SGOTM 10 - Chokonuts

AlanH

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BtS SGOTM 10 - Armageddon



Welcome to your BtS SGOTM 10 Team Thread. Please use it for all internal team communication, turn logs and discussions. Subscribe to it to receive notifications, and do not visit the other team threads for this game until you have finished. Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest.

In this, the third BtS SGOTM, Gyathaar wants nuclear devastation. Stalin of Russia starts in the Renaissance era in 1285 AD, in a world with five Aggressive AI civs. He is hell bent on world conquest, BUT he can only capture a city if he nukes it first.

It's a fight to the nuclear death in an Epic speed, Emperor difficulty game on a Small sized Big and Small map. There are no goody huts, no events, no city razing, no city flipping, no Vassals. Only Conquest is enabled.

It's a standard Renaissance start, so you get a lot of techs at the beginning. Cities are created with pop 2 and a few buildings. You start with two settlers, two longbows, one explorer and a worker. The AI start with two settlers, four longbows, two explorers and a worker.

Versions
This game will be played in Civilization IV Beyond the Sword, version 3.19, using the new all-singing, all-dancing HoF Mod BUFFY-3.19.001. This HoF Mod version is available now. You can download it here.

If a later BtS patch is released during this game you will NOT be able to use it to play. You will need to complete this game in version 3.19 before updating your copy of BtS, or create and update a separate copy.

Mac players can only join in if they are able to run the Windows game on their system.

Timetable
The game will start on Friday, August 7 .

Your start file, and then each submitted Save for your team, will be linked on the Progress and Results Page throughout the game. Please ensure that you only download your own team file.

The finish deadline is December 7 2009. If any team has not finished by this date they will be deemed to have retired, and will not be eligible for any awards.

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



Map Parameters
  • Playable Leader/Civ - Stalin of the Russian Empire.
  • Traits - Aggressive, Industrious.
  • Unique Unit - Cossack (replaces Cavalry)
  • Unique Building - Research Institute (replaces Laboratory)
  • Renaissance Era start - turn 277, 1285 AD.
  • Difficulty - Emperor
  • Game Speed - Epic (473 turns)
  • World size - Small
  • Rivals - Five
  • Landform - Big and Small
  • Other settings - No city razing, No Culture Flips, No goodie huts, No events, Aggressive AI, No Vassals
  • Victory Conditions - Conquest Only
Notes
  • Please visit the Civ4 SGOTM reference thread to check out the rules and procedures to ensure that you are adequately prepared for this game.
  • Teams will compete for up to four awards - the Gold, Silver and Bronze Laurels for the Fastest Conquest victory, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher. You will drop down the final ranking table* for each city that you capture without nuking it with a direct hit first. A "Capture" is defined as any method of obtaining a city other than by building it yourself using a settler. A "Capture" also includes retrieving a city you originally built but lost.

    *The final ranking will sort teams in the following order:
    1. Win, lose or retire. Wins go first. Retirements go last.
    2. For wins, the number of un-nuked cities captured. Zero missed cities go first.
    3. For wins, the finish date.
    4. For losses and retirements, final score will determine their rankings within those categories.
  • All saved game files uploaded to the server are parsed through software that extracts and archives data about your save, including reload count for each turn set.

Have fun.
 
Welcome all, this should be fun. Big commiserations to Edzako for being put on the wooden spoon experts :lol: but as long as you just want to have some fun this should be all right.

I've actually been playing some non-ancient starts recently for HOF games. One of the keys is to get settlers out as quick as possible to grab the land.

Someone want to generate a test start. Picking the right techs to research from the start will be a key I think. I know Physics reveals uranium but what allows nukes? Ecology will be important as well to clean-up.

More thoughts as they come to mind.
 
Yep, I'm here :salute:

All set for another award-winning game....... :mischief:
 
Hi guys and welcome Edzako :wavey:
This should be a blast.
 
I've never played a non-Ancient start before, and have never been in a Nuclear war before, so I'm completely stuck for ideas!

By the way, I'll probably be away on holiday the second half of August, so it may be September before I can contribute fully.

PS - @oz - remind me... which team is currently leading the Ashes series?!?!!
 
PS - @oz - remind me... which team is currently leading the Ashes series?!?!!

Still two games to go! Stayed up til 1am last night watching :crazyeye:

Actually I'm playing cricket tomorrow night so can't do a test game until Thursday.

My only nuke experience is in SGs, where once we realise we can't win by any other means we WB ourselves nukes and tanks like this (end of the page) :lol:

Turns played. Our dudes killed stuff. Stuff killed our dudes. 72 nukes turned spain into a glowing pile of global warming. Typical set.
 
One thing I have learnt about nuke strategies is to try to get Millitary science and use gg's to build academies.
Highly promoted troops are not needed for taking nuked cities and nukes are expensive.

edit:
Other obvious key is to control or destroy UN before any anti nuke resolution is passed of course.

edit2:
Given late start and hammer needs maybe a hammer focussed economy would be better than trying to grow cottages.
 
Signing in, I had ummed and ahhed about taking a Civ break but the theme of this game overcame my resistance, more wooden spoons on their way!

Although in honour of our captain's cricket team perhaps we should just aim for second this time round.......

Ralph
 
Some thoughts on tech path and civics.

1st Decision do we want to immediately use two turns of anarchy or one (kind of depends on what we see when we move some units around and where we want to settle).

Definately want Beauro and one other as this will give one turn of anarchy.
Let's say Bearuo and Merc. We start with a forge so we can then run an engineer in each city.
This is what the AI does it seems. So we should be getting a GE exactly at same time (I think around turn 35) as all the non philo civs. I am guessing these GE's are going to be used to rush wonders.
GE will bulb gunpowder which opens up Chemistry from liberalism if that's what we want.

These wonders are immediately available:
Notre Damme
Angor Wat
Sistine Chappel
U of Sangakore
Shewanpandega
Spiral Minaret

It seems as we have gold we should be trying to sink as many resource/trait boosted hammers into SP to build up some failure gold to do deficit research.

If we take another turn of anarchy then we can also revolt to the Caste and HR.
Caste allows an immediate scientist. THis will boost our tech rate relative to AI which all go engineer.
Also Caste favours the hammer economy as all flat tiles can with workshops will have same production as corresponding hills.


This will give us a scientist which I believe bulbs Education partly and then PP.

Liberalism race is much tigher in this setting.
All AI's in my test games go for education.

I believe if we can manage diplo well (this is critical) we would be better off going Nationalism (for monopoly). Our tech rate will be boosted yet again relative to ai as we have two pre-reqs for this as opposed to one for education.
This means we would complete hopefully before ai has education. Of course, we are now exposed to it being demanded.
If diplo is ok we should be able to trade for education once it is no longer a monopoly or if we invest some beakers.
We can then go straight to Lib and shoot to take Constitution for rep. or if we went for GE we would have option to go Chemistry after bulbing Gunpowder.

edit:
I've only tried a few openings to get a feel for what goes on so haven't gone all the way to lib yet.
Will try on the test map and see what happens.
 
Shewanpandega

...took me a while to work out what you meant by that - sounds like it should be a Sri Lankan leg-spinner......

Has someone tried PM'ing Edzako, so that he knows he has to sign in??

What starting buildings do we get? How feasible is it to beeline for Oxford Uni??
 
I keep seeing things in the setup that keep scaring me!!

I just had in my head that was nukes only until I just looked. Ok Ive never used them before but first time for everything.

Then I read that is advanced start :confused: Will be popping my cherry with these on this one them.

Ok so we can just Rex to go for peaceful win???... No cos conquest only, ok so just take a couple of key cities then vassalize.... no vassals....:mad::mad: Ok so just nuke a city raze it and leave for the barbs to make the most of the remnants .... no city razing!!! so we have to actual look the people in one of the faces from their three heads they have just grown after we "capture" each city. I think I need to go lie down!!!

How do people feel we go about this one, are we stictly adhereing to the nuke rule or do we allow ourselves to gain some nearby real estate from normal means before the dawn of the nuclear age. Personally I think best defense against nukes is to make sure others cant make them. Therefore we should look to get to Rocketry/Fission first but again I have no knowledge of AI's propensity to use nukes if they aint going to use them not so much of an issue.

I see this starts on Friday well I cant do anything then have some trip to Leeds orgainsed!!!! :D :D
 
I see this starts on Friday well I cant do anything then have some trip to Leeds orgainsed!!!! :D :D

Nice. I really wanted to go there for at least a day but couldn't get it sorted. :sad:
 
...took me a while to work out what you meant by that - sounds like it should be a Sri Lankan leg-spinner......


What starting buildings do we get? How feasible is it to beeline for Oxford Uni??

:D

Forge, granary, and aquaduct

Ianw we can definately beeline oxford I just think our overall tech rate will be better if we go for nationalism and try to get an AI friendly to trade for Education.
THey have same beaker cost but we get an extra 20% discount on Nationalism. It should be good trade bait for Education. THe question is will it affect the lib race.

In my three starts all 12 AI's went Education first.
We can try to race them.
This could work as I believe the AI will run engineers and also build cottages which take time to mature.
If we go hammers and build research and using failure wonders like SP at multiple locations to keep slider at 100%
should allow us to outgun them despite bonuses.
Also, I have no idea how many of the AI's will actually go lib right after education.
 
I've tried 3 or 4 trial starts tonight with random maps, I'm in favour of taking 2 turns of anarchy of the bat, this will give us time to move settlers (if need be). Our current settler position would bag all food resources but could possibly take out the gold of any city radius. I think whoever takes first should move southern Lbow 1SE and northern Lbow 1NE. This will give us more idea of other possible sites. Personally I am in favour of splitting two settlers one north to take Iron fish possibly 1S of Iron and the other either 1S or 1SW of western gold. The gold will give initial happiness boost and research boost. Possible third site is inbetween the 2 phants which would also get crabs and clams. We should definitely bag Iron, I got Dow'd on ealry and had just Lbows vs Knights and Maces not good and the gold would give big boost to early science especially if this is capital with bureau bonus. Sci is a drag early be prepared for 40+ tech research turns.

As regards science, I have seen certain civs go Nationalism and Gunpowder but agree 50%+ go for Education. If we go Merc, HE, Caste, Bureau we can run sci's instead of eng's and use GS to bulb remainder of Education this should get us ahead in Lib race. We can also run priests in second city to get GP for shrine for inevitable holy city. (I did get two in one game, which I suppose is 1 in 6 chance).

Ian problem with Ox uni is we need six unis for that thus 6 cities which isn't really feasible pre-Liberalism. Not enough time to get economy robust enough to support that many cities.

Stil haven't used a nuke!!
 
I've PMed Edzako a few days ago but nothing yet.

I agree with Mighty that running scientists first to help bulb Education is a good start. None of the wonders available are game killers so a GE isn't as useful as could be.

I think we play this one to the letter of the law and nuke everything. Good idea about using GGs to build academies, nuked cities don't need promoted troops.
 
@mighty
We need 5 cities for Oxford because of small map. This might be possible with a fast rex and good blocking but can't count on it as AI's spawn fairly close.
Also, usually in Emperor fourth city can be a big jump in maintenence.
 
@ian
Coastal cities get LH too
 
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