This is the pregame discussion thread for GOTM26-Asian Melee. Feel free to share insights as to how to approach the game based on the information given in the game announcement page. The starting saves will be made available on December 1, 2003. Allowing for the hollidays, you will have until January 7, 2004 to submit your game.

Once you download the starting save game file and open it to begin play you may no longer participate in this discussion thread.

Game Announcement Page for Gotm26-Asian Melee (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/gotm26_han.shtml)

Minimap:

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/2003images/gotm26_start_mini.jpg

Starting Positions:

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/2003images/gotm26_start_dyes.jpg

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/2003images/gotm26_start_spices.jpg

They are my most hated enemies. Now I have to love them! After playing the Koreans against them and now Oda against them in redux I have truly developed a dislike for them.
Well, maybe some serious butt-kicking with them will change my mind.

Interesting concept. Without scouts deciding on a capital may be difficult, but since we start spread out getting FP early and setting it up in the second core city sounds like a good idea.

There are no additional setup files required to play this game beyond the Gotm25 game packs.
Whoo!

Anyway, back to evaluating the start positions...both have a luxury, both have a river, both have coast nearby, both have 1 bonus grassland, one hill, and one mountain. The only difference is that the Spices start has more forest around it. We won't know which is the upper or lower start until we actually get the starting save. The ultimate challenge in my opinion is figuring out which of the two coasts actually is linked up to a body of water, and which is just part of a lake.
Of course, it could be that both are linked to the ocean or both are the shores of small lakes, but that wouldn't be like the GOTM Team to do that. And if one was a lake it would probably be 22 tiles so they both show up as salt water.

Looks brilliant! It'll take a bit of thinking to get my head around this one and I must finish conquering the world first as Temujin.

By the way, no offence Aeson, but where is cracker? I hope he hasn't left yet and this is just an early US thanksgiving.

ciao

I hate to move workers if I don't really have to, but the BIG diarrhea in this game is to understand where we are?

Are those waters fresh or lakes? Easy rightclick.

One way way to use the workers is to move them onto the mountains, it would give us a better view of the inland, But that would cost us worker turns. Just pray there is a cow or something if you do this move, if not 2 good worker turns could be wasted.

Decisions, decisions! Two settlers are EVIL and against everything we learnt so far from GOTM. the temptation to reload is too big after failing the first steps!!

Deity. EVIL!

What settler will settle the capitol? EVIL!

10 + 2 minor Civs against us. EVIL!

And of course raging barbarians. EVIL!

The makers of this game are EVIL!

But we love ya:)

Space Race as winning condition? EVIL!

:)

Ciao!

Unfortunately I did not have the time to a proper GOTM25, but I played a bit to have a look at it.
I have PTW 1.27 and installed all that wa requested to play with the new UUs.
However, when I reached the scientific advance needed to have the first unique UU (I'm sorry I don't have the game here and can't be more precise), I never had the chance to build them, even if I also had all the necessary resources (horses and iron if I remember correctly). The Civilopaedia had the new units and told me when I could build them, but I had only the possibility to build the usual units.
What was wrong?
Would it be a problem for GOTM26?

Stefano

P.S: I'm sorry to repost: this originally appeared in the GOTM26 speculation thread but it seems disbanded now....

Moving the settlers on to the luxuries could be a smart move - having and extra content citicen at the start would allow the workers to do something more useful.
I'm betting we are given a starting warrier for each city so moving both to the mountains will help see the terrain.

Looking forward to it and the later submission date means I will have time to finish this one.

Wow,

TWO starts. Just when I thought I had my early game under some degree of control, out come the stops and I have to deal with two.
Both positions are evenly matched, the top one might be better as it is potentially more central. But with mystery landmass, both could be on two different continents for all we know, how would that be for evil? I really really hope they are on one continent. PLEASE... :)

Yesterday I speculated on what this game might hold in store for us (see speculation thread), but clearly my limited imagination is no match for the GOTM team - this is even more twisted. And I'm sure it's just the tip of the iceberg - Well done, guys!

The victory condition actually suits me well, I am much better as builder/researcher than as a warmonger and if I manage to survive the middle ages I usually manage to slingshot to a comfortable space race victory. But for that my main goal is always to become sole occupant of one nice continent and then stop expanding and concentrate on research. With 12 (10+2) opponents on a standard size map, that will be challenging as well.

One thing I will have to pay attention to is FP building. As one approaches the optimal number of cities (evenly divided between both locations, I guess, it depends on what terrain is revealed), one city in the non-capital cluster should start a FP early, while it is still productive. Timing will be crucial, and I am not sure both cores will be able to build up a good military for protection, and early expansion. This will play like two games at the same time, only one starting with much heavier corruption penalties. One might almost say, without raging barbarians and two minor civs to milk for at least ONE leader (for FP) the game could be even harder.

And do I sacrifice a worker to attempt a connecting road? Probably not, until I'm sure that they _can_ be connected by road...

I can't wait - forward the Han!

Hammurodi

PS: I'll definitely remain in conquest for this one - my respect to all of you who can keep up with predator or deity level in general - I'm usually toast much too quickly to enjoy the game on those levels. But gotm has already worked wonders for my overall game, it'll just be a question of time until I get tempted to try open.

I'm guessing, that at the separation distance of those 2 cities, the 2nd one is going to be completely corrupt... but still useful for advanced scouting, possibly a slow settler or 2 to secure vital resources...

Which one to choose is the million dollar question. On Open, you get bonus units in 1 or other city, and have to choose before downloading the saves, so don't get to make the worker moves before deciding... still better than no bonus units at predator! Whether to put the bonus units in the start or 2nd city is another awkward decision...

Now where are the mist prediction guys...

RL meant no time for Gotm-25, and I'm gutted to have missed out on that game. Looking forward to this one a great deal, feeling rested and ready to go!

It could be worth getting the bonuses for the city you don't want as the capital (if you are playing on open level). That way it somewhat compensates for the corruption this city will face. Then using the chests to get an early granary could allow the growth of the two cities to be similar. I guess researching pottery at 100% will be my first tech.
Decisions, decisions

Hi,

correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the starting units are ready assigned and you get no choice. Still, at least we have one worker for each city. and I might be willing to use them for two turns as early lookouts on the mountains.

Four more days to go, and it comes out on the monday, whatever will I do on the weekend? ;*)

Who said that the two cities have to be so far apart?

What if we bring the second settler back to the capital and build a city that will be much closer?

Clearly, having two cities far apart is one of major challenges in this game, but the second city with its huge corruption should be such a pain in the ass...

If we bring back the settler, we'll lose about 20 turns worth of shields and gold from the second city, but at Deity, chances are that it will not produce more than 1 shield+1 gold per turn...

So, instead of settling on the spot and after a long march through the rice fields, our settler could found a nice, productive city close to the capital...
...
...that's if the settler succeeds avoiding barbarian attacks...
...and if there is a land route between the two starting locations

Well, just another crazy idea...:crazyeye:

Decisions, decisions, decisions :undecide:

Hmm, Cybergogo, that actually sounds like an interesting topic to discuss...
I was worried also about the grim prospects of the use of an useless nonproductive and corrupted city far away from the capital... I do not see any reason for keeping a territory so far away, especially in early ages...
So it is NOT another crazy idea, actually...
:goodjob:

Originally posted by Hammurodi
correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the starting units are ready assigned and you get no choice. Still, at least we have one worker for each city. and I might be willing to use them for two turns as early lookouts on the mountains.
The anouncement says that open class players will have the choice between two savegames, with warrior + 3 chests at one or the other location. However I'm wondering how we are supposed to choose when we not even know which one is the northern, slightly more central location?!
Anyway, apart from optional hidden boni there are no real differences between the two locations. And if there are no cattle(-likes), expansion will be a pain in the ***. Both starting spots seem to have a total of 4-5 wood tiles. The upper one probably only has two grassland tiles, the lower one 3. But the outer tiles could also be hills. No flood plains in sight.

Which means: My first build has to be settler unless I want to end up with less than half a dozend cities at 1000BC. On the other hand, we can still hope for 4x cattle in the upper city radius, and up to 9x cattle in the lower city.

But this I doubt.

Really. ;)

Four more days to go, and it comes out on the monday, whatever will I do on the weekend? ;*)
Well, I will try to finish gotm25 in time. Been quite busy with both RL and C3C this month...

Two questions: If we settle on the very starting spots,
1. Do we need an aqueduct in the upper city and
2. Can we immediately irrigate the bonus grasslands? (yes I know it would be idiotic to actually do this; just curious if its possible)

Originally posted by gogoK
Hmm, Cybergogo, that actually sounds like an interesting topic to discuss...
...So it is NOT another crazy idea, actually...

Sure, if you don't mind wandering 10+ turns and then finding a nice little ocean.
And if you don't mind wandering into barb territory with one or none single warrior.

Originally posted by burkina
...The Civilopaedia had the new units and told me when I could build them, but I had only the possibility to build the usual units.
What was wrong?
Would it be a problem for GOTM26?

If you played some random game as Mongols that's perfectly normal. But if you played from the actual gotm25 starting saves, you should be able to build the first UU with Feudalism, horses and iron. If you were not, you probably will get problems with GOTM26, too. Make sure you installed the proper versions of everything including the starting save (there are packages for gotm21, 24 and 25, each different for vanilla civ and ptw).

But on technical problems you should generally PM or email Cracker (forum rules!)

Originally posted by karmina
Two questions: If we settle on the very starting spots,
1. Do we need an aqueduct in the upper city and
2. Can we immediately irrigate the bonus grasslands?

1. No. The river in the upper location counts as being adjacent to the starting tile.
2. Yes, once we have built a city on the starting tiles. The "waterways" usually go through a city.

This is unless something has been changed in cracker's game setup.

Rightclick any land tile and check the gold output. If a tile has no road or luxury or other resource, and does not already contain a town, and still gives 1 gold, then it must be adjacent to a river. This means that a town placed on the tile will not require an acqueduct.

Think twice about irrigating grassland while in despotism...

Hi,

@karmina, thanks, found it. Case of eyes wide shut... :)

I've just ran alexman's excellent corruption calculator and depending on the distance the other city will be between 54% (dist=15) and 72% (dist=20) corrupt, as long as these are the only two cities. It goes downhill after that. I am sure someone will go and count pixels and tell us exactly what the distance between the cities is, my feeling is closer to 15 than 20.

So the first build or two in the second city should be made to count, and if you are a wimp like me and have treasure in it (open/conquest), then wait until you have built one or two more cities before using it. My priority for the workers will be connecting the lux, then mine the bonus grassland (of course depending on what is revealed once I had a look around!)

Cheers
Hammurodi

"I've just ran alexman's excellent corruption calculator "

Where can I find this corruption calculator?

Originally posted by karmina
Sure, if you don't mind wandering 10+ turns and then finding a nice little ocean.
And if you don't mind wandering into barb territory with one or none single warrior. [/B]

Well 10 or 15 turns is not so much actually. You will still have a big advantage, as you CANNOT have a second settler in ten turns in a normal one-starting-settler game. Furthermore, the closer to the capital, the better, even if there is an ocean five or ten tiles away from the starting spot of the second settler.
wandering into barbarians is a risk that everyone has to decide for himself to take or to not take, I will probably be willing to take that risk...
What do you think will be the use of second slow nonproductive city so far away? Even if you use the bonus chests there to help the starting production, it will help with 10-max 30 shields.
Explain please, I am probably missing something.

If you were going to move one of the settlers, would you be better off moving the lower settler up towards the center start, or the center one down?

If you don't move one of them, the only thing i can really see the far city being good for is popping out warriors or scouts. If there are barbs or a minor civ around and you can luck into a leader, and then get the FP built up there, than maybe that city will end up being more useful sooner rather than later. I don't see any possible expansion at the secondary city otherwise.

but then again, i'm a newb ;)

The second city will not have bad corruption before you found a city near your first core, so it can still build warriors and such at a decent pace.
Using the second settler as a scout and move him closer to "home" is a waste I think, you can build a couple of warriors instead.
Raging barbs will be a problem for a city far away from the core, so every warrior you can crank out before you settle a third town will be essential.
The maps are EVIL, if you settle cities by the shore and they are sea, you only have one food for a number of turns. I will probably move inland to use the bonusgrass for maximum growth (I bet there will be no cows there, not with 2 settlers)
The settlers are placed far away from each other, so there are possibly someone in between, hopefully a minor civ with 20 starting units, but a good sport :)
My second city will build a warrior for scouting, then a worker for connecting the 2 cities, then warriors for barbcontrol.

cracker said we have to make choices for our opening turns in this game, and YIKES! wasn't he right. But I stick to my "inland-theory". I just hate to waste worker turns.

Originally posted by jsut
If you were going to move one of the settlers, would you be better off moving the lower settler up towards the center start, or the center one down?

It depends on many things.
Gold from the luxuries for example. I would rather prefer to keep the settler that is located near the one that gives more cash, as it is scarce in the early ages...
Sea - we cannot see is there any close to one of the two.
It is always good to be able to control a part of the world with a dead-end (I mean close to the poles or to a long sea shore), as you don't have to defend youself on too many opposite war fronts later in the game. This is especially true in the case of a game with numerous opponents like this one. Being located in the center of the map (as in the arab and mongolian games) is a challenge to many for the reason mentioned above. At least this is true for earlier pre-railway wars and not necessarily true for the skilled players. Which would probably prefer the central position (which probably gives you the opportunity to get fast contacts with most of the civs around you - if there is no sea around, that is).

If you don't move one of them, the only thing i can really see the far city being good for is popping out warriors or scouts. If there are barbs or a minor civ around and you can luck into a leader, and then get the FP built up there, than maybe that city will end up being more useful sooner rather than later. I don't see any possible expansion at the secondary city otherwise.

but then again, i'm a newb ;)

That is not necessarily true, you can get a leader, but sometime you don't get one trough the whole game no matter how hard you try. For example in my mongolian game after so many wars and so many elite forces sent in combat with the hope of getting a leader, I got my first and ONLY one around 1500AD...

But this suggestion in theory is a viable one:goodjob:

yeah, i know all about not getting leaders ever. i don't think i've ever gotten more than a single one in a game ;) probably because i don't tend to be that agressive.

I just pulled the images up in photoslop to have a look, my first guess is that the lower start point in 15 tiles south, and 5 tiles east of the higher one. I could be off though. I also think that the order in the initial post is reflects their layout on the map (ie, dyes is the middle start, spices is the southern start). i'm making that guess based on the colours of the squares in the minimap. of course, i could be completely wrong.

Well here are my thoughts for what they are worth.

Starting Position:

An important part of this is that both starting positions are VERY similar. Both have a mountain immediately adjacent, both have a river immediately adjacent, both have a bonus grassland immediately adjacent and both have a luxury immediately adjacent.

The body of water is also a similar distance from the starting point of each.

Now, would cracker and company go to all the work of creating this gotm with the idea that we should march our second tribe all the way to the first? NO, that is not his style.

That means there must be an advantage, or at the very least a reason to settle in those general areas. More on this below.

I have tried peeking under the mist but either there is nothing that I can see or cracker et al. have gone to some lengths to obscure any goodies. My bet is that it is the former and thus another design reason for us to stay put.

I blew up the mini map to see if I could determine which starting position was which but to no avail... too grainy.

Given the title of this gotm "A Tale of Two Cities" I really think the game is designed for us to go initially with a dispersed kingdom.

Scouting:

I will be playing Conquest level (Deity is too much for me) so I will have a Spearman in each starting location so the spearman can go onto the mountain for a first view.

Workers:

Barring a sighting of Xanadu, my workers will connect my two "citiies" with the luxuries. We are industrious so that will be four turns. Then back to the grasslands (one move), road (two), then mine (three). so in ten turns I'll have a luxury in the woods with a road and a bonus grassland mined and hooked up.

Water Body:

I think... ack. The view from the mountains will not help, but the worker on the dyes will have a better sight line. So I agree with the earlier comment that a right click on the water body will tell us all we need to know.

It would be nice if it was a connected coastline to the other tribe.

Corruption:

I agree with the analysis above that corruption in our second city will begin to be unbearable as our cities increase and therefore to save the chests for turns when our production drops (for the Predators this is a completely useless statement I know) and we need to get that temple or grainery.

Initial Builds:

2nd City - Warriors... and lots of them. We have gold to burn and I think we will need to fight our way to the capital clearing a route and building towns along it.

Capital - Warriors and start toward a grainery? What about a barracks?

I don't see either of these sites/areas as settler factory material.

Other Thoughts:

China is/was known as the Middle Kingdom. It is the fourth (or third, I forget) largest country in the world. Our mini map starting position puts us into a central position and can result in a large kingdom.

The 10 rivals will, I hope, be scattered around the outside, while the two minors will be between our cities. Historically, China was a collage of competing smaller kingdoms until the Han unified most of what we now know as China. Then there were the barbarians!

The game announcement makes several references to good diplomacy and betrayal and treachery. I think a quick brush up with Sun Tzu and Lao Tzu is required.

Summary:

Unless my Spearmen find a better site, I will probably start where we are (although moving the settler to the water and still adjacent ot the dyes would be good... Shanghai? but that would lose the bonus grassland).

Workers to the luxuries and then the bonus grasslands.

Build warriors.

Trust that cracker et al. have designed this layout a) to work b) to make sense and c) to be fun.

Ciao

To try to resolve which start is which, instead of blowing up the minimap I reduced the start images to the size of the minimap areas and then compared them to the minimap as published. It looks to me as if spice town is the southern site and dye town is to the north, FWIW.

I missed out on several GOTM's and just made a come-back by submitting a marathon GOTM25. Now this one is a must-have. I can't wait!

Two starting settlers should give a big advantage. There seem to be too many negative vibrations here about how difficult the second settler will be to exploit. He's a bonus. Make the best of him, but you still have a basic job to do around your capital. As someone has said, you don't usually pop your first settler until turn 20 or so. Moving him around for 20 turns still gives you two settlers at turn 20 instead of one. o you get to choose which start to use? Do your best to choose between them logically. If they come out even when we have all the information available from starting unit moves then toss a coin, whatever. I doubt if Cracker has made two identical start options into a huge lottery. He usually avoids making random dice rolls by player or RNG into game-breakers.

For information, we recently ran an SG using the GOTM23 start. During that game our team popped a settler out of a hut about 20 turns away from our start. We had a choice - build a corrupt city with poor defences near the ex hut, or trek back towards our capital and settle in a location near enough to contribute to our core. We chose what I believe to be the correct option - to move back towards home. In that situation, of course, we knew there was a land route back home, and we knew part of the terrain along that route, although we used the journey to push back some fog. Sure there were a couple of interesting moments with barbs, but fast footwork and luck pulled us through. This time we don't know we can get home, but so what? We'll know a lot more about the landscape and we'll know more about where we want to settle, whether that's near our capital or back where we started or somewhere else.

The Han (a.k.a Chinese) have got to be a great civ to play, having fought against them in GOTM25, where the AI totally wasted the opportunity. They are industrious/militaristic. Cheap barracks and fast workers. The Rider is my favorite kind of attack unit - faster than a speeding bullet. I enjoyed the Cataphract/Ansai Warrior in GOTM23, and a Rider has all that plus stronger defence. Riders arrive early in the Medieval, so if your Ancient Age development has been sound you get a Golden Age at a great time to sling shot research with a few 4 turn projects, and they upgrade to Cavalry.

I haven't worked out the details of how to approach this yet, but...

This might be an ideal setup for a fast Palace jump.

I.e. build up population in one location to serve as the final Palace location; build a Forbidden Palace as soon as possible near the other location, jump the Palace, and have two productive regions running sooner than is normally possible.

Yes it does look like the GOTM team have set it up so that we will be considering a Palace jump. But why? I have a sneaking suspicion that we are alone on an island with no potential for generating GLs for the FP. The starting bonuses given to open class would virtually guarantee victory on a standard map for most of the Open class players at diety - there must be some sort of nasty twist aside from the probably SiD level tech rate arising from the number of AI rivals.

I also though about a palace jump, but it really depends on a number of circumstances. But I will definitely consider this option, and probably start on the FP as soon as possible.

Ok here is a question for corruption experts - If you have a number of cities at the same distance from your capital for RCP purposes and a similar ring around the forbiden palace city, at the same distance, will you have low level coruption in all cities or will the palace be more effective than the forbidden palace giving high corruption around the second city? I guess I am asking, is the forbidden palace identical to the palace for corruption purposes?

just a funny thought....

what if one location is on an island (Taiwan-like)
and the other on the main land (China-like)

....in the end, till now, most GOTM-games were very close to the real world history.....

Originally posted by killerloop
just a funny thought....

what if one location is on an island (Taiwan-like)
and the other on the main land (China-like)

....in the end, till now, most GOTM-games were very close to the real world history.....

Now, that's a very interesting thought.... and a rather chilling one:eek:

THIS will be really EVIL ...

But then, hey, no one said it should be easy:)

Can't wait for the save game and the first moves around the starting locations - until we have discovered a few more tiles, all the strategical options will be open.

As someone suggested, I might move the workers over the bonus ressources to see the surrounding tiles and then decide where to locate the capital (even if for the moment I would rather choose the central start, which seems to be the one with the dyes)

Judging from the visible tiles, we might not be able to set up a settler factory :cry: ...unles there are a few hidden cows.

Well, whatever the fog might hide for us, once again Cracker and Co have brought us a new challenge and a GOTM that should be lots of fun:goodjob:

Originally posted by BerzerkerJoe
If you have a number of cities at the same distance from your capital for RCP purposes and a similar ring around the forbiden palace city, at the same distance, will you have low level coruption in all cities or will the palace be more effective than the forbidden palace giving high corruption around the second city? I guess I am asking, is the forbidden palace identical to the palace for corruption purposes?
The Forbidden Palace ought to be identical to the Palace for corruption purposes but, due to a bug, it is not. This thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=62851) has a description of the bug. There might be a chance to exploit the bug in this GOTM with the two settler start. I'm not sure, I don't intend to deliberately take advantage of it, to me it seems outside the spirit of GOTM.

Fortunately, in the specific situation you describe where there is a ring at the same distance around each of the FP and the Palace, the rank bug will have no effect. The corruption for all of the cities will come out the same (due to the RCP build), just as if the bug didn't exist at all.

Originally posted by gozpel
Are those waters fresh or lakes? Easy rightclick.

Don't know whether someone has responded to this, but No, it's not so easy. You first have to move to expose the water tiles fully. A right click as they are in the start pictures would give you a "no information" response.

Originally posted by AlanH

Don't know whether someone has responded to this, but No, it's not so easy. You first have to move to expose the water tiles fully. A right click as they are in the start pictures would give you a "no information" response.

Yikes, what did I think? :scan:

I blame the heat!

Hmm, I have never played a game with 2 settlers. I can see this would be interesting.

Originally posted by SirPleb

The Forbidden Palace ought to be identical to the Palace for corruption purposes but, due to a bug, it is not. This thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=62851) has a description of the bug. There might be a chance to exploit the bug in this GOTM with the two settler start. I'm not sure, I don't intend to deliberately take advantage of it, to me it seems outside the spirit of GOTM.

Fortunately, in the specific situation you describe where there is a ring at the same distance around each of the FP and the Palace, the rank bug will have no effect. The corruption for all of the cities will come out the same (due to the RCP build), just as if the bug didn't exist at all. This won't matter though, I think... as you can't play the GOTM with Conquests anyways...

Originally posted by Grey Fox
This won't matter though, I think... as you can't play the GOTM with Conquests anyways...
Actually, it is the other way around :) This matters because we can't play with Conquests. In Conquests this particular bug has been fixed, at the cost of introducing yet another corruption related problem, but that's another story :)

Thanks for the advice SirPleb, sounds like a patch should be made to cover this exploit. It would certainly create an unfair advantage to a player utilizing this bug, especially in this GOTM!

Open Class--PTW 1.27f

The two sites are virtually identical so this doesn't help in choosing a save file for the Open class. The only other piece of information is the minimap. Since the northern site is more central, I expect it will have more neighbors. The higher production of the capital will be needed more there then.

As mentioned by others, the treasure chests will be more valuable at the second, more corrupt site. I will, therefore, take the units at the southern site.

As far as using the chests, grabbing land is always the first priority so I'm planning to use them to help build settlers. Shields will be harder to come by than food so a granary is not as good.

A palace jump definitely sounds like a good idea. Setting up two good disperse cores and building to the modern era will be important for getting the ship. Trading will be crucial.

Research will start at max towards Pottery, then zero or min towards Republic.


Confucius himself had a simple moral and political teaching: to love others; to honor one's parents; to do what is right instead of what is of advantage; to practice "reciprocity," i.e. "don't do to others what you would not want yourself"; to rule by moral example (dé) instead of by force and violence; and so forth. Confucius thought that a ruler who had to resort to force had already failed as a ruler -- "Your job is to govern, not to kill" (Analects XII:19). [from http://www.friesian.com/confuci.htm]

Good luck to all!

Sheesh!!

I go away for a couple of days and Crackers gone, the GOTM has 2 settlers and Bush is still President.

My first thought, since I'm playing open class (1 extra warrior + 3 treasure chests) is to add the bonus units to the southern settler group and send that group on a NE route home. I'll move the worker east to check for a better spot for my capital. If none are found I'll settle in place and the worker can connect the dyes to boost the happiness, then move to improve local tiles. I’ll research at max for pottery while building a couple of scouting warriors. After scouting the local terrain, I'll be able to decide which city is going to be for settlers and which is for military as well as probable city placement for my nearest cities. When the wanderers arrive I'll found a second city and use the 3 chests as a production boost in one of the cities for a granary. I've found I like the spacing of a 4-8-12 RCP setup, so I'll probably settle the arriving city somewhere S on the 4 ring. The other city will build a barracks and start pumping out veteran warriors and one available veteran horseman. Hopefully, I'll be able to trade around to get the rest of the 1st level techs and be able to find out if/where the iron & horses are. I'm planning on a late Ancient Age Swordsman war against any weak neighbor(s) using 10-15 units for growing space.

Things likely to change this plan:
If this map turns out to have as much room as GOTM 25
If the 2 groups are on separate islands
If there is a 'sweet' spot (lots of luxuries) found along the way
Lots of barbarians (though usually no barbs until after 3000 BC)
Finding neighbors 'too close'

Building in place at both locations, with the capital to the North. Alas, the loss of Cracker... I hope that this doesn't spell the end of QSC!

I like the idea for the Palace Jump. I'll probably settle in both places (moving workers first to see if there's any better place to move to nearby), and use the 2nd city to build warrior-scouts and see what's around, maybe make new and different contacts, etc.

Since it is Deity, I have to recommend that when the AI makes a demand, you pay it!! This way you wont have 5 civs all at war with you 2 turns later. :)

I hope this deity game is quicker than GOTM 20 which took forever. I am sure Cracker meant us to settle at both sites, and I will respect this. A palace jump sounds good; I've never done one before.

I will play predator just so I don't have to work out what to do with treasure chests.

Offa, this is the second time you've made me laugh today. I hope you and Samildanach keep up the good work.

It is a Melee, I bet all civs have 2 settlers far apart just like us so that we all have two cores thus
- communication issues
- diplomacy is a must

It is going to be fun :D

Most of you have probably already started, so maybe this is useless, but it looks to me like the minimap clearly shows which start is which.

The northern start is the dye start, The southern is the spice.

evidence:
The northern start minimap has the dark spot on the east corner. (This would be the forest with the dye)
The southern start has a light northern tip with a darker center. (The northern tip is the plains, the darker part represents the forests)

This looks like a clear time to scout. If you have chests, use them to scout. If not I would waste a worker move in hopes of finding some some guidence of which one of my cities should be capitol, and maybe even some food bonus.

Don't know if I'll find time to play this, but it does look interesting.

Glad to see you agree with my conclusion, posted on the previous page. :p

Originally posted by AlanH
To try to resolve which start is which, instead of blowing up the minimap I reduced the start images to the size of the minimap areas and then compared them to the minimap as published. It looks to me as if spice town is the southern site and dye town is to the north, FWIW.

I am sort of exhausted by the Crackers gotm pace and constant wars. This time I want to try a peaceful game aiming not to rob the AIs and let them do the research as fast as possible for a rapid finish. May be crush some minor opponents with Riders. Starting locations look great and there should be something for early expansion probably at both locations. There always was some bonus resource and this gotm should not be an exclusion.

It would be nice to know the Jasons score coefficients before the game starts. Otherwise it is still possible that warmongering can give a better score.

There are so many options as to the second settler that it seems almost impossible to make an active decision. No one (I think) has mentioned a Forbidden Palace built from scratch, so I will brainstorm about it a bit.

Initially, the non-capital will have a good ranking v/s corruption, but I doubt that it will even bring in 2 shields/turn. There will be no roads to the capital for a long while and I believe this also influences corruption negatively. On the other hand, three warriors will surely be enough to fend off barbarians and deter other civs, so the maximum time a hand-build will take is 230 turns + anarchy turns. That means around the year 1200 AD and is way too late.

One can also move the settler some 5 turns closer to the capital to get it within a second RCP ring. But then it's good-bye to a luxury.

If I was not playing predator I think I would move the 2nd settler with protection from the free warrior. But someone said barbarians don't tend to appear before 3000 BC, so maybe it will work on predator too. If I do this and find a goodie hut on the way, I will probably stalk around in my room for an hour before I can decide how to safely pop it!

I think I will try RCP5-5.5 around the capital in this game, just to ensure some big, strong core cities. I tend to have RCP4 or even RCP3, but since I usually don't manage to build a well-structured second ring anyway, I think it will be a better choice for me to try RCP5 and maybe have room for more cities in that ring instead. One advantage with RCP5, seldom mentioned, is that the workers get to improve tiles well inside the borders for a bigger part of the time. Another advantage is the free tiles that you get between the capital and the core town while the capital is a 2 in the culture ranking (10-98 c).

Does anybody know more about if/why barbarians don't show up until 3000 BC?

Ignore this post...

I just looked at this game and it looks really awesome. I think I may give deity a try again. I also probably will settle in the starting positions with the capitol to the north(unless thats what they want me to think.;) )

I don't know for sure if I will play open, but I may as well. Good luck everyone!!

I'm thrilled with this GOTM.

This is the kind of diversity that makes playing the GOTMs interesting.

It's mentally tough right from the beginning (even before that actually when you consider that, at the time of posting, I haven't even seen the download yet), knowing full well that if you make the wrong decision, you'll kick yourself for it later on.

I've struggled in the last few GOTMs (Mongols, Korea) but I'm absolutely and positively excited with the thought of playing this one.

If it was Cracker's last effort before throwing in the towel, then thankyou (already). 'Way to go!?!