GOTM 18: Genghis Khanhttp://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/leaders/leaders0008.jpg

We keep the difficulty (nominally) the same this month....

This game MUST be played in patch version 1.61. We will NOT accept any games played under any other patch versions, and you can't play it in warlords!

Further, it MUST be played using HOF mod version 1.61.011. (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/mods/HOF-1.61.011.exe)




Game settings:
Civilization: Mongols (Leader: Genghis Khan; Traits: Aggressive, Expansive)
Rivals: 6
Difficulty: Monarch
Map: Continents
Mapsize: Standard
Climate: Tropical
Water level: High
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
Options: <none>
Victory Conditions: all enabled

Genghis Khan:
Genghis Khan is Aggressive and Expansive; starting with Hunting and The Wheel. Aggressive allows a free combat 1 promotion for melee & gunpowder units, and double production speed of barracks and drydocks. Expansive provides +3 health per city, as well as double production speed of granaries & Harbors.

Unique unit: Keshik:
The Keshik replaces the standard horse archer. The stats remain the same (strength 6, moves 2, cost 50), but it is the abilities that are the key difference. Aside from the 50% bonus against cataults (which both the keshik & horse archer receive), the keshik doesn't gain immunity to first strikes. It does, however, gain a first strike of its own. The keshik also ignores terrain costs, making it very useful in jungles & hills. Neither the keshik nor the horse archer receive defensive bonuses.


The starting screenshot is here (click for a bigger version!)
http://72.36.239.243/civ4games/images/gotm18small.jpg (http://72.36.239.243/civ4games/images/gotm18large.jpg)

Adventurer Class bonuses:

Player starts with knowledge of fishing and mining.
The hill to the south-east of the settler has gold.



Challenger Class Equalisers:

Cattle shown in starting location are removed.

Nice that "nominal" difficulty... no horses perhaps?

anyway at normal speed the keshiks become obsolete too fast.

Not a wonderful start, let's see.

Everyone else's settlers happen to start on top of copper? :D

My initial thought was to move settler SE. Start with AH to work cattle and reveal horses?

My initial thought was to move settler SE

Mine too....but the longer I look and think about it I'm not so sure??

A) seeing a bit of what looks like jungle peeping out of our northern most view makes me wonder if settling 1SE will limit us to 1 city on/near the coast rather than two that could be fitted by settling by the river and/or plains hill south of cattle??
B) If Ainwood has a gold bonus there for adventurer class, does this suggest that it is not the optimal site to settle??

Nice that "nominal" difficulty...

I think Ainwood may have used the word "nominal" purely due to the criticism (unwarranted IMO) from some people in WOTM8 in regards to other civs starting positions and the alleged difficulty setting for that WOTM.

I'm inclined to think that the best city site is east, getting the three plains hills (15 hammers/turn and 3 food/turn at size 6 with a lighthouse) and picking up two more grassland forests to chop and cottage. I wonder if the stray tile across the water has copper/horses/iron, but it's close enough that it shouldn't be a problem to get a settler over there.

The advantage of the plains hill to the southeast is alluring, though. It looks like there is at least one hill, maybe two to the south, so moving the scout down to check it out first is probably prudent, whether or not the gold on adventurer is supposed to be a deterrent.

B) If Ainwood has a gold bonus there for adventurer class, does this suggest that it is not the optimal site to settle??

I'm not that clever ;)

That is simply to give the adventurer class people a happiness bonus up-front, and a research bonus that they can leverage throughout the game.

My first move will be dependent on where i want to move the scout. I'm tempted to move to the forest east of the cows to see what's to the south or jogging up to the plains hill in north. I won't be settling in place, I'll atleast move one east to get the plains hill to the north rather then the plains accross the water

My first post was made in a rush so here's another spear of the moment thought: move scouts to the northern plains hill before deciding where to settle?

The spot 1 east of the Settler looks much better than where it currently is. And personally I'd prefer it to the plain hill to the SE, at least in terms of long term potential.

I think I'll use the Scout to see what's available to the south, and unless there are more resources available from the SE hill I'll settle one East. The other possibility would be to look to the north with the Scout, but I think odds of there being a better spot to settle up there than the start location aren't that great since you'd be losing the Cows for sure and probably the Fish.

I'd be surprised if Keshiks are much of a factor on this map. But Genghis gets some nice bonuses from his traits, including some really useful buildings for cheap.

I'm struck by the number of similarities between this game and WOTM08.
(But I've edited this now to avoid any spoiler info that people wouldn't have had before starting WOTM08)

Both are standard sized, continental maps with high sea-level; We have 6 rivals. We are an expansionist civilization. The game speed is normal.

Some of the strategies that were applicable to WOTM08 would look to be good here, too.

On a continental map, we might expect 2 or 3 rivals.
The strategy I'd be looking at is to scope out the continent as fast as humanly possible, find out what our first weapons are going to be, and hit the first rival hard and early. Then work out what the second weapon-set needs to be, and use that on the second rival. Aim to own that continent by about 500AD.
In the meantime, we want to research Optics and get out there and find the other continent before they find us.

There are some differences between the two games, of course.

The difficulty is 2 levels harder - and Monarch is significantly tougher than Noble. No mistakes, then!
The map is tropical rather than arid: different resources & different terrain for travelling through. Those Keshiks will be in their element, for the window of time that they are useful. Surely we must have horses nearby? (Though of course it might be arranged that we have to fight for them)
We are Aggressive rather than Organised, so smacking the neighbours has been given a bit of a lift
No raging barbarans. Phew!
Standard CIV and not Warlords. So no vassals, no unique buildings, etc.


So all-in-all I'm thinking of getting out the battle-plan that I already have in my pocket ready.

The main thing I have realised about these games of the month is that reconnaissance is essential because you can't rely on a normal randomly balanced map.

I think I''l go SE-SW with the scout to see what's down further south. based on that I'll decide whether to go E or SE with the settler. I don't see the point of going north with the scout to the hill on the other side of the lake, I find it hard to imagine I'll find anything that will make me want to lose the cows (or the fish). The wine is kinda an afterthought in the whole decision process.

I'm apparently going a different direction than everyone else is...

In Vanilla, resources still point toward the equator, and the fact that I see coastline at the bottom right of the screenshot makes me think we are at the S end of the continent.

So, my Scout will head NW>NE to the northern plains hill, and my settler will either go 1E(because Vynd is right, the spot 1E is worth an extra turn), or north, depending on whether I find anything worth the trip up north.

The primary candidate tile for the first city is the plains/hill SE. The extra hammer will shave off a few turns on the initial worker, and these turns will be hard/impossible to catch up later in the game. The scout will first move to the hill 2N to challenge the primary candidate. There is ofcourse a risk that bronze is located on the hill that I will settle, but thats a risk I'm willing to take.

When I choose my settling site, I look for the best tile that will get me a settler/worker pair as quick as possible. I will ignore a long term optimal site if the short term effects are suffering.

I'll start researching animal husbandry.

The primary candidate tile for the first city is the plains/hill SE...There is ofcourse a risk that bronze is located on the hill that I will settle, but thats a risk I'm willing to take.


Actually, in this case there is no chance of that... The Adventurer bonus includes gold on that hill. Since you cant have both gold and copper, obviously there cannot be copper there (and replacing copper with gold would NOT make it an easier start for adventurer so that cane be what happened). So, the SE hill must be resourseless.

The spot 1 east of the Settler looks much better than where it currently is. And personally I'd prefer it to the plain hill to the SE, at least in terms of long term potential.

I assume this pretty much means that 1E is obvious place to settle on the Adventurer Class? At least I don't see better options unless scouting the north reveals something absolutely crazy.

Actually, in this case there is no chance of that... The Adventurer bonus includes gold on that hill. Since you cant have both gold and copper, obviously there cannot be copper there (and replacing copper with gold would NOT make it an easier start for adventurer so that cane be what happened). So, the SE hill must be resourseless.

Gold and copper won't ever occur together on a game-generated map, but I think you can put them in the same spot if you're manually editing the map (which, obviously, Ainwood has done). However, I agree with you to the extent that it seems pretty unlikely Ainwood would do something like that.

Gold and copper won't ever occur together on a game-generated map, but I think you can put them in the same spot if you're manually editing the map (which, obviously, Ainwood has done). However, I agree with you to the extent that it seems pretty unlikely Ainwood would do something like that.

He did however put pigs on mountains a few warlord games back, so anything could be possible!!! :eek:

Gold and copper won't ever occur together on a game-generated map, but I think you can put them in the same spot if you're manually editing the map (which, obviously, Ainwood has done). However, I agree with you to the extent that it seems pretty unlikely Ainwood would do something like that.

Just looking at WorldBuilder files, and tried to set a tile with 2 bonus resources on it. I half expected it to crash the game when I started it (it's quite easy to do that with bad editing changes) - but it actually ignored one of the resources and only used the one I named second.

I hate to be a wet blanket - but I don't think it can actually be done.

(Of course, you can put resources on terrain types that they would never normally be found on: ;)
152189
)

I'll move my scout to SE then SW also to check for further resources down south and if nothing else of value, will settle also 1E. Researching Animal Husbandry first will also be a good idea to make use of the cattle and start searching for horses.

I assume this pretty much means that 1E is obvious place to settle on the Adventurer Class? At least I don't see better options unless scouting the north reveals something absolutely crazy.

Well, as you can see there are different opinions about exactly where the best place to settle is, based on what we can see in the screenshot. But as you can also see, no one think s it is a good idea to settle right on the starting location.

All other things being equal, it's best to have lots of improveable land tiles in your city's workable area. Settling in place on this map means you'll be stuck with a lot of Coast and (even worse) some Ocean tiles, which will never be more than mediocre workable tiles.

Strategy (ies)? I haven't played an expansive trait leader yet.

I'm thinking it is not nearly so much of an 'early jump-start' trait [such as Financial or more particularly, Creative], but that it will come into its own as we develop our city size into the range where a +3 health bonus will matter.

That would also mean that it's a nice plus on this map, huh? Expect tropical and high water to mean more jungle tiles, where health 'matters.' We might look north toward the equator (resource arrows pointing that way) for such tiles to develop, since at least theoretically, we would have a slight advantage in that territory? - over the AI civs without expansive trait - due to the negative health bennies of jungle.

Aggressive speaks for itself, but Expansive also offers the cheap granaries - a very important infrastructure. What else? For a noob like me, maybe expansive means just that - more expansion and cities and less thought toward early warmongering.... but, with the aggressive trait, maybe the two offset and we'll see a little of both styles (i.e., I mean in the "early" era).

Also like to stake out territory to the west on the other side of the large pond (okay, so it's an ocean bay). I agree with above that we may be not too far from southern extremities to the south (i.e., no jungle tiles in our starting position to the north? yet?)

Doesn't seem like most of us think too much of the Keshik. Will anyone build another Scout, or go straight up with Warriors? I expect that I'll go Worker---> something while I pre-chop for a settler. Not as worried, are we, about chopping too much forest, since we have the +3 health? Also, might go without slavery/ pop rush since the growth cap won't be on our capital so early (extra warriors would cover happiness cap; +3 health from Expansive trait).

Just my noobish random thoughts... corrections and help appreciated.

Good luck to all,
Adama
Military leader of the last remnant of the Human Race

I agree that on general Keshiks are awful.
On this map, they may have some merit, though. If we're going to research AH first, our starting techs + archery and HBR would enable 6-strength units very early.

Honestly, keshiks aren't that bad, especially since this is vanilla: they don't have the -10% city attack that's in Warlords and chariots don't get +100% against axemen. Chariots cost half what they do, but it's probably going to take more than twice as many chariots as keshiks to kill most units. It should be pretty easy to get keshiks to 10 xp against barbarians or in an aggressive strategy and then they can handle every other contemporary unit - combat II plus shock isn't unreasonable odds against spearmen and since copper/iron should be pillaged and the AI rarely makes more than 1 spearman per city, they shouldn't be a big problem.

The main problem is that it takes a LONG time to research horseback riding. Bronze working takes a fraction of the time and gives you axemen, chopping and whipping.

Is there some explanation for why I'm not seeing the initial screenshot in message #1?

Is there some explanation for why I'm not seeing the initial screenshot in message #1?It was there yesterday, but you're right, now it's gone ...

probably because of the server move, they haven't finished re-establishing all the links to the server.

Is there some explanation for why I'm not seeing the initial screenshot in message #1?
Server move. Its back now.

Hmm...I don't know. I sort of like that spot to be honest. No, nevermind. I'll likely do 1 E as well.

So I started thinking about what I would improve after settling 1E of starting position:
Net +/- on food = -12
( assuming tile 2S of scout is forest/grassland )
Cow, Workboat, Lighthouse, (2)wines = +12 eventually
:lol:
Seems the designers want us to cottage spam.
(3) mines and (8) cottages then - and a very strong desire for CivilService, but probably can't slingshot it on Monarch even with all the trees to chop and Gold for adventurer.
:(
but I might run a few test games to see if it is even theoretically possible.
so . . .
AH first for cow and hopefully a horse [we can't be that lucky] then probably BW [whip/copper->axe] Pottery Writing

Build Worker / Settler<->Warrior / Boat / Granary

At least that is my starting rough plan.

(3) mines and (8) cottages then - and a very strong desire for CivilService, but probably can't slingshot it on Monarch even with all the trees to chop and Gold for adventurer.
:(
but I might run a few test games to see if it is even theoretically possible.


I'd be pretty surprised if anyone achieves CS slingshot on monarch without something like gold.

Should just about be doable on the adventurer save, with their bonus gold. But it'll still take some skill - arguably sufficient skill that anyone who does pull it off probably shouldn't have been playing adventurer in the first place :mischief:

Just looking at WorldBuilder files, and tried to set a tile with 2 bonus resources on it. I half expected it to crash the game when I started it (it's quite easy to do that with bad editing changes) - but it actually ignored one of the resources and only used the one I named second.

I hate to be a wet blanket - but I don't think it can actually be done.


Oh OK. Y'live and learn :) Thanks for taking the trouble to try it out, AgedOne.

If you want the CS sling on monarch and there isn't much gold nearby, try getting Writing ASAP and running scientists. You won't get many settlers out (usually just one), but I've probably got 75-80 % success rate with this strategy.
In this case, however, there are just so many techs you'll want before writing: Fishing, AH, Mining, BW. Makes it harder to decide which techs to start with and which will have to come later. Fishing is often a good start imhso.

I love reading this thread to see how the professionals think. As someone whole only plays 1 or 2 games a month at best, I really appreciate all of your thoughts. :)

Based on what I've read, I think I'm going to settle 1E and have my scout head S at first to see what's down there. Then probably try AgedOne's suggestion; see who's on the continent with you and use the available technology to wipe them out. :)

G

<- Not professional; just opinionated. :p

I still haven't started this game, but probably will later today.

Been toying with the idea of a Gt Prophet-fuelled CS run. You might know the drill: Build Stonehenge and Oracle as fast as you can in the same city. Research lots of appropriate techs that the GP might want to give you (avoiding Masonry, cos that spoils it). Take either MC or CoL as your freebie from Oracle, and then use the imminent GP to lightbulb CS.

Tried it a few times in dummy runs, and seems to get me there pretty fast. Not as fast as a true slingshot, but as various have pointed out, that might not be do-able at Monarch unless conditions are perfect.

What I feel, from these practice runs, is that it seems to detract from growing my empire at the right rate, unless I'm careful, so I end up having CS, but not enough cities or military, which can be scary.

There's also the possibility that there are no metals nearby, which means you went to all of that effort just to be able to run Bureaucracy - and that wasn't the main aim!

@DynamicSpirit
No bother doing that spot of WB. I was in there anyway, looking at what kind of land-masses you normally get from these starting conditions.

The one thing it taught me to be wary of was expecting to see just 2 continents. These settings can result in 3 or 4, with the high water level splitting large continents into two.

@=FC=Gorgon
Yow! I'm certainly not a professional. :D My results speak for themselves. :(
However, I am learning!

I may have missed this somewhere, but what is the purpose of this mod?

if you go to this link, it will explain much about the mod to you:
HOF Mod Info (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=216540&page=2#34)

if you go to this link, it will explain much about the mod to you:
HOF Mod Info (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=216540&page=2#34)

Interesting, but that really doesn't answer the question. That describes the contents of what's in the mod, but not the WHY.

I'm not so much interested in the blow-by-blow description of the mod, but "What does it do for ME?" Why do we have to load the HOF mod for GOTM games? Would I want to load it for ALL games I play?

As an extension of that thought, why do mods do in general? Do they change the way the game is played? How far can they go? For example, could you set warriors to have 1000 hit points and be basically invincible??

WHY?
The HOF mod makes many little things easier that would otherwise be extremely tedious. For example, every ten turns, one should check to make sure that the enemy is paying you as much gold as possible for that extra resource, otherwise you should renegotiate. Also, you should be keeping track of exactly what everyone is researching by constantly checking their trade screens, so that you can continue to research a technology that is good for trading.

Those kinds of things are painful and time-consuming, but if one person does them in a competitive game, then everyone else sort of has to in order to compete. The mod allows us to play in relative calm by making those things easy, while still being competitive and preventing things like "well sure you won, but I could have done that too if I felt like keeping written records of everyone's technology path."

Maybe that's not the purpose, but it's what I [author of very few posts] decided. Am I right?

Interesting, but that really doesn't answer the question. That describes the contents of what's in the mod, but not the WHY. I'm not so much interested in the blow-by-blow description of the mod, but "What does it do for ME?" Why do we have to load the HOF mod for GOTM games? Would I want to load it for ALL games I play?The link he gave tells you what the mod does. Only you can answer whether you will find it useful, and he gave you the info for you to determine that.

I find it very very useful, and by the way it's also very very easy to install (only takes 5 minutes and a few mouse clicks to install and configure). But I can't say if you will feel the same, only way to get answer to that question is for you to try it.

There was quite a bit of discussion about it when the HOF mod was first made compulsory for GOTM's. I can't remember when that was or where that thread might be, but if someone can come up with a link to that, you might find that discussion helpful, because people then were asking the same questions.

Personally I was skeptical and a little annoyed about it being compulsory, but have thoroughly enjoyed using it since. I find the way it arranges information very helpful. It's information you can get anyway, but the mod makes it easier to get. The HOF mod also makes it easier for the staff to be sure you didn't cheat in a GOTM! I use the HOF mod for all games I play simply because of the information layout which I really like.

The mod itself is also quite unobtrusive and stays right out of the way if you don't want to use it.

Interesting, but that really doesn't answer the question. That describes the contents of what's in the mod, but not the WHY.

I'm not so much interested in the blow-by-blow description of the mod, but "What does it do for ME?" Why do we have to load the HOF mod for GOTM games? Would I want to load it for ALL games I play?


It does answer your question, but perhaps not in the way you wanted it answered.
"What does it do for me?"
It gives you access to a ton of information that would generally require a lot of note-taking and micromanagement to either gain access to, or be able to benefit from. It also allows you to have the game alert you when certain events either happen, or are about to happen, eg. your city is about to grow/be unhappy/be unhealthy/pop borders; this leader has new technology/xxx gold/xx gpt for trade.

"Why do we have to load the HOF mod for GOTM games?"
It adds a layer of security to the saved files that allows the staff to more accurately, and with less effort, ensure that we have a fair and level playing field, since the GOTM is partially a competition.

"Would I want to load it for all games I play?"
I don't play games without it anymore...I had never played with it until a little before it became required, and I immediately was hooked on the wealth of information I had access to that I couldn't ever have made use of previously.

The main portions of my link that would help you understand this are the enhanced advisors and civ4lerts sections.

It also fixes one major bug in vanilla Civ4 (that is also fixed in Warlords 2.08, so you don't need the HOF mod for that).

There was quite a bit of discussion about it when the HOF mod was first made compulsory for GOTM's. I can't remember when that was or where that thread might be, but if someone can come up with a link to that, you might find that discussion helpful, because people then were asking the same questions.
I believe this (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=189069) is the thread Mad Professor was speaking of.