The NOTS stands for No Optional Techs, Sid.

Now here is what a NOT game will do for you. This is taken from Comprehensive Guide to Variants
Definition: No Optional Tech (NOT) : You are not allowed to discover optional techs. Optional techs are those which are not needed to reach the next era, monarchy for example.

Well, doesn't sound like a challenge. But think over the complications. I list the most important features sorted by their importance:

a) The one and only one advanced type of government will be feudalism. With all the corruption and war weariness included. Have fun.

b) You never can build a knight or cavalry. So this game is essential near an infantry game. Have fun. In other words, clean your own continent before the ai reaches military tradition, or you are possibly toasted. (Up from demi god, this can be a problem even for experienced players)

c) You can never build a library, since literature is prohibited. This means, you can never build a university, since libs are required to build them. In other words: Your own research capabilities will humble you, and still you must avoid a cultural victory of other civs.

d) You will never be able to get cities above size 12, since sanitation is an optional tech. More important, you are not able to build battlefield medicine. So have fun with it.

e) Stealing technology will be difficult, expensive and comes along with a high failure rate, because you cannot build the intelligency agency. And this means, you cannot plant spies.

f) You can never mobilize your economy, since nationalism is optional. This may really humble you up from demi-god level.

g) You can never build a marine to take out this damn last island city of your opponents. Ok, usually not that important, but it's like a course in my games. Nearly always there's one of these ugly one-tile cities, and combined with war weariness this can cause problems.

h) If you capture the great library, you must raze this city, because there's the danger that you receive optional techs from it, and your entire game is toast. So, you cannot use the GB to boost your research, which is annoying up from demi-god.

i) You have no access to some important wonders like Smith or JSB, except you capture them, of course.

Believe it or not, but all the feature together, the difficulty of a level moves up around 2, so a simple monarch game usually becomes humbling as demi-god.
Personally, i still had no success with it above emperor, and with normal settings and luck i'm meanwhile able to beat deity on huge continent maps, so i guess, i'm a experienced player.

So check it out, it's quite annoying and evil :-)

with kind regards
a fanatic

Is anyone up for this challenge? This is perhaps one of the most daunting challenges so far. How about this challenge, we must choose a civ that has a UU from an optional tech? Am I crazy in setting up this game? Who knows but we shall find out. I must say this also, this will be my first Sid game.

Version: [c3c] 1.22

Turn Order
classical_hero
conquer_dude
Obormot
Mirc

Are you willing to join this great quest? We need two more players

We need to get the setting for this game.

Here are the potential civ that we can be with my additional variant being we must have a civ that has a UU that we cannot use. Also all scientific civs are out since we might get Nationalism.
Our choice: Chinese - Mil Ind

So now we need to choose our civ.

The map will be continents, standard, and everything esle middle of the road.

I'm ininininininininininininininininininininininininin ininininininininin.:)

Wait, so can we trade for those techs that we can't research, ex Military Tradition?

HOLY CRAP Sid, I'm so joining this. :D

You can never have any optional techs, meaning you can't trade for them.

Good luck, and good bye. ;)

Sweet mother of mercy :eek:

What if you play scientific?

Then you can't ever reach the industrial ages.

Holy moly! This is as insane as it gets! :eek: It's beyond Beyond Sid. Good luck with this one!

Question about the NOT variant:

It seems like you won't be allowed to play a scientific civ either because of the risk of getting nationalism as a free tech.

But... what about the modern age? Are *all* modern age techs considered optional?

I am willing to try this, but only if we play it on pangaea or continents. Archipelgo SID is not real SID.

What exploits are allowed? Are we going to use strict SG rules or are we allowed to screw AIs buy breaking treaties?

Question about the NOT variant:

It seems like you won't be allowed to play a scientific civ either because of the risk of getting nationalism as a free tech.

But... what about the modern age? Are *all* modern age techs considered optional?

I was thinking the same thing, after all, none of them are ' needed to reach the next era' as there isnt one!

I was thinking the same thing, after all, none of them are ' needed to reach the next era' as there isnt one!

but they are required to research future technology which could be considered the next era, thus maintaining the spirit of the challenge

I think I'll just lurk this one, I've never beaten sid and this appears significantly harder

Good luck

Sooo...is there a save or a screenie here?

@Classical Hero: You're nuts. I respect that. But you're still nuts.

I must be mad to say this, but I'm in. Of course, if you accept me. I've never beaten Deity.

So far we have four intrepid people wanting to join this great adventure. So far we need to decide on what civ we want to be from the choose we have. I personally favour Chinese since we will be able to get extra military experince which i greatly needed in this game and with us being improve our terrain quickly. I was going to go for Japa but then I realised that the Rel trait is pretty useless.

China is fine for me. But I don't know about the others.

My favourite civ for sid is persia because of the UU (using fast units at sid is not good because you need artillery and persian UU is the only good slow UU). Also the extra tech is quite helpfull on sid for trading. But it is out because if we play a sci civ we cannot enter IA and we might need to get there. Since we cannot use immortals we should think about good traits for this. I think best traits for this are agri, mil and ind. Maya, China and Aztecs are all fine with me.

Here are the potential civ that we can be with my additional variant being we must have a civ that has a UU that we cannot use. Also all scientific civs are out since we might get Nationalism.
Chinese - Mil Ind
Japanese - Mil Rel
Indian - Rel Com
Mongols - Mil Exp
Arabia - Rel Exp


Sneaky CH edited the first post to add an extra restriction. Persia, unfortunately, has a UU that is a required tech.

In my wildest dreams. I think I'll lurk.

1,000 posts!!!!!!

This will start on the weekend since I am busy with work. So we have agreed to play as the Chinese.

Question about the NOT variant:

It seems like you won't be allowed to play a scientific civ either because of the risk of getting nationalism as a free tech.

But... what about the modern age? Are *all* modern age techs considered optional?
Modern techs are considered as required to get to the next age, which is future tech.

To research future techs you need all optional techs as well.

Really? So this is impossible! Because if we don't research any optional tech, we will never get to research future techs, so because civ is designed that every turn you research something, you will eventually have to research them too!

What do you mean? You don't need to research anything. You can shut down research anytime you want.

I was going more along the lines of being the Vikings...but you guys want a no UU civ? fine... good luck.:thumbsup:

great variant C_H.:D

:hammer2: Forgot about the science slider :hammer2:

Given the conditions that you have set for yourself, I only see one possible path to victory.

Tiny map, archipelago, 80% water, hope that the map favors you tremendously and win by score because the AI will cripple their research so much by building units on their puny little 3 tile island.

Not much of a chance, but still a chance. :p

I'll be very happy if you can prove me wrong. Go on, do so. :)

The quest has started. Here is our starting position.
http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/3033/staringpositions0eb.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I settle in that position and I pop a hut as a result we get a warrior. During the next twenty turns he starts to explor and so far he has not found anything. This is wha happened during my twenty turn period.

I was able to build a settler just before the last turn and is going towards the cow and hopefully we will see better the terrian once the Settler is there. We have lots of good area for us to grow into so we need to get tha area fast so the first thing I researched was Pottery so that we can start building granaries and get faster growth.
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/1165/core4zx.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Classical Hero - played.
Conquer Dude - now up.
Obormot - Waiting.
Mirc

What are the world settings?

And what is that worker doing so far? He should be irrigating towards the cow.

The worker is mining. Actually I see through the fog, the cow is either near fresh water (which would be good) either near an ocean.
N00b Question: why should we irrigate? Isn't this despotism? Don't we get a food penalty?

N00b Question: why should we irrigate? Isn't this despotism? Don't we get a food penalty?

So the cow can be irrigated for food.;) :p

To elaborate Ansar's almost zen-like answer: yes, there's a food penalty in Despotism, but the food bonus of the cow allows you to get additional food out of it after irrigation, even with the penalty. A useful thing. An irrigated food bonus tile is a must for a settler factory. Or even just to grow at a decent rate.

A good rule to keep in mind is to have workers concetrate on tiles that you're actually using or likely to use soon. There are plenty of bonus grasslands near Bejing he could be mining, or better yet, he could be irrigating towards the cow, as mentioned. At Sid, you're going to have AI settlers running around like skinheads in a moshpit. Why improve tiles that they might well end up using instead of you? (Said by one who's more than once improved a perfect city site and then watched someone else take it a turn before my settler got there. :cringe: )

Got it. I'll play ten tonight. Watch me make us loose. :lol:

Yeah, irrigation is for food. Even in BG's. Mining is still needed, but why is the worker mining out of our territory? Do you want to build a city around there?

@ C_D Bonus grasslands won't give more food with irrigation in Despot, but they will give an additional shield if mined. A single tile giving two shields, two food, and potentially two gold (roaded and on a river) is a very good thing in the early game. Plus those are quick improvements (as opposed to mining a mountain, for example).

Okay here goes. I'll play 5 since I'm short on time and have a small chance at sid...

Pre Turn - Well, I don't do anything but I see fish in the water...

Turn 1 - Move settler up and find coast (doh)

Turn 2 - Move settler into position. Send worker to work on Beijing some.

Turn 3 - Send warrior two more turns away. I am afraid we may meet someone and get killed. I settle Chunky Coast, and has a whopping growth of 7 and warrior production in 5, but I switch to barracks in 10.

Turn 4 - Pottery in. switch to Alpahabet in 50.

Turn 5 - I decide to continue exploring with the warrior since I discovered a whole lot of nothin'

Summary:
Nothing much. I am a tad bit afraid of meeting someone for fear of agression. I am also too afraid to pop any goodie huts, since on Sid, chances are really slim for anything good to pop out, ya know. And if it were barbs we would be doomed.

Save and a screen of the current area.

At Sid, you should be desperately trying to find other civs. If you don't contact them, you will definitely fall down so far in technology that you will have no chance at all.

There are a lot of things in this game that are bugging me, reading this, like the settler due in 10 but growth in 5 and size 1, the abundance of roads around Beijing but no mines, and the placement of Shanghai being so far (it could have been on the other side of the cow, acting as a pre-irrigated square to build the bridge to the cow), the barracks build in Shanghai (you should be building warriors/workers/settlers/granaries/curraghs!) and obviously, the mining of that square outisde your borders? Sorry, but it just upset my Civ senses. :(

Wow, you guys are insane. I don't know if I would go for Feud gov (earliest, maybe only gov that's not from optional tech). I probably would. Maybe play it extreme war style.

I might join, but don't want to overdo the SG's.

I won't be able to play until June the 6th. After Obormot, skip me.

Um.... C_H anyone up?

This is now on the back burner for awhile.