but the starting situation is pretty similar. I moved the settler 2 south onto the plains hill.

That is one sweet start. In my test games I restart when I see gold, because I don't want to rely on it it showing up in the GOTM.

I played OCC until I completed the CS slingshot, and got Samurai in 340BC.

So I am seeing how everyone is starting up test games and so do I if I have time, and just now I got this crazy thought.

What are the odds that while generating the map that you get the same one as the GOTM? :eek:

I mean from as far as I can tell they are not specially created like the ones in CIv3 were.

So theoretically couldn't someone generate it? If this is possible, what are the odds? :lol:

I started up a test game and I'm fairly new to CIV. I noticed that all of the AI's had the same religion and when I got C.O.L. and Conf. The top two AI's in points attacked because I had fallen victim to the Heathen Religion. Any suggestions? I'm looking forward to the GOTM's.

Thanks

I started up a test game and I'm fairly new to CIV. I noticed that all of the AI's had the same religion and when I got C.O.L. and Conf. The top two AI's in points attacked because I had fallen victim to the Heathen Religion. Any suggestions? I'm looking forward to the GOTM's.

Thanks

Don't declare your state religion in that case. I hardly ever declare a religion early, unless I'm doing something specific with it. Like trying to make a friend who has that religion, or need to use one of the religious civics like Theocracy...in which case I'm planning on war anyway. Sometimes I never declare a religion at all.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that the organized attribute also applies to city maintenance - that is you can expand cheaper than a non-organized civ. I found it is half the maintenance cost? I suppose this could have been a fluke, and I may have just built my cities closer with the organized civ, but I am fairly sure it is the case.

Opened up a test game this is gonna be tough. Looks like we will be the meat in an AI sandwich. Only spent 1/4 of an hour mucking around at 11:45 last night had to be up at 6. One thing I do know is that warriors are worthless. You will need 3 to escort your settler I believe. This brings my question as to what the popular choice of next Unit Tech to research and when?
The barbs are gonna have archers pretty early here, so do you waste time building excess warriors to keep your settler moving safely and protect city or do you go for hunting archery and guarantee yourself a competitive defense with archer Hill or City Defense bonus. Or do you risk it go mining B.W and home that there might be some copper nearby?

The HIGH sea level also makes the territory very small indeed, I think if you are planning "not" to be too expansive early you are gonna be sorrounded if not by AI barbs pretty quickly.

I also noticed that the map generated had a lot of Tribal Villages do not know if this is because of high sea level or not but I am sure they will be few and far between in GOTM file.

Sayonara to February, this is gonna be tough

What are the odds that while generating the map that you get the same one as the GOTM? :eek:
That is not the point. The idea is to get used to the conditions of the GOTM. On the other hand, games can vary a lot with this setting.

In the test game I started, I sent one warrior around the inner sea to see where each civs were. I realized that my civ had plenty of space to build cities. I can probably settle 8 cities, due to the fact there is a lot of space between me and Ghandi. Following the coast, I saw that India, Egypt, Rome and Persia were all very close to each other. If I started in the spot where Egypt or Rome started, I doubt I would be able to build more than 4 cities!

While there is about 12 tiles between the side of the map and the sea near my starting position, the land is only 6 tiles wide near Persia. If Persepolis had expanded twice, my warrior would have been blocked by a single city!

Therefore, I see your point: test games will not be a perfect practise for the GOTM. Still, it gives me a idea of what it could be like.

@Shadow2k: Wow! That is a very weird thing to do to not declare any state religion. I have never considered it before, but it sounds like a good idea in that situation. Note that I usually conquer the founder of a religion instead of getting a religion through research, so I guess I am strong enough that religion alone is not enough to declare war on me. Still, the state religion is very useful to expand the borders in the early game, especially if you do not build stonehenge or once it is obsolete.

@shadow2k & shillen: You guys rock in terms of research! I have never been able to do anything close to what you did. In GOTM2, I had to wait until late medieval before I took a tech lead. I guess it means I should prioritize alphabet more and I definitely should not go for space race victory! :D

I have a question to those who play test games. At high sea level, what are the chances that our world consists of two land masses instead of one?
Kinda important to know :hmm:

I have a question to those who play test games. At high sea level, what are the chances that our world consists of two land masses instead of one?
Kinda important to know :hmm:

WOW :eek: great point I never thought of that. I am assuming that if the map is randomly generated ( By assuming I mean of the 30 regenerations I just did) that it will be a doughnut, and the sea won't completely cut the map of east west or north south.

That being said 4 maps had only 2 square passages on one side of them :crazyeye:

So how hard would it be to edit this... I mean if they can edit and take out huts, then they could edit and stretch the Sea....boy would that be a kick in the teeth for a domination or conquest win...:lol:

The real kicker would be if the was a narrow passage and the AI capital cut of the exploration and therefore until writing you wouldn't even know if there was one landmass or two :mischief:

I have a question to those who play test games. At high sea level, what are the chances that our world consists of two land masses instead of one?
Kinda important to know :hmm:
i assume our kind map designer would then catogerize it as 'continent' if that indeed were the case.:crazyeye:

my two test games ended like this (spent ~15min on each)
1: had three cities when i got alphabet and could trade around and got all the useful land improving techs (besides the necessary ones i already got). had only 4 warriors and barb archers started to show up and conquered one of my cities.

2: similar to game one. i had more warriors. instead of barb, Mont declared war and my two defending warriors were killed by an archer and a chariot the next turn...

not having more time, i guess i only learned a very limited lesson (keep my flanking cities well defended). monarch AI don't seem to be too good in grabbing lands.

The reason I am asking is that I decided to have a look on how this map might look like and what I saw is two land masses. The question is whether this is just an illustrative image or has it something to do with real maps generated under such conditions.

The reason I am asking is that I decided to have a look on how this map might look like and what I saw is two land masses. The question is whether this is just an illustrative image or has it something to do with real maps generated under such conditions.
i think the 'preview' map is kind of misleading. the left side of the land is always cut off by water tiles though in reality (at least based on what i've seen in test games and other players' inland sea games) it is never seperated by water.

:thanx: this is something that I hoped for.

This is quite interesting start. I will probably move settler SW,SW if there is floodplain southwards as the floodplain, plainhill and river proximity make up for the cow prety well.
In my test game I have found that research priorities have huge impact on early game as one must balance the needs for terain development, military, resources revealing and still get to alphabet reasonably fast.

In my testgame I had an extrodinarily good starting position and a lot of luck with resources (cow, 2 banana's, corn, mined a hill, got silver, a floodplain). Anyway, I built 4 extra cities, got the pyramids and the great library, missed out on the oracle, so I decided to go for machinery first and hope to trade COL later on. Mistake... the AI does NOT traide COL, and without COL, no Civil service, and no Burocracy. Dispite this, I got samurai around 850 AD, (I had construction long before that so I also had a heap of cats). And started warmongering. I killed two civs, which gave me a lot of land (about 40% of the landmass around 1500AD, when the first musketmen began to appear. Tripple cityraider, double combat samurai still make mincemeat of these guys, but as I was carving up the third civ, they sudenly had rifles :eek: . All this warmongering had taken its toll on my empire. No banks, few markets (although I did have courthouses and the forbidden palace at a good location) resulted in poor economy. It took me about 30 turns to get my economy up (80% science, +40 orso gold, also thanks to a captured holy city with shrine (I had no holy city of myself), but by then, the others had infantry (this is around 1700 AD). Luckiliy they are warmongering amongst themselves BIGTIME :D, but I'm left a little behind, and will prolly win the game with a spacerace (I have lot's of good producing cities, and will catch up techwise fairly quick), as I'm not so good with modern warfare.

So.... how do you win with only samurai?

Well... I guess, raid more cities, build more defensive units to guard the new cities, get a bigger startin army to begin with (I had about 15 samurai and 7 cats when I started my war, and kept on building samurai), get currency earlier then I did to be able to keep the tech% above 40 and hope you don't have monty as a neighbour (in my game he had TONS of horse archers.. no match for samurai with double combat and anti horsies training, but still, 30 horse archers can do some damage).

Any other help on early conquest/domination?

Update (techs in order)
3760BC, mysticism (goodyhut)
3600BC, mining
2800BC, BW
2120BC, Archery
1875BC, Agri
1725BC, Masonry
1200BC, writing (after pottery)
940BC, priesthood (dang.. missed the oracle as it seems)
760BC, Pyramids!!
460BC, Alpha
100BC, Iron
140AD, Literature
400AD, metal casting
450AD, great library
930AD, Theology (double cityraider samurai :) )
1020AD, Starting of the time of wars
1515AD, End of the wars as riflemen come into play
At that time I didn't have banking yet, nor feudalism!

hmm... after viewing the dates, I just was too slow I guess... should have cottage spammed some more :|

Are TPTB willing to make a statement about the situation with goody huts? I am not fussed either way, but it does make a big difference to the early decisions if they have been removed again.

It seems that if the reason for removing them is to reduce randomness, then not telling people if they are there or not adds some of this randomness back in.

I haven't read it in the thread so here is my question:
can you upgrade both axeman and swordman to Samurai ? (once you discovered civil service AND machinery ? )

Thanks in advance.

That is one sweet start. In my test games I restart when I see gold, because I don't want to rely on it it showing up in the GOTM.

I played OCC until I completed the CS slingshot, and got Samurai in 340BC.

Well, my reasoning was that I couldn't see the gold with the initial start file, I had to waste a turn to get to the plains hill, and there was at least 1 flood plain by the start. We could very well move in the GOTM and find a gold hill down there also. Ainwood did hint at the fact that he made the start conditions better than a normal monarch game (unless I completely misread his comment). Samurai in 340BC is very impressive nonetheless.

So.... how do you win with only samurai?

I don't think anyone will win with only samurai. I'll be extremely impressed if they do. So best not to destroy your economy during your samurai war.

I've seen a few people make comments about the barbarians that seems to belie why they're having trouble dealing with barbarians.


A few people have said that they will build worker->barracks->warrior->...

I presume the idea behind this is that there are so many barbarians out there that you need to beef up your warriors to handle them!

Well, I assert that there are so many barbarians out there because you built your barracks first! Instead of the barracks, you could build a lot of warriors for the same cost. You can then place these warriors outside of your city radius. This creates a "no barbarian" zone in which no barbarians can ever spawn. With enough warriors, you can really slow down the rate of barbarians appearing near you.

Furthermore, you have a lot of advanced warning about the ones that do make it towards you, and can occupy a good defensive square in its path.


Someone else mentioned escorting his settler with three warriors! :eek: What I've said above applies to this too -- if those three warriors were out there watching the terrain around where you wanted the city, and the path to that tile, there will rarely be any barbs to trouble your settler party! (And your settler can safely walk there unescorted)

Snap

Played some test games last night, not particularly successfully.
Generally researched Agri, Animal, while building warrior (warrior),worker then went for BW then alphabet. Each start had a farmable tile, (corn or floodplains) and either cows or pigs.

Barbarians were not too bad, combat warriors will cope against most archers when defending a good tile, and the barbs will attack units in the open before pillaging, which I had not previously realised. So churn out some warriors and stick them on wooded hills outside your culture radius to minimise the barb problem. And even unescorted settlers will survive.

On the other hand, first game I researched hunting first, for scouts, which was a waste as the scouts did encounter barbs frequently and died. Goody huts also spawned barbs maybe 40% of the time, and fighting off 1 barb warrior is easy, two is difficult, and three is a non-starter.

The other thing I wonder about people who complain about barbs is are you chopping? Once you get bronze working, one worker can produce about 9 hammers per turn (45 / 5 turns), compared to the capital which is probably 1 - 4 hammers per turn.

If you can chop axemen barbs (esp. wariors) just become cheap upgrades.

The other thing is does anyone know how much fog a barb needs to spawn? I often have 1 unit moving back and forth so no tile is in fog for more than one "end of turn". I have never seen a barb spawn in this situation.

I am fairly sure that a city needs a full 9 tile square to spawn.

Barbs can spawn in 1 tile of fog, but the chances are unlikely unless that's one of the only tiles of fog on the map. I don't know if it has to be foggy for a certain number of turns, but I doubt it.

A few tips/impressions from playing 2 short test games:

1. Chopping is great, if you have enough forests. You get 45 hammers from a chop. And due to japanese traits, being argessive, you get 90 hammers for 1 chop towards barracks, and can build it in one turn! I chopped axeman too.

2. Research bronze working pretty soon, to see if you have copper. If you do, and also see a close enemy, don't wait a second and take him out, keeping the cities which are well placed. Taking cities is cheaper than building them yourself: you need a settler, 1-2 axeman, 1-2 worker and a lot of time. For taking a city with 3 archers, you need 6 axeman (3 usually die, 3 finish the archers off, that's just some 160 hammers or so and you get a partially improved land for free!). Also, the 3 surviving axeman usually get the second promotion, so taking the next city is usually 'cheaper' - you lose less and less axeman as they improve. In my test game, I also took over a holy city of an early religion, so I could focus on researching non religious techs. By the way, that enemy was the romans, so I knew that it was my first and last chance to take them out. If they got to iron, then...) Do just one chop in the conquered cities and you have barracks! Build a few axeman then to allow the new cities to grow in size. This barrack rush allows you to focus on wonders or whatever else you want in your 'old' core cities.

3. If you don't have copper, then I strongly suggest you go for iron working although it is deadly expensive to research early on. Without copper or iron, you are an easy target...if you don't have iron either, animal husbandry to see the horses. If no horses, then prey:)

Just my 5 cents. I didn't play the games longer than maybe 1000 bc, so I can't say if this early warmongering hurts your economy/science too badly.

2. Research bronze working pretty soon, to see if you have copper. If you do, and also see a close enemy, don't wait a second and take him out, keeping the cities which are well placed. Taking cities is cheaper than building them yourself: you need a settler, 1-2 axeman, 1-2 worker and a lot of time. For taking a city with 3 archers, you need 6 axeman (3 usually die, 3 finish the archers off, that's just some 160 hammers or so and you get a partially improved land for free!).
I agree with a lot of what you say, but dissagree that taking a city is cheaper than building them yourself. You need 1 setler, sure. This is the equivalent of just less that 3 axe men. You need 1 unit to sentry it, but I probably had a unit ther keeping away barbs. You need a worker to improve the terain but most caputered cities will need some work. You are also at war with another civ, so that is a few units that you do not need.

I think the really big advantage is that there is one less enemy, and that much less competion for city spots.

Been playing a few test games, and although I'm pretty much l