This is the third game spun off from ScoutX (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=92492&page=1) .

Roster
Now in order-of-play:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/gold_jumpwings.gif SesnOfWthr
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/silver_jumpwings.gif bed_head7
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/gold_jumpwings.gif scoutsout
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/silver_jumpwings.gif Detlef_Richter
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/gold_jumpwings.gif romeothemonk
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/silver_jumpwings.gif Merum

Moved to Vanilla Team (Roster B)
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/silver_jumpwings.gif Slicknick1136

Computer problems/back to provisional roster
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/silver_jumpwings.gif JavierLQ
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/silver_jumpwings.gifManwaring

The Start
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/scoutxc3c1.jpg

Game Settings
Software: [c3c] v1.22
Level: Emperor
Variant: No research, period!
Target Victory: Spaceship Launch (or Diplomatic?)

More to follow....

Variant Rules - No Research, Ever!
This means:
Science slider must be set to 0 at all times.
No Scientists may be hired (or tolerated) in any of our settlements.

We can, however, build Libraries, Universities & Research Labs for their cultural impact. The Great Library is also allowed but not manadatory (we'll just have to see how things look before deciding on this one).

General Game Rules
A lot of SGs use RBCiv (http://www.realmsbeyond.net/civ/eexploits.html), and I generally like them. The biggest differences between RBCiv and Game of the Month rules involve ship-chaining and Palace Jumping. These are allowed under GOTM rules, and disallowed under RBCiv. Though I personally don't regard ship-chaining as an exploit, we will play under RBCiv rules because I like the values and "spirit" of non-exploitative play that RBCiv tries to foster.

Ted's team is playing under an additional rule that they will not buy more than one worker from each AI before 1000BC. In CivIII Conquests, the AI places a higher value on their workers, so it is a lot more expensive to strip an AI of all of its workers. This rule is open to discussion, but worth considering.

More to follow...

Succession Game Etiquette Guide
Please do:
Let the team know if you're going to be unable to play for an extended period - holiday, illness, exams etc.
Post a "Got it" notice or ask for a skip within 24 hours of the save becoming available (I reserve the right to skip a player who hasn't responded after the 24 hour grace period is over).
Play and post within 48 hours of posting a "Got it". Additional time may be requested and granted for expected delays.
Write up a log of the events occurring during your turn and post it along with your save.
Provide notes for the next player as to the current situation and any immediate plans for the future - are those Caravels heading NE or SW? is that Swordsman fortified to heal or act as a lookout? Our forces are mustering for an attack on...
Feel free to pause and ask for advice, or simply discuss, if a situation arisies in the game and you're unsure of the best course of action.

Please do not:
Automate Workers.
Use City Governors unless the team has discussed and agreed their use.
Leave units on goto orders that will extend beyond your turn. (Auto-moving is bad form in SGs)
Make deals on your last turn. However, you should notify the next player if trading opportunities exist.
Make wholesale changes to build orders on the inherited turn without consulting the team. One or two is okay, and pre-builds may naturally get changed.

More to follow....

General Gameplay Notes

Reputation: we will need to protect our reputation very carefully in the early part of the game. Losing the ability to make GPT deals early on would make the game much harder.

Brokering: for those unfamiliar with the term it's just a shorthand for acting as "middleman" in deals - e.g. buying a tech from Civ A then selling it on to Civs B, D & E (hopefully picking up something else of value along the way). We'll need to be on the lookout for brokering opportunities at every turn so I suggest that we use CRPMapstat (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=52902) to monitor trade opportunities. This utility offers no information that cannot be gained by slogging through the Diplomatic screens every turn, it just presents the information quickly and simply.

Keeping the AI Isolated (from each other): again, this is an important factor that will help us to maintain our position as a broker. Even if we have to devote significant resources to keeping the AI isolated we will still benefit by controlling trade. Obviously this situation can only last until the end of the Middle Ages but it is well worth the effort!

Roads: we will need every gold piece we can lay our hands on in the early game so building roads has an even higher priority than normal. We really don't want our citizens working unroaded tiles.

More to follow...

Useful Links

Although this isn't a Training Day Game I plan to put links to useful reference material here.

Selected War Academy (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3academy.shtml) articles:

Monarch to Emperor: The Great Leap (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_montoemp.shtml) by Ision. This article is a must-read for any player working their way up through the levels. Together with his articl on "Wonder Addiction", the "Great Leap" artical has helped my game tremendously. It is no small coincidence that this game started as a "Jump School" concept.

Babylon's Diety Settlers (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_deity_settlers.shtml) by Bamspeedy. This is the groundbreaking work on settler factories, and a definite must read.

Training Day Game Threads

GK2 - The Training Day Experiment (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=81351) - hosted by Gengis Khan and Sir Bugsy, two players to whom I personally owe a great deal. This thread has an absolutely ridiculous post count (to which I have contributed) but a wealth of information and discussion to go with that post count. There is an index on the first page with links.

The Conquest Training Game (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=88183) hosted by Ainwood. Though a great deal more structured than GK2 (and not open to de-lurking) this thread also offers some great pointers.

GK2.2 - Trading Exercise (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=92382) - something that you can play to work on tech trading skills. Set up by DJMGator13.

More to follow...

Great,lets get this thing going.

Glad you're here Nick. We'll probably need just a little pre-game strategizing before we kick this off. This variant will be a complete about-face for me compared to the game we're playing in SGOTM2.

Another reason for discussion: Sesn and I are in a couple of SGs together, and he's the only one on the team that I've ever played a game with. It will take a little time to get to know you guys.

I'm thinking about asking either Sesn or romeo to play 20 to get us going. How do you guys feel about that?

Also - since we have a 3/4 mix of stronger players (instead of 3/3 in the other teams) I want to structure the "order of go" carefully. I know Javier is somewhat new to the game, but if I could get some feedback from the rest of you as to where you are with your game, it will help me. I'm going to have to put 2 of you Regent/Monarch level guys next to each other in the order.

I think that having an experinced player do the first 20 is important,seeing how the beggining of the game makes a great impression on how the game will go overall.

Checking in.

Are we trying to pad our post count there Scout? Five posts in a row, you should have gone for six and included all of our SG histories. :joke:

The one worker rule is a standard "LK rule", and although geared towards Vanilla, might be good to keep intact.

We may want to detail our rules a bit more clearly. For people who have not been in SG's, it may be a bit daunting to know what is/is not expected of them. Also, the RBC rules can be extremely restrictive, if followed in full, and probably a bit more than we're looking for.

Have no problem starting this thing, or passing to Romeo. Tell me what to do, O Captain, My Captain!!

For the newer guys, as we have four, we should at least wait for some input/critique before the second goes in a row.

To ALL: the greatest benefit of an SG is the learning that takes place during discussion of turns. Please don't hesitate to inquire about/critique our moves as well as your own. I'm sure Scout and Romeo will admit that we're all still learning too.

I agree that we need to go over the RBCiv rules. Are we staying away from the exploits, or staying away from anything dastardly whatsoever? Personally, I see nothing wrong with a few of the things considered dastardly, especially suicide galleys.

As for skill level, I wouldn't say I have mastered regent by any means, but it has been a long time since I have started a game on regent and had any doubt about whether I would win. Monarch is challenging, and the current COTM is typical of my Monarch games, with me even in tech, but with a smaller army than my neighbors, less culture, and less infrastructure. I am sure I will catch up towards the end of the Middle Ages, and surge ahead ath the beginning of the Industrial Age, barring unexpected disaster of some kind, but Monarch is still challenging. And my last trt at Emperor was ugly, though I have improved greatly since that attempt.

Exploits like RoP rape, sneak attacks, and free palace jumps are certainly a no no.

Suicide galleys, razing cities, and starvation diets are some of the things I was referring to...

Just checking in here..will read the rules on the links you posted.


Javier

@Sesn: You make a lot of good points in your posts. RE: "Padding", I plagiarized Ted's opening extensively, which is why there are 4 in a row. :)

RE: RBCiv: "Dastardly" is in, the clearly exploitative stuff is out. If you think RBCiv is over the top, we could play this by GOTM rules. I think ship-chaining and palace-jumping are the more important differences between the two. If you know of others, let us know.

@Team: On discussion between turns in general... this game may develop a little slowly and pick up as our strategy comes into focus and we get to know each other. It looks like we need a couple more team members to check in before we get started in earnest.

As long as dastardly is OK, then RBC should be fine.

In addition to waiting for check ins, we're also waiting for a couple "self-assessments".

I didn't want to open the save up yet, but what civ are we? Did I see someone say we were the Dutch?

I'd also like to see some discussion on what people think the first turns ought to be, once everyone is here.

BTW - I think this may be a tough weekend to start this up. I know that I personally won't be around Sunday (hosting a cookout), but I'll do my best to contribute regardless of liftoff date.

EDIT: difficult to keep straight everything I read in the scoutx thread, but didn't the game difficulty get bumped to DG?

I didn't want to open the save up yet, but what civ are we? Did I see someone say we were the Dutch?I took a peek, and we are C3C's most nerfed up tribe: The Vikings! :viking:

The reason I say nerfed up is this: The Viks changed from Expansionist-Militaristic in PTW to Seafaring-Militaristic in C3C. Both the Seafaring and Militaristic traits get cheap harbors... so there is something of a loss of synergy there.

However - for this variant and map type (I think it's going to be a 'pelago) we should be in good shape. Since we're going to be acquiring our techs through sums of gold and the "pointed stick", the research weaknesses of the Vikings won't be an obstacle.

EDIT: difficult to keep straight everything I read in the scoutx thread, but didn't the game difficulty get bumped to DG?Mad-Bax was kidding about that part, although the variant may make this a little harder than a straight emperor game.

On another note: If the Vikings are not your favorite tribe, there is a fair chance that your fav is in this game. We've got something like 13 AI civs in this game. :eek: :wow:

Actually, if you were to go back and dig up my only (thus far) hosted game, you'd see that we were able to use the Vikings, and especially the zerks, to great effect.

I'll find the thread later (SESN1) as that's also a good game for people who have the "I have no iron so I'm gonna lose" mindset.

/delurk

Scouts there's quiet a few threads out there to show you how powerful the viks can be on an archiplego. Just explore the waters early is the best bet... in my game I made it manditory to build a naval unit before even a warrior.... it helped ALOT for exploration... it basically gave us a 3 move coastal scout.

Also, you may want to shuffle the roster around a bit so there's a few monarch level players between each emperor level player.

Alerum - the roster in the first post is not the same as the turn order will be. I believe Scout intends to alternate between gold and silver wings, as much as is possible anyhow.

Agree that the three movement curragh is great for early contacts.

Also here's the aforementioned thread: SESN1 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=86765)

Okay - I overstated the 'nerfed up'-ted-ness of the Viks - and you guys are right, they can be a terror on a 'pelago map. I just think the trait combo is a little silly, and the PTW/Expansionist version of the Viks are a little easier to play well.

Do you guys think that someone who likes Marines so much wouldn't like the Berserks? :D

@Alerum - I do plan to re-shuffle the roster, and stick the Regent/Monarch level guys between the stronger players. You're suggestion is what I had in mind. ;)

This should be a really fun game.

To ALL: the greatest benefit of an SG is the learning that takes place during discussion of turns. Please don't hesitate to inquire about/critique our moves as well as your own. I'm sure Scout and Romeo will admit that we're all still learning too.
Nope, I know everything. Muhahaha.
Actually I will be out of town for a couple of days and would like to get slotted near the back of this roster. The No Research is going to make this annoying as with a commerce heavy start like this I would be the tech leader the entire game on Emporer.
I advocate the worker move to the first wines and mine. If nothing else is spotted I would settle us where we sit. Set research to CB at 0 so we don't pop a totally useless tech. Pottery is the next in order after CB. :p (We are the Vikings, not the Babylonians.) Since we start with Alphabet and WC, I would pump a very early curragh (1st build) and go looking for targets. On Emporer a Viking Archer rush is very deadly to the AI. Take 1-2 cities and get 4-5 techs. :mischief: Rinse and Repeat.
I advocate a very dense build initially, 8-10 tiles per city, as unit support is going to be what costs us immensely in this game. I do not advocate for the Great Library. Any techs it can give us are very easily pointy sticked.
I would have to see if there is BG under any of the resources to determine mine or irrigate. If no BG, then irrigate our wines, if BG then mine.
More to come after the first turn set goes out.

Hmm... let's see... I was thinking we should irrigate the wines rather than mine them. Those (and our city center) will be our only source of surplus food....

@Sesn: Would you feel comfortable playing 20 sometime in the next day or so while I figure out how I want to shuffle the order-of-go? (I also have some stuff to do in GK2 today...)

dosnt the bonus grassland have better stats.I think they have one shield more.

@Nick: yes, the bonus grassland gives 1 shield when unimproved, 2 shields when mined.

I'm going to go look for something that might make a good prep exercise before we get into this game. I think Sesn and Romeo must have both taken the weekend away from the computer.

Sorry we're getting off to such a slow start, but I'd prefer we all participate in discussion of strategy, etc.

Can't get a BG with any additional resource with random maps.

So do we want to mine the wines or the bg.No point in irrigating since under depotism fp over 2 are subtracted by 1.

So do we want to mine the wines or the bg.No point in irrigating since under depotism fp over 2 are subtracted by 1.

Nick: You're questions are good, and your thinking solid on irrigating the BG. We don't want to irrigate any grassland in despotism. My thought: Irrigate the wine (we get a modest food bonus for irrigated wine) and mine everything else green.

Back in a minute with something to tinker with while we wait for Sesn and romeothemonk to get back to this thread.

Dosnt the wine have 2 food points,like the bg?

Wine on grassland has base food of 3, so irrigated it would go to 4, and with despotism penalty, we get 3 food.

Dosnt the wine have 2 food points,like the bg?Yes, but if we irrigate it, we get 4 food. After the despotism penalty (1 food) we get 3 food from an irrigated wine, even in despotism.

Here's a little something that I want every team member to play. This is a little 'scenario' that DJMGator set up for the gang in the "GK2" Training Day Game. It's a little tech trading scenario. Since we won't be able to do our own research, tech trading will be a skill we will all need to work on in this game. Let's see if I can make this work, a link to:

GK2.2 Trading Exercise (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=92382) set up by Gator. Give it a download, and play it. I plan to.

Edit: Cross-posted with bed_head, who seems to be tracking nicely. :thumbsup:

I actually did that about a week ago. I managed to catch up in techs, but didn't fare quite as well as some others in making back the gold spent to get the techs. But a map of the world as it is known and five or six techs for three or four hundred gold isn't too bad.

Sorry I've been so quiet guys, had a cookout/party to host. :)

A quick point I'd like to make if no one has actually looked at the save. This is NOT a randomly generated map, MB created it. Therefore, it is possible that the wines are sitting on BG's, although it's probably unlikely.

I'll take a look at the trading exercise after I catch up with everything I've missed in the past couple of days.

Should be able to bang out the first twenty sometime later, if Scout still wants me to.

Having a go at the trading exercise. Here is my status at the beginning: (BTW the horrible interface is why I *HATE* playing large or huge maps with more than seven ai’s)

I forgot to check, but I believe we started with 775g?

Japan: Contact with babs, Philo, 1g
Zulu: Contact with babs, philo, math, lit
Egypt: contact with babs
Persia: contact with babs, philo, lit, CoL, Poly, 39g
England: contact with babs and greeks, philo, CoL, MM, Poly, 73g
Russia: contact with babs, philo, 21g
India: contact with babs, philo, poly
Rome: contact with greeks and babs, philo, CoL, poly

I see two monopolies at the moment: England – MM, Zulu – math.

Trade India 288g for Poly.
Trade Zulu Poly and 180g for math.
Trade Russia Poly for contact with babs, philo, and 21g.

Babylon: contact with greeks, CoL.

Trade Persia math for lit and 18g.
Trade England WM, lit, math, and 253g for MM.
Trade Rome lit and math for contact with greeks and WM.

Greeks: don’t have about eight contacts, and are down a bunch of techs. They do have 50g.

Trade greeks IW and philo for WM and 50g.
Trade Persia MM and contact with greeks and 11g for WM and CoL.
Trade England WM for 123g.
Trade India math, CoL, and lit for WM and my 288g back.
Trade Zulu MM for WM and my 180g back.
Trade Japan contact with greeks for WM and 1g.
Trade Egypt contact with greeks for WM.
Trade Russia math for WM.
Trade Babylon MM for WM.
Trade England WM for WM and 83g.
Trade Persia TM for his last 32g.

End result: Only England has any money left (120g), which means she was able to keep 47g of mine. I have all techs, WM’s, and contacts. I ended with 839g. I’m sure it’s possible to get the money from England too, but I refuse to go through this whole thing again.

Hey guys, checking back in. I would prefer to go in the 3 or 4 hole if that is acceptable. I will be out of commision next Monday through Friday (surgery), so slot me where I can get a set in before I go computerless for a week please.
I will greatly advocate a highly pointy stick method of research in this variant, and as I absolutely adore amphib assualts, I will try to teach everything that I know about them and how to pull them off succesfully and very devestatingly.

Well, Scout didn’t give me the go ahead after I asked, but since Romeo wanted a later spot, and Scout had mentioned one of us should start it….

For the record: Neither wine is on a BG.

I sit and stare at the edges of our vision before deciding on a first move. I’m glad I did, because I can see the tip of a wheat poking out of the fog 2 squares SW. That automatically dictates that our settler not move, so I send the worker to road a wine. This reveals a third wine to the north.

Before settling I set research to CB. Hopefully we’ll pop an early tech from the hut. BAH! We get maps instead. Trondheim is founded. Start building a warrior.

I’m not sure we can get a four turn factory out of this location as long as we’re in despotism. We can get the food by irrigating the wheat and a wine, but that only leaves two other tiles to work for shields (2 BG’s). Unless I’m missing something, we can’t get enough shields.

3950 bc (1) – Start roading the wines.

3900 bc (2) – still roading.

3850 bc (3) – Zzzz

3800 bc (4) – Wines connected, worker heads for BG.

3750 bc (5) – warrior -> curragh. Start mine on BG.

3700 bc (6) – Zzzz

3650 bc (7) – Not much.

3600 bc (8) – The west coast is not very far away, a mere five tiles. (the water only yields one food)

3550 bc (9) – All quiet….

3500 bc (10) – Our borders expand.

3450 bc (11) – We see another GH, but I have no desire to pop it.

3400 bc (12) – curragh -> warrior.

3350 bc (13) – See another wheat to the S. Certainly plenty of food around.

3300 bc (14) – Find some spices about 7 tiles S/SE of Trondheim. Warrior -> warrior.

3250 bc (15) – More spices 10 tiles S/SW. See some coast to the SE, but I’m unsure if it is connected to our island or not….

3200 bc (16) – Still not sure if the second island is really part of the first.

3150 bc (17) – See a Babylonian warrior on the second island. Trade Hammurabi WC, alphabet and 17g for BW and CB.

3100 bc (18) – See Babylon’s borders. It would seem that they are on a separate island. Warrior -> settler.

3050 bc (19) – I see what appears to be a chokepoint in the south of our island.

3000 bc (20) – I see some pink borders (China? Arabia?), but unfortunately, my time here is up.

Recap: we’re at parity with Babylon, with another trading opp right around the corner. We have 110g, making 7gpt. The curragh put us a little behind a normal build order, with the first settler due in 4. It appears that we are alone on the island, but that is not set in stone yet. i have already seen the first barb camp (on another isle), so I would not recommend sending settlers out unescorted. Be wary of popping huts, as they will most likely be barbs.

>>>SAVE<<< (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/ScoutC_3000BC.zip)

The yellow dot shows a 4 turn factory location, after border expansion.
"S" stands for spices.
"GH" stands for goody hut.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/ScoutC.JPG

I hope the border is Arabia, so that we can snag pottery from them. If we are on an island we should build another 1-3 curraghs in the next 2 turn sets. We can probably ignore military and go mostly a farmers gambit unless the barbs are really bad. I would attempt to get another worker out in the next set and get Trondheim to max growth. Irrigate the wines, mine the BG and possibly road a forest or two for shield production.
I would settle on Sens yellow dot, and then creep 2-4 cities down to the spices.

I agree with almost everything Romeo said, except ignoring the military. MB said the barbs were "regionally intense" and I have already seen a camp on another isle. I don't think we can afford to ignore the barbs, and I'd also like a few more units so that we can pop the huts sometime.

If no one has made an attempt by then, I'll whip up an early dotmap this evening.

Of course we're still waiting for a roster as well..(nudge, nudge)

As for builds in our capitol, I would suggest temple as a prebuild for a granary. Normally I would suggest the Colossus, but it would be a great waste of shields in this situation. I would also suggest actually building a temple in trondheim and have it oscillate around size 6. Trondheim might actually be a very good worker farm as it has high food and low shields.

I will be able to put a little more time into this in a day or two. My SGOTM2 team has reached "endgame" and it is incumbent on me to finish it up. Time to play "capture the UN"...

I will be able to put a little more time into this in a day or two. My SGOTM2 team has reached "endgame" and it is incumbent on me to finish it up. Time to play "capture the UN"...

Funny thing: That's where mine is too. I only got to this last night because my pc crashed twice on me, and I got annoyed playing "try to keep the comp running long enough to capture the UN".

Funny thing: That's where mine is too. I only got to this last night because my pc crashed twice on me, and I got annoyed playing "try to keep the comp running long enough to capture the UN".Well I don't know which team you are on, but I wish you luck, and look forward to playing alongside you again here. (Nice finish in EOC2, BTW!) Ours looks a little dicey right now. Wars in progress, MPP tripwires aplenty... and a stack of German Modern Armor, at the ready.

Well I don't know which team you are on, but I wish you luck, and look forward to playing alongside you again here. (Nice finish in EOC2, BTW!) Ours looks a little dicey right now. Wars in progress, MPP tripwires aplenty... and a stack of German Modern Armor, at the ready.

Team Alamo. We're much farther in the game than any other completion dates I've seen. Of course, we also had to eradicate the Chinese in order to induce the Japs into building the UN. *sigh* Ironically, the Japs are the only civ who aren't furious with us to this point, but that's about to change. Now they're almost done, and we'll see if our completely trashed rep will still allow us to get the vote from two of our early victims, Liz and Joan. I'll let you know tomorrow. ;)

Hey everyone.The game looks good so far.We should go for the yellow dot,but also i think we should get a city by the wheat to the south.I would love to play some turns but I dont have a computer at the moment.Im selling my computer for $1,600 so I can buy a 14 inch ibook(macs never crash!).So I wont be able to play for a bit.Just think,when I get my mac,ill be able to play civ everywhere...............(stops and thinks for a second,slightly letting out a sigh of bliss)..............Can't wait

Is Conquests available for Macs?

Is Conquests available for Macs?

The answer to that is a resounding "NO!"

If you are selling off your pc for a mac, I think you just inadvertantly withdrew yourself from the game. There is a possibility we could get you in on the vanilla team, but it may be too late.

I have made an inquiry into the Vanilla team for you, Slicknick. Will let you know if they think they can slot you in somewhere.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Is there ptw for mac?????

I think I could handle the next twenty turns, unless someone else is slotted. I will try to keep you all updated through my turns, when possible, so the ship can be righted if it goes off course.

Most times, the turns drop to ten per set after the first twenty.

I'll induce Scouts ire and say go ahead bed head. (heh heh - say that five times fast)

Well, I can wait for his okay. No big hurry, and there are still two other silver wings that we haven't heard from in a while.

Can you guys give me a little time to get back into this one? I played 2 demi-god SGs and finished SGOTM2 last night.

One thing's for sure... with this variant we need to handle some strategy carefully... and even some little things like worker move priorities.

@bed_head: I have no problem slotting you in next, but if you would wait just a little bit. I'd like a chance to take a good hard look at the situation... I've only skimmed Sesn's log.

@Nick: Have you already sold your computer? You do realize you can only play vanilla on a mac, right?

It appears we're missing a couple of the silver-wing crowd...

To the people who have never played an SG with me... which is everybody but Sesn.... I like a lot of discussion, especially in the early game. In SGOTM2 I had a couple of self-described regent level guys, and a couple of decent players (no GOTM medal winner types). By working together we achieved what (I hope) will be a respectable variant win in that game...

I know some of you guys are really chompin' at the bit to get started, but a little more patience now will make for a much more enjoyable game later. We can afford to make mistakes at emperor, but it's a lot harder to bounce back from them at this level.

Has everybody read Ision's "Monarch to Emperor" piece?

I have read most of the stuff in the war acadamy, including your marine article and review of the Ottomans, I think it was. I will look at Monarch to Emperor again, though.

Okay - I took a look at the save... We have a worker, 3 warriors, and a curraugh.

We have a setter in the queue due in 4, with growth due in 5. This is actually not bad... our regent/monarch level guys will need to get used to the unhappiness levels on Emperor.

There are a couple of Goody Huts we could pop, possibly getting a tech.... Or we could wait until the settler is finished, and maybe pop a settler.

My thoughts on build orders: After the settler is finished, start a curraugh. Sail it in the opposite direction that the last one departed.

Here are my thoughts on settling: (see dotmap in next post)

Top priority: 3 tiles east of the capitol, hilltop next to a cow. This would make an excellent site for workers and an occasional settler. Fresh water available (no need for aqueduct).

Second: 4 tiles SW of capitol, forest site. Good general city site. Fresh water.

Third: N-NW-NW of our capitol, hilltop next to wines, captures a wine that cannot be worked by our capitol. This is another food rich site. Fresh water. Coastal. Could be settled quickly once roads are complete over 2nd wine.

Fourth: 3 S of capitol, coastal, next to fish. No fresh water.

Next: Wheat sites (2 of them) both have fresh water. Might be able to settle one from cow town.

Lowest: The site to the far NW gets a fish, no fresh water. Low priority at this point. Might be able to settle from cow town.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/scout1C_DOTMAP.jpg

My thoughts on worker moves.

1) worker finishes road
2,3) Mine, road Bonus Grassland
4) road
5) Irrigate
6) Road

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/scout1C_WORKERmoves.jpg

The stuff I just posted is offered as suggestions. Anyone with questions or alternatives, feel free to chime in.

This build pattern may be tighter than some of you guys are used to. Tighter builds tend to work a little better at upper levels, for lots of reasons.

Order-of-Go:
SesnOfWthr - got us off to a good start
bed_head <-UP (any questions?)
undecided: on deck
scoutsout: warming up
undecided: waiting patiently
romeothemonk: On the bench
undecided: On the bench

So you're not concerned with trying to get a factory up and running then? I agree that the factory site is not as good overall, with a lack of a river, etc. However, I might even be in favor of disbanding the factory later, once all available land is settled. With the resources we have now, we could have a 4 turn settler and a 2 turn worker factory going simultaneously.

I would guess, if we can see the vast majority of our island now, that we'll end up with 12-15 cities on this island. If we're lucky, we may be able to grab a luxury on a nearby island as well.

Hello, comrades.

Sorry for making you wait this couple of days -my boss insisted that I should lead this progress meeting rather than looking after this SG in the forum... :rolleyes:

Anyway, everything is ready for Slicknick to join our roster. I suggest that you start reading the thread and looking at the GOTM25 and Mongol UU Treat Game to get familiar with the UUs. All links are in our thread and Alan offered his wisdom to support you in case of installation problems. Welcome! :)

@Karasu: Thanks for making room on your team for SlickNick. I appreciate that. (Once again, I owe you one!)

So you're not concerned with trying to get a factory up and running then? I agree that the factory site is not as good overall, with a lack of a river, etc. The problem is not the site itself (it is a good site). The problem is corruption implications. It's darn near impossible to build a 4-turn settler factory when you lose shields to waste. I learned this the hard way in a recent _OTM.

Since we've got good food at our capitol, and a cow a few turns away, we would have 2 cities with sufficient food to make workers and settlers. The second city (hill next to cow) could immediately start a worker... irrigate the cow, and move on to other projects.

Since we don't (yet) have pottery (a key ingredient in settler factories) having 2 high-food cities might actually work a little better for us than having one high-food granary city.

I would guess, if we can see the vast majority of our island now, that we'll end up with 12-15 cities on this island. If we're lucky, we may be able to grab a luxury on a nearby island as well.

It's going to be tough to settle off this landmass since we're not allowed to research. The AI will have plenty of galleys in the water by the time we get MapMaking. I think we'll have our hands full settling this landmass for the time being.

And I'm not convinced that we're entirely alone here. I saw a couple of potential land bridges....

Edit: Another problem with the settler factory site: it needs a border expansion. We pay full price for cultural improvements, even if we have the tech.

You're right that corruption makes everything more difficult for factories, as we found out in GCF2, and LK69, IIRC. My answer for this was going to be to settle from the outside in, to negate distance corruption as long as possible.

However, you're probably right that the effort is not worth the gain. I estimate it would take 30 or 40 turns to get it up and running regardless. In that time, we can probably build two workers from the new city, and 2 or 3 more from our capitol.

@Sesn: If you like the city planning, let me know your thoughts on the order you think we ought to settle these. The only one I'm sure of is the cow site. The ones to the N and NW can be grabbed fairly quickly, which makes me want to push SW... If you don't like the city planning, or see something I don't ... lemme know what you think.

Okay - if bed_head is ready to play, he's welcome to it.

@bed_head: You can either play, or we can discuss anything you want to discuss before you play.

Piece of advice: Watch the happiness when cities hit size 4. Don't be afraid to use the luxury slider in F1.

It looks like SlickNick will be joining the vanilla team, so he can make the transition to the Mac platform. (Good Thing AlanH is over there...)

I haven't heard from Javier in a couple of days, and I'm not sure Manwaring is over here... are you guys with us? Please give us a quick post so I can finish the order of play....

Edit: I just PM'd our other team members.

Was just about to suggest a PM too....

IMHO, the order of settling the spots you mentioned would be: (and no criticisms on the dotmap either! :p )

Cow town
S Wheat
W Wheat
S Fish
NW hill

lower priority: (maybe even after other cities we haven't planned yet)
2nd wine
Forest river

I say maybe even much later for these becuase with the overlaps, the AI is not likely to settle these spots. They tend to go for larger openings and use one city where we would probably build two. :rolleyes:

EDIT: To expand on the happiness aspect: At Emperor level, you only get one content citizen. We have a luxury hooked up, so that gives us a happy citizen. A MP (unlikely to have more than one in the immediate future) adds a second content. At size four, assuming the city is connected to the capitol, we should have one happy, 2 content, and one unhappy citizen.

Remember that you get a one turn grace period after the city grows and the new citizen is added before riots set in.

sry for not posting..im still here. I have been reading your comments and advice on what we should do next..and feel free to slot me in where you want. i got no problem with it.

Javier

And then there was one....

EDIT: any questions or comments thus far Javier?

@Javier: Thanks for the post, I'm glad you're following the discussion. :thumbsup: Knowing you're with us lets me finalize the order-of-play:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/gold_jumpwings.gif SesnOfWthr <- Just played
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/silver_jumpwings.gif bed_head7 <- UP
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/gold_jumpwings.gif scoutsout <- On Deck
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/silver_jumpwings.gif JavierLQ <- Warming up
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/gold_jumpwings.gif romeothemonk <- Patiently waiting?
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/silver_jumpwings.gif Manwaring <- Patiently waiting? (with us?)

Moved to Vanilla Team (Roster B)
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/silver_jumpwings.gif Slicknick1136

@Team: I'd rather have a little spam than silence. If anyone has questions or points of discussion about the game (even if they don't pertain to the current situation) go ahead and post.

@bed_head: Nice cultural win in COTM1! :goodjob:

Comment with the worker plan you have posted scout. I would skip action 4 till later. Roading a normal grassland in despotism that we will probably never use, we have inland lake with more commerce, I would save the 4-8 worker turns and skip right on ahead to taking care of other business.

Comment with the worker plan you have posted scout. I would skip action 4 till later. Roading a normal grassland in despotism that we will probably never use, we have inland lake with more commerce, I would save the 4-8 worker turns and skip right on ahead to taking care of other business.the main benefit of roading that tile is to make it easier to get "Cowtown" connected to our capitol. I just hate marching workers across tiles that I might have to march back over later...

Also, if he roads that tile, he can move immediately to the wines and irrigate, rather than taking another turn to move.

I'm not the absolute greatest at worker management, and you do have a point... we probably won't have a citizen working that tile anytime soon.

Edit: Sesn? What are your thoughts? (I'm not strong in this opinion...)

Actually, I'm gonna really throw a curve out there.

I agree with Romeo that it will probably be quite some time before that grassland square gets used.

I also agree with Scout that we want to get connected to cow town.

So I say that we road the forest tile. I know that it will take six turns rather than 3, but the forest tile is far more useful, IMO. When the food box is filling up, we can switch to the forest to get the extra shield, and not waste the food, if possible. It will also put us one tile away from having the southern wheat city connected.

The forest is going to be roaded in the immediate future anyhow, so why not do it now?

Did anyone see that coming? :p

I did not see that coming...and in a sense, I did not see where it went. Which forest tile? The one E of "cowtown hill"?

I did not see the forest to which you are referring. Any forest move would be at least 2 moves away, or would not fuel our capitols war machine :nya:
I would still vote for carrying on with the plan, but skipping the worker road. The biggest mistake most players make is overbuilding their capitol too early. I have had great success making my capitol a settler farm and just flooding the opponents, followed by a limited war or 3 to increase territory. (emporer)

Well... since Romeo feels strongly about it, and Sesn's curveball took off my earlobe, we can skip #4 on the worker moves. :D

Though I'll be surprised if the worker gets that far in bed_head's turnset...

There is a forest tile one S of Trondheim. Eventually, it and the next forest tile will be roaded to connect fish town. It would also complete the road going out towards cow town. In addition, we will be using that forest tile, if we are closely MMing, when the food box nears full, most likely. An extra commerce never hurts.

Does that make it any clearer?

With ten turns, I doubt I will have time to do more than settle cow town, and maybe build the next settler in Trondheim. I think I will move the worker to the forest south of Trondheim, if I make it that far (I won't). So I will just go mine and road the spot northwest of the wheat.

Scoutsout, that was my first GOTM, and I had just read SirPleb's milking article, so was trying that, since I didn't know GOTM used a different scoring system. I would have won quite a few turns earlier, probably with a better score, if I hadn't destory libraries and temples wherever they weren't necessary. But thanks, and I am surprised you noticed. Though not as surprised to find I made the top half, though just barely.

2950: Gave Arabia 45 gold, Alphabet for Pottery
Gave Babylon Pottery for 52 gold (should I have waited for more, since I don't think they have contact?)

2850: Decided to travel around Arabian continent with curragh, as opposed to Babylonian

2800: Finished settler, start work on next settler

2670: Founded Bergen on hill next to cow, begin work on warrior
Growth to size 3 in Trondheim, finish production on settler both set to finish in six turns

2550: My final turn. The Babylonians have no techs, three towns, and still have 0 gold. The Arabians have no techs, two towns, and still have our 45 gold. Adjusted citizens in Trondheim, so growth comes in two instead three but settler still comes in three. The Vikings still only know two civs, but much more of the coast has been mapped. We have the continent to ourself, so which spot gets settled first is more flexible.

I am not sure how to zip a file, since I have never had reason to do it before, so I just attached my save. I have no idea whether that will work or not, but I am sure you will let me know.

On zipping: zipping is not necessary. The reason mine was is because of an unfortunate incident in another SG where a save got corrupted. Zipping helps prevent corruption of saves.

To do it: What I do is go to the file in my conquests folder, and then right-click. One of the options should be "add to zip" (assuming you have winzip). Then i just click OK, and there is a zip with the same filename sitting there. Then you just attach that instead of the .sav.

Screenies: Do you know how to make/post a screenshot? They can be very helpful in illustrating a point, or allowing others to quickly see your progress. let us know if you need help with that.

Tech trade: I might have waited before selling pottery to babs, only to see if they would get a tech to trade for in a few turns. The risk is that they might get pottery, and then we're left holding the bag. As a general rule, first tier techs in the AA are near worthless though.

i also might have tried to trade a different tech to Arabia. Alphabet gives them curraghs, which they can use to launch ships and get contacts. Not a biggie though, as the ai seems to have a weird aversion to curraghs.

Sorry for the long winded post. ;)

I took a quick look at the save. I like the MM in Trondheim... but we need to get another Curraugh in the water to make some more contacts. I think that should be next, considering the fact that we apper to be on this landmass alone (for the moment).

Is there some reason nobody has popped a goody hut? Are we saving those for some special occasion?

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/ScoutC2.JPG

I'd like to get the warrior from Bergen out to the mtn near the "?" right away, just to insure there is no land bridge.

Incidentally, Arabia seems to be on a huge continent.

Didn't mention build priorities because you were up next Scout. ;)

I would rather wait and send a spear to pop the huts. Might be very troublesome to pop some barbs with only a warrior right now, but if it were my own game I would have popped them while exploring.

Alright... I've got it, and if there is a land bridge there I'll try to block it.

Anybody object to me going ahead and popping a couple of goody huts?

You're the boss. :)

I didn't pop the huts because I tend to have bad luck, like getting beat by a single conscript when I am on a mountain. It didn't look like there was anything past the mountain, and since it is toward that north, the only thing up there would be a bit of tundra, but no connection to a landmass with any worth. I've never tried to post a screenshot before, but I have read the explanation. I was actually going to try to post the same shot you did, Sesn, but I noticed the Great War scenario, and forgot all about posting. Currently, I am hoping it will finish configuring the scenario (on another computer).

Forgot to mention that Alphabet was all we had to trade to Arabia, and I figured trading it would be better than nothing.

/delurk

Hi guys, I think Trondheim can reach 4-turn settler factory at size 5-7, please check my math :)

At size 5, working the wheat(0), the irrigated wine(0), the 2 bg's(2*2) and one mined wine(1) (and the town center of course (1)) gives you 12 shield for the two turns, plus 2 more shields for the auto-picked forrest on growth, totaling 14 shields.

Then at size 6, working the before mentioned tiles plus one more mined grassland, gives you 14 shields for the two turns. Add those and the 2 shields that you get on the growth to size 7, you should have exactly 30 shields for a 4-turn factory.

GK-2 was one amazing thread btw

/relurk

BH - you're right, trading for something is better than nothing.

I also think you are looking at the wrong mtn, I am referring to the one to the west.

SJ - You know, I think you're right. I always forget that size 5-7 can work too, but we would have some happiness issues to deal with.

Oh, I meant to go to that mountain. I hit the wrong key, leaving me two tiles away, and since looking through fog, I didn't see much, I decided not to go back. Maybe I was wrong, hope I didn't screw anything up.

Pre-Flight Check: Arabia has 45g, Babylon is broke. Wake the Warrior in Bergen and send him south.

IBT - Nada

Turn 1 (2510) Arabia now has Mysticism, 90g. Won't sell myst. Warriors scout.

IBT - Bergen trains a warrior, starts a worker.

Turn 2 (2470) New warrior heads north to goody hut. Curraugh sails, finds a small island.

IBT - Trondheim Settler>Curraugh

Turn 3 (2430) Move setter SW, move warrior back to bergen (MP, and I want to pop a settler from the hut) Scouting warrior confirms - no land bridge.

IBT - nothing

Turn 4 (2390) - warrior spots barb camp on other side of straits, near spices.

IBT - nothing

Turn 5 (2350) - units move.

IBT - Bergen Worker>Archer

Turn 6 (2310) - worker moves to irrigate cows at Bergen, warrior moves north to pop hut. Settler in position to found a town next turn. South warrior pops hut, gets maps of our region. Oh joy. Curraugh sails northerly around arabia's landmass.

IBT - nada

Turn 7 (2270) Copenhagen founded SW of Capitol. MM citizen to forest, start a barracks (this looks like a good unit factory). Warrior pops barbs out of north hut. Wake the warrior in Trondheim and send him west.

IBT - Barb warrior flawlessly kills our north scouting warrior (on a hill!)

Turn 8 (2230) Move scouting warriors northward.

IBT - nothing... the barbs are fortified.

Turn 9 (2190) our curraugh spots a yellow border. It looks like someone shares a landmass with Arabia.

IBT - nada... (we need archers to take these barbs out of these hills).

Turn 10 (2150) We have met the Netherlands. Now Abu (who wouldn't trade Myst for anything a turn ago) will sell it to us for 250g. William will also sell it to us for 250g. These are opening offers. Abu will actually take 228. Willaim will take 220.

I will leave this up to the team to discuss, and perhaps let the next player execute the deal.

Screenies to follow.

Some screenies. (I love screenies)

First, our world.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/scout1_03_MAP.jpg

Next, some suggestions for future Curraugh expeditions:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/scout1_02_CURR.jpg

Third, Trondheim:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/scout1_01_TROND.jpg

I went against the advice of the team here, and roaded that grassland tile. I think there is a chance that we could make a 4-turn settler factory here, but I think we'll need to come back and mine that tile to pull it off - which is why I went ahead and roaded it. I stuck some notes on the screencap...

Basically, we need 3 things:
1) A granary
2) +5 food per turn (Irrigated Wheat and Irrigated Wines will provide)
3) 30 shields in 4 turns. This is tricky, and funny stuff happens on the 4th turn... but I think with the right improvements we can pull it off.

After action review:

The good: Got another city founded, met another civ. There is a possible trade on the table that the next player could execute in pre-flight.

The bad: we have a small barb problem.

The ugly: Nothing ugly - yet. Which has me concerned at the moment. :)

Some other notes:

Try to build another archer in Bergen before playing whack-a-barb. Barbs get a healthy combat bonus at Emperor level, and need a bit more respect than some of you may be accustomed to giving them.

When Copenhagen grows, micromanage it to keep its citizens off the mined BG next to Trondheim. Once it completes its barracks, build nothing but ground combat units here for a while. This is one of few non-coastal cities we will have, and Bergen needs to be put to use making workers and maybe a settler or two. Copenhagen looks like a good unit factory.

For the next better player,> > The Save < < (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/ScoutC_2150BC.SAV)

Sorry for the triple-post - I'm debating on whether we need another Curraugh, or if it ought to be switched to granary now. If we don't build the curraugh, it will be a while before we get another... and contact is important in this variant....

Next player: Don't be afraid to use the luxury slider a little as Trondheim grows... when it hits size 4, it will need a little help.

Scout, if you look in post 82 you'll see that a lurker was kind enough to point out that we can get a four turn factory.

The trade - Well, we either take it now, or wait and hope we find someone to pull a two fer with. Personally, I say wait, as it's not a very useful tech to prioritize.

@Sesn: It's not a tech I'm excited about paying 220g for either...one of the reasons I held off. The AI seem to like it, since it's a wonder tech.

What do you think about Trondheim? Curraugh for contacts or Granary for settler? Bit of a dilemma, huh? (A curraugh is 15s, btw...half that granary...)

Only because we're isolated on our landmass, I say we can afford another curragh.

did you see post 82? We would have to have 2 mp's and a temple, I think, but it can be done.

EDIT: BTW, I just finished off our SGOTM. A very unsatisfying result, to say the least. We had tickled the dom limit for about 40 turns, and finally were able to call the vote. Of the four civs (including us), we got one vote, ours, and two abstentions. We knew then that the variant was out of reach, so I went crazy nuking and killing to trip the limit. I'll go see how you guys fared now...

Only because we're isolated on our landmass, I say we can afford another curragh.I'm leaning that way too. We need contacts.

did you see post 82? We would have to have 2 mp's and a temple, I think, but it can be done.I did see it, but haven't had the time to really dig through it. Concur on the second MP (which we could get from elsewhere), disagree on the temple. We can afford some lux tax here. We pay full price for all cultural improvements. With the AI production discount at emperor, it's way too early to plow 60 shields into a temple.

EDIT: BTW, I just finished off our SGOTM. A very unsatisfying result, to say the least. We had tickled the dom limit for about 40 turns, and finally were able to call the vote. Of the four civs (including us), we got one vote, ours, and two abstentions. We knew then that the variant was out of reach, so I went crazy nuking and killing to trip the limit. I'll go see how you guys fared now...I caught that. Check out my note in the spoiler. It should brighten your day a little.

For those that aren't tracking, I'm about to join the "Benevolent and Protective Order of the Wooden Spoon".

The 4-turn settler factory is not going to work here. We are either going to be short food or shields. If we mine the wine, we've only got 4 surplus fpt. Irrigate the wine, and we can only get 28 shields in 4 turns.

But all is not lost... I have an idea.

Edit:

This may be more than a little tough to get your mind around this one... but I have been dying to try this out. Offa did a 4-turn unit/settler factory trick in GOTM30. I don't know if we've got what we need here to pull this off or not, but have a look at this. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=1739190&postcount=23)

Nope, I think it will work.

Size 5

Turn 1: Work 2 BG (4f, 4s), 1 irrigated wine (3f), 1 mined grass (2f, 1s), irrigated wheat (4f), city square (2f, 1s). Total = 15f, 6s Cum Sh: 6

Turn 2: Exact same as above. Cum sh: 12

Growth to size 6, citizen added to forest, +2s Cum sh: 14

Size 6

Turn 3 : 2 BG, 1 wine, 2 grass, wheat, city. Total = 17f, 7s Cum sh: 21

Turn 4: Exact same as above. Cum sh: 28

Growth to size 7, citizen added to forest, +2s Cum sh: 30 Settler is completed, shrink to size 5, start over.

This is more tricky than a normal factory because there is no room for error. If the city is allowed to actually grow to size 7, the granary is emptied, and the cycle is screwed.

BTW: the reason Offa's trick is not common is because you need to be able to make 6f, and 10 shields, at will. Not easy to do. Certainly need some really friendly terrain for it, and i don't see how we have that.

BTW: the reason Offa's trick is not common is because you need to be able to make 6f, and 10 shields, at will. Not easy to do. Certainly need some really friendly terrain for it, and i don't see how we have that.

@Sesn: Looking at your math, I think you're right... assuming you're talking about taking that citizen off the forest when he/she is added. Working a forest takes us off the +5fpt we need. Consider this:

Irrigated wheat=+4fpt, Irrigated wine +1fpt each, or +6fpt. :D

Somehow, I knew you would point out the food could get to +6. :)

However, to be more specific, for Offa's trick, on step on you need to be able to make 4f and 10s, and step two you need 6f and 8s, with two more added at growth.

As is the problem with our factory at size 4, there just aren't enough shields. I have also been trying to find an appropriate time to try that, but it is a very rare situation indeed.

BTW, yes, I did mean you had to move the citizen off the forest tile at growth.

Well... let's try the 4-turn settler factory thing as you suggested Sesn. Perhaps we can get it up and running during romeo's turns. We'll just have to watch it closely until the tiles are developed - this may or may not become a settler pump that works on "auto-pilot"; it may need "priming" from time to time.

So... we finish the curraugh in Trondheim, start a Granary, make units in Copenhagen, make a couple of archers in Bergen to play whack-a-barb...and then...

Hmmm ... Bergen... Granary, or Barracks? I think we will be making a mix of workers and units there, and maybe a settler or two. I'd like the team's thoughts on this.

Some other thoughts:

1) Settle the 2 sites north of the Trondheim-Bergen line with settlers out of Bergen. Push Trondheim's settlers south and southwest. They can pick up escorts in Copenhagen along the way....how does this sound?

2) I know archers can upgrade to longbows, can they upgrade to Berserks? :mischief:

3) Unit mix: My thoughts are a mix of archers and spears... 3:1 ratio. I doubt a warrior-to-sword upgrade gambit is in the offing here.

4) Terrain: Irrigate food bonuses; after that, "Mine green, irrigate brown".

Thoughts? Comments? Gripes and Complaints?

Thoughts. Granary in Capitol first. Then settler then curragh. This seems counterintuitive, but the extra units to fill our continent early is an amazing bonus later on. Bergen to barracks, and I would have it build rax, archer, spear, worker in an enless loop at around size 3-4. Do not build archers to upgrad to Zerks. This is really cost ineffective as it costs around 150 gold to do. (If we can get Leo's however, it might be more of a possibility). I like a 1.25 to 1 ratio here on spears to whatever offense we use. Archers are nice if we can use the leos slingshot. Otherwise I would lean towards horses.

I still lean towards curragh first, but only because we won't be able to make another one otherwise for about 15 or twenty turns. I'm not entirely sold though.

The upgrade cost is high, but otherwise we'll be building a bunch of 70 shield units from scratch. Since we aren't investing $ into anything other than luxuries, we should be able to produce at lease some for upgrade. I would still like some horses as a reactionary force though.

Bergen -> barracks. We shouldn't need many settlers from there if we get Trondheim running right, so a granary is not important, IMO.

I want a spear in every city, with some archers/horses for homeland defense/barb patrol. We don't need a ton of offense yet, as we won't really go on the offensive for a while.

With our own continent, there is the option of not building spears. I like to do this every once in a while and just build horses/swords/archers and just attack, attack, attack. Since we really shouldn't see many fast units, (barb horses) this might work nicely and really allow us to barb hunt, and won't have "useless" units during a republic run. I might favor granary, curragh, settler build in the capitol, but am heavily leaning towards granary first. The extra growth is very beneficial.

You obviously feel strongly, so i can compromise to granary, curragh settler.

Have we decided that we do indeed want republic? The WW may become an issue at some point, and the research benefits will be nonexistant.

Interesting idea on the units. I would still say that we need spears on the fronteir, in case of barbs, but I suppose a heavy offensive mix otherwise would be fine.

BTW - So far I think we have seean a total of about 5 posts from our "silver wings". Where have they gone, and why are they not participating in discussion?

@Sesn: I hope we haven't scared 'em off with all the math. :crazyeye: I'm really only concerned about the one who hasn't posted yet.

Seriously, bed_head, Javier, Manwaring (?) if you guys have questions, comments, suggestions...whatever... don't be afraid to post them. We don't bite. (Well... not often... ;) )

Barracks in Bergen sounds like a consensus. I like the sound of romeo's production rotation too. IMO, we really only need to get 2 settlers out of Bergen, mabye 3 max.

I'm starting to lean towards the Granary in Trondheim... but not yet convinced on the Curraugh. Since we should be able to plant 4 of our next 5 cities on the coast, we will soon have additional shipyards...

Both you guys have good thoughts on the unit mix...romeo has posted a couple of different ones.... spears for settler escorts might not be a bad idea if we start seeing barb camps pop up... Archers are about the only offensive units we'll be able to build for a bit. We should probably try to have archer/spear pairs, or maybe trios with 2 archers for barb hunting.

Have any of you guys ever had any luck with "barbarian farming"?

Governments: Good points Sesn. The warmongering and MPs of Monarchy are worth thinking about. I've also given passing thoughts to going with communism in the late game. What techs we can't buy we'll simply steal! :devil2: Though its "a little" early for that...

Edit: an "order of go" reminder:

JavierLQ <- up, strategizing with us?
romeothemonk <- on deck
Manwaring <- warming up, are you with us?
SesnOfWthr <- warming the bench
bed_head7 <- waiting patiently
scoutsout <- just played

Depending on how large our empire is, A stint in Facism would be useful for pretty much every player as well. (Spies are better too).
I've had mixed luck with barb farming. Usually I'm fine, then someone switches ages and I get really bad uprisings. With our largish treasury I would not want Massive barb uprisings. Other stuff looks good.

I like the offensive unit idea. I have occasionally left my defense a little weak on my home island, focusing on offense in cities with barracks and catapults and naval units to take out passing ships. With the amount of money we should have by the time we get invention, leaving a few archers around for upgrade is feasible. Shooting for Leonardo's and then upgrading later on in the war should give a boost, since generally I feel like there aren't enough ships to carry units over at the beginning, and not enough units to go in the ships towards the end.

Has anybody seen Javier lately? :hmm:

I have not seen him lately, but his last post was last night at 11:30. Any idea where he is based?

Good point Sesn. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to ask that before. After all, one of my team in SGOTM2 lives "on the other side of the pond" (England).

We'll see if he checks in tomorrow... I'd like to get in another turnset (maybe 2?) this weekend.

Just to expand a bit, the posts I have seen from him all seem to be between 10 pm and 10 am EDT.

Actually just an excuse to mention that I like the new sig scout. :thumbsup:

@Sesn: glad you like the sig. Some accuse me of being half-crazy. They're half-right. :D

10pm to 10am... :hmm:

@Javier, where in the world are you my friend? :D

A quick note on SG practices:

Most Succession Games use a "24/48" rule. The next player is expected to post a "got it" within 24 hours of the previous player's log being posted, and play within 48 hours of posting his "got it".

@Team: please do not make me impose and enforce a rule to keep this game moving forward.

I hate to do this, but since Manwaring has not yet checked in to the thread there is no sense in holding his spot when someone else can use it who is willing to play. Manwaring is now on 'provisional' status, and I have invited Detlef_Richter to join the team.

@Javier: Please post a "got it" within the next 24 hours, and let us know if you have any questions, or if you are ready to play.

I was wondering if you were going to get out the :whipped:.
We seem to be having a tough time getting things rolling smoothly here. I imagine once we have a round in the books for everyone, it'll start flowing a bit better.

BTW - Romeo is having eye surgery and will probably be out of commission until Wed-ish.

BTW - Romeo is having eye surgery and will probably be out of commission until Wed-ish.Well I hope that goes well, yikes! Let's see if we can get Javier to give us a turnset between now and Wednesday then.

Hi guys, i hope you playing not too good for me. I see that i'am in the last position (the position of Manwaring), so i have enough time to take a look on the last save and to read all posts. You have "No Research" as special rule, is this the only one or have you something else more?

That's the only real variant.

Of course, standard GOTM rules apply regarding exploits.

Thanks for joining us. (Incidentally, we have not heard from Javier, so you may end up going next - Scout will let you know for sure)

EDIT: As you may or may not have read yet, Scout, Romeo and I really favor discussion in our games. Add to that the fact that we're trying to help you guys step up a bit, and you get to realize there should be a lot of discussion, especially from the "silver wings". Please do not hesitate to interject with any question or comments you have along the way.

I just got a PM from Javier. He's having computer problems, and will have to bow out of this one.

So...adjusting the order of play, I guess we'll stick Detlef in Javier's spot, which means you're UP DR! :D Ask any questions you have, play ten when you're ready.

@Sesn: I'm at a friend's home helping to fix an ailing machine. Would you mind PMing one of the others on the provisional roster and inviting them to join in? Was it Merum that actually signed up before Detlef?

It was Merum. PM being sent as we speak. :D

Thanks Sesn, I appreciate that.

OK, I've got it.
I will play today afternoon and i hope i can Post tomorrow.
First i would say sorry for some missing decisions which made by you. I don't know if i have read all of your comments.
Your masters are expansion and exploration to find new trading partners.

As far as decisions go, I think it's safe to swap that curraugh build to a granary in Trondheim. If you can get a second archer and barracks going in Bergen, that would be good. When Copenhagen builds its barracks, I don't think we will build anything but units there for a while...

Edit: updated roster
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/gold_jumpwings.gif SesnOfWthr
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/silver_jumpwings.gif bed_head7
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/gold_jumpwings.gif scoutsout
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/silver_jumpwings.gif Detlef_Richter <-Up
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/gold_jumpwings.gif romeothemonk <-On Deck
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/silver_jumpwings.gif Merum <-hopefully will join in soon...

Checking in. I'll review the thread in detail when I get home this evening. Thanks for the PM!

Our pleasure. :)

Thanks for joining and responding so quickly.

Scout - it seems we may finally have put a team together and can get this thing rolling...

Scout - it seems we may finally have put a team together and can get this thing rolling...Yes, and I'm starting to feel happy about it. :D Hopefully SlickNick will get his computer straightened out and joing Roster B soon, and maybe we'll catch Javier and/or Manwaring in another game...

But I'm pleased that we've got a crew assembled now.

@Merum: Glad you could join us, welcome to the party!

For those joining us: I don't mind a little banter, spam, whatever. If you guys have questions, post away. If you have suggestions, I welcome them. My SGOTM team used a suggestion ("Mistfit's Gambit") offered by one of our Regent-level guys (who I no longer consider regent level)... so if you have an idea, post it. One thing that makes SGs such a powerful learning tool is that one player will often see something the rest of the team missed...

OK, I've spent the night going over this thread a few times. I hope I can do a good enough job to keep up with you guys. So the jumpmasters know my current level, I've gotten to the point where I consistently beat Regent with all randoms and am beginning to steal a Monarch here and there. (2 Monarch wins, 1 diplo, 1 space)

I basically agree with the dotmap for the city location, but what order? I generally try to place my fastest growers first, but maybe that's not so good at higher levels. A good mix of high-shield and high-food would be a nice start. (EDIT: d'oh! thanks bed_head for the pointer to the build order. :P)

Forgive me, but did I just completely miss the discussion about what victory type we're going for, or are we going to play it by ear for a while and see what develops?

hmm... more later, as I think of them.

EDIT: here's more...

Will we go toward the spices early? I'm thinking they might help with happiness with our large settler factory. Or would it be better to just use MP to keep order?

On the third page, 53rd post, was the order scoutsout said, and I think we are basically sticking with that, though we might go for the better food producers as opposed to just placing cities so that the AI won't want to settle. Since we have an island to ourselves, filling the outer spots and going in isn't such a priority. Or at least that is my understanding.

Lots of good stuff in those last 2 posts! :thumbsup:

Victory condition: I'm thinking space race...for the challenge in a no-research variant. :devil2: but this is still open for discussion.

@Merum: Good thoughts on a mix of high-food, high shield cites. Take a look at what we have, what that cow town will look like when the cow is irrigated... and share your thoughts on the priority of sites. What hasn't been settled at this point has not really been prioritized...and is therefore open to discussion. :D

...and spices (for that matter, any lux) is a Good Thing to control at Emperor level. Good point.

@bed_head: you were tracking my thoughts nicely. I'd like to push south and southwest, because I think we can settle the sites to the north quickly... (less competition).

OK, here we go.
I hope i've dona a good job. It looks like a hard game specially with the Space Ship goal. We have no chance to come in front of tech because we ever need the AI's for research. We also can't eleminate too many of them. We need a big pool of searchers, because the techs are then cheaper.

My turns:

2150: i bought Mystik for 230g from Arabia

2110: Trondheim finnished a curragh, i changed it to pottery
i decided to use the curraghs for exploring and two warriors for Barb
searching

2070: 1 Barb killed, warrior looses 1 HP

2030: the second Barb killes our warrior :(

1990: Copenhagen finished barracke, i changed it to archer
I realized too late that we have not enough MP at our towns, so two
of them riotes. Sorry for this failure :blush:
I've set the lux to 30% until we have enough MP or more luxuries

1950: Bergen finished archer, i changed it to barracks
i use this archer to search Barbs, to protect our unprotected towns
1 Barb killed

1910: 1 Barb killed
moved 1 warrior to Trondheim (it's the biggest town and we need it as
MP)

1870: nothing happens

1830: MM Trondheim to finish pottery and growing to 4 at the same turn
(ready in 7 turns)

1790: checked AI's for new techs. Arabs will sell masonry for 180g + 3gpt
i havn't done so. They also have iron working but won't sell it

1750: Bergen finished barracks, i changed to settler (We need more towns)

Summary: 1 warrior killed, 1 archer build. Nothing news from our curraghs, we
only found some free lands (ilands). Netherland and Arabia are
technically in front. Both have the same both techs to sell
(masonry and iron working). We have 198g and +9gpt

2 curraghs
2 warriors
1 archer
2 workers
2 barracks

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/ScoutC_pic1750.JPG

Looks good, Detlef :thumbsup: Don't beat yourself up about the rioting. It's part of the learning curve of playing at Emperor level, and it takes getting used to. Checking the F1 screen for unhappy citizens every turn isn't fun, which is why I use Dianthus' Mapstat utility.

It also appears you got a taste of the Barbarian combat bonus at this level. That's one thing that still bites me, and got me in this game too. At regent level, that barb that came out of the goody hut never would have survived attacking a regular warrior on a hill. In this game, the stupid barb warrior killed our warrior, even though he was on a hill.

On techs: Did any of the other AI have Mysticism? Were there any AI that you could sell it to?

Something to think about: tech brokering. The idea here is to acquire a tech that once civ has a monopoly on, and broker it around the table to acquire other techs or luxuries. It will be helpful to us if we can recoup some of the investment on the techs that we purchase.

romeothemonk is up, and I think he said he was going to be away until Wednesay, so that turnset was also well timed.

@Merum: You're on deck...

I tried to sell mysticism to Babylon, but they havn't anything for us. The other AI's still have mysticism.

Wow, miss a day and a bunch happens. Don't let me hold you up ..... j/k

Couple things though:

Detlef, you made repeated references to building pottery. I can see form the screenie that you play a German version. For future reference, POTTERY is the tech that allows you to build GRANARIES. Maybe nitpicking, but I found it rather disconcerting that you started pottery in a no research variant, until I figured it out.

Regarding that granary, we need to adjust the MM on it. Detlef said the he timed it so the granary would be filled in conjunction with growth. The granary should be finished the turn BEFORE growth. That way, it is filled automatically, and you get the benefit immediately. If growth and the granary happen at the same time, we would need to wait until the next growth before we get the benefit.

RE: tech brokering. The only way this works for us is when we meet the rest of the civs. That is why early exploration is imperative. If you have the choice between mapping the coast of a known civ, and mapping an intirely unknown land, go for the unknown. We can always map our rivals' coasts later, but we need the contacts now.

(not trying to step on your toes Scout, I have just found that a clear roster sometimes is easier for people to spot)

SesnOfWthr
Bed_head7
Scoutsout
Detlef Richter
Romeothemonk - UP
Merum - ON DECK

The toes are fine Sesn, no problem.... the order-of-go is better that way.

...on the language thing, you were nit-picking a bit... :p I don't know about you, but Detlef's English is certainly better than my German...but I like the way his screenshot refers to us as "Nordland". :cooool: I should drag Longasc in here... I helped him with some English homework once... but I digress... btw, apparently there is a "Queen's English" version as well, because somebody is building a "Granarium" in another game I'm in. :crazyeye: ...more digression...

@Detlef: Your log was fine. You'll get used to these language subtleties as you plays a few more SGs.

I've got it like a pro wrestlers got steroids.

More pics to follow.

IHT: MM Trondheim. Must resist urge to start up science.
Turn 1: Copenhagen Archer to Worker (Listening to country music, must resist really bad joke here). Spices off our continet MB has hosed us as we cannot rule the spice market.
Turn 2: Babs start Oracle
Turn 3: Keep MM. Find a new continent to our northwest.
turn 4: Trondheim Granary to Settler.
Turn 5: Spot orange border, send curragh in northeast on possible suicide. Babylon has monopoly on writing.
Turn 6: Bergen Settler to temple, Copenhagen worker to archer.
Turn 7: Contact greece in Northeast. Trade Myst and 30 gold and get masonry. Everything doesn't get s writing.
Turn 8: Babs start colossus. Contact England. This is the motherload. Trade Masonry for the Wheel and 10 gold. Trade myst for IW. Get writing from babs for IW and Myst. Wheel gets 154 gold from Arabs and 70 gold from Greece. Build some embassies. (see pics)
Turn 9: Trondheim settler to temple, lux to ZERO.
Turn 10: Found Reykjavik, start worker. Greece has math and will trade to us. The babs are the only other ones with writing, although the dutch have 166 gold. Team call, but I say get the gold, but trade to greece first. Many units unmoved. I say settler goes just north of the northmost spices to found Kessel (for all you Star Wars fans in the house). Enjoy
Somebody's gonna give you a lesson....

That was some nice trading there romeo... but ... why did you start a temple? We pay full price for those, and Trondheim is a settler pump... why interrupt it for a temple? Since we're not spending anything on research, we can afford a little lux tax...

It looks like Merum will get to do a little tech trading right off the bat... I'm not sure exactly who has what, so I may download this and have a look...

The only known tech we are down is Math, which the Greeks have a monopoly on. Everyone but us lacks at least one tech.
I started the Temples because I am a monk. J/K Our pumps need primed, and a little growth and happiness will help do that. Both can be easily switched, but by my calcs Trondheim needs to be 5-7 to have the really good settler pumps and was only at size 3. Plus at size 5 we needed 20 percent lux. Another lux hooked up, and a temple should keep our people happy, plus I am greedy. I like the gold.
Sorry to those that do not know me, but my posting style is eclectic at best.
Sombody's gonna give you a lesson... is a country song from the mid 70's that just happened to be playing when I was finishing my set. I am a bit of a hillbilly and enjoy both kinds of music, Country and Western.
Don't worry y'all, Ize a won't goa talkin all dixie on y'all. (Minnesota native doncha know).
Boy I'm rambling.

Okay - so Trondheim needs to grow - I can believe that. I'm just not very fond of temples.... barracks, units... another curraugh... all of those are less than 60 shields. I suspect Trondheim will grow quickly with a granary and the surplus food that's there...

:lol:

Yes you were rambling a bit there Romeo.

Indeed nice trading. I'm game for swapping for math and grabbing the gold. If we don't have a monopoly on it then it won't do us much good soon.

Got it. Very late, will play tomorrow night.

:gripe: AAhhhhh, granery,pottery, masonry.............sorry guys i'm no searching my dictionary to learn a little bit. :coffee:

Regarding that granary, we need to adjust the MM on it. Detlef said the he timed it so the granary would be filled in conjunction with growth. The granary should be finished the turn BEFORE growth. That way, it is filled automatically, and you get the benefit immediately. If growth and the granary happen at the same time, we would need to wait until the next growth before we get the benefit.




Is this correct?? If yes, then i had an misunderstanding. I thought we must finish it at the same turn to use the Bonus. :confused:

Is this correct?? If yes, then i had an misunderstanding. I thought we must finish it at the same turn to use the Bonus. :confused:

This is a minor point, but it will get the settler factory going a turn or two faster. The idea is that the food bin is emptied when the city grows. If you get the granary built before city growth, then the food that is in the food bin is automatically used to fill the granary.

Usually all that is required is to take a citizen off a high food tile and put them on a forest for a few turns. This will usually slow growth and add shields so that the granary is built just before the city grows.

Ideally, we want the city to grow to size 5 before we start making settlers again. This is why romeo set the queue to temple, to allow it to grow. I'm not sure we want a temple... my inclination is to build a curraugh or a barracks....

What do the rest of you think?

Detlev:
http://dict.leo.org/

Outstanding online dictionary.

Though I'm not sure if this will always help, since Atari's German isn't that much better then I expect Sesn's German to be....

'Nahrungslager' :vomit: - warum bitte nicht 'Kornspeicher'?

SesnOfWthr is correct with the granary, or at least that is how I have always heard and done it.
IDEA: Build a coastal city with the next produced settler, give it 2 MP's and have it start a Great Lighthouse Prebuild.
Mapmaking is about 40-50 turns off in my estimates, and TGL is a great wonder for us. I vote for no more curraghs, as it will take at least 15 turns to find new coast.
I would vote for Bergen making a settler and settling him in the north by the fishes, BG's, and river and making that a wonder city. I would leave trondheim on Temple, and have copenhagen's new archer cover MP duty in our capitol.
I like temples, sorry scout. I do not see building any libraries this game however.

I would vote for Bergen making a settler and settling him in the north by the fishes, BG's, and river and making that a wonder city.

Referring to my earlier dotmap, do you like the hill that used to have the goody hut? Is that where you would send the settler from Bergen?

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/scout1C_DOTMAP.jpg

No, I actually have it slated to move 1 NW on the grassland. I do not want to lose the production of a hill later. We don't need the Defense bonus, the other AI's will. Reyjavik was founded on the southernmost dot, withoout me finding this dotmap.

Okay - moving that northern site off the hill and on to the grass sounds fine. Actually, I like it a little better, since we'll get another BG without a border expansion...

Regarding that new city site: Moving on to the grass gives you an extra BG now, at the expense of one later. Kind of a wash IMO. Although the shields will be nice later on.

The granary point may be minor right now, but it is a good thing to know in general. I thought the whole point of this was to help people learn the intracacies of the game.

@all - I really don't mean to be nitpicking. When I see something that is wrong and/or that I don't understand the reasoning for, I pipe up. It is not meant to be insulting in any way. If anyone has taken my comments in that way, I do apologize.

The granary point may be minor right now, but it is a good thing to know in general. I thought the whole point of this was to help people learn the intracacies of the game.Good point. I just wanted Detlef to know that it was a subtlety, and not some earth-shaking strategic thing.

I don't think you said anything insulting Sesn... and I don't think anybody took it that way. It's hard enough to get people on the same page when they all speak the same language; I expect Detlef is having to work jus that much harder...

Ok, first question. Does the discovery of the iron adjust our dotmap at all? Do we want to go for that first? I always jump on iron as soon as I see it, but given we have an island all to ourselves, it may not matter, unless somebody grabs MM and drops a settler on our coast there.

I'll look for the discussion on this in a bit. More work now. ;)

I think the settle order should be
1st Spices
2nd Wonder city
3rd Iron
This will get us through the next turnset, when we can re-evaluate.

You know, I was just scrolling through the main forum page, and noticed somewthing that required a post here.....


:bday: Happy B-day Detlef! :bday:

[party] :beer: [party]

Stage Fright Suppression on...

Pre-flight checks...

Reykjavik is size 1, growth in 10, also producing worker in 10. I'm thinking if I leave him on worker, the city will stay size 1 for at least another 10. Is this what we want? I'll leave it like this through the first couple turns for discussion.

The spices are far down the road, off the existing dotmap even. The iron is closer, and tempting, but my inner voice is screaming at me to settle on the hill nwof bergen, by the river delta, push some culture in there, and get those horses in our borders. The downside is we won't be able to road it until we can cross that water and plop a city down over there with a harbor. Thoughts?

1500BC

Get math from Alexander for Writing and 91 gold
Writing then goes to William for all of his 166 gold
Everybody else is broke. We are:
Up math and writing on England
Up wheel and math on Babylon
Up Writing and Math on Arabia
Up math on Netherlands
Even with Greece

Reykyavik from worker to warrior. Need boots on the ground.
I leave the temple builds for now. Not so sure I like the temple in Trondheim yet, I think I'd rather have MP.
Can't risk the loss of the settler to possible barbs hiding in the fog to the north. Onward to the spices. I change Trondheim to spear, to gather units for the northward expansion.
Start the archer on Reykjavik north, target Bergen. Reyk is size 1, 1 happy. it won't need MP for a while. We have enough military coverage south, not enough north. I'm planning to settle the coastal forest square with the spices, so as not to settle on the BG. Tell me if I'm wrong here.

IBT: zZz

1475BC

Moving toward abovementioned goals
Trondheim grows, lux to 10 to keep it out of riot. MM the new citizen to the irrigated grapes for growth in 2, spear in 2.
Curraghs explore farther along their coastlines
No new techs, everybody except Greece broke. We'll probably have to start gifting to them later on to keep the research up?

1450 BC

Road NE or Reykjavik complete. Move worker toward the wheat for road & irrigate.

1425BC

Trondheim spear>settler. Grows to 5, still happy. Spearman waits to pick up his settler.

1400BC

Worker begins irrigation SE of Reyk on the wheat
Worker moves NE Copenhagen to road grassland for new citizen due next turn

1375BC
Copenhagen Archer>worker
Trondheim size 6, growth in 3, settler in 2 so we don't dump the granary

1350BC

Reykjavik Warrior>Warrior.We can upgrade these to swords when we hook up the iron. WArrior heads to Bergen, gonna need MP there soon.
everybody started building the Oracle this turn, except for us.
No new techs at the halfway point of my tenure.

1325BC

Oslo founded, our spice center.
I think the Trondheim pump is now working. We'll see.

1300BC
There's Ivory on the Greek island. I also spot a pink border east of Greece. We'll make a new lackey -err- friend next turn.

1275BC
Copenhagen Worker>Archer. Worker heads down to road to Oslo.
Settler/archer are heading to the grassland NW of the north hill
Meet the French. They have nothing to offer at this time.

1250BC

Not much here to talk about.

Tech status is unchanged. We are up writing to France, as well. I'm afraid the Greeks, who appear to be the front runner in research, may be researching one of the tech we have. Should I have gifted to them?
Looks like Trondheim pump is on. Settler scheduled to finish in 2.

I finished up on 1275BC. I didn't expect this year, did I take too many/few turns?

With any luck, I didn't screw it up too bad. :P
Happy birthday, Detlef!

The elusive save is below...

Unless Reykjavik is very corrupt, change the build off of the worker. We can build a worker much quicker than ten turns a bit down the road. Once cow town is running smoothly we can churn workers out of there no problem.

Don't settle the spot you just mentioned. Settle the grass NW of the hill if you're not sure where else to go. Refer back about ten posts to Scout's dotmap if you need clarification. In his dotmap, the city is built on the hill, but we actually want to move the city one more NW.

Don't worry about those horses. We can't build a road to them so they are no use until we can get a settler across the straight.

BTW - You should only have stage fright if there is a fear of failing. We all have confidence with you guys, and no minor gaffe can't be overcome.

We all have confidence with you guys, and no minor gaffe can't be overcome.Agreed. All three of you 'silver wings' guys on this team are playing carefully, asking questions, thinking things through. By the time we get to the Middle Ages you guys will get a better feel for Emperor level, and you'll start to enjoy this a lot more. We'll also be a little better as a team once we've been through the order a couple of times.

Romeo's got me re-thinking some things on temples...for this particular variant. Though culture per shield is cheaper with libraries, and a temple is a high price to pay for one content citizen... temples are a little cheaper than libraries, and will give us some culture expansions in some towns... I normally don't build temples above Monarch level...

OK, I'm done... *wipes forehead* see my earlier post for the turnlog & save.

*is waiting for Bede to storm in here ranting*

The pure shield cost is certainly better. Over the long haul, we get gipped on culture, but we weren't going for culture in this one, right? :hammer: :nospaceshipsmiley:

I wouldn't worry much about the tech pace right now. We can be very content to keep it at our slow pace and be able to expand. Remember, no one can land on the island until they have MM. In addition, I'd like to have a solid core set up when the zerks arrive, as they're 70 shield builds.

anyhow, since I'm right here, "Got It"

BTW - giving you a heads up that wed-ish may be the only day I can play any SG's next week, and definitely not the weekend.

Let’s see what we’ve got going on here…

The pump is not quite set up properly yet. We need one more mine. MM for settler and growth both in 1.

Change Reykjavik to spear. We have a settler who will plop down in 3 in the NW. Looking over the map, I realize that we will be racing England for control of the island between us. I will focus on getting the pump running asap. Seems odd MB would leave that island empty…

As noted we’re even or ahead in techs. England doesn’t even have writing yet, so maybe we’ll be able to get MM several turns before them.

Luscious redhead says that we’re weak compared to everyone.

1225 bc (1) – Somehow I got screwed on the MM in Trondheim. Stupid governors…

1200 bc (2) – Trondheim settler -> worker. Bergen temple -> spear.

1175 bc (3) – Stockholm founded in the NW.

1150 bc (4) – Trondheim is so close to being ready …. I’m agonizing over the most efficient way to finish it.

IT – I sit and stare at the screen for several minutes, looking at the popup. William is demanding Math. Maybe one of the hardest things I had to learn was how to cave to demands I am not strong enough to deny. We are weak compared to every civ in the world, says Red, not least of which is seafaring Willie. He gets math, and also earns himself a mental note.

1125 bc (5) – I see some light blue borders near France.

1100 bc (6) – Oslo curragh -> spear. Bergen spear -> settler (sword prebuild) Copenhagen archer -> archer (ditto)

1075 bc (7) – Trondheim spear -> settler. I *think* the factory should be up and running now. Birka is founded and will have iron hooked up in 3 turns. Still have not seen a blue (Chinese?) unit.

1050 bc (8) – Finally meet Sumeria. They’re at par, and have 50g. Willie now has MM, but not willing to trade.

1025 bc (9) – Shuffling troopsaround.

1000 bc (10) – The factory is working right now.

Recap: Willie got MM, and so did Babs in the interturn. We can trade hammurabi Wheel, math, and 110g for it. Actually less, I didn’t bother haggling at all. Would recommend we consider getting the tech very soon and try to get some cities built on the other island. Dutch will already have units on the way, and so will England when she gets the tech.

Iron is connected and the first couple swords are in progress.

The settler factory is working now. Please pay close attention to it!! Every time it grows to size 6, you will need to move the citizen from the forest onto the mined grassland. Whatever you do, don’t let the city grow to size 7 unless it will be synchronized with a settler. If it does get to size 7, the granary will empty, and everything will be thrown off.

Here's a more current dotmap. The numbers indicate a possible order of settling to best finish claiming the island.

Site 9 takes precedence over all others once we get MM.

I hope I placed Oslo properly. If not, can you tell me what I could have done better there?

Also, I was a little unsure of the pump in Trondheim, but since I could get a settler out in 4 turns, I thought it was running. Where was I off?

I'm thinking much more deeply about this game than any of my previous, I think. Good stuff!

I also see Trondheim is set to grow in 2, settler in 3. Careful, or we'll empty the granary!

I hope I placed Oslo properly. If not, can you tell me what I could have done better there?

Nope, thought that placement was just dandy.

Also, I was a little unsure of the pump in Trondheim, but since I could get a settler out in 4 turns, I thought it was running. Where was I off?

What you were forgetting is that the city has to grow TWO sizes and build the settler in four turns. You had it approximately set to build a settler and build ONE size. Only growing once is a rapid downward spiral, size-wise.

Hope you know what you started....

In order for the city to grow twice in 4 turns, we must keep up a pace of five surplus food per turn. In order to build a settler in four turns, we need to produce thirty shields in four turns. At size 5, we can make a max of 6s, while producing our surplus of five food. It would be something like this:

irrigated game on grass - 4f, 0s
irrigated wine on grass - 3f, 0s
mined grassland - 2f, 1s
mined BG (x2) - 4f,4s
city center tile - 2f, 1s

each citizen eats 2f per turn, so we need ten food in addition to our surplus of five, for a total of fifteen. However, now we only make 6s per turn, which leaves us four short.

Now here's the fun part: on the turn your city grows, the governor selects the best tile for the new citizen, and the shields are added to the tally the turn the citizen is added. So that means that after two turns, we have actually stored 14 shields towards our settler.

Now we have a fifth citizen, and we move him off of the forest he grows on, and put him on a mined grass, giving us 2f, and 1s. The two food is negated by the new mouth to feed, but now we are making 7s per turn, with 14 in the bank. Still two short? Nope, the same thing will happen on growth to size 7 and we get another two free shields, completing the settler on the fourth turn.

There are two things to be aware of though: The governor for the city must be set to "emphasize production", with all other prefs set to no. This gives us the new citizen on the forest tile because it has the most production power, e.g. shields. The second trick is that you have to manually go into the city screen and move the citizen from the forest to the mined grass every turn 2 of the cycle. Also, as I noted above, it is important that growth is timed properly to avoid emptying the granary.

I'm thinking much more deeply about this game than any of my previous, I think. Good stuff!

Good to hear! :) That is why people can play 1-2 levels above their solo abilities in most SG's. Because you only have ten turns to play, you tend to analyze the game more, and make better, and more well reasoned moves. Just another of the many facets of SG's I have come to really enjoy.

Hope I haven't bored everyone. :rolleyes:

:wow: Only 24 hours later and i missed, if i count right, 3 turns. You guys are very fast. I think i have to change my life. Sleeping today and working tonight :crazyeye: (But i'am shure, my wife says no :spank: )

All is clear for me, but on one point, i don't know if it's OK.
I don't understand why we should build the Great Lighthouse. All other ilands and landmasses are nearer then 3 tiles. We can reach them whithout loosing any ship. And at later times we can reach far away ilands with Galleons.

@all: I'am not annoing about my english or the posts about it. To learn english is one point for me to be a member of this forum. (If i don't want so, i can also play on German sites) I can tell you, it's really hard to read posts with american or other slang and understanding only the half of it. :cry:
If you read my signatur, live is fun and i love the good old song from Bobby McFerrin "Don't worry, be happy"

Some thoughts on Sesn's map:

Overall, I like the city placement notes... though I'm tempted to ask that site 6 be moved 1 tile SE to be placed next to the lake and Site 2 move 1 tile NW to be placed next to a lake.

Players new to C3C will need to note that site 8 will need to have the wetlands cleaned before that site can be settled.

Some other thoughts/suggestions:

We Have Iron, and it's connected. I'm tempted to suggest we pillage it, and build a bunch of Veteran warriors for a massive warriors-to-swords upgrade gambit... but that would cost some worker turns...

I suggest we take any warriors that we presently have and upgrade them. Any regulars should be positioned to go to the other island and get some combat experience for promotion.

We need to consider building some curraughs, and get some harbor pre-builds going in cities along the western coast. Put the curraughs in these cities so we can upgrade them, and make a push for the island to the west. Scrap the unit builds in Stockholm, Oslo and the Iron town... build curraughs, and start temples as harbor pre-builds. I suspect there are some serious barbs on that island. Suggest we land 2 boatloads of swords before we send settler pairs.

We seem to have neglected scouting the mountains north of our capitol... we need to make sure there isn't more land up there.

Order of go:

SesnOfWthr <-just played
Bed_head7 <-UP
Scoutsout <-on deck
Detlef Richter <- warming up
Romeothemonk
Merum <-played a solid first round

There are actually two curraghs right around the minimap in the screenie.

For site 2, the placement was based on using the whales, which are just out of sight to the E. Site 6, I didn't want to waste the fish to the NW.

I should have noted that 8 would have to be cleared. Low priority location though.

Not sure warriors/swords are the way to go here. I expect to be in expansion mode for a bit yet, and when it comes time for pointy-stick, we should be close to zerks. I was more interested in getting our perceived strength up a bit, to avoid more demands.

@Sesn: You may be right... the Warriors-to-Swords gambit might not work well here... I just thought I'd throw the idea out. If any of you guys are unfamiliar with this technique we can discuss it for "training value".

I missed the whales on that one site. You've probably figured out by now that I hate building aqueducts almost as much as temples. :)

If we've got some curraughs in the area that aren't needed for scouting, then perhaps we can bring them home. We need a harbor in one town on the west coast... when we acquire Map Making, we need to get into land-grab mode on that other island. Land 4 swords to deal with barbs, and start sending settler/spear pairs.

Well, the curraghs aren't needed for scouting THERE, but we still haven't met 4 or 5 civs, which is where they were headed. It's probably more important to continue with the land grab, as you say, so turn them around.

We do still have one curragh far to the east scouting.

BTW - I'm not a big fan of aqueducts either, but I figured that it would be awhile before it would be an issue, and I expected to have a lot more money then.

@Sesn: You may be right... the Warriors-to-Swords gambit might not work well here... I just thought I'd throw the idea out. If any of you guys are unfamiliar with this technique we can discuss it for "training value".


PLease, i need this explanation.


If we've got some curraughs in the area that aren't needed for scouting, then perhaps we can bring them home. We need a harbor in one town on the west coast... when we acquire Map Making, we need to get into land-grab mode on that other island. Land 4 swords to deal with barbs, and start sending settler/spear pairs.

I totally agree, we have to hurry on this iland.

Warrior to swords trick, is building a bunch of warriors for 10 shields, and then connecting iron and upgrading them for 60 gold apiece. This is much quicker then building the 30 shield swords, and the sudden appearence of 4-10 swords can very quickly turn a game. It is a very common trick in emporer and above. About this time, most players shut of research and do a sword gambit, and extort a few techs with this trick.

the basic idea is that since we have a nice chunk of cash, upgrades could be more appropriate than builds.

That is to say, we disconnect the iron, build a bunch of warriors, then reconnect the iron. Then we upgrade all those warriors.

The net result? We get a bunch of vet warriors for 10s and 60g, rather than a straight 30s. It is quicker, if you can afford the upgrades.

In this game, however, I don't think we want to go crazy with swords, as they are useless once we get to invention and get our zerks. (which are a very expensive upg of archers)

EDIT: beat me by a minute....

@Detlef: the Warriors-to-Swords gambit is a potentially powerful early warmonger tactic. It can be risky if you start it before you are certain that you have iron... without Iron you can be stuck with a bunch of warriors.

For early conquest you can move the Vet warriors to a border city with a barracks, and in one turn of upgrading have a small stack of doom. I used this effectively to take out England and most of Iroquois in GOTM31. I used it again in '32... the Jag warriors assemble so quickly at the rally point that it really eases the logistics. Pull it off with the Celts, and you can unleash a holy terror of Gallic Swords...

Nice trick.
If i understand right, it's useless for us infact of our UU.

Nice trick.
If i understand right, it's useless for us infact of our UU.You understand it correctly. The Berserk takes the place of the Longbow. I believe we could upgrade Archers to Berserks. An expensive upgrade, but I'm not sure we will need large numbers of them.

I would probably prefer to invade by attacking a coastal town with 4-6 Berserks, and then follow up with Knights. The Berserk's low defense rating makes it vulnerable to counterattack in ground combat.

It is not useless for us as archers upgrad to Zerks, but they cost 150 gold each. This is not a good deal for us. I can see upgrading a 2-4 archers but beyond that, I would not upgrade too many.

It is not useless for us as archers upgrad to Zerks, but they cost 150 gold each. This is not a good deal for us. I can see upgrading a 2-4 archers but beyond that, I would not upgrade too many.

Agreed, but in this game, I would rather build a couple swords for defense/barb patrol, and stick to spears for the most part. I don't see swords as an important part of any plan we may have, and I don't want to be stuck with 10 of them sitting around as MP's, since our galleys will be in use....

I will try to play today or tomorrow, but I have lots of reading to do, it seems. Sorry to slow down the pace, but I finally got my first job, so that means less time for civ for me.

No problem bed_head. We're not in any big hurry. I normally prefer to wait another day or two rather than skip someone. As long as you're participating in the discussion, that's fine. (It's when people disappear that I start getting antsy...)

I seem to be having problems with my civ-playing computer, so unless I resolve them soon, you can go ahead and skip me. How about, unless you here from me again in the next twenty-four hours, skip me. I would rather that I miss ten turns than hold up the game for the rest of you.

I'll check this tomorrow, bed_head. If it looks like you're going to resolve your computer problem soon we can wait. If not, I can pick it up... maybe tomorrow night.

Go ahead and skip me. I will get back in next time through.

Very well then. I'll play tonight or tomorrow.

Disconnecting a connected resource to build cheaper units and then upgrade them just seems... "exploity" to me. *shrugs* I'm not sure I would do it in a regular game, but maybe that's why I'm still a regent/monarch player.

I suppose one could say that you're simply trading resources, using gold instead of shields to gain the units you desire. If I'm off base here, let me know.

I have never done a disconnect/reconnect. I have waited on hooking up a resource, but never a dis/re move. I feel that it is an exploit larger than ROP rape myself.

While you may regard it as an exploit, the RBCiv crowd allows it. Since you are essentially substituting gold for shields, you're still having to sacrifice some of your empire's resources to pull it off.

Though I've never actually done it, I do recognize it as an option. If there is one thing I like to have in this game, it's options.

Well, I suppose I feel like you should still be able to build warriors after you can build swords... why wouldn't you be allowed to build inferior units and upgrade them with training(cash) when you need them?

I suppose it's a gray area, for sure... anyway, if you want to build warriors for upgrade, I'm not going to squawk. ;)

<delurk>
I suppose that it is not exploit in the terms that you could substitute shields for gold an time using Rush Build...unless you are on Despotism or other pop-rush governments. But if pooling workers to substitute pop for shields is an exploit...

Bah. I'm thinking too much.
</delurk>

Pre-flight check (1000BC):

Netherlands and Babylon are up Map-Making. We are up Wheel and Math on Babylon, otherwise even with Netherlands. We are actually ahead of all other civs in the game.

Dial up William. He'll offer Map Making for 650g.
Dial up Hammurabi. He'll sell Map Making for Wheel, Math, and 110g. I give him the 2 techs plus 60g.

Sell Map Making to Greece for 89g (their treasury) and to Sumeria for 58g.
Build embassies in Paris and Ur.

Wake the spear and archer, and send them northward.

Cycle through our cities:
Bergen has 16 shields towards a Swordsman, and is pop 4, growth in 1, producing 4 spt. How did we mine the gold without roading it too? Change to Spear (due in 1).
Swap Birka to galley and Stockholm to harbor.
Swap Oslo to Galley.

IBT - Abu complains about a trespassing curraugh.
Bergen Spear>Settler
Reykjavik Worker>...Settler
Maya complete the Colossus.
Babs swap to Pyramids, Greeks and Sumerians to Oracle

Turn 1 (975)
Move units around, recall one galley, scout with 2.

IBT - Trondheim Settler>Settler
English cascade to Pyramids, Oracle

Turn 2 (950)
MM citizen from forest to mined grass in Trondheim to maintain 5fpt
Scouting galley moves south, and we contact Theodora of Byzantium. She's 8 cities, silks, but down Map Making. She offers 80g, I sell it to her for 90.

IBT - not much

Turn 3 (925) move some units... there is a pink border near Byzantium...

Swap Stockholm to Galley, Oslo to Harbor
Backtrack with the galley near Byzantium, and we meet the Portugese.

Henry is UP horseback riding, down Math and Map Making... has access to Ivory. Trade him MapMaking for HBR and 20g. Sumeria has a monopoly on Polytheism. He wants our treasury for it, and there are no other techs available. I'll wait.

IBT -

Turn 4 (900)
Found Aarhus and set queue to Galley

IBT - nada

Turn 5 (875)
MM Trondheim to maintain 5fpt.
some worker moves... scout with the curraughs

IBT - Forest chop completes in Oslo, harbor due
Bergen Settler>Worker
Copenhagen Sword>Spear
Oslo Harbor>Galley
Dutch start Great Lighthouse
Sumerians start Temple of Artemis

Turn 6 (850)
Upgrade a curraugh in Oslo
Move some units, push back the fog with the curraughs

IBT - Trondheim Settler>Settler

Turn 7 (825)
Move some stuff around... I will found a few more towns and put troops on the other island next turn

IBT - Hammurabi complains about a curraugh

Turn 8 (800)
Move a sword and and archer to the other island, a scouting curragh makes contact with the Ottomans. Osman has no new techs, and is broke.

IBT - A barb attacks our archer
Bergen Worker>Spear
Sumerians start Great Lighthouse

Turn 9 (775)
Found Stavenger, set to Galley

Oh man ... a sword pops a goody hut on the other island, and we learn the secrets of Philosophy!!!
[dance]

Oh man... the stupid science advisor wants to go for Polytheism (which we can buy)...
Our other options are Code of Laws, Currency, and Literature. Since the AI tend to neglect Currency and Lit, I set queue to Lit.

AAAAHHH!!!!

Since we were "researching" Construction, we got that as the free tech. :gripe:

Move some units... change Copenhagen to settler

IBT - Osman complains about a passing curraugh
Arabs building Pyramids

Turn 10 (750)
Drop a settler pair off by the horses
move some units...

I do a check... and Gilgamesh will still trade us polytheism for 17g + 983g. He'll also trade for Construction, straight up. He'll be insulted by Philosophy, which means he's working on it.

> > The Save < < (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/scout1_750_BC.SAV)

Got it. I play today and post tomorrow.
Our next milestone is the expansion on the W iland. And if i have understand it right, every two turns MM of Trondheim.

I would not trade construction. I would keep it until Polytheism makes the rounds. Construction is just that much better of a Tech, and I would like to use it to get an expensive tech, not just one where we could lose the ToA race.

@ Detlef: There are still some sites along our southern coast that need to be settled. With Map Making known, I'd hate to have an AI on our shore. I put some towns to work on settlers that aren't really settler pumps, in order to grab some land.

Philosophy from a hut! wahoo! ::dance::

I can't wait to get my hands on this game again...

What was wrong with getting Construction as the free tech? Next to Republic, isn't that the most expensive tech in the Ancient Age? Although I can understand why you would rather have gotten Currency, I would take Construction above all the others that you mentioned.

What was wrong with getting Construction as the free tech? Next to Republic, isn't that the most expensive tech in the Ancient Age? Although I can understand why you would rather have gotten Currency, I would take Construction above all the others that you mentioned.

I think, and I sure could be wrong here, that we would prefer to get currency because the AI tends to lean toward the construction path. We get a freebie, and let the AI research construction for us.

Am I right, or just dumb? :P

@actually, I was thinking Lit and a Great Library gambit, or maybe the Republic Slingshot (do we have Code of Laws?) ...but it's no biggie. We're up on several civs in technology, which isn't bad considering the fact that we're not researching... :D

@Merum, I usually go with currency as the Ai will research construction at 5th rather than currency. When I get to currency, I can usually trade it for 2-4 other techs. I usually like to do a Philo gambit with a currency gambit following, unless I am on a huge or large map, then I go IW to start the warmongering. So if you are ever presented with a free tech option, take currency, as judicious trading gets you many techs.

Here we go:

730: Babylon pays 60g for horseback riding
found Odense and build harbor to connect lux and resources
Sumer gives construction for polytheism + 14g
now we are the tech leaders ( :eek: without any research)

710: Berlin builds Orakel

690: Stockholm builds triere -> next settler
Maya builds pyramids
Greece builds great wall
Portugiese builds statue of Zeus
I changed lux to 30% (Stockholm try to riot next turn)

670: France pays 60g for construction
these trades are not the best, but with map making and the contact
of each other, our chance for trading goes away. If we spead up
some AI, they can search new techs for us, else we have to wait
a little bit longer.

650: found Hareid (build barracks)
found Molde (build temple)
Babylon climbes on our iland with a settler/warrior combo
our settler arrives earliest next turn

630: lost 1 sword against barb warrior
Babylon found Shuruppak
Portugal gives code of law + 40g for construction
Greece gives 90g for code of law

610: nothing

590: found Alesund (build temple)
Osman gives currency for polytheism + 490g

570: nothing

550: Sumer builds Great Lighthouse
Blue borders S of Babylon, but i don't met them

We should speed our iland settling to the W and the small iland East. Also two more citys at our S. Two settlers went to this location.

Can we get a screenshot of our empire?

Where are we gents? We slipped off the front page. ;)

Sorry gang... I didn't mean to neglect this one. The last couple of days have been a bit busy. But I'm going to scrap GOTM stuff for a bit and focus on SGs for a while. I'll read Detlef's log and offer some thoughts tomorrow.

First, a roster:
SesnOfWthr - Skip from Thurs till Tuesday.
Bed_head7
Scoutsout
Detlef Richter - Just Played
Romeothemonk - [b]UP[/]
Merum - ON DECK

I took a second to look at the save now, here are some pretty quick thoughts:

How did Babylon get a city on our island? Looks like a pretty good pointy stick oppurtunity a bit down the road....

I'm not sure how we managed it, but we have not researched for a single turn, and lead Portugal by philo, and everyone else is 3 techs or more away from the MA. So a :goodjob: to all of us.

Detlef - I like your thinking on trying to skim some extra settlers. I'd like to see a mad dash for land, almost at the expense of all else. Many (or most?) of the civs have MM now, so available land will start to fill up quickly.

I would not trade any techs right away. Nobody has anything we need, and a slower tech pace favors us. Ideally, the land grab will be coming to an end when zerks come online.

How did Babylon get a city on our island? Looks like a pretty good pointy stick oppurtunity a bit down the road....This one's on me. I got a little "tunnel vision" and went for the other island before we got our home landmass secured.
I'm not sure how we managed it, but we have not researched for a single turn, and lead Portugal by philo, and everyone else is 3 techs or more away from the MA. So a :goodjob: to all of us.We've traded well, and I popped Philosophy from a goody hut. Hey - sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. :DDetlef - I like your thinking on trying to skim some extra settlers. I'm going to have to re-read that part of his log...
Ideally, the land grab will be coming to an end when zerks come online.Speaking of 'zerks... we don't need a great many of them. I think half a dozen (followed by many knights) would make a nice invasion force...

I'm going to have to re-read that part of his log...

Don't know if it was in his log or not. I opened the save to get Romeo's screenie and saw a few small cities building settlers. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Speaking of 'zerks... we don't need a great many of them. I think half a dozen (followed by many knights) would make a nice invasion force...

Scout you of all people should realize that the fun of zerks is assaulting these cities from the water. You don't even really need knights en masse. Just take a city, jump back on the boats, and hit the next one down the coast the next turn. All you have to bring with you is defense to leave in the cities.

Of course a knight army or two would be nice...

BTW - Need to rush that harbor in Odense and get a worker over the to the horses. Just a few fast movers will be good for homeland defense.

Here's Romeo's screenie, BTW:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Scoutc_2.JPG

Scout you of all people should realize that the fun of zerks is assaulting these cities from the water. You don't even really need knights en masse. Just take a city, jump back on the boats, and hit the next one down the coast the next turn. All you have to bring with you is defense to leave in the cities. Consider this: 2-3 boatloads of 'zerks, 3-4 boatloads of Knights. Hit a coastal town with the 'zerks, and take it. Move the boats with the Knights into the newly acquired coastal town, and UNLOAD the Knights...and press inland. Immediately. THEN move the 'zerks up the coast to raid another seaside settlement... What's the shield cost of a Beserk versus a Knight?

Whaddya think?

What I think and the shield cost are inherently related. They're both 70s builds.

It may be difficult to muster a large enough force, and still be able to hit those spears and pikes. You gut into muskets, and things go much slower for both units....

I would go for 8-10 beserks, depending upon how far away our foe is. Bad luck with RNG and a few pikeman, or musketman, depending upon how long it takes to get our galleys where they are needed, in a city could mean we lose a few. Add in slower healing aboad galleys, and probably 3-4 defenders per city, and a couple more beserks might be worth the cost. Another thing, any extra spearman should be taken along, just to insure that a beserk never defends. That is probably a really obvious thing to the gold wings, but the first, and so far only, time I played as the Scandinavians, I only brought two pikeman per town, and stupidly lost a couple beserks that had established the beachead, or were damaged enough to need to get in a town with barracks. Of course, we will probably have the money to upgrade the spearman, but I had used all my spare change to upgrade my archers.

Good comments on the units and what we may face as defenders... it will be interesting to see how it shakes out.

Just to get the order-of-play on the current page:

SesnOfWthr - Skip from Thurs till Tuesday.
Bed_head7
Scoutsout
Detlef Richter - Just Played
Romeothemonk - UP
Merum - ON DECK

Yeah, Whoops. I guess the skip at the beginning threw me. I will need a swap here gents. I can't touch until Saturday. Game time has gotten limited this week. Thanks.

We could wait a couple of days if you can get to it this weekend. We don't have to be strict about the 24/48 rule here. If you'd prefer to skip we can let Merum have it, but I don't mind waiting.

Whatever the rest of the team wants is fine with me. I'm not impatient, I was just worried that everybody forgot. :P

If we wait for Romeo, I may not need a skip after all. :p

On the other hand, if Romeo and Merum swap, we could potentially get 4 or 5 sets in the books before I am available again.

Doesn't matter to me, I'm just throwing it out there....

@Sesn: I'd like to maintain the order-of-go if that's possible. Alternating gold and silver is a check to try to give these silver wings guys a game that's in decent shape, and a way to mitigate against any nasty surprises that may come up. If we were a little further along and settled into this game a little more I wouldn't have this reservation...

...but if romeo can't play this by saturday we'll let Merum pick it up. I don't see anything that would cause this to take a twist like Bede2 :rolleyes:

If you could take a look at the save and offer some pointers for Merum, that'd be good.

@Merum: We'll put you on 'standby' for the moment, if that's okay with you. If romeo doesn't post by tomorrow evening, we'll let you pick it up on Saturday if that suits. You (or anyone else on the team) can download the save and have a look, offer comments, suggestions, etc.

@ Team: I apologize for the double post, but I just saw the latest GOTM results: Detlef posted a domination win in 1640 in GOTM32 (Monarch level, Continents). His game put him comfortably in the top half of the games submitted, which I think is quite respectable.

So, @Detlef: :thumbsup: I smiled when I saw that. :D

Scout - sorry, just saw this at 3 am. Since I'm leaving in the am, I can't spare the time to look at the save (I'll regret being up as it is).

However, I did look at the save the other night and posted some basic thoughts, see 10-15 posts above.

Basic advice is this:
1) Finish settling our continent
2) Settle as much of the next continent as possible, keeping our cities basically bunched together (no stray city on the SW side of the continent)
3) Keep the tech pace as slow as possible
4) Focus solely on expansion and a basic military for now. That mean little, if any, buildings.

HTH, and I will look forward to checking in late Monday. :)

Some embassies that I built.

IHT: Guess theres nothing left to do but a little southern Gospel music. A lot of scientific civs. I vote we kill all but the scientific civs to help us out.
IBT: NOthing
Turn 1: Whack a barb camp. MOve a bunch of stuff.
IBT: Meet the Maya, we are up alphabet, HBR and poly. Greeks start MoM.
Turn 2: Oslo settler to court. Greeks are up engineering on us. Move stuff.
IBT: Greeks start the ToA.
Turn 3: Pop a hut, get barbs. Kill a barb. Greeks won't part with engineering, we will have to start buying at 4th or so, or start stealing.
IBT: Kill a barb, Portugese start MoM.
Turn 4: Rej builds spear starts court. Oslo sword to sword. Whack a barb camp. Found Bodo. Lose a vet archer to a conscript barb.
IBT:
Turn 5: Trondheim settler to harbor. Bergen Settler to settler. Found karasjak.
IBT:
Turn 6: Aarhus rax to harbor.
IBT:
Turn 7: Birka Settler to Settler. Kill a barb and pop a hut to get more barbs.
IBT: Germany declared war on the French.
Turn 8: Build Tromso. My bad, I lower lux from 30 to 0. Kill a barb.
IBT: Sumerians get the ToA, portugese get MoM. Swap to Palace.
Turn 9: Stavanger Galley to harbor. Whack a loose barb and a barb camp. Move ships.
IBT: France declares on Sumeria. Babs start TGL.
Turn 10: Trondheim harbor to settler. Hareid rax to Sword. Get Lit and 56 gold for CoL. Found Vadso. Whack a barb. Found Farsund, which will probably be pillaged in the interturn.

What is rax? And what was the swap to palace about? Is that a prebuild for something?

Rax is a barracks. Palace swap was to get a high shield buildup so we could get a nice wonder. (Hanging gardens).

(Delurk)
Rax=Barracks

Nice game going here guys

For the Understatement of the Month I submit the following quote:
@Team: I'd rather have a little spam than silence.

Alrighty - a little cross-posting spam...thanks for picking it up romeo. Nice turns from what I can tell. (I was up in a couple of others, and have only skimmed the log).

@Merum, you're up if you're ready for it.

ok, Got it. Have to play later.

Random thoughts...

Our Military is almost non-existent, and our farthest cities are surrounded by barbs. I hope we don't lose too much from their pillaging.

We seem to have awfully few workers for our city #. I know we're on a land grab, but we're also in despot,and at the mercy of the other civs to research a govt... shouldn't we be trying to squeeze out everything we can?

We are even or up on everybody except Greece, who has Engineering. Alexander is proud of it, and won't let it go. have to wait.

We could bankrupt the other civs selling them old techs, and perhaps get them to research something we need. have to think on this one.

There's a settler here, no obvious mention of a destination anywhere. I'll try to plop him where he looks useful. Might be time for a dotmap of the new island.

350 BC

Joan wants an alliance vs the Sumerians and ROP. I don't think so.
Farsund ransacked, 79 gold lost.Still barbs everywhere.
Hareid should build some culture and grab that wheat so it can grow faster and be more productive. Thinking about switching to temple (29 turns right now).
Put that settler on the way to the horses before the brits can grab it.
Aarhus on the brink of riot. Lux to 10.

330 BC

Arabs ask us to leave. OK.
Odense Riots. How did I get Aarhus, and miss Odense? *scratches head* Lux to 20, +53gpt.
Note to self: find one of those smiley-face citizen mods. Odense had two content + 1 unhappy. Thought they were two happy.
Smoke Jaguar gets Alphabet for all of his 87 gold
Copenhagen Sword>Sword

310 BC

Bergen Settler>Sword
Settler and sword pair move toward the galley.

290 BC

zzz

280BC
Trondheim Settler>Settler. Move the settler toward the boats.

Babs have lit, and are building GL. I'm going to trade it around before they can. Here's what we get for it:
Netherlands: 515g, now broke, cautious to polite
Arabs pay 73g, now broke, annoyed to cautious
England can't even write, get that for 89g, now broke, cautious to polite
Netherlands pay up their 69g, now broke, cautious to polite
France ponies up their treasury, 31g. cautious to polite
Sumeria gives us all their 52 g, cautious to polilte
Ottos give up all 40 of their gold too.
Byz have 2 gold to their name. Let them get it elsewhere :P
Greece won't give up engineering, so they can go pound sand. :P

We need that engineering to get invention, for our zerks. With this round of trading, hopefully I've knocked a couple of civs off of researching it onto something more useful, like a decent govt, and get them closer to engineering too, so the price will come down. We net 870 gold from this, bankrupt the customers who bought it, beat the babs to the trading table, improve our relations with many.

Are we prebuilding for hanging gardens or leonardo's?

270BC

Bodo Riots... dammit! sorry guys. Lux has to go to 50 to keep them happy! Why is Bodo so unhappy?, +20gpt
Practically everybody starts building the GL. Now I'm worried I've made a horrible mistake, but I figured the babs would swap it around anyway.
Karasjok Worker>court. Anybody can change this build if they want.
Shift unbusy workers to stockholm to add shields to the wonder mill.
Greeks still won't get off engineering.

250BC

Aarhus Harbor>archer
I'm afraid I might have broken the settler pump. Sorry if I did. I can get the settler in 2, but growth is in 4, or settler in 3, growth in 2. I'll keep an eye on it.

230 BC

zZz... moving toward stated objectives

210 BC

Still moving along... Alex still wont trade us engineering.

190 BC

Risor founded, stealing a horse spot from the anybody who might get a settler across on a galley
Sumeria has monarchy! We can get it, but it's insanely expensive, with no real avenue to recover our investment. I'll let Sesn work that deal, he's much more experienced than I.
Alex still won't give up engineering. We may need to war with him if he gets too far down the lower half. I'm afraid he's halfway to gunpowder by now, and he has hoppers to defend.


I guess I'm not coming away with a warm fuzzy... I don't feel like I did a stellar job with these turns. I'm unhappy about the settler pump, sorry if I screwed it.

I have the settler in Molde slated for the iron hill SE of Farsund. Put him wherever you feel is right. There's another settler headed for the boats.

I anxiously await any feedback here.

The Save:

The only feedback is some slight constructive criticism on the lux tax. If one otwn needs tax that high and the others don't, Hire a clown in the city, whip the city, swap to worker, etc. Don't mortgage the treasury on one town unless it is a wonder town. The Prebuild is for HG, but it will be a long time before it nears completion.
Note: Do not be the first to buy a tech anymore. Any person that knows the tech knocks roughly 10% off the total price.

In that context then, I'm glad Alex didn't sell me engineering. I had hoped he would trade it off, but I guess nobody else qualifies for it yet. I'm anxious to get those zerks on line.

I guess I'm looking at consolidating "our" islands, pushing the brits off our second Island, and the babs off our main one. I'm reall concerned that corruption will become an issue... FP in the center of island 2?

I've been looking at some other no-research games, where the players gifted and traded to keep the other civs researching new stuff. I think we need to get to that point, but we need a MUCH stronger military first. I'd think slow tech pace until we have a respectable defense force, then pick it up a bit. We're going for space, right?

Anyway, yeah, I hate buying techs at monop prices.. I'm just anxious to get out of Despot. Am I wrong for feeling that way in this variant? I'd really like to cash-rush some courthouses in the far reaches.

The Forbidden Palace just fixes the OCN, Optimal City Number corruption. It has no bearing on the location/distance corruption. Thus the FP can be built anywhere to have the same effect. In fact we can use the Prebuild going now for the FP. The government we will want is republic, and thus shouldn't concern ourselves with Monarchy except to use it as trade bait. The amount of time needed to research is dependant upon the number of civs, so I think if we knock a few civs off, the research pace will pick up, especcially if we knock off the non-scientific civs. I am all in favor of an incredibly slow tech pace until zerks, then wipe out the Arabs and the English. After that, accelerate the pace a little, and hang on until we can go commie or facist for the cheap steals.

So we want republic? I figured since we'd be doing an appreciable amount of "pointy-stick research" that we might want to be in Monarchy...

If we're in repub, I guess we'll have to manage our wars to be very short, with specific goals in mind. I guess we can still achieve our objectives without rolling over our neighbors. :)

EDIT: Well, I guess repub doesn't have the same war-weariness issues as Demo, so just never mind. :P

In republic, war weariness doesn't kick in until you start losing some major units or a city or 2. With a concentrated Zerk hit, we should be able to take 3-5 cities on the opening turn of a war, hold on for 2-3 turns and then get nice peace settlements. Pointy stick is a nice idea, but we really do not want to hamstring the science leaders.

Scout - I'm back.

Lot of catching up to do, so I'll read the logs tonight, and hopefully get to this Tuesday night.

Couple of thoughts I'd like to offer up, most of which echo Romeo:

We want to keep the tech pace as slow as possible. If we aren't actually doing any research, it is impossible to remain the tech leader, and becomes increasingly expensive to attempt.

The whole concept of "pointy-stick" research is basically tailored for the WW in a republic. The idea is to hit quick, make it hurt, and sign an expensive peace treaty. Republics have a low enough WW to withstand the first turns of war easily, but prolonged conflicts really drag the economy. Similarly, we don't want to kill everyone, as we still need someone to discover the techs for us.

Although it's always good to have an extra 900g, we can only use that money for trades and upgrades. If we sit around with the money in our pockets, we will be asking for trouble with demands and barbarian pillages.

I'm gonna go dig around the save and possibly cook up a map...

Lots of good discussion going here. Sorry I haven't been participating in more of it (up in 3 Demi-God level games over the weekend...that took my Civ time... :D ) I'll have more time for this game this week.

@Merum: a note on Republic. It is arguably the most flexible form of government in the game. I find it durable enough for all but the most serioius warmongering.

The main reason I did the lit trading was to bankrupt all the civs... I thought this would slow research. Is this not the case? I chose lit because I could sell it to everybody. :P

A monopoly on Literature (or Currency) has good tech-trading leverage, because the AI tend to neglect these techs.

I agree completely on the republic. Since the revision in Conquests (or PTW, I never bought it and GOTM 33 is the first time I have played it) to give unit support, in most games I see no reason to make more a government switch after the move to republic. In fact, I used to nearly always switch to Democracy if I was being a 'builder', and sometimes even when I was doing limited warring. With Conquests, I cannot remember ever having made the swith to Democracy. Large scale wars have prompted a switch to Communism, and I tested Fascism once or twice, but I have a lot of trouble dropping the commerce bonus under the republic.

The main reason I did the lit trading was to bankrupt all the civs... I thought this would slow research. Is this not the case? I chose lit because I could sell it to everybody. :P

You were right to sell it to everyone. If you didn't sell it to all, one of your customers would have.

The flaw in your reasoning is this: gold on hand has nothing to do with research rate. It's only gpt that will slow the research rate. If you apply it to your own games, you can see that if you have to buy something for 1000g, you take the hit once, and start rebuilding your treasury. If you make the same purchase for 50 gpt, it lasts for twenty turns, and you will probably have to lower your science slider, thus slowing your research rate.

A couple notes about the save:

The factory is definitely wacky. I'm not even sure how it got down to size 3 , but the cycle is the four turns from sizes 5 - 7.

Why did we put that city (can't remember the name) so close to the Babylonian city? Are we hoping for a flip, or something?

We should probably just fill in our gaps on the Northern half of the Western island, and slow our growth. Looks like we were able to settle a good chunk of it since I saw the game last. I will try to grab the iron in the middle of the island, though I doubt I'll get it.


And specifically for Merum, though all are welcome to it:

Note to self: find one of those smiley-face citizen mods.

Here is the one I use. I believe the readme is still included with it. If not, let me know, and I'll help with the installation.

Scout you lurking around here somewhere?

I just started playing and randomly remembered the whole "war with the civ that gets Team A's start" thing. Did we still want to try that?

For the record, that civ is England, directly on the other side of the second continent.... :mischief:

For the record, that civ is England, directly on the other side of the second continent.... :mischief:

Yeah, I'm lurking... rough last couple of days of RL, limited time for Civ...

I think England would have been a logical target even if it wasn't Roster A's civ... and it would be quite appropriate for Viking Berserks to raid English coastal settlements....:devil2:

But my question was do you want to declare war now, or just wait for the natural progression?

I started the turns last night, should have them finished sometime today. Sorry for the delay, SGOTM3 took up more of my time than I had expected.

I don't think there is anything to be gained by an untimely declaration of war on England. I believe we will compete with them to settle the island to the west. Once that is settled we should probably position ourselves to take England off that island.

An untimely decleration might be fine. Last I saw is that they were just given writing and are bankrupt. This means that they really are no threat to settle our Island.
I built that one city really close so that we have a nice city placement when we raze the babylonian City. I imagine a minor war against Babylon with an outlying city capture plan will greatly reduce the cost of a tech that we would want from them.

First, a clarification note:
I was not necessarily advocating a war on England. In the ScoutX discussion thread, we had mentioned declaring on the civ that started in the same location as TeamA. I remembered this last night, and after taking note of their start screenie, easily deduced hat England was the civ that got TeamA’s start. Actually, I feel that we are too thin militarily ATM to really wage effective war, but England is also about 7 techs behind us. All that being said, I will not declare on England, and will continue to play my turns normally, but I will say that they will make a nice first conquest, excepting the lack of pointy-stick opportunities.

Some pre turn notes:
The factory is completely whacked out. It is supposed to run from turns 5-7. Starts the settler right after growing (or shrinking) to size 5, then produces it 4 turns later when it grows to size 7. Thus, a never ending cycle. However, we are currently building a settler, some two turns after we grew to size 3. Looks like it will take four turns before I get it churning again.

Our luxury rate is currently at 50%. We must be able to get it down. In fact I can drop it down to 10% and just MM three of our colony towns. Income jumps from 19gpt to 62gpt. Now if I could only use all this money on something good.

Sumeria pays 7g and 26gpt for Currency, which gets them into the MA. Their free tech is Eng, which they’ll sell for 1750g, still too rich for my tastes. Besides, we haven’t seen Feud yet, so zerks are still a bit off.

I’d like to get all the plains irrigated, as there are six cities that can use those eighteen or so tiles.

We’re on turn 118, so I may play an extra two to even it back up.

I do change a few builds, starting FP in Reykjavik, but not wholesale changes by any means.

170 bc (1) – Copen sword -> worker.

IT – Henry gives us the boot.

150 bc (2) – Would anyone care to enlighten me as to the existence of irrigated grass near Oslo? See some borders in the NE of a civ we haven’t met yet?

130 bc (3) – Bergen sword -> spear. Copen worker -> sword. Hareid sword -> archer. Contact Hittites, they have nothing useful, and are down 4 techs. Establish embassies with them and Germany. Amusingly discover that their capitol is on the far end of this continent.

110 bc (4) – Trond cat -> settler. Odense harbor -> galley. Trondheim should be back on track now.

90 bc (5) – Aarhus archer -> archer. Fauske founded on northern coast of second continent. I discover that the governor in Trondheim has been changed so that “emphasize food” is on. Undoubtedly this has contributed to the factory problems.

70 bc (6) – Stavanger harbor -> galley. Pop a hut for 50g. Karistad founded to disperse barbs and claim more spices on east coast of second continent.

50 bc (7) – Molde settler -> temple. Alesund temple -> cat. I don’t understand why none of these idiots will research Republic!!

30 bc (8) – Bergen spear -> archer. Disperse a barb camp nearly touching English borders. Have to bump luxes up to 20%.

10 bc (9) – Trondheim settler -> settler. Aarhus archer -> archer. Disperse barb camp on second continent.

IT – Lose a 2 hp sword to a constcript barb warrior.

10 ad (10) – Hareid archer -> archer. Tromso worker -> spear. Risor worker -> spear. 3/4 sword takes revenge for his fallen brother. Settler moves in.

30 ad (11) – Copen sword -> archer. Birka archer -> court. Batsfjord founded to claim iron on other continent.

50 ad (12) – Farsund worker -> spear. Disperse one more barb camp for good measure.

Recap: Settlers are en route to the last couple of spots that are worthwhile. I have marked them appropriately on the screenie to follow. The redhead says we are weak vs England, Germany, and Ottos. Strong vs Arabia, France, and Sumeria. Average vs all the rest. Engineering is still only available MA tech. Republic is still entirely unavailable. Monarchy can be traded for, but not much gain in doing so. We’re #9 in score, with 553. England leads with 706. With our current cash, we can upgrade 29 archers to zerks. We’re also making 80+ gpt. We should build more archers, as we only have 7 right now. Building a few horses may be a good idea as well, if only for homeland defense currently. A few cats may help this cause as well.

EDIT: also attached screens of the two embassies I built.

Red dots are current locations of two settlers, yellow are thei destinations (both on go to orders)

I have been trying to get a skeleton road network up and running on the second island.

Even though there are a couple more city spots on the other island, they're probably not worth the time/effort required to get them.

I also blocked the two access points to the channel running between the islands to reduce their vulnerability.

Will start it tonight, hopefully finish tonight or tomorrow. I think you already answered this at some point, but what do you use for screenshots. I tried one of the free ones someone recommended, and have not managed to make it work.

I use MS paint. If you have that, I'll be glad to explain what i do. :)

Otherwise I won't be much help. :(

I thought I remembered something else. But I do have paint. And I would appreciate an explanation. I am only given the choice to save as a bitmap, and the file is then too big.

It's not that the file is too big, it's that CFC doesn't accept .bmp's as an option for download. ;)

Now you say you aren't given any other options? That's confusing. :hmm:

Here's exactly what I do:
In game, I press the "print screen" button.
Then I alt+tab and open up my paint program.
Make whatever customizations I desire on the screenie.
Choose "save as" and name the pic whatever suits it.
Below the name box, there is another drop down that gives me an option to change format to .jpg.
Change format and save. Then just upload to CFC.

Following these steps exactly, you don't get an option to change format?

No, I haven't. But I may have figured out the problem. I will test a bit, and I might be able to finally figure it out.

What version of paint do you have?

Version 5.0, which came with Windows 2000.

Hmm. I'm using 5.1. I would have thought it would be almost identical....

Well, I guess I can go another 10 without posting screenshots. My mom should be installing Photoshop on this computer fairly soon, since she is slowly switching her work related stuff to this computer from our older one. Next time around, I will post screen shots.

delurk/

I use IrfanView (a free download) it's great for saving screenies and resizing images. I use other things to actually paint with but I use the darn thing all of the time. It's only 1.24 MB so it shouldn't take forever downloading either. I will post a link in the AM for it or you could just google it. Also it does not have one of those annoying pop-ups asking you to buy the thing either

Download speed is not a problem anyway. I'll google it. Thanks for the suggestion.