SGOTM3 - Spoiler 1

Rules for Posting in and Viewing this thread

1. Your team must be researching a middle age tech.
2. Your team must have contact with all AI opponents who started on the same landmass as you.
3. A nominated team member must have posted a summary of the teams game to the limit of this spoiler.
4. No discussion is permitted of any contact made from other continents.
5. No discussion is permitted of any Middle Age resource locations.

REMEMBER: Wait until your teams' summary has been posted before reading or posting in this thread yourself.

Ancient Age Spoiler for Team Smackster:

Opening moves:
We settled on the spot, and went for an ultra early food strategy, sending the worker straight to the game to chop it. We built two warriors for scouting while chopping, turning the forest into an early barracks before starting a settler. This turned out to work very well since Veii didn't really need a granary, as our second city was formed N-NW of the game, and would be a 4 turn settler factory once the third city would make the second game available.

Exploration and contacs
The first warrior scouted northwards, stopping just past the floodplain before heading counter-clockwise.
The second warrior scouted SE, and in 3200 BC made a frightening discovery:
Alert alert, Alert alert, enemy sighted, enemy sighted. To the south east, Greek Phalanx, oh dear, run away, run away.
He hightailed home incase Alexander decided to just waltz into Veii. The hoplite folloed us all the way home before heading off into the mountains. Alex finally popped by for coffe before 2710 BC, and sold us Bronze Working before being told he would be the next acquisition in our empire. He wouldn't comply, so we declared on him. Scouting continued south along the western coast, before being put on hold since we didn't want more contacts and had sufficent map to plan cities.

Before 1950 BC England and America appears in F4, guess someone told them where we live. Before 1750 BC we get more company, as Russia, Germany and Babylon appear in F4. France also appeared somewhere in there, but none of them have contacted us yet though.

In 1710 we make our first contacts: Germany first, followed by England and Russia. Babylon contacted us before this with a trade, but there was some confusion if this was proper contact, so war wasn't declared untill the next player spotted the mistake. It probably didn't change much though, as Babylon never managed to become a threat, and only sent the occasional bowman at us.

Scouting was resumed again in 1350 BC, and we have a look towards the north and find French borders.

Settling and Expansion
We decided early on to go with 2 main RCP rings, at 3 and 6. This way we managed to take full advantage of the rivers.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/SG03-Smackster-Citymap.jpg

Research and Trading
We started by researching pottery at max, followed by Bronze Working. BW never completed, since it was traded for before 2710 BC from Greece for Pottery and 3g. Continued on to Iron Working at max, which came in 1950 BC. The entire roman culture rejoiced at the fact we had plenty iron to build our might legionnaries. The wheel was the next tech up for research at max, coming in 1670 BC. Maths was ordered as the next project.

Before 1725 BC Hammurabi offers us Masonry and Ceremonial Burial if we'll just cough up Iron Working and 7 gold, which we decide is a worthy trade.

In 1500 BC England sell us Writing for WM, 23 gold and 5 gpt, Russia give us Philosophy for 6gpt and WM, Swap Philosophy for Mysticism with America, and philosophy with HBR from Germany.

In 1275 BC 3 civs have math, so we buy from France for 63g, 1gpt and wm, and sell it to Germany and England for a total of 90 gold. We buy literature from France in 1125 BC for WM+90g.

In 800 BC we buy Polytheism from America at monopoly (13gpt and 284g), and sell to the rest of the world. We start Monarchy at max.

After getting the Great Library (see below), we finished Monarchy then cut of research. At the start of 530 BC Republic pops from the great library, followed by Curreny and Construction in 450 BC, and that's it for research in this age ;)

In 530 BC we finally trade for a world map.

Warfare
Alexanders first raiding party showed up in 2430 BC, consisting of 3 warriors. They attack our defending archer, which defeats 2 and gets promoted, and the third dies attacking the defending warrior. Things looked shaky there, but we pulled through. Immediately after a hoplite appears as well, but that is killed by our elite archer while on grass. It isn't untill 1600 or so that the next "attack" comes, in form of a lone archer. Our elite archer attacks it, and Trajan rises to our cause!
Trajan draws up plans to construct several marvelous limestone triangles which will somehow cause our cities to grow twice as fast, as well as provide us with a border expansion. Trajan supervises construction, but perishes in a tragic gigantic limestone cube accident.
The greeks come at us again with some archers around 1450, but it's too little too late. From here on out there is a steady trinkle of Greek units (and others as well) over the mountains, but no serious threats.

We decided to hold of the GA till we could switch to Monarchy, so we built mainy horses for leaderfishing.

Before 690 BC, England allied France against us and we got an early enemy. In 570 BC an elite horse kills the last defending spear in Termopylae, getting us a leader as well. Great Library rushed in the replacement city.

In 330 BC we declare war on the last civ known to us, Russia. England had established an embassy with us, and we used this to sign England vs America for gpt, one turn before declaring premature war on England. We decided that our trading rep wasn't worth much in this game, so might as well get some use from it.

Wonders
Pyramids rushed in Antium in 1575 BC.
Great Library rushed in Syracuse in 550 BC

Conclusion and General Points
I personally love the way that all ancient age buildings, terraind and resources have latin names, gives a much better feeling for the game. Nice work on the latinized player references in city names (Aesonesium, Gonzominium?)

Those mountain ranges in the northeast and east posed some initial problems, both in blocking cities and letting enemy units walk close in protected squares.

At the end of ancient area, we didn't really see any barbs, so we were clueluess on the barb puzzle.

PTW and we're doing the variant, OWE. Note to self: schedule psychiatric evaluation ASAP.

4000BC send our worker south to confirm there isn’t a better location to plant Rome on. After seeing nothing deemed significant, Emperor M60A3TTS commanded the settler to drop his pack and we're off. Iron working in 40 @ min. Senator Sesn of Wthr had cautioned the despotic Senate that in his dreams he envisioned early contact with the mysterious Greek civ, so it was decided to try and avoid contact by moving our first warrior south. This of course was a futile attempt to circumvent the will of the gods, as a hoplite appeared in 3600BC from, you guessed it, the south. We eagerly traded young Alex our warrior code +23g for knowledge of bronze working so that we might better defend ourselves. Then we proceeded to tell Alex he was a fool as we would shortly have legions and declared. He was not amused.

Already at war with a civ and without any army to speak of, leadership was re-shuffled and Emperor Tallanas took command. In a brilliant defense of the capital in 2850BC, Greek warriors were successfully driven off, and the home of the Evil Empire, Athens, was discovered. The connected incense nearby confirmed our suspicion that Alex was on drugs this whole time, hence his pitiful attack on the Roman bastion. Thus our “Just Say No to Incense” campaign began as pillaging efforts were made ready. Senator Sesn then proceeded to claim the title of Caesar and brought up the required pillagers and improve our lands, and starting up the Cinzano wine-fest. Next up, Emperor TheNemesis DCLXVI founded our second city of Veii in 1990BC. Regrettably, Greek archers approached Rome once again, and declaring themselves to be Prohibitionists, cut our wine supply. We were not amused, and a little less happy.

A couple centuries later we learned that Tours de France was founded north of Rome. Choosing to avoid contact initially, we decided to send a Meet & Greet delegation to our new neighbor in the north. Happily spending 140 gold on French pottery and masonry, Emperor Romeothemonk showed Joan our deep appreciation by promptly razing Tours. Antium was founded as the newest member of the empire. Right around this time, we continue to rack up a growing list of enemies as England and Germany come a calling. M60 followed up with more contacts in 1375BC, with Babylon and America promoting a magical Mysticism tour for 80g that we chose to decline. Traded Uncle Sam 152 sawbucks and 1 per turn for math. Then help Otto with his cipherin’ by giving up math and 2 euros per turn for a new set of wheels and that Mystic thing. Also working Veii into our settler factory. 1200BC saw Cumae spring up as a new settlement, and around this time Emperor Tal decided it was time to get out and see the world. Trading for a series of territory maps, it was clear we were being heavily out-settled. Picked up Polytheism from Honest Abe right around this time for 10 gpt and our worldly map so we could accelerate our move towards Monarchy. Poly then went to DC Hammur-abi for writing and 15 gold grickles and his t-map.

As time marches on, the AI wonders start rolling by without so much of a hint of an MGL as we’re fighting off a growing number of bad guys. And the French bad guys got swords. We have a couple legions of our own, but are holding out for the GA to start with a more productive form of government. Emperor Tal shows his artistic side by coming up with a very colorful dot map that indicates tons of places we can put settlers down. Of course without a means of defense, planting a bunch of towns may not mean as much. M60 develops an attack plan into the French at the start of the GA, although the AI unbeknownst to us is sending a steady stream of swords in our direction which renders the plan somewhat, if not temporarily, irrelevant.

Emperor Nem gets to deal with our #1 continental power, England, and beats back every effort to get at our west coast towns. Vexed by their inability to put together an intelligent offensive, Liz calls on Babylon for assistance in 750BC. 670BC we offer 62 euros and 4 per turn for literature from Otto. He accepts, at which time we amend the deal to be for 62 euros and war. Get MM from Russia for Lit, 120 rubles and a map. Emperor Romeo finds things getting hotter as Bab bowmen and French swords are coming in force now right as Monarchy is almost discovered. Honest Abe appears in a belligerent tone and demands a map and some spare change. As we’re due to declare within 10, we tell him to take his threats elsewhere. So like any expansionist bully, he declares. Our towns are holding, but next, Emperor M60 sees AI settlers moving into the undeveloped areas to our south, so it’s getting close to flood conditions. 330BC gets Russia 323 of our gold and WM for Philo and CoL and her map. 250BC is an ominous year as our first town, Viriconium in the north is sacked by the French.

Monarchy is discovered in 250BC as four whipped units come in just before our unit production stops. Anarchy reigns for 7 turns, as Emperor M60 continues to hold off other advances. Emperor Tal leads his people out of anarchy and into the GA. Pick up currency in 130BC and we’re into the Middle Ages. 90BC is the Year of the Ridiculous. A Roman elite spear in a walled city loses to a French warrior. 70BC was the actual start of the GA. How does that correspond to Caesars arrival? 30BC brings bad news as Lutetia is destroyed by Greece. A scandal breaks out in Rome itself when it is learned that Emperor Tallanas was capturing slaves in this last set of turns. Rebuked by the Senate for his transgressions, the slaves are ordered to be freed from their existence and sent to the cross.

So the big picture says we’re being overrun. Whether we turn it around, we’ll know soon enough. Waiting for Monarchy has certainly been a risk, and the payoff remains to be seen. We’re desperately seeking MGL, anyone seen one out there?

So the big picture says we’re being overrun. Whether we turn it around, we’ll know soon enough. Waiting for Monarchy has certainly been a risk, and the payoff remains to be seen. We’re desperately seeking MGL, and I ain’t talking Monosodium glutamate. Anyone seen one out there?
Yes one or two, but most in the next spoiler, including 3 in one span of 10 turns, and on consecutive elite wins. Sorry looks like we got all yours.

Looks like meeting France so early is a bad thing, we were lucky that they were way down our contact list.

Cheers

Smackster

Yes one or two, but most in the next spoiler, including 3 in one span of 10 turns, and on consecutive elite wins. Sorry looks like we got all yours.


I'm sure you're not all THAT sorry. :p

But for pity's sake, keep it to yourself!! :lol:

We have not yet begun to fight.... :ninja:

Xteam's Ancient Age Progress.

We decided to go for the Xenophobic NOW variant, just for fun :D

Our celebrity cast:

klarius
AdrianE
Capt Buttkick
leif erickson
AlanH

klarius seemed to have a very good handle on how to MM our capital to get a fast granary, so we gave him the first turns. He settled Rome in 4000 BC, ran Pottery research at max and duly completed a granary as he predicted at turn 20. In 2550 BC AdrianE founded our Veii, our next city, west of Rome on a 3.x radius, and we proceeded to build a core.

We met Greece in 2750 BC but studiously ignored them. In the IBT after 2310 BC they finally called us with an offer we couldn't refuse, so we did a few tech trades and declared war like good little xenophobes. We then sent out a warrior to track down more civs, since we had 20 turns before our next declaration and we wanted to make as many trading opportunities as possible. Our second research project was Writing at minimum and we built our treasury for trade.

We met France in 1990 BC, and we set up tech and contact deals with them in 1575 BC to the tune of 20 gpt and declared war :D. Our full dance list for this continent then filled out as shown below, with a combination of direct and traded contacts. You'll see that we didn't have to worry about keeping to schedule after our third declaration, on England. In the space of ten turns they bought three others into a dogpile on us, with Russia giving them a helping hand. Germany finally declared on us to complete the continental set:


Civ Contact date/turn Latest DoW date/turn
Greece 2270 BC / Turn #37 2270 BC / Turn #37 (1st contact)
France 1990 BC / Turn #44 1575 BC / Turn #57 Declared
England 1625 BC / Turn #55 1075 BC / Turn #77 Declared
America 1500 BC / Turn #60 610 BC / Turn #97 They declared 975 BC
Russia 1500 BC / Turn #60 210 BC / Turn #117 They declared 775 BC
Babylon 1450 BC / Turn #62 190 AD / Turn #137 They declared 750 BC
Germany 1325 BC / Turn #67 420 AD / Turn #157 They declared 510 BC


We mainly operated in active defence mode, batting off successive incursions of warriors, archers, spears and bowmen. The Valley of Death to the north of Rome was a particularly bloody field, complete with the fabled 600 English horsemen riding to their deaths. We used archers then horses to defend the Roman Empire, and held off on building and deploying legions for as long as possible to delay our Golden Age. The RNG was not kind to us during these battles, and in spite of winning many elite battles we weren't blessed with a leader until after the end of the Ancient Age.

Our defensive approach meant we only took out two cities in about 4000 years of hatred. We destroyed Chartres in 730 BC, and Thermopylae in 250 BC.

Our research path took us through:
Pottery (max) completed in 3250 BC
Writing (min) completed in 1650 BC
Literature (min) bought in 1325 BC,
Polytheism (min) bought in 800 BC
Monarchy (max) completed in 350 BC
Construction (min) bought in 190 BC
Currency (max) completed in 130 BC -> Medieval.

We now have a 2 ring core of 14 cities at 3.x and 6.x, we are in our Golden Age in Monarchy and we are about to start taking the fight to our enemies. We've met more despicable aliens but even if we were allowed to talk about them here, they're not worth the typing effort, frankly.

Here's a picure of our empire as we move to a new era:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Spoiler1_Xteam.jpg

Team Mauer: Ancient Age

First of all I would like to say that our team is very technologically advanced, and blatantly disrespectful. Seeing that Democracy has not been discovered yet, isn't it amazing that I was "voted" to write the spoiler. The whole lot of degenerates refuse to even call me sir! :salute:

We started off by deciding, as others did, to found on the spot. We started off by building 3 warriors, researching Pottery at 100%, then prebuilding a granary. We got so lucky with each of the warriors finding huts within a 10 tile radius. All of them giving us settlers!

J/K Had you fooled for a second there huh! We decided on a 4/7 core, but looking back wonder if we should have gone 3/6 using the rivers to our advantage. Our second city was Veii settled Just east of the second game there. Zamint our team hero, spied out a good settler factory. :goodjob: We set up the inner core with Veii pumping settlers, the other cities building barracks then warriors, and Rome alternating between the two.

We tried to stay out of petty sqabbling with our neighbors, being pansies for the first couple thousand years. I think all of the civs demanded something at one point or another. Alex was the first one we met. He was pretty stingy with his scientific discoveries. We noticed the mountain range wasn't going to give him much room either. So when we saw one city, then another on "our" side we decided he should be the first to go.

Our Northermost scout made most of the contacts. After meeting Cathy in 2310 BC we noticed some border conflict between herself and the germans. They were at war for quite some time. In 875BC we were able to get math/57g/WM for a MA against Germany. Germany never would send any troops.

1000BC QSC stats:
9 cities
7 workers
20 warriors
3 legionary
6th place at 233, 1st is Greece with 276

In 950BC we decide we should be acquiring land in more convenient ways. You know, take land where cities already exist. So we hook up the iron and start upgrading. It takes a few hundred years to get those legions trained and upgrade all those warriors. But in 690BC DoW on Greece. I was pretty pessimistic about attacking those hoplites in all that mountainous/hilly terrain. But the RNG gods were watching over us. We pulled it off without a hitch. In 470BC we offer peace for 3 cities WM and 12 gold. Leaving Alex with 2 cities (each on different continents).

We were shooting for Monarchy, but it was taking forever. So we finally buy Republic from cathy for an arm, a leg, and our firstborn children. They wanted Sark too (thought he was my firstborn), but I quickly informed them he is a comrade in arms. Then we tripped the anarchy switch in the middle of the war with Greece, but we weren't worried cause they rolled over pretty easily. Researched currency in 410BC and here we are in the spoiler.

I would like to bring up some confusion in our team thread. We were curious, being Romans and all, where are the bathhouses? Should have been available with Construction, right?

screenshot (sorry it is 3 turns into the MA)
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/MA.JPG

Team tao decided to go the xenophobic variant for a little bit of extra excitement. Before we started, I gave out our plan: ;)

How to win an ideal game

We start exploring and hope to meet the first civ not too close to our capitol.
We can trade our alphabet for pottery and bronze working (or wheel/warrior code) before we declare war.
We do min research on writing and hope to meet the 2nd (or 3rd?) civ once we learned it and can trade it for iron working.
We research literature aiming for the Great Library.
A very early Great Leader builds us The Pyramids (wishful thinking).
We build the Great Library with a Great Leader.
Maybe we can delay our Golden Age until we are monarchy (more wishful thinking).
Since we are not pangea, contact with other civs is delayed until we have conquered our continent.
The Great Library will give us also lots of Middle Age techs once we contact the off-continent civs,
If even half of this happens, we should win. Easily.

Alas, the game turned out to not be "ideal". We did not get a Great Leader for The Pyramids. We could not trade alphabet for pottery nor bronze or writing for iron working, but had to pay lots of gold.

We settled on the spot and decided to do rcp 4/7 for a little more growth potential. We saw the Greeks early but managed to avoid contact, because hoplites are no fun to kill. We min researched writing and literature, and just as we finished the latter, we got the much hoped for Great Leader Trajan, who built us the Great Library in 530BC. Thus we learned a lot of Middle Age techs (including monarchy), and after only 2 turns of anarchy, the Roman kingdom was established in 450BC, the same year we enter the Middle Ages and learn monotheism. We will soon start our Golden Age and start annihilating them all.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm3_tao_350bc.jpg
The picture is dated 350BC, but no new cities were founded inbetween.

Contact List
2800BC: France; dow
1550BC: England; dow
1550BC: America, Russia, Germany, Babylon, Greece
1050BC: America; dow
590BC: dow on Russia (they already declared 730BC)
190BC: dow on Germany
210AD: dow on Babylon
430AD: dow on Greece

Looking good X-team. :clap: ....looks like you are somewhat behind in score though. :p


The RNG was not kind to us during these battles, and in spite of winning many elite battles we weren't blessed with a leader until after the end of the Ancient Age.


That has allways been a problem with the X-team, you don't know how to please the RNG-gods :worship: , they have been smiling at my new team! (Team Mauer :king: )

Can I ask one question? How does your military look at this moment?

Looking good X-team. :clap: ....looks like you are somewhat behind in score though. :p
Sorry zamint, hate to stomp on your gloating, but I was gonna ask this question here anyways. What does everyone think about the balance between variant and nonvariant play? As far as score comparison.
We mainly operated in active defence mode, batting off successive incursions of warriors, archers, spears and bowmen.
In all fairness, this is something we didn't have to deal with untill it was on our terms. We were able to make deals, trade maps for gold, etc. more often and for longer periods of time. We didn't DoW on anybody untill about 875BC I think, and there were no troops involved. First action we saw was when we had 3 seperate stacks of legions prepositioned outside greek towns. I started thinking about this every time I would go check out the graph. Just wondered what everyone else thought.

Sorry zamint, hate to stomp on your gloating
:mad: You could have waited a day or two! :mad: :lol:

:mad: You could have waited a day or two! :mad: :lol:
Oops, I mean yeah, what's the deal Xteam?! :lol:

What deal? You mean why are there two distinct scoring lines on the Firaxis graph? Check out which teams are in which group and look a the YES/NO entries under 'Variant'. With one notable exception there's a 100% correlation.

We've been fighting the Greeks since God was a child, and all the other civs since shortly afterwards. We've not been able to trade gpt since our second declaration of war, and we've had very few trading partners anyway. Early and continuous war, with no option to take cities, sue for peace, or capture slaves. That's enough to explain the score difference between the variant and non-variant teams.

We've build everything we have with the sweat of our own Roman brows, with no Leader help from the pesky RNG that has been living in Smackster's pocket for the last two weeks. Hence our score being down by 30% on Smackster - how do you compete with free Pyramids and Great Library? Success at this variant is obviously very dependent on random leader generation, and Smackster drew the long straw :(

We're not going to win any laurels this time (when did we ever :hmm: ), but we'd still quite like to see if we can survive :D

Can I ask one question? How does your military look at this moment?Enormous :D

I'm with you, Alan.

I really hate to make excuses, but we've been doubled screwed by the rng. It took us some 60+ tries to get a leader, and Greece contacted us fully 800 years before anyone else that has posted.

Now, I should also add that we have not been the most strategically sound team ever, but I think the gaffes we did make were minor ones.

We've build everything we have with the sweat of our own Roman brows, with no Leader help from the pesky RNG that has been living in Smackster's pocket for the last two weeks. Hence our score being down by 30% on Smackster - how do you compete with free Pyramids and Great Library? Success at this variant is obviously very dependent on random leader generation, and Smackster drew the long straw :(

Free Sun Tzu's, Leo's, HG, Magellen's, etc....although out of scope of this spoiler its seems a bit restrictive not to talk a little beyond AA. Only our first leader was really lucky (third elite win I think), the rest were due to the quantity of elite wins.

Maybe tweak the rules a bit to reduce the early randomness and only allow teams to use a leader after 26 elite wins (so if you get him on your first win you can't use him until 26 wins).

As important for our game is that our contact with France was far down the contact list, so for a long time in this game we only had to fight one direct neighbour. And that order was not totally luck as we decided early that as soon as we got our second contact, we would trade for the rest in an order based on historical locations. Second contact came quite late, as we had no cash and were generally behind in tech.

@SesnOfWthr: It wasn't clear from your timeline that Greece contacted you. Did you do any active exploring? We stayed very close to home to delay meetings, and by the time we did see a Greek we had nothing of interest to them, I guess, so they ignored us, and we waited until they came calling.

Our first leader was mainly luck, but the others have just been stacking the deck. We had some luck on early contacts though, as one of our closest neighbours (France) was one of the last we had to declare on.

The non-variant teams have a definite advantage early on though, as they can press on expansion without worrying too much about defense. Later on their main advantage is being able to capture wonders and free (slave) labour.

Only our first leader was really lucky (third elite win I think), the rest were due to the quantity of elite wins.You think in 3000 years of continuous fighting we didn't have elite wins? :hmm: I'm not going to go back and count them, but rest assured we had them in abundance.

Free Sun Tzu's, Leo's, HG, Magellen's, etc....

I would also add free Sistine Chapel, Heroic Epic and couple of armies to this line... ;) ... We have those, don't we, team? :D

and... i think the difference here is while we were collecting MGLs other teams were hunting for some greek and french slave women to use in sweat shops :lol:

Oops, I mean yeah, what's the deal Xteam?! :lol:
Sorry Alanh, I didn't mean to hit a sore spot :p . Was just a response to Zamint3's disdainful reaction to my question posted above. I absolutely agree with your remarks, as well as tarkeel's and sesn's. When comparing the scores on the graph, I usually uncheck all of the yes variants just to get a better feel for how we compare to the level we are playing at.
edit: by the way RNG grace just left us I do believe :lol:

@AlanH - Yes, they contacted us. As M60 noted, I figured MB would put Greece or Carthage next to us, so we decided the safest place to explore (first warrior) was to the south due to our map position. Greece decided to go straight W apparently, and contacted us about 6 turns after we first saw them on turn 8. We declared immediately in 3300 bc, so to correct my earlier statement it was 500 or so years early.

We tried to explore only enough to plant cities, and were able to delay next contact until turn 54, and it has been pretty regular declarations since. Of course the next contact was Joan who came calling, and she had iron hooked up pretty early, although she didn't send a noticeable force for a while.

BTW - Thanks for the list of dates/turn numbers in the maint. thread, it made things much easier. :goodjob:

Team -Oblivion-

vanilla 1.29f

Not playing the varient
-----------------------

move settler and worker SW and settle Rome in 3950bc. Research Pottery 100%.
3250 meet Greece and France - no trades
3200bc learned pottery and trade pottery to greece for bronze working and 3g. Start researching IW
2390bc settle Veii
2350 meet Russia and America, buy CB cheap from France and sell cheap to Greece
2230 meet England
2110bc settle Antium
1790 settle Cumae
1700bc connected wines
1625 settle Neopolis and on the ibt, learn IW (2 iron sources in or near our territory)
1525 contact germany with a warrior - was available to buy contact sooner, but was too expensive and we all passed
1475 trade WM and 120g to Babylon for Wheel and Masonry
1425 connect horses
1375 connect iron
1325 learn writing and start researching lit
1250bc trade wm and 6gpt to England for math, trade math to Russia for HBR+7g, trade HBR to Greece for Mysticism
1225 switch from expansion phase to building mostly military units/raxes
1100 found Ravenna
1050 England dow on us after refusing to give her our map

have debate about whether to try for Great Library, eventually decide no

975 Buy Philosophy for 90g, 1gpt, and WM
900 buy construction for 76g, 20gpt, and 76g
875 buy currency and CoL for construction, 9gpt, WM and 2g
850 English warrior attacked legionary and triggered our GA (in depotism)
825 found Viroconium
buy Lit from French for 9gpt
750bc founded Lungundum (without military)
ibt England builds Pyramids (first wonder completed in the game)
730bc raze Oxford
670bc Greece demanded lit - ok as most of our military is marching north to England
650bc english horse razed lungundum (undefended and couln't pop rush anything)
490 bc Civ we haven't met built Great Lighthouse, we DoW Greece, and France
470 America builds GW, Sign Peace treaty with England getting Polytheism and 17 gold
450bc Paris completed great library as our troops arrive at the gates
430bc capture Corinth and generate first Great leader "Trajan" who is sent to Rome
Capture Paris with Great library and rename the city Paresium
410bc GA ends, and caught up in techs (and I think entered MA - but we never officially put it in our thread anywhere)

You think in 3000 years of continuous fighting we didn't have elite wins? :hmm: I'm not going to go back and count them, but rest assured we had them in abundance.
The point of my comment (hold a leader until 26 elite wins) was to reduce the effect of getting that early leader, as that is so unbalancing, like the SGL in Conquests. In our game the very early Pyramids had a huge benifit. I've also played those games where leaders don't come after 100 plus elite wins, not much we can do about that.

smackster

The leader discussion is interesting, and a little painful for me to read. I hoped that by using a militaristic civ, and controlling first contact to be on turn 12 +/- a couple of turns that all the variant teams would get at least one leader before 1000BC. I personally played to 1000BC 7 times, and only once did I not get a leader, and that was because I played a completely defensive strategy.
I also tried to compensate for different research strategies by putting a goody hut next to the Greek start, so that there was a good chance that pottery would be an available trade.

One of the reasons that the Xenophobic variant was chosen was because of the number and close proximity of the civs in the north. Almost always they would end up at war with each other very early and their workers would hide in the capital cities. It was regularly possible to buy 8 workers in the first 50 turns, which would give the vanilla players a huge advantage. I did not want to mod the game this time round, and so not being able to trade. Again, on one test all the AI remained at peace for a long time, and I faced far more units from the AI since they had not "exchange" their free starting units.

It is difficult to make everything perfectly fair for competing teams when a random number generator is involved. But I think I will have to come up with something for the next AW type variant. Perhaps I can reduce the power of leaders to only build armies, and not rush improvements/wonders?

I do take it personally that one team can get half a dozen leaders with the same number of elite victories as a team that didn't get any. In a one off game it's just tough, but in a competition it is just silly. I guess I have a lot to learn. :(

I do take it personally that one team can get half a dozen leaders with the same number of elite victories as a team that didn't get any. Don't. It is a game, even though a competitive one.
RNG affects A LOT of aspects: goody hut results, contacts, trades, ....
If you control them all, it is no longer Civ III!

Hey! We're still playing and enjoying the game. Don't feel bad about it. You didn't invent Civ3, and one of it's attractions is that you keep coming back with the hope that *this* time the RNG will be on your side. Smackster's experience shows it can happen.

There's a strong Las Vegas aspect to this game and that's proved a winning commercial formula. A lot of punters in 'Vegas are convinced they have a system to beat the house, but they also know that they are in the hands of the RNG gods. It's somewhat the same here ;)

We've build everything we have with the sweat of our own Roman brows, with no Leader help from the pesky RNG that has been living in Smackster's pocket for the last two weeks. Hence our score being down by 30% on Smackster - how do you compete with free Pyramids and Great Library? Success at this variant is obviously very dependent on random leader generation, and Smackster drew the long straw :(



I have some dark infos, that smackster pays for his RNG luck :mischief:



i think the difference here is while we were collecting MGLs other teams were hunting for some greek and french slave women to use in sweat shops



Thats the only goal who makes sense :D

I'll add to the thoughts a bit:

As mentioned, you do not control every aspect of the game, MB. We are all aware of the possibility of the well being dry when we go fishing. It is a game of chances and probabilities. I think I saw you post somewhere that

"this game is very complex, perhaps endlessly so, which is why I'm still addicted"

or, at least, something to that affect. If we knew that we could get an MGL at every twelfth or sixteenth victory, how much would that take away from the complexity?

I do find it somewhat disconcerting that the rng gods can have such a huge impact in the game though. Perhaps it is as simple as removing the "rush large wonder" flag? Perhaps not, I never mess with the editor. :shrug:

Our team is not disheartened, and we are not about to stop playing civ, or even SGOTM due to this lack of luck this time round. One thing I have observed is that over time, these things always even out. Next month, team Sesn is going to get a world record 103 Leaders in the course of a normal game! No, even better, by 10ad. :lol:

Perhaps most of all, please do not take it personally, regardless of what outcomes are obtained. You have put together a wonderful competition here, and we all enjoy it immensely. You must be doing something right, how many teams participated the first time round as opposed to round three. I shudder to think how many hours you have invested in this little competition in the past few months. I know you have had help with it all, but there can be no doubt who has been the point man in this thing. We only complain, and dissect the rules, because we care enough to want to win.

[/rant]

I have some dark infos, that smackster pays for his RNG luck
Yeah! Right! Perhaps a Centurion stubbed his toe as he climbed the steps of the Parthenon, or Caesar caught a mild summer cold when heading north to supervise the redecoration of the Reichstag :rolleyes:

other teams were hunting for some greek and french slave women to use in sweat shops.Unfortunately when we captured them we had to kill them. No sweat! :mischief:

Unfortunately when we captured them we had to kill them. No sweat! :mischief:



You've choosen a hard way :sad:

You've choosen a hard way :sad:
You mean there is another way??? :eek:

@M-B - We all want to win and sometimes we take the RNG personally. Please keep doing what your doing and help us enjoy and appreciate the game even more. X-Team learned from the start that the RNG is what it is, another aspect of the game that you have to think about at times and live with all the time. Keep up the good work! :goodjob:

Team Smackster
I guess the variant made us do things differently from how we usually use resourses in a game. The Leaderfishing was more intense than usual, as was the number of elites. The fact that if we did not build a GW it was "lost" to us was a major reason for the extensive use of elites in attacks. I normally start an attack by softening the defenses and use elites to kill off wounded enemies. Not so this time, when the attack had a fair chance of success I would go right in with elites hoping for that GL and if the attack failed the attacker would retreat when redlined to fight another day. This of course resulted in more elites being killed than usual though as not everyone retreated... I think that during my second stint in this game I did about half a dozen elite attacks per turn. I was actually rather annoyed by the time the leader finally arrived during my 8th(?) turn. His name: Better late than never... sums it up I guess. So even if we did harvest a whole "legion" of GL's I do not believe we had any real luck factored into this. I believe we have been on par compared to the number of elite attacks/defenses we have had.

Team Smackster contd.

There was another factor that helped us to get all those leaders...
We played Rome, but we barely used legions at all...
Initially we wanted to postpone our GA until Monarchy, so all the early fighting we did with horses... Extra movement and ability to retreat helped us to generate more elite units than otherwise would be possible.
So we used some what unconventional tactic while playing for Rome when instead of using powerful legion we did almost entire warfare with horsemen...
But outcome is known, I am glad we did it.

Xteam
Your tactics sound very similar to ours. We also used archers and then horses, and we didn't use legions until we were in Monarchy and very near the end of the AA. I certainly attacked healthy units as well as injured ones with elites, losing a few and I probably had a similar number of elite battles per ten turns to yours. Maybe, for interest, we should count up our elite victories and compare real numbers rather than trading hunches ...

Xteam
Your tactics sound very similar to ours. We also used archers and then horses, and we didn't use legions until we were in Monarchy and very near the end of the AA. I certainly attacked healthy units as well as injured ones with elites, losing a few and I probably had a similar number of elite battles per ten turns to yours. Maybe, for interest, we should count up our elite victories and compare real numbers rather than trading hunches ...
We didn't count, is there a way to get this from the save? Not sure if it matters, I'm sure you were unlucky and maybe we were a little lucky (although we did have a huge number of elite wins). Maybe we need to introduce the pink laurel for the unluckiest team.

Irregardless of the leader farming, I think our team did play a good game, whether it was better than others remains to be seen. Hopefully within the next few days we'll be reading all the threads to compare ;)

I still think getting France way down on our contact list was a significant tactic, as that gave us more breathing room to grow, as England and Babylon had a long way to send any troops to us. Greece never posed much of a threat, which is partly explained by their landscape.

smackster

OK I'm going to close the discussion on who was/wasn't lucky now. I'd rather see discussion of strategy and tactics. Research, exploration, GA's, city placement etc.
Let's use this thread to learn something. ;)

MB does a great job and shouldn't be told 1Leader/12wins isnt a good idea. It has to be taken seriously IMO.

Here's our spoiler post, I kept it brief and didn't include mundane things like units built/improvements..


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/ivan_610bc_overview.jpg

The early turns:
Settle on the spot, build order is warrior(x4), settler, barracks then spear
Scout W,SW find Athens
Scout W->N Spices cluster
Scout E->SE Silks
Scout E ->N
Meet Greeks in 3500BC and French in 3150BC.
Trade Bronze working to Greeks for Warrior Code+ 36g
Buy a French worker for 26g

2900BC Found Second city (Mabellonica)

2590BC Meet Liz
Buy Pottery from French for 39g, sell Pottery+10g to Greeks for Ceremonial Burial

2390BC Meet Babs (no trades)

2150BC Discover Writing

2070BC Buy contact w/Germans from England for 40g
Writing to France for IW, Contact w/America and 15g.
IW to America for Masonry and 6g.
Writing to Babylon for Mysticism and 4g
Mysticism and 22g to Russia for The Wheel
Writing to Russia for HBR and 22g
Writing to Greece for 82g.

1910BC Greeks demand 26g, we pay up

1675BC Buy Philosophy from Germans for 120g
Buy maths from English for Philosophy, 36g +1gpt

1625BC Found 3rd city (Ivanorium)

1550BC Found 4th city (Alexandreii)

1500BC Found 5th city (Kaiserium)

1400BC Greeks and Russians are at war
Settle 6th city (Zabus)

1375BC Make embassy with Greeks
Greeks give TM+16g+MMking for MA vs Russians WM+2gpt
Americans TM+77g for WM
Embassy in Paris: Oracle (41 turns, 5spt, 3 food pt, 1 spices, 2 spear)
French give RoP+TM for WM
England: 57 g for WM
Greek 1 g for WM,
Babylon WM for TM
England: WM+2 for WM
Greek WM+8 for WM

1300BC English demand TM+28 gold, we refuse but they don't declare

1150BC Found 7th city (Forpost), Antium also founded around this time (city 8)

1075BC Make peace with Russians they give PT+WM+14g +Polytheism for PT!
Phony war paid off, we got MM and Poly very cheaply!
Buy Construction from French for Poly, C.o.L, WM +28g

800BC Germany builds Great Library

775BC Sell construction to Germany for 37g+WM

750BC Build first galley but its mission is spoilered!

650BC French and English in Middle ages
Trade WM+330g to Liz for Currency
Trade Currency+209g+10gpt to Germany for The Republic
Call a revolution, get a 2 turn Anarchy!

630BC Roman Republic formed and are now in the Middle ages

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/ivan_610bc_mil.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/ivan_610bc_score.jpg

I'd rather see discussion of strategy and tactics. Research, exploration, GA's, city placement etc.
I'm finding it very hard to analyze/compare each individual team's progression given the fact that pics and relevant stats aren't being posted at similar dates/turns. If in the future all team's post relevant pics and stats — a list of military size, workers, number of cities, known techs, GL dates and what they were used for, GA dates — at one or two pre-determined dates/turns in addition to the recap, it would be much easier.

You take two teams like tao and X-team. Chosen because the scoring curves are so similar while employing different strategies.

We chose a loose build at 4 to gain quick access to the initial bonuses and better long-term growth, while X-team chose to go at 3. More of a short-term approach but a good one given the variant. X-team stayed close to home avoiding contact, while team tao actively explored giving us the ability to buy techs faster and set our contact list to some extent. One would think with more cities and a tighter build that X-team is in far better shape at this point, yet our score curves are running almost in parallel.

Why the similar score with two very different approaches? Is it that the RNG was kind and we got a GL for the great libary and X-team apparently didn't? Did we focus more on improving terrain (workers) while they focused on expansion, military? Or, is it just that they are two games employing different strategies but played about equally. Its just very hard for me to tell given the way the information is posted.

Perhaps, in the future it will be possible to provide the QSC's and 1000BC saves for comparison. For this game though, we just have to exercise a little patience. :)

Although it would be nice to have a QSC and sav, I don't think you have to go that far. If each team just added say, a 1000 bc pic and relevant stats to the other AA spoiler info posted, it would greatly ease the comparison next time.

IMHO, the only real difference between the xenophobic teams up to now is The Pyramids built by Smackster. This will make them the winner, if they don't do any real major blundering.

The Great Library up to now IMHO has no effect on Firaxis score, this score being territory and happy citizens.

And the similar evolvement may of course also mean similar strength in the teams. mad-bax: :goodjob:

Well, We do have a Pyramid in Smackster team and our score is high, but that really means nothing.
Golden Laurel will be received by a team with fastest win, not the highest score...
and eveb with Pyramids built it's hard for us to compete with non-variant teams in terms of scoring...
It is not proper to say Smackster team is a definite win. Yes our team most likely will be on top of the charts but we are as likely to become 2nd or 3rd or 4th team in this race.

Well ......... I disregarded the non-variant teams, of course. ;)

In other games, you can catch up by conquering the Pyramid city, but not here. Still I will try my very best for team tao to beat team Smackster. ;)

Well........to totally disregard the non-variant teams, of course ;) , is to disregard the awards.
From the progress and reports page:
*The Green Laurels are awarded to the team with the highest Jason score.
*The Golden Laurels are awarded to the team with the fastest Sponsored Variant finish
(or the highest variant score in SGOTM 01).
*The Wooden Spoons are awarded to the team with the lowest Jason score.
Don't get me wrong! I don't think, or put forth for a second, that I could compete at the level of the variant teams scores if I was playing the variant.

However, I think that the Green and Golden Laurels do the disregarding for us. If you want to win the Green Laurel, but don't think you can by playing the variant, then don't play it. If you can, then play the variant. But to disregard the non's from comparison I think, is somewhat demeaning.

Again, I'll say I'm not arguing who is the better player. Because I'm sure, without a doubt, you could prove you can score higher than me on an individual game. I am just talking about the SGOTM3 competition. Nobody forced you to play the variant, and nobody forced me not to play it.

Not meaning to sound too defensive here, but I feel that was in a way an improper statement towards the competiveness of the game.
EDIT:If I just totally took your comment out of context, I apologize in advance.

Well........to totally disregard the non-variant teams, of course ;) , is to disregard the awards.

.....

EDIT:If I just totally took your comment out of context, I apologize in advance.

You have a point: Anybody winninging on emperor (alone or as a team) is way better than average. Please accept my apologies, if my statement above was improper.

I was arguing (mostly) the Firaxis score, and the non-variant teams have the tremendous advantage on both capturing cities (less settlers needed) and slaves (less workers needed). And as Firaxis is based upon population, I only compared xenophobic teams. And I am not complaining about this. Emperor would be relatively easy, but the variant IMHO is at least deity level. And that is the "fun" part in this game. I also play the predator versions in gotm, well knowing that it will lower my score. But it is fun. :king:

I have couple of things to point out..

1st. I think non-variant teams and variant teams are really in two different weight categories and therefore we should have 2 sets of Laurels ;) .

2nd. As Tao pointed, fun is what important... After all, we are not doing this for living but for pure, healthy portion of fun. It is sure nice to win and of cource it boosts one's ego...

But i enjoy fun part of this game a whole lot more... I love discussions we have in our team, look at the number of posts Smackster team has comparing to others, may be we have that pyramid everyone is jelaus about and bunch of other wonders also because we talk to each other a lot and do not hesitate to correct and help each other...
I know I've learned a lot during the course of this game thanks to my team.

1st. I think non-variant teams and variant teams are really in two different weight categories and therefore we should have 2 sets of Laurels ;) .

2nd. As Tao pointed, fun is what important... After all, we are not doing this for living but for pure, healthy portion of fun. It is sure nice to win and of cource it boosts one's ego...
I totally agree with one and two, and maybe this is something for MB to consider once the participation level is high enough. At least to keep the low-level emperors (at best) like me from overreacting about things like this :rolleyes: .

I am surprised at this discussion frankly. I think the teams are reasonably even. I think the highest jason score will be acheived by a non-variant team and the quickest variant finish will be acheived by the Staff team ;) which is exactly as it should be.

I had a dream, that the Staff team acheived the fastest win, but then i awake and i saw they didn't. Because team Mauer win earlier. :lol:

I am surprised at this discussion frankly. I think the teams are reasonably even. .

I think so too, I really meant the difficulty level between variant and non-variant play.

....and the quickest variant finish will be acheived by the Staff team ;) which is exactly as it should be.

We will have to see how that goes :rolleyes:


I had a dream, that the Staff team acheived the fastest win, but then i awake and i saw they didn't. Because team Mauer win earlier.

In my understanding Mauer team is not eligible for fastest win prize, since it doesn't play variant ;)

I hope there is no spoiler info here but we are doing the variant and have very little of the map exposed. So I have no way of knowing if all of the civ's we've met are from our island or others.

In the year 4000 BC A wandering band of misfits found themselves wandering around the hills and grasslands of their world, after being thrown out of every tribe and civilization they had tried to join. Their problem? They just did not mix well with other people. Some 5500 years later they would properly name them Xenophobes.

Their fearless leader of the time was known as grs. This is pronounced GRRRRRRRRS. Grs tired of the wandering life and decided it was time to settle down and start a community with other likeminded peoples. During the reign of grs Rome was founded and a few neighbors were spotted (not contacted for fear that they will have coodies)

It was during our second leader, conehead234’s reign that 1st contact with another civ was made. The French. Even though A few of our tribe wanted to take Joan back to our camp for breeding purposes it was decided that the French were not our type of people so we declared war on them.

marconos was the first to be contacted by the Greek. He was offered a gyro by their pushy and slightly smelly leader Alexander ,we accepted the gyro but of course did not eat it, it had to be tainted. Being a bit more understanding and open minded then other leaders, marconos did not declare war immediately on the Greek

Gator on the other hand did. He also made contacts with the English, Russians and Babylonians. Our queue of people to war with was growing but so was our army.

During the 1st reign of Mistfit the Weedyone nothing much was accomplished. Defensive skirmishes were the order of the day and the gods did not smile on Mistfit’s troops. Many died, some were misplaced and others just plain stopped listening to their proper orders. (I had A few unfortunate misclicks leading to a wasted unit or 2)

During the second reign of grs it was decided to stop building cities in concentric circles for a bit to build a city a bit further out to house a big building with many books in it.

marconos second stint as leader brought a new stepping stone for the Roman people. A malleable metal product was found in our territory and a new style of fighting unit was learned. The Legionnaire. The Romans would never again be beat-up by other civ’s. Foreign cities would start to fall.

Gators next time in power garnered us a fellow by the name of Trajan. Trajan would be instumental at the building of or great library. More cities laid to waste.

Lastly before the turn of a new age Mistfit went on the offensive and took out a couple of offending English cities. The Evil Russians tricked the Germans into attacking us, and the dawn of the new age was ushered in at 630 BC.

Somewhere in there we met the Germans and the Americans as well.

Although it would be nice to have a QSC and sav, I don't think you have to go that far. If each team just added say, a 1000 bc pic and relevant stats to the other AA spoiler info posted, it would greatly ease the comparison next time.
1000 BC saves are available for all but three teams, one of whom hasn't reached that date yet and the other two maybe can't count to ten :rolleyes:. If you select 'display as list starting at 1000 BC' all the scores in the first row of the table are links to the related downloads.

We've been MidAges for a few days, but were indecisive about who should post, so here's a quick post of our AA. We are playing the variant and had a bit of discussion on how to play it. Starting spot for Rome looked good, so we founded in 4000 BC. IronWorking seemed to be the Key to controlling this game - we can locate iron and build our UU, and ideally prevent the AI from using Iron. In reality, this wasn't possible; just too many AI clogging up the world.

Contact We decided to delay contact for as long as possible, but still maintain a good initial set of trades. So we wanted the option to contact as many civs as possible (at least 3) on the first turn of contact, making as many trades as possible, and of course doing a DoW on the first civ contacted as we left the diplomacy screen with them. This also gave us the option to choose the order of DoW's.

Research Lots of discussion. One option was minimum on Writing then Maximum on Literature. We'd decided that Great Library was a key part of our planning, and wanted to build or rush that Wonder. Minimum on Writing would lessen chance of AI contacting us, if we had nothing to trade. But doesn't allow Pottery. Ultimately decided to research to Iron-Working as fast as possible, and look for a good 1st round of trades to pick up Pottery.

Military To Legion or not to Legion. We decided to Legion early and often, eventually deciding to pillage Iron to have more Warriors to upgrade. At same time, build Catapults to defend advancing Legions and hopefully take some HPs off defensive units when attacking towns. This should help us not lose as many Legions as we otherwise would. Eventually build up Horses for Knight rush, but that is much later. Legions will cause an early GA; after developing a few key spaces for each city, plan was to limit Worker actions so as to minimize the Despotism effect - unless needed to connect cities, do not Mine or Road River BG's, do not Road River Grassland, etc.

Our first 20 turns were uneventful as the Roman civilization grew. We decided on a 3.x inner ring for local defense and good production/commerce. The next ring was 6.x.

Turns 21-30 saw a Hoplite come walking by. Great, the one civ we were hoping wouldn't be too close. But no contact is made. 3 Warriors are sent on scouting routes towards the North to make other contacts before the Greeks decide to come calling.

Turn 31-40. Finally, on turn 37 (2270 BC), we saw Pink Culture and a Pink Warrior (France), evidence of Orange Culture ahead (England), and a Russian Scout. Russia seemed to be a far off civ from what we could see, and would have the longest to reach us, so we contacted Catherine first. We'd already learned Bronze-Working, and were 5 turns from Iron-Working; she had IW already, so we were able to trade Alphabet and some Gold (her offer) for IW. First War was declared and iron was nearby (but not the Russians!) Next we contacted Greece, who had the Wheel; we held off. 3rd was France; we got Masonry and Pottery for IW and some Gold, then traded IW to Greece for the Wheel. Before we contacted England, a Babylonian Warrior showed up, so we put Babylon in front of England. No initial trades here. Finally we contacted Germany and America in 1475 BC.

Russia is too far away to be much of a problem. Greece is close by. Our tactics were to build Warriors for future upgrade, and place them on Mountains and Hills to block the Hoplites. A few Archers would be built to counter Greek Archers as much as possible, but mostly try to block his access until Legion come online.

1575 BC saw us declare on Greece. Iron connected in 1225 BC, and 8 Legions upgraded immediately with more to come. GA kicked off in 1175 BC when a Greek Warrior attacks a Legion. Math learned in 1075 BC, traded for Writing, and a few other things. Start on Literature, and city #4 (Antium, 3 away from Rome, South on river and Coast) starts pre-building for Great Library.

Learning Literature was tricky. We didn't want to learn it too soon, or the AI might take advantage of cheap research, learn it, and build Great Library in cascade. But if a GL formed, we wanted to use it pretty quickly. So we researched it almost all the way, then went to minimum research. If need be, we could set research to 0 with 1 turn left, waiting for a GL or our Palace pre-build to get too big, or for the AI Wonder Cascade to end, before finishing the research.

Declared on France in 1075 BC; forces are building up, but Hoplites are a tough nut to crack. Decided not to commit a lot of Legions to taking Athens without significant Catapult support; ended up tying up several units, and never actually attacked Athens as Cats never had a good round bombarding Athens. Meanwhile the AI units are pouring South. Declared War on Babylon in 610 BC; over the years many a Bowman died on Roman turf. Finally, in General Peanut's second set of turns, 2 GLs are generated, and we rush Great Library, sending us all the way into the Middle Ages, and build an army. Our Great Library pre-build redirects to Hanging Gardens, which are completed a few turns into the MidAges.

If the AI were at war with each other, we saw no evidence of it. There were mass piles of units heading our way; the Catapults we've built have really helped us keep our Legions healthy and breathing by taking HPs off these attacking AI field units. And we've continued to build up the forces, looking for opportunities to advance out of our mainly defensive positions.

In 350 BC our main military is 14 Legions, 17 Warriors and 12 Catapults. Here's our screen shot in 350 BC.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Peanut_sg3_bc350MainZoom.JPG

Well, back on track: Strategy.

We basically treated the game as AW with some early trading. This meant maximizing kill ratio. We set a defensive front line in the norther mountains, lured the AI into the floodplain valley and bombed them away. This kept the AIs stalling while we were expanding to fill out the south and building up a force for later invasion.

The only "bonus" from playing variant, is that all civs were early at a warfooting, which would slow down their research as they neglected infrastructure to military builds.

Well, back on track: Strategy.Fine. Here is the Roman Kingdom 450bc, the turn we entered the Middle Ages.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm3_tao_450bc.jpg

We decided to let our first Great Leader build the Great Library in northwestern border town of Hispalis last turn. A little bit of risk to put it in a border town, but the massive 6 culture points per turn will expand Hispalis' borders next turn and again in 15 turns, which makes healing for attacking units much harder.

Our military is a mixed bag of 2 warriors, 2 archers, 9 spears, 6 horsemen, 1 catapult and 1 legion. We also have 9 native workers.

You will also notice, that our first ring is at rcp distance 4, compared to 3 some other teams used. We put Pisae on a hill close to the silks to claim them in the future.

A horseman watches with pleasure the attack of Greek units on Houston in the west. (We avoided contact with Greece and they are last on our list to declare war on.)

There isn't a lot to report except contacts and wars, so just a bunch of date. We declared war unnecessarily due to misunderstanding of the rules.

2950BC: We see Greece but do not meet it, hoping it thinks the same way.

2510BC: Greece comes to us, and offers a "BW for Pottery+79g" deal. We accept and declare war. In hindsight we probably shouldn't have chosen the research path with min Writing, as it accumulates money and allows AI to come to us for a deal.

We see English scout AT THE SAME TURN! Since we didn't understand the rule well enough, we didn't dial up and probably missed some trading opportunities.

2230BC: Our wines get pillaged by hoplite.

1790BC: We get Iron Working from England by Contact with Greece + 40g. We meet France and get Contact with America by Contact with Greece + 40g. We get CB+Wheel by Alphabet+IW from America.

1700BC: We declare on England and learn Writing.

1675BC: get Masonry+Mystism from deals.

at 1500BC we have 3 towns.

1475BC: England starts the Great Library!

1425BC: Russia and Bablon make offers to us.

925BC: France demands 20g and we let it declare.

825BC: France MA with Babylon against us.

730BC: We trigger our GA with about 6 cities and despoticism.

630BC: Ger Currency/CoL/Polytheism from Russia and Germany.

350BC: France MA with Russia against us. And we needlessly declare on Ottomans too.

Somewhere along the line we are also at war with Germany but I don't know exactly when.

170AD: We revolt to Monarchy as soon as we learn it and get out of anarchy in 260AD.

AI is building JS Bach's already when we enter Middle Ages in 340AD.

We are behind in tech and this game is giving us a hard time. We are in survival mode right now.

This game is definitely more difficult than AWE. No foreign workers, no capturing cities, no haggling deals. The only "easy" part is the 20-turn declaration rule, which actually is where all the confusion comes from and it's not easy to follow.

It's bad that AI built Great Library very early on, but we did make some mistakes. After Writing we went for math, and didn't do enough leader fishing, otherwise we could have got Great Library and things would have been very different. We got some leaders later, but we didn't have useful wonders. We rushed Hanging Gardens.

We'll try to survive till the next spoiler thread.

Germany was declared on 350BC by yours truly :D Of course, my stupidity in misinterpreting the rules made this DoW a premature one by 41 turns :eek: :eek: :eek:

If team microbe somehow survives this game, we should get the title of "Masters of Creating an Even More Difficult Variant" and an appropriate award. Probably a rifle and a foot :D

If team microbe somehow survives this game, we should get the title of "Masters of Creating an Even More Difficult Variant" and an appropriate award. Probably a rifle and a foot

Let's not go jumping the gun here. Team Sesn certainly deserves any such award as A) We made some declarations 60 turns early!, and B) I was the one who made it harder for you, not yourselves, necessarily. :D

Germany was declared on 350BC by yours truly :D Of course, my stupidity in misinterpreting the rules made this DoW a premature one by 41 turns :eek: :eek: :eek:

If team microbe somehow survives this game, we should get the title of "Masters of Creating an Even More Difficult Variant" and an appropriate award. Probably a rifle and a foot :D

Hey, wait a sec...
Team Smackster can compete for this prise as well.. I was also stupid enough to declare a war prematurely ;)

Yeah, we also had some problems counting to 20.. For some reason we only got to 10 before declaring some times... Oopsie :blush:

Is this confess your sins to M-B day? I don't think you're going to get much sympathy!! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: Nor are you likely to get redemption!
:p ;)

Hey guys, no need to argue who is more an idiot when it comes to the rules. We all are! :lol:

Is there a bonus for figuring out the barb riddle? If not, can we discuss it in here. Considering that MB seems to think it is unsolvable, it might take a collective of minds to solve it. Or do we need to wait for Spoiler #2?

From our experience I'd say the information required for tackling the puzzle would probably only be acquired within the AA scope of this spoiler by teams not playing the variant. When did MB say he thought it was unsolvable? Looks quite straightforward to us :hmm:

He posted in our team thread that he thought it was quite unsolvable. Still we have only 13 of the 18 (I think) letters. What I should have asked......is this type of discussion something that should wait for the endgame spoiler? Didn't necessarly mean is this within the scope of AA spoiler info.

There are 2 reasons that make that riddle unsolvable...

1. Those who played PTW have all those named barbarian units names messed up. If there was a capital letter in the middle of barb name in original Civ save it would be changed when Mad-Bax converted save to PTW.

2. Other AIs colonized parts of the island therefore they had a good probability to kill some of the named barbarians before we ever saw them.

... and M-B was quite clear he didn' twant this riddle to be a public discussion, He said if team finds the answer it should keep it to themselves

... and M-B was quite clear he didn' twant this riddle to be a public discussion, He said if team finds the answer it should keep it to themselves
Ok, thanks. That's all the answer I need. :)

Letters, names :confused: ... BARBS?!??!?!?! :confused: :confused: :confused: . Okay the barbs I figured out from GOTM16 :)

If you have 13 of 18 letters you could have a shot at the answer I'd say. Depends which letters you are missing. Only 2 of the names are screwed up, and you don't have them anyway.

To have a good shot at the answer you really needed to get a few units onto the barb island in the AA. Teams that took the opportunity to upgrade their units there would have an advantage I would guess. In PTW it seems (though I am not sure) that the AI is much more willing to settle the island than in 1.29. This is just a subjective observation by me, and could be wrong.

Maybe I will give one clue. The answer is three words, two of which are proper nouns.

MB, I would like to buy a vowel, an E please :D

We never saw a single barb.

I think one of the interesting strategies has been the density of the build. We built at RCP 4 as did Tao's team. A lot of teams were at 3 with a second ring at 6.

It might be interesting to compare the success rates of the variant teams based on build densities.

I don't think Team Peanut saw any barbs either.

We turtled to avoid contacts so I do not believe we have seen a single Barb the whole game. Possibly one of the early turns did.

You will see them, trust me ;)
Ooops, have i said too much again :blush:

Team Bugsy

PTW Xenophobes

Entered Middle Ages 800AD.

At war with all continental neighbors. At peace with only one nation on the other continents, but not for long.

It was cold in the hills above the Tiber, and the darkness of the night sky was broken by only a few small pinpricks of frigid white light. Romulus and Remus, twin brothers, lost boys, ababdoned by their vulpine mother, lingered in a cave. Romulus carried a shovel, while Remus bore a pack containing two small scrolls and a waterskin. The night passed slowly. The twins shivered with cold and fear of their uncertain future.

The light of dawn revealed the bends of the river, more hills, a vineyard abandoned by the previous inhabitants who had left no other sign of their passing, and a forest full of game. The twins wanted no part of any further wandering, so Remus built a hut, married the next wolf child to appear, and started making babies, while Romulus took his shovel and started digging.

So begins the History of Rome.

For many years Romulus labored with his shovel. Remus, tiring of his spouse's labors, and finding himself with many layabout offspring who disturbed his meditations, opened the scrolls in his pack and used the knowledge contained in them to build a place for training archers and then taught his sons and daughters how to use the bow and arrow, thinking at least it would get them out of the hut and perhaps they could go shoot a deer for food and clothing. Meanwhile he studied the art of writing.

Some years later Remus decided to send his children out into the world. The hut was getting really crowded with all of them still at home. He got his old pack and the waterskin out of a corner and gave it to his eldest child with an order to go live somewhere else. Much argument ensued as to where and how and whether or not an archer should attend her.

Meanwhile one of Remus's wandering bow-carrying children meets another tribe (2750BC), who call themselves Greeks and carry really long heavy spears and big hide covered shields. The Greeks know how to store food, so the Roman trades them gold for that knowledge. Then, remembering her father's stories of how dangerous other wandering tribes are, she declares war on the Greeks, and they run away. Satisfied with her purchase and proud she was able to frighten the Greeks, she reports to her father at Rome. Remus orders other of his children to guard the passages to Rome and sends the eldest off in the other direction to build a new hut.

The Greeks do not remain frightened for long and return into view with axe weilding warriors and more spear carriers. The archers in the passes kill several Greeks but some die valiantly, impaled by those long spears and unable to penetrate the heavy shields.

In 2270BC the ENglish send an advance party into view of the Roman archers and we buy the knowledge of smelting from them. Remus has forbidden any more declarations of war until the Greeks are under control so the English are allowed to continue their wanderings unimepeded. The decision begins a long argument among the Romans, some in favor of attacking the English as soon as we can, others arguing for a delay. Then Jupiter speaks: You have no friends, only enemies in waiting. You must go to war within 200 years, or I shall withold my blessing.

In 2230BC the French appear. Another enemy in waiting!!

In 2150BC the Russians pay an unwelcome call and in 2110BC the Americans come calling as well. The Russians offer to teach the Romans the art of iron-mongering in exchange for our knowledge of writing.

In 1950BC the unending warfare begins. The fledgling kingdom of Rome needs money so in a treacherous move the Romans borrow money from the English with a promise to repay, then declare war on the English, so the repayment is canceled. The same treachery is practices on the French, thoguh the declaation of war is delayed.

Every so often the Greeks send warriors and spear carriers into range of our archers and we slaughter them. As soon as the children of Remus train some Legions the warfare with the Greeks will begin in earnest. Remus keeps sending his children to military school or out on their own and his daughter in her town of Veii is told to concentrate on producing children and training them to build their own towns and warriors and legionaires. The opponents start sending many troops into the Roman homelands and much blood is shed driving them off.

Remus orders his descendants in Anitum to build a great storehouse of knowledge before any other nation so that the Romans can keep current with developments in the rest of the world, but they fail and build a temple in 550BC instead. The warfare continues to grow in intensity as the other nations begin to send more and yet more troops. In order to keep up in technology the Romans resort to extortion and outright fraud and soon are at war with every nation on the continent.

For the next 1300 years the Romans continue to send out new citizens and defeat their enemies in battle though we are fighting increasingly stronger units with sword wielding Roman Legions and stone throwing catapults. The central part of the kingdom is secure and reasonably productive, but we are at least an age behind our enemies in our scientific knowledge.

Around the turn of the millenium we were finally able to take the war to the enemy with several armies in the field dedicated to ruining their productive capacity.

In 800AD the Romans enter the Middle Ages. In 950AD we have 27 towns, 3 settlers ready to find new homes, 64 legions, 5 armies, 3 horsemen, 35 catapults, 6 spears, and 12 workers. The Greeks are reduced to two small towns to our NE. The French have only 9 cities and two armies are destroying the French trade network and terrain improvemnts. There is one French towns remaining on our flanks but they will fall soon.

Eight Great Leaders have appeared and five have formed armies. One was used to build the Forbidden Palace, another the Pentagon and a third the Heroic Epic.

Our economy is mortgaged to our war effort with nearly 1/2 our income devoted to supporting our troops in the field.

The strategy is resource denial to our enemies while we develop our productive capacity in our towns.

Tactically we are killing more than we are losing but it is a close run thing. If we can bring France back to the AA as far as their miltary is concerned by destroying their access to resources we can really bring the war home to them, and then the Germans, and then the Russians, and the Babylonians, and anybody else we meet!

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/EditB.JPG

Hope that one expensive temple built in 550BC made people REAL happy. Were you close?

IIRC, we weren't horribly close, but it was more expensive than normal. It wasn't my turn...

Also, even though we had 8 GLs, they all came late, with all of the AA and early MA wonders gone by then.

Close enough that pushing the okay button was painful. And the MGL's all went to armies and, then the Epic, then the Pentagon.

Hey we might be big and slow, but we sure are dumb! We're just going to grow to 1000 lbs and sit on everyone.

Team Ankka, where is your spoiler #1? I was just interested in the comparison of the early game.
EDIT: I guess I could stop being lazy and just read your thread :crazyeye:

Mauer,

Some of us who haven't finished yet would like to see 1st spoilers for Ankka too. I haven't seen spoilers for Akots, Handy or Staff yet either.