Welcome to your C_IV Warlords SGOTM 4 Team Thread. Please use it for all internal team communication, turn logs and discussions. Subscribe to it to receive notifications, and do not visit the other team threads for this game until you have finished. Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest.

The Game
This Monarch difficulty game is on a Standard size, Gyathaar-special, fractal map, at Epic speed, against 7 rivals including India. All victory conditions are enabled except Diplomatic, but the laurels for this contest will be awarded to the teams who achieve the fastest Space defeat by Gandhi.

Versions
This game will be played in Warlords Version 2.08 only.

It will be played using the current version of the HoF Mod. This is version 2.08.003 for Windows. There are insufficient Mac players to form a Mac team. so it will be played in Windows only.

If later versions of Warlords or the HoF Mod are released they cannot be used for this game.

Your start file will be available on the SGOTM Progress and Results Page (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/civ4sgotm_submission_list.php) at midnight, server local time, at the start of February 23.

Here's the starting position - click the image below to see a larger version.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/sgotm4_start_small.jpg (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/sgotm4_start_large.jpg)

Map Parameters
Playable Leader/Civ - Ragnar of The Vikings
Rivals - 7 civs including Gandhi (who is locked in war with Ragnar)
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Fractal, cylindrical, medium sea level, temperate
Game Speed - Epic
Diplomatic Victory Disabled
All other settings are defaults

Notes

Please visit the C-IV Warlords SGOTM reference thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=208462) to check out the rules and procedures to ensure that you are adequately prepared for this game.

Warlords v.2.08 is supported for this SGOTM. No other versions can be used, and you will have to stick with the same version throughout the game.

Teams will compete for up to four awards - the Gold, Silver and Bronze Laurels for the fastest finishes, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher.

Awards will be given to teams who achieve Space defeats to India in the least turns.

All saved game files uploaded to the server are parsed through software that extracts and archives data about your save, including reload count for each turn set.

Please enjoy the game :)

Welcome everyone! I'm looking forward to this SGOTM with you all.

For those of you who have not played a SGOTM before, please make sure you have read AlanH's thread on SGOTM rules and etiquette. Let's go kick some butt (and get Gandhi into space....)

Roster:

LowtherCastle
Erkon
Gnejs
JERFit
johnpaulcain
Mitiu Ioan
Big Pig (I figured I would need to go at the end to sort out everyone's messes....)


Housekeeping:
Approx 20 turns 1st set, 15 turns 2nd set, 10-12 turns thereafter. In the early game play to the next 'decision point' -ie the point where the team needs to discuss next tech etc (if it is only 6 or 7 turns you can carry on after group discussion).

If you are unsure about anything - stop, save the game and ask! You can save the game every turn if necessary - it doesn't matter

Altho' you may fuind it dull to micromanage please try to think through all your decisions and try to check each city on a regular basis to optimize builds, growth, specialists etc and each AI to optimize diplomacy (your 10 turns will feel longer that way.....:) )

Please post a 'got it' when you are up to play and have opened the save. If no 'got it' is posted for 48h, the next player on the roster may 'get it' If you are away or can't play, arrange for swaps or skips

Please don't switch on the city governor (to optimize growth etc) or set units to auto-move beyond your turnset - and if you do let the next person know

Enjoy!!

Table of Contents

Page 1. Strategy Section

Page 6. Turnset 1. Turns 0-24, 4000-3280 BC. Founded Murky Waters. Res: Agri, AH. Build: wb. Scouted N, W, saw Gandhi's land.

Page 8. Turnset 2. Turns 25-36, 3250-2920 BC. Res: Mining. Build: wkr, warrior. Scouted S, met Genghis.

Page 10. Turnset 3. Turns 37-55, 2890-2520 BC. Res: BW. Builds: 2 wrs, settler. Scouted S, saw Genghis' land.

Post #260. Turnset 4. Turns 56-74, 2350-1780 BC. Founded Gold City. Res: Pot, Wtg. Builds: Wkr, 2 wars, barracks. Scouted E, died.

Page 16. Turnset 5. Turns 75-94, 1750-1180 BC. Res: Sailing(-1t). Fdd: CC. Build: GC library.

Page 20. Turnset 6. Turns 95-110, 1150-850 BC. Fdd. MC. Res: IW, Myst. Continent explored.

Page 21. Turnset 7. Turns 111-122, 835-670 BC. Res: Alpha. Triremes explored most of coastal waters.

Page 23. Turnset 8. Turns 123-133, 655-505 BC. Res: Poly,PHood,Marchy,Arch,Mason,Lit. Build: GC TPost. MC borders expand to marble. GK extort: ~T128 (next T178?).

Page 25. Turnset 9. Turns 134-149, 490-265 BC. Fdd: Cape Fish. Res: MC. Build: GLib, GS. Rev: HeredRule. Disc: Iron in MW!

Post #606. Turnset 10. Turns 150-164, 250-40 BC. Res: Monotheism. Captured New Sarai.

Post #624, #645-47. Turnset 11. Erkon's Birthday!!!

Post #756, #767. Turnset 12. Turns 165-171, 25 BC - 65 AD. Met Brennus. Res: Compass, Machinery, Optics. Popped GS. Captured Old Sarai.

Post #916. Turnset 13. Turns 172-181, 80-215 AD. Met Mehmed, Washington. Built NE in MW. Scouting Hannibal, Brennus. Building units to crush GK.

Post #955. reserved

Post #996. Turnset 14. Turns 182-185, 230-275 AD. Popped GG. Circumnavigated globe. Res: Feudalism. Revolted to Vassalage.

Post #1054. Turnset 15. Turns 185-189 275-330 AD. Built units, popped GS.

Strategy Section (A summary of our ongoing discussions)
--------------------------------------------------------

Clarification of Our Goal

We must ensure that no other AI wins (apart from Gandhi, of course).
We must ensure that we don't win.
We must ensure that Gandhi wins as quickly as possible.

Our Long-Term Plan

High tech pace and lots of tech trading for us and AIs (Erkon feels we can warmonger in mid-game and slip behind in tech).
Facilitate Gandhi’s expansion, get his power rating to >130% of all others’.
Spread Gandhi’s religion.
Get AIs to Friendly with Gandhi.
Pillage and otherwise limit AIs’ production, but not commerce and growth.
Use a variety of tricks to do achieve the above.

Research (summaries of relevant research, simulations...)

Two variations on the same test map:
1 - Gandhi with +food, low-hammers: http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/58975/LC_BC-4000_WSGOTM4_testmap1edited.CivWarlordsSave
1a - Gandhi with enough food and ++hammers: http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/58975/LC_BC-4000_WSGOTM4_testmap1aedited.CivWarlordsSave

Genghis' True Attitude Toward Us
Genghis will be Pleased with us when the diplomatic screen shows +5.
He'll be Friendly with us at +12.
At -1, he'll drop to Annoyed.When Pleased = 90% chance he'll not DoWar us.
When Cautious = 50% chance he'll not DoWar us.
When Annoyed = 10% chance he'll not DoWar us.
(Not exactly sure how these chances function.)

Brainstorming

An accumulation of ideas for gambits, off-the-wall ideas, variations, etc.

Links (Links to relevant articles or posts, outside of our Team Thread)

Changes between Warlords and Vanilla CIV: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=185778

War weariness (at least for Vanilla): http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=181512

What tech a GL will lightbulb next: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140952

Welcome all!

Thanks, guys, for letting me reserve those posts. They're reserved under my user, but the idea is to provide summaries of our group discussions and sundries contributed by each of us.

Let's have a great time!

Thanks for the welcome!

This will be fun. Perhaps we can agree on where to settle our first city before we reach the 150 post marker this time? :lol:

It's my first SGOTM and I'm new to the team. I live in the very southern part of Sweden, not far away from the Danish capital Copenhagen. I'm married and have two kids. I work at Ericsson as an engineer. And I like playing computer games. Sorry for bringing Gnejs into this team. Don't blame me when he screws up. ;)

Does anyone have any idea of how to keep track of votes in a good way? If (when) we need to decide something and we don't agree, then it could be practical to edit that in a poll-post? Example: Vote 1 covers the initial city placement. So, in my poll-post, I state
Vote 1 : initial site
while Gnejs states
Vote 1 : stupid-site
and so on. Or should we have one post for each poll, and the owner of that specific post is responsible for updating the post? Just some random thoughts before the real discussions start. I can't wait!

Cheers,

/Erkon

Does anyone have any idea of how to keep track of votes in a good way? If (when) we need to decide something and we don't agree, then it could be practical to edit that in a poll-post? Example: Vote 1 covers the initial city placement. So, in my poll-post, I state
Vote 1 : initial site
while Gnejs states
Vote 1 : stupid-site
and so on. Or should we have one post for each poll, and the owner of that specific post is responsible for updating the post? Just some random thoughts before the real discussions start. I can't wait!

Hi Erkon!
Its usually pretty easy to keep track of votes from the posts (there are only 7 of us in the team after all..... ;) ) But we normally find that when jpc comes up with a stupid idea (e.g. lets suicide our units against Monty's SOD)we can talk him into seeing the error of his ways. In fact we have quite a lot of experience of that by now....
And of course as captain I have the casting vote anyway :)

EDIT: One thing that was quite useful in the last SGOTM was for someone to provide a summary post of our discussions and plans for the upcoming turnset (e.g. tech, diplo, etc) to help the person about to play

And of course as captain I have the casting vote anyway :)At first I thought you meant deciding vote, but based on my experience with you as captain, fishing for good ideas, I'm now unsure whether you meant fly-casting, spin-casting, or just casting about.

EDIT: Anyway, Erkon, as you've probably already deduced, we have two castes on our team: there's Big Pig, and then there's the rest of us.

I think there are two main areas for discussion:
1. Long-term plans. How are we going to get Gandhi rapidly to have Space Age techs and to quickly build a space-ship
2. Short-term plans. At this stage, this boils down to where to settle and where to move the scout. We can move on to tech discussions once we have settled and can see the land a bit more.
To kick things off, here are my 2 cents:

Long-term plans
As we are at constant war with Gandhi we can't gift him techs etc. The only thing we can 'gift' is cities (by letting his forces capture an unoccupied city of ours). So how do we get him to max out his tech rate and get all the Space Age techs quickly?
1. Encourage rapid tech progression in the other AIs by lots of tech trading (and hope they then trade techs with Gandhi). Emphasising science in our cities will help drive this. Ideally we would want to get as many civs as poss the same religion as Gandhi so they will be more likely to trade techs with him
2. 'Gift' Gandhi cities with academies? I am not too keen on this as it will be a waste of our GS's and limit our tech progression
3. A ploy used in the Civ3 version of this SGOTM was to build the GLib and 'gift' the GLib city to Gandhi. I think in Civ3 the GLib acts like the Internet in Civ4 in that in gives a civ all techs known by 2 or more other civs. So we could beeline to the Fibre Optics and 'gift' the Internet city to Gandhi. This may be a viable late game strategy but by the time we have built it, Gandhi ought to be pretty advanced anyway. 'Gifting' the Space Elevator city might be more useful

Short-term plans
I think the scout will provide the most useful info (ie revealing the most squares near the settler) by moving 2NW.
The blue circle on the plains hill 2N of the settler looks enticing. It still has access to all the food resources and looks like there will be at least 5 hills in the fat cross. It also minimises the number of commerce poor ocean tiles in the fat cross while still having access to the coast

Hi all!

Great to be on the team! Never mind Erkon, the best is probably to let him ramble incoherently until he runs out of wind. :p

It is an an interesting victory condition, to say the least. How do you help someone you are at war with? :)

Some random ideas:

If Gandhi has jungle, we can help clear it for him.
Declare war on other AIs to give him some mutual struggle bonuses.
Have an AI declare war on Gandhi, then attack that AI. Kill all troops, but let Gandhi capture the good cities.
Keep the tech pace high by trading a lot (obviously not possible to trade directly with Gandhi :( ). Perhaps give Alphabet away to all AIs as soon as possible.
Slow down wonder builders by pillaging strategic resources and even razing production cities.
Take out Gandhis closest neighbours to give him room for expansion. Keep him friendly with the distant ones.
Spread all religions that Gandhi founds everywhere.

Hmm, most of my ideas seem to involve warfare... :)

About the starting position, it sure is nice! 3 food resources, lake, 3 hills, plenty of forest, coast, plenty of grassland, start on plains hill for extra hammer. Pretty much everything we could ask for. I don't really see any reason not to settle in place. 2N might reveal something more, but is it really worth the loss of a forest and a 1-2 turn delay?

I think we should be careful with early exploration until we get one or two warriors or archers up. The last thing we would like is to run into Gandhi too early and have him send an archer our way...

Start with fishing and hunting. We are going to need AH, Agriculture, Mining, BW, Wheel. I am thinking that we can delay Agriculture for a while, especially if we build an early work boat. Clams+Pig+city gives 11 food, enough to work all three hills. 9 hammers without mines, 13 with. Not bad!
I would propose AH first, followed by mining. Next depends on whether there are any horses nearby. If not, we may need Archery unless we want to gamble on Bronze being nearby.

Edit: I agree on scout 2 NW to start with.

Hi all! Hi Gnejs!
Great to be on the team! Never mind Erkon, the best is probably to let him ramble incoherently until he runs out of wind. :p So in the Modern Age, we wait till he runs out of gas? I think it'd be wise for us to brainstorm ideas like Gnejs has presented. I'll add some to his list:

If Gandhi has jungle, we can help clear it for him.
Declare war on other AIs to give him some mutual struggle bonuses.
Have an AI declare war on Gandhi, then attack that AI. Kill all troops, but let Gandhi capture the good cities.
Keep the tech pace high by trading a lot (obviously not possible to trade directly with Gandhi :( ). Perhaps give Alphabet away to all AIs as soon as possible.
Slow down wonder builders by pillaging strategic resources and even razing production cities.
Take out Gandhi's closest neighbours to give him room for expansion. Keep him friendly with the distant ones.
Spread all religions that Gandhi founds everywhere.
--------
Set Gandhi up for a PA with a strong researcher. (I assume we win if Gandhi wins with a partner.)
We must be a tech leader so we can police the world to prevent other victory conditions.
Non-Gandhi civs should have low-prod, high-commerce cities only. Gandhi needs both.
Depending on the map we may eventually decide to palace jump to Australia and leave Gandhi with Europe, to reduce his need for military build-up in end-game.
Early on, avoid threatening Gandhi so he freely REXes.
No worker stealing from Gandhi.
If we have useful neighbors, beeline to Alpha, avoid early wars, get the tech jump.
Don't have anyone like us too much, so Gandhi doesn't get negmods for being at war with us.
Make sure Gandhi has aluminum.
We may want a shrine and propagate reigion to Gandhi's cities to know what he's producing where at end-game.

Island possibilities, as I see it:

Only us and Gandhi with no aluminum, cramped island.
Gandhi, us, spacious continent.
1 or more additional AIs, continent.

Great to be on the team! Never mind Erkon, the best is probably to let him ramble incoherently until he runs out of wind. :p
We tried that with LC last time around. We're still waiting.......

Set Gandhi up for a PA with a strong researcher. (I assume we win if Gandhi wins with a partner.) I don't think PAs are enabled in this game
Don't have anyone like us too much, so Gandhi doesn't get negmods for being at war with us. No. He would only get negmods for declaring war on us. And good relations with AIs will help tech trading
Make sure Gandhi has aluminium.
We may want a shrine and propagate reigion to Gandhi's cities to know what he's producing where at end-game. Scotland Yard and spies will be better.... We won't be able to send our missionaries to convert Gandhi's cities if we are at war with him. EDIT: Does a shrine let you see the city screen of all cities with that religion? I thought it only let you see what troops were in the city



We can also 'gift' Gandhi workers - although it would be a drain on our resources to do so

About the starting position, it sure is nice! 3 food resources, lake, 3 hills, plenty of forest, coast, plenty of grassland, start on plains hill for extra hammer. Pretty much everything we could ask for. I don't really see any reason not to settle in place. 2N might reveal something more, but is it really worth the loss of a forest and a 1-2 turn delay?
I guess the initial site has great potential for a science powerhouse or a GP Farm too

Shrines will not enable you to open up a city screen, only spies will do that. And I don't see the need to send spies to Gandhi cities, but to his competitors so that we can mess around with their cities (destroying improvements etc).

Here is my view of the game:

Short Term Plans: Get as powerful/advanced/big etc as possible without harming Gandhi. I'll leave that to later discussion.

In order to draw up our Long Term Plans I would like to clarify what the goal means:
1. We must ensure that no other AI wins. (apart from Gandhi ofcourse)
2. We must ensure that we don't win.
And to beat the other teams:
3. We must ensure that Gandhi wins as quick as possible.

To reach goal 2, we must ensure that we don't trigger a domination win.

Our Long Term Plans must then have 1 and 3 in mind. So, we need Gandhi to be advanced and have lots of production. This means that he must be able to trade for tech and have room for expansion. Killing his closest neighbors is a good way to enable Gandhi to grow. We can attack his neighbors from the opposite side of Gandhi, and when the AI is gone, Gandhi can have the cities back. If we plan for Gandhi to capture our cities, there is no need to build anything apart from granary and courthouse in those cities (focus on growth).

We should gift tech to AI that we don't plan to attack. Regarding wonders: I think we should build those that we want. We can't rely on Gandhi to take them (or capture such cities).

Gifting tech to the friends of Gandhi may be counter productive, since Gandhi will not be able to trade away his obsolete tech. We don't need to be that advanced ourselves. I would prefer if we focused on military instead, building units and fight, fight, kill them all, attack!!!!!!!!!!!:ar15:

I think that the initial spot is fine to settle.

Dang, these posts are coming fast and furious. Anyone keeping up?

Just to get things started off on the right foot, I ran some tests... :lol: :lol: :lol:

In the above Research post, I have attached two versions of a test map, if anyone wants to play around with them. I have concluded some stuff with my testing:1. Gandhi's initial builds seem to be invariably: archer>barracks>archer. (EDIT: tested on some other maps too.)
2. Gandhi starts w/2 archers and a fast worker. One archer garrisons, the other explores.
3. If Gandhi is not too close, he won't attack us with the exploring archer, once we garrison a warrior in our hill city.
4. Gandhi's exploring archer will attack our scout anywhere, first opportunity.
5. Gandhi's garrisoned archer does not seem to attack our scout, even next to his city. Worker keeps working too, in that case.
6. Gandhi's exploring archer will not enter our cultural boundaries unless it means to pillage or attack.
7. Gandhi's third archer is an attacker, although it may not bee-line for us.
8. Gandhi seems to research worker techs first (although on the test map he's not on the coast).My tentative conclusions from this incomplete testing are:
We want to settle our city on the 1st or 2nd turn and immediately build a warrior.
Our city can survive the early game with one, eventually two, regular garrisoned warriors, but that will leave any worker improvements defenseless.
It would be really helpful to know asap what Gandhi's hammer production is, so we can predict how soon he'll finish his barracks, 4th archer and start his REX. (The caveat being that if our scout meets his archer, the scout's dead meat.)

Just to get things started off on the right foot, I ran some tests... :lol: :lol: :lol: Old habits die hard.....

We want to settle our city on the 1st or 2nd turn and immediately build a warrior.
Our city can survive the early game with one, eventually two, regular garrisoned warriors, but that will leave any worker improvements defenseless.
It would be really helpful to know asap what Gandhi's hammer production is, so we can predict how soon he'll finish his barracks, 4th archer and start his REX. (The caveat being that if our scout meets his archer, the scout's dead meat.)

I am fairly certain we will find we are separated from Gandhi by a body of water (similar to the Civ3 start) to stop teams being wiped out early by Gandhi's wandering archer. But would I bet the farm on it and go WB first? No.

Thoughts on our first move:

1. Fog-gazing

Fog-gazing with the real save will probably give us somewhat of an idea what's up north, namely, whether the tiles are land or coast, whether they are hills or flat, plains or grass, forested or not.
The scout's first NW move will reveal that one hill to the SW, and perhaps another hill or two, or mountain.

We may want to post a screen shot after the first or second NW scout move before deciding whether to settle or move the settler.

2. Where to settle

Considering Erkon is openly bloodthirsty (unlike closet warmongers like BP), we may want to think twice about which spot to settle on. If we're going to go all out on research, then I think settling in place is probably fine. If we want to get really bloodthirsty, the N,N location looks like it may have significantly more hammers, and we will have the food to use those hills, once we have enough happies.
The N,N site may have fewer gold pieces (or more if there's Gold on those hills), it's even farther N, it may have tundra in its fat cross, but it may also have another seafood resource, and it may put us closer to or farther from Gandhi.
The current site has more grassland for towns, it saves a turn, and presumably puts us no closer to Gandhi than the standard minimum, whatever that is, and becasue we already N, it may give us a better 2-3-4 city layout.


For the time being, I'm leaning toward more of a research than a warmongering focus, because I think the fastest victory probably occurs in a world with minimal DOWs, at least until late in the game, when AIs may resist trading amongst themselves more.

In SGOTM1 Hatty was locked in permanent peace with Gandhi. However, at least 1 team managed to inadvertantly switch this to permanent war (by DOW of a civ that had a DP with Gandhi). So, this got me thinking - would it be possible to find a way to switch permanent war to permanent peace?

One possibility that occurred to me was if Gandhi became the vassal of another Civ. If we got peace with the Master, would that not then automatically result in peace with Gandhi? (Of course, we would then have to find a way of de-vassalising Gandhi again without declaring war on the Master)

@LC:
This thread which lists the changes between Warlords and Vanilla civ might be useful for the reference post

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=185778

In order to draw up our Long Term Plans I would like to clarify what the goal means:
1. We must ensure that no other AI wins. (apart from Gandhi ofcourse)
2. We must ensure that we don't win.
And to beat the other teams:
3. We must ensure that Gandhi wins as quick as possible.This is good. This is excellent. Don't let BP or Gnejs tell you otherwise... ;)

I think before we play a single turn, we should take this one step farther, and do what they do at CFR (you know, the guys who regularly finish about 100 turns before the pack). They attempt to rationally figure out the fastest conceivable way to win and implement that, come hell or high water. Their rationale is that some teams are going to try the fastest way and at least one will succeed, so...

I'll give a shot at it, to start the discussion.

The fastest victory would be a world in which Gandhi has a certain percentage (I don't know what, 20%, 30%, 40%) land advantage over all the other AIs that leads to a power advantage that is somehwat beyond some limit coded in the XML and SDK (we need to research this), so no one wants to declare on him. Gandhi is generally peace loving in such a situation, I think, and will automatically just shoot for the moon. At the same time, we don't want the rest of the AIs way too far behind him, especially early and mid-game so that Gandhi will be able to trade techs around and speed up his overall progress.
Then there are some game-mecanical factors that we could also attempt to manipulate, such as trading alphabet around asap, and researching techs faster than Gandhi, so his percentage diminishes. Kind of the opposite of what we usually do--research what we think Gandhi WILL research to make it cheaper for him, rather than research what the AIs WON'T research, so we can trade it around. This only works, of course, if we have a huge tech lead already.

Just thought I would mention it:
If any team somehow manage to find a way to break the permanent warstate with Ghandi with some obscure method, then they are free to do so.
(Like the teams that managed to switch the permanent peace to permanent war in SGOTM1).

Personally I dont know of any way to do this.. but then I didnt know about the method that was used in SGOTM1 either :)
Hmmmm. I think I would prefer it if Gyathaar didn't reveal all our possible strategies to the other teams.

I surely hope our game doesn't devolve to where Gandhi becomes someone's vassal. That sounds pretty bad. However, I wonder what would happen if we vassalized ourselves to someone at war with Gandhi, then they signed a peace treaty with Gandhi? Maybe we'd be at peace with him as long as we're vassals to the other.

I surely hope our game doesn't devolve to where Gandhi becomes someone's vassal. That sounds pretty bad. However, I wonder what would happen if we vassalized ourselves to someone at war with Gandhi, then they signed a peace treaty with Gandhi?
Very good! I think that calls for a test

Very good! I think that calls for a testI think so too, but for me to do it, someone will have to clue me in on the mechanics of vassalization. Never been there, never done it.

EDIT:
Just a bit of an explanation on how I go about testing stuff like that, so "someone" knows what to tell me about vassalization:

It's possible in Worldbuilder to give any tech, unit, build, etc., to any civ. So if I know the mechanics of vassalization, I can't try to manufacture that without having to play through three dozen games before an opportunity presents itself.

I think so too, but for me to do it, someone will have to clue me in on the mechanics of vassalization. Never been there, never done it.
I've never done voluntary vassalisation, but I guess you can offer it to a civ in the diplo screen. I don't know if you have to be friendly or pleased etc for the civ to accept. You need to make sure that (?both) civs know Feudalism.

With voluntary vassalisation, you get to choose to un-vassalise every 10 turns or so

EDIT: So for a test you will need:
1. 3 civs (us, Gandhi and a.n.other)
2. Us and a.n.other knowing feudalism
3. us knowing a heap more techs so we can bribe a.n.other to declare war on Gandhi in the first place and then subsequently get peace with Gandhi
4. an impregnable Gandhi so he is not wiped off the map before peace breaks out

I don't know if you can easily play around with the relationship (pleased, annoyed etc) between us and a.n.other

In fact there are 2 things to test
1. Vassalising ourselves to a civ at peace with Gandhi
2. Vassalising ourselves to a civ at war with Gandhi, then getting peace

This may be easier than we think. I just read in the manual that came with my cd:

Capitulation forces the vassal state to immediately adopt the master's war/peace state against thrid parties.

In fact there are 2 things to test
1. Vassalising ourselves to a civ at peace with Gandhi
2. Vassalising ourselves to a civ at war with Gandhi, then getting peace

This may be easier than we think. I just read in the manual that came with my cd:

Capitulation forces the vassal state to immediately adopt the master's war/peace state against thrid parties.
Slow as ever, but I was confident you would get there in the end ;)

Okay, I'm having a problem. The diplo screen shows vassalization or capitulation (in red) for the other guy but never for me. So what do I have to do to be able to prostitute myself (sorry no personal experience with these matters)?

Here someone says the human player cannot capitulate:
can the player capitulate or ask to become a vassal state? how?

short answer: no

Here someone says the human player cannot capitulate:

Damn. Stupid civ.... :badcomp:

Looks like we'll have to do this the hard way then.

Gyathaar has now succeeded in getting Gandhi to capitulate to someone and creating peace:
Bah. After more trial I managed to provoke this to happen...

How about this rule?

If Ghandi capitulates to another civ, and this cause you to end up in peace with Ghandi, then you have to immediately declare war on Ghandi's Master. (this will put you back at war with Ghandi again..)

but you know, I think it's pretty risky and I don't see why people are so certain it would get the spaceship launched any faster.

I'm practically willing to let the CFR's go for it and the rest of us rest on our laurels.

But you know what, that whole capitulation gambit kind of takes the fun out of it for me anyway. I'm intrigued by the original, intended challenge.

But you know what, that whole capitulation gambit kind of takes the fun out of it for me anyway. I'm intrigued by the original, intended challenge.
Beating GK and the rest by a few millenia would be kind of fun tho'...

I agree tho' - getting Gandhi to capitulate to another civ is too risky. It would cramp Gandhi's development and he would never get unvassalised again

Beating GK and the rest by a few millenia would be kind of fun tho'... Why does everyone think it's so much faster, because we then gift him everything underthe sun?

I agree tho' - getting Gandhi to capitulate to another civ is too risky. It would cramp Gandhi's development and he would never get unvassalised againHe can decapitulate by getting his land and pop over 50% of his master, which presumably we'd be happy to help with.

He can decapitulate by getting his land and pop over 50% of his master, which presumably we'd be happy to help with.
.... without declaring war on the master? Sure, it could be done (e.g. getting other AIs to declare, using spies to pillage the Masters lands etc, gifting cities to Gandhi) but it would not necessarily be simple

You see, the basic notion seems to be that the human player can launch way faster than the AI so if we're friends with Gandhi we can get him to do it way faster.

But as Gyathaar said in the SGOTM9 thread, CIV AIs love to go into space. Now since Gandhi has some built-in advantages over us on Monarch level, doesn't it stand to reason that he can do it faster than us, even as his enemy, if we're covertly helping him?

I guess it boils down to which is faster--1) focus on beating gandhi down till he capitulates to someone, then building him up again and going for the launch or 2) going straight for the launch and having Gandhi beat us to it.

Basically, I think that we should just race Gandhi to space but in the end use those little human-player tricks to make him win.

.... without declaring war on the master? Sure, it could be done (e.g. getting other AIs to declare, using spies to pillage the Masters lands etc, gifting cities to Gandhi) but it would not necessarily be simpleAs I read it, the capitulator has 2 options for annulling it (not DOWing it).

As I read it, the capitulator has 2 options for annulling it (not DOWing it).
Yes - but if we DOW on the master to help Gandhi get to 50% of pop and land, then Gandhi would be at war with us again. Anyway, it is academic. Lets focus on winning this thing while at perma-war with Gandhi

Yes - but if we DOW on the master to help Gandhi get to 50% of pop and land, then Gandhi would be at war with us again. Couldn't we just gift the land to Gandhi, the vassal? If not, then what are going to do, exterminate the master and hope we're out of perpetual war with Ghandi?

This will be fun. Perhaps we can agree on where to settle our first city before we reach the 150 post marker this time? :lol:
Starting to look unlikely :(

But you know what, that whole capitulation gambit kind of takes the fun out of it for me anyway. I'm intrigued by the original, intended challenge. You'll be telling me the BP DiploV gambit (TM) was unsporting next..... :p

Ok - lets get this discussion back on track. We need to decide whether to settle in place (for a commerce/science powerhouse city with reasonable production) or 2N (for a production powerhouse city with reasonable commerce)
Option 1 gives us a good chance of fast tech; Option 2 gives us a good chance of building a sizeable early army for REX or an early Wonder or two

Considering Erkon is openly bloodthirsty (unlike closet warmongers like BP), we may want to think twice about which spot to settle on. If we're going to go all out on research, then I think settling in place is probably fine. If we want to get really bloodthirsty, the N,N location looks like it may have significantly more hammers, and we will have the food to use those hills, once we have enough happies
....
For the time being, I'm leaning toward more of a research than a warmongering focus, because I think the fastest victory probably occurs in a world with minimal DOWs, at least until late in the game, when AIs may resist trading amongst themselves more.

I prefer to wait with war until we have catapults/swordsmen or trebuchet/mace or grenadiers/cannons. The first 4000 years should be expansion and research. Then we'll know what is suitable. What I meant earlier was that in the mid game, I think it is ok to sacrifice research and that I don't mind if we slip behind in tech.

We need to decide whether to settle in place or 2N On our overall strategy: Will we start before firming this up?

On settling: I think we need to agree on the scout's first move, screen shot, decide on scout's second move, scout's second move, screen shot, THEN decide where to settle.

EDIT: For that matter, we can download the save now and look at the opening screen, rigjt? As long aswe don't move anything.

On our overall strategy: Will we start before firming this up? Well we need to decide if we want a commerce- or a production-heavy capital site

On settling: I think we need to agree on the scout's first move, screen shot, decide on scout's second move, scout's second move, screen shot, THEN decide where to settle. Ok - although I'm not sure what the scout will be able to reveal in its first 2 moves that will change things

EDIT: For that matter, we can download the save now and look at the opening screen, rigjt? As long aswe don't move anything.
Yes we can open the save (although I tried a couple of hours ago and it didn't work...)

So do we move the scout to reveal the maximum number of tiles (ie in a south-ish direction) or NW to reveal tiles near-ish to the settler?

I'm a little late to the party? Oh well, I'm here either way.

Short term: I think we should scout a little, although that 2N spot does look tempting, we get all 3 food resources plus any other resources that could be around, along with more hills for better production and no ocean. Although, it could give us a slow start in the tech race.

Long term: I don't think we should play the capitulation gambit, its too risky and likely that it won't even work. I think we should try to get a tech lead, and spread Ghandi's religion around to promote trading with other civs. I also like the giving away alphabet idea. We should declare war on Ghandi's best friend to give them an extra relationship boost.

I'm a little late to the party? Oh well, I'm here either way.Hi JERFit! Welcome to our happy family. Big Pig is happy too, as long as you tell him he's the greatest at least every other post. ;)

Great to have your input too. The capitulation gambit is out, but it still may be strategically useful to encourage Gandhi to take on a vassal or agree to a PA.

For those of us who haven't read the SGOTM4 Maintenance Thread, we now have Revised Victory Rules:

Let's cut this debate, as I believe it will distract from the true goals of this game.

I think we all know that the objective in this game is to get Gandhi to the stars while we remain at war throughout the game. Gyathaar's initial response was based on his belief that you would not find a way to make peace with Gandhi. However, as usual, the SGOTM community has come up with options that may thwart our intentions.

We shall operate to the following amendments to the game rules:

"You are allowed no peace treaties with India" will change to "You are allowed no peace treaties with India, and you must immediately declare war on Gandhi or his master if you ever find that you are at peace with him, either directly or via a vassal relationship."

The winning condition will be amended from "Awards will be given to teams who achieve Space defeats to India in the least turns" to "Awards will go to the teams that achieve the fastest spaceship defeat to a launch by Gandhi."

Please confirm that the above changes resolve the debate, or suggest any remaining issues.This is very important for each us to be aware of because:

If you are playing your turns and suddenly are at peace with Gandhi, YOU MUST RE-DECLARE WAR WITH HIM ASAP (whenever that is).

This also clarifies that our mission is to have Gandhi be the one to launch the spaceship, no matter whether he is a vassal, a master, or a one-eyed beggar with fleas.

Please take a look at the map and indicate where you want the scout to move. I've drawn arrows for the scout and circles for potential city sites. And let me know if anyone of you are color-blind ;)

If we want to move the scout before settling, I think green-green is the only option that will have an effect on initial city placement. We don't have coast above blue circle, so i vote against green circle for city placement. Red tile provides much more production for initial city compared to blue.

EDIT: I notice that I forgot another blue arrow southwards.

@Erkon, did you manage to download the save? I'm blocked for some reason. Have you been able to fog-gaze approximately what is to the north? If it's all plains (hill or not), then I think we can safely say that the N,N site is too commerce-shy for our needs, in which case we can send the scout exploring. Because the of jungle S,SW of the scout, I'm thinking NW, SW might give him the best chances of finding faster movement terrain.

I'm thinking we want the scout to go W and S long-term. If we make a warrior early on and there's no threat, he can scout N to see about potential city placements.

EDIT: By the way, Erkon, if you downloaded that save when it first becamse available, then it's been altered by Gyathaar (See Maintenance Thread) and you would need to download a new version before making any moves. That one should be okay for fog-gazing though.

I've edited Erkon's scout map to show the tiles revealed by the scout's first moves (1 = tiles revealed by scout moving in direction of blue arrow on turn 1 etc).
148670
NW NW reveals the minimum number of new tiles. Its main advantage is that it reveals the grassland forest 2W of the settler - but we already know it is a grassland forest so the only value of revealing that tile would be if a resource (e.g. spices) were present that might sway our decision to move the settler or stay put.
The other scout moves reveal more tiles, but in general ones further away from the settler and so ones which are highly unlikely to impact on our discussion as to where to settle (unless say we find stone and gold and food+++).
In conclusion I don't think the scout moves are likely to be of much help whatever we do with it.
My vote is for 1S, 1W (reveals all tiles with 1 and 1 on them) as it reveals the most tiles and some of them are not too far from the settler
EDIT: altho' after fog-gazing, most of the revealed tiles are jungle and therefore of very little immediate interest. NW NW seems as good as any and reveals 4 or 5 non-jungle tiles
@LC. I can't get the save game either (I was able to open the one yesterday am before Gyathaar made the changes). I'll PM AlanH (EDIT: now fixed - thanks Gyathaar!)

it still may be strategically useful to encourage Gandhi to take on a vassal or agree to a PA.
Pay attention LC - PAs are not enabled on this one (default setting)
A vassal for Gandhi may be useful - it will increase Gandhi's happies but will also increase his maintainence costs (so potentially slow his research). There is no guarantee that a vassal will tech trade any more or less than a non-vassal. And it means another civ at war with us (let's hope he doesn't vassalize Monty.....)

Vassals for us OTOH may be useful as we can (I think) direct their research

Red tile provides much more production for initial city compared to blue.
Good point - I think we had all been overlooking that. Settling on site and building a commerce/science powerhouse is looking the most attractive option unless fog-gazing and scout wandering provide anything unexpected

Hi Gyathaar

The link to our save (Murky Waters) seems to be down since the new saves were put up. Is it a problem with the server or just the link to the save?

Cheers

BP
Fixed (I had managed to forget the 's' in Waters )
That was quick. Happy fog-gazing everyone :)

After intense gazing, I submit the following:148671
Jungle to the south, tundra to the north, ocean to the east. Hmmm - which way do you think our expansion will be?

Good point - I think we had all been overlooking that. Settling on site and building a commerce/science powerhouse is looking the most attractive option unless fog-gazing and scout wandering provide anything unexpected

After improvements, the pig will generate 6 food, as will the corn. The clam will generate 5 when we have a Trading Post (and the inland sea will give 3). Working these three resource tiles will thus generate 11 food surplus. We can use this for intense whipping, work mines or assign specialists. I don't think working cottages will that good idea. I don't like to use specialists in capital after running bureaucracy. We will be able to build workers and settlers very quick. We can whip any surplus populations above three. We can work mines with these as well.

I like bronze working and animal husbandry. With slavery we can whip defensive units if necessary.

How about building a workboat first, working the forested hill? It will take us 9 turns: 45 / (2+3) = 9, then we can decide to build warrior or worker?

I prefer to use our capital for production early on. Second or third city can be commerce or great people farm.

After intense gazing, I submit the following:
Jungle to the south, tundra to the north, ocean to the east.And no resources on forest/grass S of pigs, cuz there'd be a recognizable hollow in the forest.

I think we have 2 basic exploration options with the scout:
1. Clear fog for settlements, W and S, Go NW, NW then NW again and go W and loop around south to give us an idea of settlement sites W and S and eventually meet any AIs in the those 2 directions.

2. Scout far and wide asap for other AIs. Go NW, SW and just beeline SW-ish to get as far as we can with the scout as quickly as we can.

I like bronze working and animal husbandry. With slavery we can whip defensive units if necessary. I like slavery too.

How about building a workboat first, working the forested hill? It will take us 9 turns: 45 / (2+3) = 9, then we can decide to build warrior or worker? We can't work the 3h forest till our 8th turn (border expansion). We know we need a worker, a wb, and a defender asap. We need to optimize that.

The research order interweaves with our build order. Do we want to get slavery asap or go straight toward writing and alpha?

I ran my test map and had Alphabet by around 1700 BC, as I recollect. My build order was warrior(11t)>worker>warrior>wb (I think), I worked the corn to pop2(11t). I researched Agr>AH>Writing>Alpha. I happened to meet a bunch of civs on that map so it was worth it. The problem is, Gandhi eventually sent an archer to pillage my corn farm and pig plantation, so I might throw archery in after AH (it's a lot cheaper after having met those AIs). Probably would need to work mining in earlier too.

With a happiness cap of 5 (edited) and 3 food resources and one hill (edited) available without BW, is whipping optimal? (Don't misunderstand me--in 95% of my games I start with Mining>BW.) EDIT: I realized there's only 1 hill w/o chopping, but we still have the lake tile, if we want the research coins.

One other factor may influence our research path: There is frequently marble in the far N and S. Will we scout for that and if it's available, will we want to go for the Oracle?

So I have time tomorrow and I'd be happy to try to test and optimize various build/citizen/research paths, if you guys want to make some suggestions or requests.

After improvements, the pig will generate 6 food, as will the corn. The clam will generate 5 when we have a Trading Post (and the inland sea will give 3). Working these three resource tiles will thus generate 11 food surplus. We can use this for intense whipping, work mines or assign specialists. I don't think working cottages will that good idea. I don't like to use specialists in capital after running bureaucracy. We will be able to build workers and settlers very quick. We can whip any surplus populations above three. We can work mines with these as well.
...
I prefer to use our capital for production early on. Second or third city can be commerce or great people farm.
The capital will certainly be a great site for early (whipped) production (if we settle on site). But by the time we want to start growing the capital (which we can do quickly) its production potential will fall away somewhat until mid-late game when grassland workshops can again boost production. Consequently in the early-mid game we will probably want to concentrate on commerce (and so leverage our financial trait) either with specialists (esp scientists) and/or cottages

Ok - I've edited the first post to put in the roster based on your order in visiting the thread :) and stick in some general housekeeping rules.

I've PMed jpc and Mitiu to let them know we are underway

LC is first up. @LC - I think we are probably over-analysing the scout's first moves (as they are very unlikely to make much of a difference). Do you want to move it 2NW then post a screen-shot, and we can finalise our discussions on where to settle? Otherwise we will end up way past the 150 post record we set last time......

EDIT: For the record we took over 200 posts in SGOTM2 - although technically this was our second city as Kyoto had already been founded at the start of the game.......

"Got it."

Okay, I'll move the scout, take the screenshots and we'll go from there.

EDIT: Done: We have spotted GOLD! Aren't we HAPPY!

I'm fog-gazing plains N of gold, maybe some water NW of gold, and the river continuing W on the tile N,N of Gold tile. South is jungle galore. Note that the computer now only gives us two blue circles for the settler, in place and N,N.

Now I think the chances of spotting more gold at the N,N settlement site are slim, thus, I vote for settling in place.

EDIT2: @BP, am I supposed to upload this save to the SGOTM progress page?

Now I think the chances of spotting more gold at the N,N settlement site are slim, thus, I vote for settling in place.
I would second that

EDIT2: @BP, am I supposed to upload this save to the SGOTM progress page?
No real need, as you will be carrying on your turnset in due course


Ok - we now need to come up with an initial build and tech strategy.
-wb first is probably optimal build (= wb in 11 turns). It runs the risk of a Gandhi wandering archer stumbling into our capital, altho' I do think it likely that Gyathaar has seperated Gandhi from us by a body of water
-techwise Agr>AnHus will be cheaper than AnHus>Agr - and the corn and the pig give equivalent yields. However we are a good few turns away from having a worker to work either if we go wb>?warrior first. I guess my first tech would be mining

I would second that
...
Ok - we now need to come up with an initial build and tech strategy.
-wb first is probably optimal build (= wb in 11 turns). It runs the risk of a Gandhi wandering archer stumbling into our capital, altho' I do think it likely that Gyathaar has seperated Gandhi from us by a body of water
-techwise Agr>AnHus will be cheaper than AnHus>Agr - and the corn and the pig give equivalent yields. However we are a good few turns away from having a worker to work either if we go wb>?warrior first. I guess my first tech would be mining

Settling in place is fine with me.

As I see, there are three alternative productions

1) Worker, WB, Warrior
or
2) WB, Worker, Warrior
or
3) WB, Warrior, Worker

There are four techs we need first: Agr, AH, Mining and BW and that could be the order for the first two production options. For the third option, we can go Mining, BW, Agr, AH.

And no resources on forest/grass S of pigs, cuz there'd be a recognizable hollow in the forest.

I think we have 2 basic exploration options with the scout:
1. Clear fog for settlements, W and S, Go NW, NW then NW again and go W and loop around south to give us an idea of settlement sites W and S and eventually meet any AIs in the those 2 directions.

2. Scout far and wide asap for other AIs. Go NW, SW and just beeline SW-ish to get as far as we can with the scout as quickly as we can.

I vote for exploring for next settlement before finding other AI.

there are three alternative productions
There are four techs we need first: Agr, AH, Mining and BW I'll attempt to optimize these three tomorrow and post my results. If anyone else has time, that would be great. When CFR-W did this at the beginning of SGOTM3, they all seemed to come up with different optimizations.I vote for exploring for next settlement before finding other AI.Since we are already N, the most efficient way would probably be N, NE and then gradually loop around to the W and then down S. This also gets our scout away from any low-defense tundra before animals start spawning.

Do we want to just scout X tiles from our capital or do a thorough exploration?

I vote to explore the position for our second city first, then send the scout out to find the other AI

I've been struggling to optimize this scrum, all alone, obviously. (This silence is deafening...)

Erkon's Option 3) seems a little better than Option 2), because the pop grows to 2 while building the warrior, but overall neither works very well with Mining>BW because the pop grows too slowly. So I tried slow-building the wb and growing pop asap. This worked okay, but then we poprush the worker about 6 turns before Agriculture comes on line. So I tried using the lake to speed research and slow growth a tad. This also worked okay but then I ran into what to build after the worker, because I had to grow the pop back up. Finally, I worked that all out and poprushed a settler in 2290, settled and garrisoned a warrior there. Three turns later a Gandhi archer appeared and the last I heard was a guttural gurgling from my warrior's throat. Hopefully, you're starting to feel my struggle or at least feel confused (no snide remarks back there, BP).

So I did some caluculations to see how cost-effective pop-rushing actually is with this fat cross. Operating with pop5, whipping for 90 hammers (two poppoints each whip):

Wkr/Settler production

Whipping: 226h (+25h to non-wkr prod) every 15 turns
Not-whipping: 255h

Other production

Whipping: 199h/15t
Not-whipping: 180h/15t

Additional value from whipping: earlier production of whipped unit, possibility of pop-rushing defenders.

Conclusions
1. I think we're going to need archery before our second settler.
2. We need to figure out the optimum start here, because I ran through a lot of fumbling starts (Silence!, BP) and I don't think it's self-evident what the best start here is.
3. I'm skeptical that workboat is our best early option. Why? Because it's a lot of hammers for only one extra bushel (compared to unimproved corn/pigs). It does give three more coins, but that's 3 on 9, not a drastic percentage. Building a worker first and researching Agr>AH might have a more pronounced impact on pop growth. Just food for thought.

Conclusions
1. I think we're going to need archery before our second settler. *If* Gandhi is on our island / continent, then yes. Hopefully the scout will give us some idea if G is close at hand or not
2. We need to figure out the optimum start here, because I ran through a lot of fumbling starts (Silence!, BP) and I don't think it's self-evident what the best start here is.
3. I'm skeptical that workboat is our best early option. Why? Because it's a lot of hammers for only one extra bushel (compared to unimproved corn/pigs). It does give three more coins, but that's 3 on 9, not a drastic percentage. Giving 33% more growth and research sounds pretty good.....Building a worker first and researching Agr>AH might have a more pronounced impact on pop growth. Just food for thought. Possibly - it is certainly an avenue to explore

I had a chance for a quick test this morning, but am currently on a non-civ PC. Going wb(11 turns)>warrior>worker>warrior>settler(whip)>etc and Mining>Agr>BW>AnHus (swapping BW and Agr would probably have been ok too) concentrating mainly on high bushel tiles for growth seemed to work pretty well. Whipped settler 1 in ~2400BC and settler 2 ~11 turns later

Tried: Agr>AH>Archery>Writing (2410bc)>Alpha(1300bc)
Builds: warrior>wkr>wb(partial)>archer>wb(finish)>archer>settler>lib(1630bc)
Improvements: corn farm>pig pasture>nets (2470bc)
City 2: 1930bc
Gandhi: Appears outside 2nd city (1330bc) w/3 promoted archers, 1 warrior
City 2: 1300bc razed by Gandhi.

Forgot to assign scientists for academy GS.

Worldbuilder revealed that at 1300bc Ghandi had 4 thriving cities, but that's with the overpowered hammer site I created. I think it's vital that we find out if Gandhi is on our landmass and what his hammer situation is if at all possible.

Gandhi: Appears outside 2nd city (1330bc) w/3 promoted archers, 1 warrior
City 2: 1300bc razed by Gandhi.
That is why I think it is likely we do not share an island with Gandhi

That is why I think it is likely we do not share an island with GandhiRight, I understand your hunch, but what gets me is this:
You start the game as a neighbour of India.

What if Gyathaar decided a good thick jungle to the S is enough? In any case, I think our capital will be relatively safe because it's on a hill. The question is, is it better to focus on building up our captial until we know one way or another (or build our 2nd city on a hill too)? If we race for writing/library and hire two scientists, we'll have an academy fairly early. Just an option to keep in the back of our minds.

Also gives us a reason to maybe start with Agriculture--leaves open the possibility of going straight for writing or switching to the Mng>BW path.

...
Conclusions
3. I'm skeptical that workboat is our best early option. Why? Because it's a lot of hammers for only one extra bushel (compared to unimproved corn/pigs). It does give three more coins, but that's 3 on 9, not a drastic percentage. Building a worker first and researching Agr>AH might have a more pronounced impact on pop growth. Just food for thought.
I agree on the wb, didn't think about that :blush: . I'm leaning towards starting with a worker. Since you get 1 beaker for free/turn, it's actually 3 on 10.

I would then vote for

Worker first, then warrior or wb depending on map.
Tech would then be agr, AH, then depending on map.

Agr will be completed before worker, and AH about when the corn is improved. I think we should sneak in mining/BW before alphabet, so that the worker can actually work. Definately archery if Gandhi is on the same landmass. Perhaps the wheel as well.

BTW, I would prefer if we didn't adopt any religion...

I would still rank AH as being far more important than Agriculture. AH reveals horses which will decide everything else in the early stages. Would prefer AH first rather than Agriculture first...

I would still rank AH as being far more important than Agriculture. AH reveals horses which will decide everything else in the early stages. Would prefer AH first rather than Agriculture first...
But either way, we should have both before we get our first settler - and Agr>AH is cheaper than AH>Agr

SGOTM9 - Scandinavia and the Star of India.
You start the game as a near neighbour of India. Following the pact you are at permanent war with Gandhi, and must remain so for the rest of the game. You are allowed no peace treaties with India. And India must win by space victory. All victory conditions are switched on except diplomatic, but the winning team will be the one that gets India to Alpha Centauri, and does it fastest.

Here's the start.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/images/SGOTM9-start.jpg

For what it is worth, this is the Civ3 SGOTM start.

I would still rank AH as being far more important than Agriculture. AH reveals horses which will decide everything else in the early stages. Would prefer AH first rather than Agriculture first...

We won't have use for horses until we have roads. And first two builds will not be affected by horses. What early decision would be changed if we found horses close by?

Would prefer AH first rather than Agriculture first...AH is better if we want to race to Alpha. For me, the question is, do we want to develop both corn and pigs early or not? Pig shite is probably harder to protect from pillaging than corn site. Pigs, corn, and clams together is pretty powerful even without slavery. Beeline to Alpha is useful if we meet enough AIs before Optics. Maybe someone could test going straight to Alpha without Agr.

What I'd like to know is, are any of you aware of a choice for us that's significantly better for our REX than others? That's what I've been seeking.

AH is better if we want to race to Alpha. For me, the question is, do we want to develop both corn and pigs early or not? Pig shite is probably harder to protect from pillaging than corn site. Pigs, corn, and clams together is pretty powerful even without slavery. Beeline to Alpha is useful if we meet enough AIs before Optics. Maybe someone could test going straight to Alpha without Agr.

What I'd like to know is, are any of you aware of a choice for us that's significantly better for our REX than others? That's what I've been seeking.

The timing of alphabet depends on how many AI that meet each others and what kind of AI. Beelining to Alpha is sometimes just a waste, and sometimes even worse than waiting a while (since homogenizing the tech spread reduces the chance to find balanced tech trade deals). When Gnejs and I compare our games, we typically end up at the same tech level at 5 AD regardless of when we acquire the alphabet.

REX-techs: agriculture, AH, Mining, BW, The Wheel (in no specific order). Then writing/alphabet. We need several cities before building libraries anyway.

I think we should aim to work all three food-resource tiles most of the time, and only whip below size three when we are close to grow.

I also think we should be careful to settle cities without having a worker available to directly improve the land. One worker / city is a nice ratio.

I have updated the Strategy Section on page 1 to facilitate our decision making. Let me know of any changes you think we should make, now or any time in the future.

Clarification of Our Goal

We must ensure that no other AI wins (apart from Gandhi, of course).
We must ensure that we don't win.
We must ensure that Gandhi wins as quickly as possible.

Our Long-Term Plan

High tech pace and lots of tech trading for us and AIs (Erkon feels we can warmonger in mid-game and slip behind in tech).
Facilitate Gandhi’s expansion, get his power rating to >130% of all others’.
Spread Gandhi’s religion.
Get AIs to Friendly with Gandhi.
Pillage and otherwise limit AIs’ production, but not commerce and growth.
Use a variety of tricks to do achieve the above.

I've tested worker first vs wb first on LC's map. In both scenarios I've studied the 4 'basic' techs (Ag, AH, mining, BW) and then started on writing. I've built 1 wb, 1 worker, 3 warriors and 2 settlers.

Worker 1st
tech: Ag>AH>mining>BW
builds: worker>wb>warrior>warrior>settler(2 pop whip)>warrior>settler(2 pop whip)
settler 1: 2350BC
settler 2: 2110BC
wrting: 1840BC

WB 1st
tech: mining>BW>Ag>AH
builds: wb>warrior>worker>warrior>settler(2 pop whip)>warrior>settler(2 pop whip)
settler 1: 2380BC
settler 2: 2020BC
writing: 1990BC

There is very little difference, although wb 1st probably shades it due to the faster research. In worker 1st there are a lot of wasted worker turns while waiting for the worker techs to research

REX-techs: agriculture, AH, Mining, BW, The Wheel (in no specific order). Then writing/alphabet. We need several cities before building libraries anyway.

I think we should aim to work all three food-resource tiles most of the time, and only whip below size three when we are close to grow.

I also think we should be careful to settle cities without having a worker available to directly improve the land. One worker / city is a nice ratio.WB 1st
tech: mining>BW>Ag>AH
builds: wb>warrior>worker>warrior>settler(2 pop whip)>warrior>settler(2 pop whip)

Studying the above and the Long-Term Plan, let's come to an agreement on our early research path, builds, and citizen allocations. It seems to me that we can control our destiny best through an iron fist. We do want a research juggernaut, but our might will lead us to that.

Hammer-Rich
Gyathaar wants us to warmonger, it's clear. We are clearly going to have at least 2-3 hammer-rich cities and the gold/river site to the NW looks hammer- and commerce-rich. We MUST settle the gold and a site N of us, preferably on hills, and we'll be plenty able to warmonger to our heart's content. Beyond that, only our speed of research can hold us back, I guess.

I think we need to have 2 priorities for our REX phase:

Survival
Growing our pop as fast as possible and going straight for slavery to use that pop

For our research path, I suggest the better of Mining>BW and Agr>Mining>BW (Agr and Mining being interchangeable), depending on whether a worker arrives before BW or not.

Build wb first.

If Gandhi is on our land mass, which I think we want to know asap, then we want to get archery and maybe even barracks before settling, and have a couple archers for each settlement. I don't think we need to be in a panic of a hurry to settle as long as we can get our three production cities.

I think we need to have 2 priorities for our REX phase:

Survival
Growing our pop as fast as possible and going straight for slavery to use that pop

For our research path, I suggest the better of Mining>BW and Agr>Mining>BW (Agr and Mining being interchangeable), depending on whether a worker arrives before BW or not.

Build wb first.
By going with BW before Ag I was able to time the worker to come out a few turns after Ag, and have him finish the corn the same time as AH. After getting the wb out as fast a poss (forest for 10 turns, plains hill for 1 turn), most tile use was emphasising growth, and where necessary to speed a tech up commerce. I rarely worked the plains hill except at size 4

If Gandhi is on our land mass, which I think we want to know asap, then we want to get archery and maybe even barracks before settling, and have a couple archers for each settlement. I don't think we need to be in a panic of a hurry to settle as long as we can get our three production cities. Agree

One more thought: Starting with Mining>BW also leaves open the possibility, if we have marble or stone to the N, of going for a wonder with all that forest.

One more thought: Starting with Mining>BW also leaves open the possibility, if we have marble or stone to the N, of going for a wonder with all that forest.

Let's rock'n roll, LC! Give me a save for me to play tomorrow ;) I'm fine with WB first, Mining & BW. Just remember one thing: Kill them! Kill them all!!! :aargh:

Hi guys !! :)

I just came from a ski-weekend and I'm still sleepy ... but afternoon I'll look over the thread and add my ( small ) contribution too.

Regards all

Hi guys !! :)

I just came from a ski-weekend and I'm still sleepy ... but afternoon I'll look over the thread and add my ( small ) contribution too.

Regards allYeah, @)(*$^#(*@^%$#)(&*, Ioan. Who gave you permission to go skiing? I bet it was jpc. Just hope it's not contagious. If BP goes skiing, then I know we're in trouble.

I'm going to spend a bit more time optimizing this wb thingie, which should give you a little time, but I will play later on today, justso you know.

Ioan you can ignore all the vassalization crap on page 2, by the way. AlanH has spoken. We are at permanent war with Gandhi. Just focus on our strategy discussion.

I'm going to spend a bit more time optimizing this wb thingie, which should give you a little time, but I will play later on today, justso you know.
Great stuff. I suggest you play up to getting the second tech (?BW) unless anything comes up that needs discussion before that. And if you lose the scout, then don't bother showing your face in this thread again. Ever.

Are we in agreement on this?

Since we are already N, the most efficient way would probably be scout N, NE and then gradually loop around to the W and then down S.

if you lose the scout, then don't bother showing your face in this thread again. Ever.
Are we in agreement on this?

Yes

(Oh, you meant the build plan :blush: )

Yes

(Oh, you meant the build plan :blush: )

Yes to both.

I meant the scout plan, as in where to send the scout, not whether he would be eaten by a big wild boar.

We won't have use for horses until we have roads. And first two builds will not be affected by horses. What early decision would be changed if we found horses close by?

As I see it, it decides our research and expansion priorities.

If there are horses inside our cultural borders we can skip archery. If there are horses nearby we know where to settle our second city. If there are none we need to decide if we can risk researching BW and not finding bronze, or if we should go with archery first.

In comparison, the only good thing about Agri is the discount on AH...


Besides, the grassland south of us sure looks like horse country... :)

As I see it, it decides our research and expansion priorities.

If there are horses inside our cultural borders we can skip archery. If there are horses nearby we know where to settle our second city. If there are none we need to decide if we can risk researching BW and not finding bronze, or if we should go with archery first.

Sure, we need AH pretty early, but we don't have to start with AH. However, if we go mining-BW, then I can see the point with AH before agri if we don't have bronze. OTOH, we then need roads so we may be too late anyway.

I...as in where to send the scout, not whether he would be eaten by a big wild boar. We don't eat scouts - only Gypsy Kings (for breakfast....)

Finally, the discussion is getting juicy. I just ran a test like BP's, with AH 4th in line at 2470bc and my settler poprushinging at 2440/2410, just in time to saddle up. Using the whip on a 15/t cycle I had:

Settler(2410bc)>warrior>Settler(1960bc)>barracks(1930bc)>writing(1900bc)

Agri also gets the corn developed some turns sooner than AH, but if we go AH>Mining>BW it's basically the same.

Archers are much better defenders than chariots, especially on our hill-cities.
____________________

So now I think we have a strategic question: How soon do we want to start whipping? Because in my tests, I haven't whipped before having all four techs anyway, so it really wouldn't matter what order I researched them in. Actually, the sooner Agri and AH the better because the worker had to idle a couple of turns away hacking part of a mine.

One way of looking at this is: While we research the first couple of techs, our scout will hopefully get a pretty good idea of our landmass. Which initial 2 techs are best or most flexible for the various surprises we might encounter?

Finally, the discussion is getting juicy. I just ran a test like BP's, with AH 4th in line at 2470bc and my settler poprushinging at 2440/2410, just in time to saddle up. Using the whip on a 15/t cycle I had:

Settler(2410bc)>warrior>Settler(1960bc)>barracks(1930bc)>writing(1900bc)
There is no need to wait the full 15 turns before whipping the second settler. Whip it asap - the city will take enough turns to regrow to compensate for several turns of 2 unhappies
Agri also gets the corn developed some turns sooner than AH, but if we go AH>Mining>BW it's basically the same.

Archers are much better defenders than chariots, especially on our hill-cities.
____________________

So now I think we have a strategic question: How soon do we want to start whipping? Because in my tests, I haven't whipped before having all four techs anyway, so it really wouldn't matter what order I researched them in. Hmm - very trueActually, the sooner Agri and AH the better because the worker had to idle a couple of turns away hacking part of a mine.

One way of looking at this is: While we research the first couple of techs, our scout will hopefully get a pretty good idea of our landmass. Which initial 2 techs are best or most flexible for the various surprises we might encounter?
Good points. Ag and AH first may be best then to maximise our ability to grow and to spot any horses. And we will still have BW before we whip out our first settler so should know where the copper is

I'll try to sum my view of the initial techs (assuming WB, Warrior, Worker).

We have two options for the initial techs. I think they go in pair:

1) Agri + AH
2) Mining + BW

Both of them will potentially reveal a strategic resource, and if so, we should go for the wheel, else we should choose archery.

Then we pick the other pair. So, these are the options:

A) Agri + AH + (wheel/archery) + mining + BW

or

B) Mining + BW + (wheel/archery) + agri + AH

The advantage with A is faster growth, while B enables whipping. Now, whipping is not suitable without agri/AH, so I think A is preferable.

I would like to delay whipping until we can maintain size three (or close to) after whipping. With the 14 food surplus, we will grow back to size 6 very quick and we can do pop-3 whipping (settlers) and still build workers in between.

WB 1st
tech: mining>BW>Ag>AH
builds: wb>warrior>worker>warrior>settler(2 pop whip)>warrior>settler(2 pop whip)
settler 1: 2380BC
settler 2: 2020BC
writing: 1990BC
For comparison purposes:

Tech: Ag>AH>Mng>BW
builds: wkr>warrior>wb>warrior>settler(au naturale)>warrior>settler(2-pop whip)
settler 1: 2380 bc
BW: 2350bc (I didn't do any optimizing to speed this up, just hit <enter>)
settler 2: 2080 bc
back up to pop: 2050bc

Plus, I forgot to use my fortifed worker to mine the hill so the above settler production would have slightly faster.

EDIT: I could have done wb before warrior too, I suppose, and gotten the fish on line earlier.

Catch-22: No early poprushing if Gandhi appears out of nowhere or if barb archers eat Punctured Warrior.

assuming WB, Warrior, Worker ?!?Won't the corn be rotting on the stems, with harvest coming mid-February? ;)

Actually, I haven't tried this variation, so what do I know? :blush:

EDIT: But the rest of the post seems right on to me.

Understanding that Erkon recommends Archery or Wheel after first 2 but for comparison purposes:

Tech: Ag>AH>Mng>BW
1st three builds are always followed by: warrior>settler>warrior>settler(2-pop whip)

1. wb>warrior>wkr
settler1: 2440bc
BronzW: 2440bc
settler2: 2050bc (pop3 after pop with zero stored bushels)

2. wkr>warrior>wb
settler1: 2380bc
BronzW: 2350bc
settler2: 2080bc (pop3 after pop with maximum stored bushels)

3. wkr>wb>warrior
settler1: 2380bc
BronzW: 2290bc
settler2: 2140bc (pop3 after pop with maximum stored bushels)

All 3 are similar. Variation 1 researches a bit faster. Variation 2 seems to optimize safety and growth. In V3, BW could probably be sped up a turn or so by micromanagement, which I did none of.

Gazing at the score graphs (which are very easy to over-interpret) reveals 2 things:
1. Almost everyone (except Geezers) settled on site
2. CRC and peanut have the lowest power ratings - indicating slow military build up. CRC are still around to tell the tale in 1280BC (with no worrying dips in score). Does this mean an early Gandhi rush is unlikely?

Gazing at the score graphs (which are very easy to over-interpret) reveals 2 things:
1. Almost everyone (except Geezers) settled on site
2. CRC and peanut have the lowest power ratings - indicating slow military build up. CRC are still around to tell the tale in 1280BC (with no worrying dips in score). Does this mean an early Gandhi rush is unlikely?Looking at Peanut's graph and start time, I'll guarantee you one thing, they made the same observation you made and decided they didn't need to build a warrior to start off.

I personally think that these graphs give away way too much spoiler info and give an unfair advantage to exactly those who don't deserve it--people who start last. You shouldn't get to see any graph info data for time periods you haven't yet played yourselves.

Are we going to decide on Gnejs' discussion or are you all waiting for me to play?

Are we going to decide on Gnejs' discussion or are you all waiting for me to play?

I spoke to Gnejs and he doesn't think agri is worth researching before AH (if he would have played this game on his own, he would have skipped agri). He is also unsure if we should start with a wb. However, he will be busy tonight and I don't know when he will have time to respond (probably later tonight). I tried to convince him that I was right, but he hang up (blamed his kids since he was loosing the argument :cry: )

He might have a point. Sometimes he's right. Most often not. We have been discussing the start a lot, and I don't really see much difference actually, so it's your call LC.

We have been discussing the start a lot, and I don't really see much difference actually, so it's your call LC.
I agree - all the various starts we have tried are all pretty similar on testing. wb first seems to have a small tech advantage - presumably due to working the 3 clams. As long as you don't go Mystcism and settler first we should be ok. Just play the start you think works best (and dont let the scout get eaten)

I spoke to Gnejs and he doesn't think agri is worth researching before AH (if he would have played this game on his own, he would have skipped agri). He is also unsure if we should start with a wb.
Without agriculture and building worker first, that poor worker is quickly going to run out of things to do. In the worker-first start I tested, even getting Ag first, the worker has a lot of wasted turns

I don't have very strong view on the start, the decisive points in this game will probably come later. Unless Gandhi is close, but that doesn't seem likely from your interpretation of the score graphs. Any of the proposed starts will do for me. :)

But my gut feeling is that we will have Iron close by, and maybe horses, but definitely not bronze... :)

Good luck, now get going!

Okay. Thanks a lot, you punks. I have to make all the decisions. Guess I might as well get used to it.

But it's all Big Pig's fault for putting me first.

It only took us 113 posts to decide to let you decide. First few turns at least... :)

Bad News
First the bad news: I made a work boat first.

Good news
Now the good news: I made a worker second.

Worker would not have been idle, because we (applause: Gnejs :goodjob:):

Got horsies? Oh yeah.
Got gold? Yes.
Got tons of resources? Yup.
Got Gandhi? Uh huh...across the canal.
Got a turn log? Indeed:Here is your Session Turn Log from 4000 BC to 3250 BC:

Turn 0, 4000 BC: Murky Waters has been founded.

Turn 7, 3790 BC: The borders of Murky Waters have expanded!

Turn 12, 3640 BC: You have discovered Agriculture!
Turn 12, 3640 BC: Buddhism has been founded in a distant land!

Turn 17, 3490 BC: The villagers give you gold! You have received 47 gold!

Turn 20, 3400 BC: Barbarian's Panther (2.00) vs Murky Waters's Scout (2.70)
Turn 20, 3400 BC: Combat Odds: 21.3%
Turn 20, 3400 BC: (Animal Combat: +20%)
Turn 20, 3400 BC: (Plot Defense: +50%)
Turn 20, 3400 BC: (Class Animal Combat: +100%)
Turn 20, 3400 BC: Barbarian's Panther is hit for 23 (77/100HP)
Turn 20, 3400 BC: Barbarian's Panther is hit for 23 (54/100HP)
Turn 20, 3400 BC: Barbarian's Panther is hit for 23 (31/100HP)
Turn 20, 3400 BC: Barbarian's Panther is hit for 23 (8/100HP)
Turn 20, 3400 BC: Barbarian's Panther is hit for 23 (0/100HP)
Turn 20, 3400 BC: Murky Waters's Scout has defeated Barbarian's Panther!

Turn 24, 3280 BC: You have discovered Animal Husbandry!
Turn 24, 3280 BC: You have discovered a source of Horse near Murky Waters!Got screenshots? Nope. I took some but they vanished mysteriously, sorry.

Got some screenshots now. I stopped at the completion of AH. Worker is finished next turn. We are on a huge landmass by ourselves, evidently, although I didn't expore it all. We are connected to Gandhi's landmass by an impassable mountainous isthmus at the far north.

Looks like we're going to need optics, although who knows, maybe a vagabond workboat could do wonders.

Hi Guys

Welcome to the new team members, hope you can keep up with BP and Low. Steaming ahead on the no: of posts graph as usual. We rule that graph!

Looks like a good start. I have read a few of the SGOTM Civ 3 threads and it seems the biggest mistake people made was not letting Ghandi develop. Gifting/Allowing him to take cities too late will mean he does not have decent cities to build his spaceship. I think the best plan for us is to work out what WE would need to do to get a spaceship victory, i.e how many cities for production. Then make sure Ghandi has all that, this will mean allowing him to populate the good cities to the West maybe or acting like a snow plow for land near him. This may mean more of a military approach.

But then how does this affect the religion aligning scheme?

Tricky balance.

Anyway, time for some apologies and innevatable strife from BP. I am going skiing tomorrow for a week. SORRY:blush: :confused: :blush:

Well done. It is up to Erkon now to keep that scout alive.

For the next turnset, I would suggest mining>BW. Now we know Gandhi is out of reach (until he starts building galleys) there is less urgency to get the horses connected, and earlier slavery will improve production for our capital. Build: warrior>warrior>? (depends on how big the pop has grown to - if 4 or more then settler). I would concentrate improving and working the food tiles before the horses to maximise growth for whipping. We will need wheel to get horses connected after BW tho' - with all those gems and gold of Gandhi's his tech rate will be pretty rapid and galleys not too far away

We need to start thinking about dot maps and optimal order of city builds

Good job there LC. I just knew I would be right about the horses! :)

It looks like Gandhi has been given the means to pull this off without our help. 2 gems+gold+clams, and that's just the tiles we can see! :eek:


Oh, and hi John!

We probably should let Gandhi settle on our side of the canal. That will make it much easier to "gift" cities to him later. The AI sucks so terribly at naval warfare that I am not sure that Gandhi would be able to invade successfuly over water.

BP, are you advocating skipping the Wheel for now? With all that unclaimed land around us there is going to be plenty of barbarians soon (what turn do they show up anyway?). We might want to get a Chariot or two for mobile defense.

Well done. It is up to Erkon now to keep that scout alive.

BP - He ain't dying on my watch! I'll take a look at the save tomorrow after we have more posts on future development.

LC - Good job!

Gnejs - Pure luck with your prediction!

John - Thanks!

Hi Guys Hi and...well...bye. ;) Have a great time!

Good job there LC. I just knew I would be right about the horses! :) Then why didn't you tell me to build worker first??? I wanted to and now I'm so depressed I didn't that I might launch an attack on Gandhi next turnset, just to teach him a lesson.

We probably should let Gandhi settle on our side of the canal. That will make it much easier to "gift" cities to him later. The AI sucks so terribly at naval warfare that I am not sure that Gandhi would be able to invade successfuly over water.

BP, are you advocating skipping the Wheel for now? With all that unclaimed land around us there is going to be plenty of barbarians soon (what turn do they show up anyway?). We might want to get a Chariot or two for mobile defense.EDIT: Disregard this post. Read my better one farther down...

We definitely want a strategy for the barbs. In SGOTM2 CFR did great just fortifying their promoted warriors on jungle hills. Gyathaar kindly gave us the same option. With no immediate AI threat, I suspect the cheapest way to defend our cities will be a handful of fog busting warriors.

Let's not be hasty, guys, we have at least 250 more posts before Erkon needs to take his turn. :lol: In particular, I'd like to discuss the how we're going to get our research engine cracking. We need to get 1 or 2 rocking commerce cities. We're probably going to have to research to Optics on our own. And we also want Calendar asap (EDIT: NOT.). The gold/fish/hogs city will be decent. The gems/corn will be good too. Down S Gnejs is predicting at least four more jungle gems bunched together. ;)

What I like about my turn most is not that I'm a genius, but that we have our choices in terms of what to research next. Our capital will produce settlers and workers at a really fast rate without poprushing. Wheel>Pottery>Writing or maybe even better just Writing>Wheel and building libraries(EDIT: NOT.) to expand our city borders and connecting the gems and gold, while REXing might be our smartest move. We have a ton of techs to research, probably by ourselves. Sooner we get those multipliers the better.

BP, are you advocating skipping the Wheel for now? With all that unclaimed land around us there is going to be plenty of barbarians soon. We might want to get a Chariot or two for mobile defense.
Barbs will start entering cultural boundaries ~1500BC. That gives us plenty of time to research mining>BW first. I think slavery is the key to harnessing the production power of our capital and REX
(it will also get us a library quickly when we have writing....)

The idea of fogbusting warriors on jungle hills will lessen the barb threat. We may even wish to consider chopping/rushing out the Great Wall.

If our scout discovers that we are indeed alone (apart from Gandhi) then this (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4547541&postcount=3) CFR spoiler from SGOTM2 has useful tips on beelining to optics/astronomy early.
An exploring wb is probably also worth building to go over the top of the island

I'll Chip in with my dot map. Red first unless a good spot pops up South, there may be another good commerce city down that way.
148852

Maybe move blue 1 S and red 1 SE?

Less overlap and gives red more grassland. It also gives option of shifting between which city gets the pig to maximize different growth rates for different situations.

Maybe move blue 1 S and red 1 SE?

Less overlap and gives red more grassland. It also gives option of shifting between which city gets the pig to maximize different growth rates for different situations.

This is a good ideea !! :)

I vote for Mining -> Bronze Working too ...
And probably after this we should research Masonry for some nice wonders. :p

Regards

Maybe move blue 1 S and red 1 SE?

I think this makes good sense.

And probably after this we should research Masonry for some nice wonders. :p I just knew you would come in at the 11th hour and try to confuse us. ;) I promise we'll build the Kremlin, just as soon as we can. :scan:

Our landmass is ideally designed for us to create at least three supercities for Gandhi, 1 commerce (red on map), 2 production (blue and brown on map). They will serve us well until we achieve, what I think should be, our primary goal:
Develop this landmass and abandon it to Gandhi ASAP.The map is a bit hard to read due to scale, but I wanted you to see Gandhi’s location as well. The red and blue cities are as JERFit recommended. All three cities have sufficient food for their purposes. Both prod centers MUST have 2 quality food resources. The pink (edited) city gives Gandhi a foothold on our land, hopefully he’ll settle this himself (anywhere thereabouts). Brown City is a Space Parts Megaproduction center. Yellow city would preferably be on the coast so we have three cities for building galleons/frigates.

EDIT: Note that there may be seafood off the tile between the N sheep and Murky Waters (MW).

REX
The big picture should guide us in our REX. I recommend first blue city (GoldCity) then red (or maybe yellow). GoldCity uses pigs (ya see, Gnejs? We DID need Agri) and grows to pop3 in about 13t, in which time 1 wkr builds 2 gold mines, roads 1. This is the fastest boost to our research we can achieve (faster than a library, is my hunch). We don’t even need border expansion or the fish. Red city shares 3rd gold and pays for itself, but only after its borders expand. Further, it needs IW to achieve its full potential. Yellow city probably comes later because of jungle, but maybe before Red City. We want to make sure we settle Gandhi’s SpaceParts Brown City in the right place. It only produces land units for us, but no biggie.

Defense
Our most cost-effective defense right now is fog-busting (see Warriors 1-5 on N and S maps). If we go Mining>BW, then we can build 3-4 warriors and still poprush our next settler when slavery comes on line around 2400bc (I haven’t tested this for exact quantities). This way we can postpone Wheel.

Research
Mining>BW>Wheel: We want slavery ASAP for defense and REX purposes. Slavery is also more hammer-effective than natural prod, even at pop6 (310h/15t vs. 285h/15t in MW), so Wheel is next so we can connect gold and expand MW to pop6. After that? IW or Sailing, but which?
Iron working. Crucial for developing our Red and Yellow Cities and getting the gems happies.
Sailing. This is the wild-card tech for us. We need triremes:

to protect GoldCity’s fish,
so Gandhi will mind his own business,
to explore the world and meet some tech traders. Luckily, we have permanently open borders with Gandhi.
We also need a trading post to make up for the lost pigs and to make our naval units faster.

Builds
MW: warrior>warrior>warrior>…>settler (~5 turns before revolting to slavery)>worker>…>trading post>trireme

Improvements: corn farm>BIG PIGSTY>plains/hill mine>horse track>gold mine (timed with settling GoldCity)

Note: My apologies, but on the 2nd fogbusting map what we are calling Red City is shown in Sky Blue.

Our landmass is ideally designed for us to create at least three supercities for Gandhi, 1 commerce (red on map), 2 production (blue and brown on map). They will serve us well until we achieve, what I think should be, our primary goal:
[B]Develop this landmass and abandon it to Gandhi ASAP.

An excellent plan. There is only one catch...

... we need to find someplace else to establish ourselves. Preferably a location where we can survive until Gandhi launches. :) Even better if we will still be in a position to influence things.

It seems obvious that we must find a poor unsuspecting AI and conquer all his land. As soon as this is done we can ship over the rest of our units and abandon whats left to Gandhi.

We should consider sending out an early workboat or two to see if there is any AI reachable pre-Astronomy. Probably, we will find Monty and Alex just beyond Gandhi (so sayeth Gnejs the prophet, emboldened by his horse prophecy).

This is only Monarch, so a Heroic Epic-equipped Murky Waters should be able to build the invasion army all by itself. The question is only if this should be done with swords/cats or with grenadiers/cannons.

An excellent plan. There is only one catch...

... we need to find someplace else to establish ourselves. Preferably a location where we can survive until Gandhi launches. :) Even better if we will still be in a position to influence things.

It seems obvious that we must find a poor unsuspecting AI and conquer all his land. As soon as this is done we can ship over the rest of our units and abandon whats left to Gandhi.

We should consider sending out an early workboat or two to see if there is any AI reachable pre-Astronomy. Probably, we will find Monty and Alex just beyond Gandhi (so sayeth Gnejs the prophet, emboldened by his horse prophecy).

This is only Monarch, so a Heroic Epic-equipped Murky Waters should be able to build the invasion army all by itself. The question is only if this should be done with swords/cats or with grenadiers/cannons.

I think we should send a work boat north and a trireme south. If we can go S-W-N we end up in Gandhia-land, where a work boat may not survive.

I also want another worker since we have lots of tiles to improve, even before the first settler: grow city to three, then worker, then settler?

Got it.

Mining will take 9 turns, worker next turn and then warrior 11 turns.

I will start improving the corn, then move to pigs, but I will report when mining is done.

The scout is on jungle/hills. Shall I let the lion attack? (about 2 vs 2.75). Or should I run south and hopefully meet a wolf? The extra XP will give a promotion.

I would like to play my turns tonight :)

The scout is on jungle/hills. Shall I let the lion attack? (about 2 vs 2.75). Or should I run south and hopefully meet a wolf? The extra XP will give a promotion.



Run, you coward!!! :scared:



I think you should move the scout. A promotion is nice, but you lose a couple of turns to heal. Besides, the Lion might get lucky and win. We would never forgive you.

I will start improving the corn, then move to pigs, but I will report when mining is done. Sounds good.

Shall I let the lion attack?Not worth it. Much more important we maximize our chances of finding out what's to the south, especially this nearby area for settling.

You can always come back later and...Kill! Kill! Kill them all! :ar15:

(There's no one else around to kill that lion, is there?)

EDIT: When you get to the southern area with plains, you might even defog one tile at a time and stuff like that to play it safe, if you know what I mean.

There is only one catch...we need to find someplace else to establish ourselves. Preferably a location where we can survive until Gandhi launches. :) Even better if we will still be in a position to influence things. Right. We must obey Erkon's victory rules, in short...:)

a poor unsuspecting AI...Monty and Alex??? Gnejs, are you some kind of a minister? I've never felt much pity for those two ba$tard$.

I think we should send a work boat north and a trireme south. If we can go S-W-N we end up in Gandhia-land, where a work boat may not survive. Very good notion, there.

I also want another worker since we have lots of tiles to improve, even before the first settler: grow city to three, then worker, then settler?Pop3 might be a bit soon, I think, if we're not going for Wheel first. Two workers may lead to idleness. The plains hill and the horses will give us +2h for the worker/settler, and we need to grow either way. Let's wait to decide on the worker till we see how much work the worker gets done (i.e., toward the latter parts of your turn).

Bottom line is MW has five resource tiles, including the plains hill and in the long run it's optimum to grow to pop5 asap. That's why I hate myself for not building a worker before the wb.

Got it.

Mining will take 9 turns, worker next turn and then warrior 11 turns.

I will start improving the corn, then move to pigs, but I will report when mining is done.

I would like to play my turns tonight :)I suggest just play to finish of BW unless there is really anything pressing to report after 9 turns

The scout is on jungle/hills. Shall I let the lion attack? (about 2 vs 2.75). Or should I run south and hopefully meet a wolf? The extra XP will give a promotion. Wolfs live in tundra - 2HP panthers live in jungle. I would stay and fight - your odds are better on a jungle hill with 1 turn of fortification, than being ambushed by a panther in a few turns time

Maybe move blue 1 S and red 1 SE?

Less overlap and gives red more grassland. It also gives option of shifting between which city gets the pig to maximize different growth rates for different situations.

Sold to the JERfit man!:)

Our landmass is ideally designed for us to create at least three supercities for Gandhi, 1 commerce (red on map), 2 production (blue and brown on map). They will serve us well until we achieve, what I think should be, our primary goal:
Develop this landmass and abandon it to Gandhi ASAP.The map is a bit hard to read due to scale, but I wanted you to see Gandhi’s location as well. The red and blue cities are as JERFit recommended. All three cities have sufficient food for their purposes. Both prod centers MUST have 2 quality food resources. The pink (edited) city gives Gandhi a foothold on our land, hopefully he’ll settle this himself (anywhere thereabouts). Brown City is a Space Parts Megaproduction center. Yellow city would preferably be on the coast so we have three cities for building galleons/frigates.

EDIT: Note that there may be seafood off the tile between the N sheep and Murky Waters (MW).

Not sure about this Low. Agree Ghandi needs good cities, however the AI seems to have prefered builds and when we gift him cities that we may think are good he may not build spaceship parts until he has built all his prefered improvements. This is the mistake people in Civ3 SGOTM made. Also I am not sure I like the idea of him having super cities too close to Murky Waters.

A better option for me is for us to build our core and snowplow all areas around Ghandi early on so he can develop himself. We also need good cities to safeguard us too.

Not sure about this Low. Agree Ghandi needs good cities, however the AI seems to have prefered builds and when we gift him cities that we may think are good he may not build spaceship parts until he has built all his prefered improvements. This is the mistake people in Civ3 SGOTM made. Also I am not sure I like the idea of him having super cities too close to Murky Waters.

A better option for me is for us to build our core and snowplow all areas around Ghandi early on so h