SGOTM 15 - Unusual Suspects

SteelHorse said:

Agree with Rusten on Stone Wonders, and Trystero on Hindu Shrine and AP.

Unless we are isolated, which I am not convinced we are, 8 AI means lots of early warring to get space/cities. This may turn into another Dom/Conquest fight, but neilmeister has seemed to set the rules that would eliminate the AP cheese condition, but allow a ligit AP victory.

One thing that, is not to difficult to do with these conditions is to snap up a LOT of religions. In the test games, other that Bud, it was not hard to get most of the rest. Perhaps we should also keep cultural in mind, especially if we are isolated.

In summary, path could be:
Isolated: Cultural
Pangea/Single Continent Map: Conquest/Dom
Multiple Continents: AP

Figuring this out early will be important.

And of course, most importantly, warrior NE.

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One fishslap for each hammer anyone puts into a GW or SH!

I agree with Steelhorse 100%.

Who wants the first turnset? The light is still Red, but we seem to all be OK with warrior 1 NE, pause for settling decision, then proceed to Poly while scouting. Pretty simple Pre-Play-Plan (PPP) for the upcoming set.

I can take it.

ChrisShaffer said:

I can take it.

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OK... you are first in the order then.

The save is scheduled to be available tomorrow, so when its up, you have the greenlight to move the warrior, take screenshot, save game, and post the screenshot here. You won't be able to upload that save, but hold onto it until we've discussed the rest.

Rest of team.... if anyone has anything against moving the warrior NE, speak in the next 24hrs, or wait until a disaster strikes and say "I told you so!".

kcd_swede said:

if anyone has anything against moving the warrior NW

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I plan to move the warrior NE, not NW. Also, why won't I be able to upload the save?

Note that my turnset must be finished by Monday night, Pacific (GMT -8) time, as I will be out of town beginning Tuesday morning.

ChrisShaffer said:

I plan to move the warrior NE, not NW. Also, why won't I be able to upload the save?

Note that my turnset must be finished by Monday night, Pacific (GMT -8) time, as I will be out of town beginning Tuesday morning.

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Yes, up and to the right. That's NW, isn't it? No, OK, up and to the right is NE. That's what I meant. See... you just need to read what I mean rather than what I say, and communication will be perfect!

You can't upload a save with the same game-date as the start save. Just the way it is. Once you finish one turn, you can uplaod at any time. So as long as we decide where to move the settler before you leave, no problem.

Sounds jim-dandy to me! Do we have an actual hour:minute time when the save will be released?

Xcalibrator said:

Sounds jim-dandy to me! Do we have an actual hour:minute time when the save will be released?

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If its automated like the GOTM's, it would be +00:01 GMT on Jan 21. (about 7 hours from now).

But I have no idea, really. Its all up to Neil/Alan.

Moving the Warrior NE gets the OK from me.

Given the theme of the game, should we name units after characters from the Hindu epics (Mahabharata, etc.)?

Only if we can pick names that are easy to distinguish and nickname. I'd hate to have to type Mahabharata every time I wanted to refer to Warrior #2.

p.s. found this http://www.indianhindunames.com/ancient-mythological-vedic-names.html

It could be worse. We could be playing the Zulu.

Mahabharata is the name of the epic, not a character. A quick perusal of the Wikipedia entry for the Mahabharata, suggests "Drona" would be a good name for our first Warrior:

"Drona was one of the most powerful and destructive warriors in the Kurukshetra War. He was an invincible warrior, whom no person on earth could defeat. He single-handedly slayed hundreds of thousands of Pandava soldiers, with his powerful armory of weapons and incredible skill."

Edit: Bhishma would be a good name for an archer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhishma

I guess I won't be allowed to name any cities, not after what KCD commented on Botm49 results thread...
BTW it's Tolkien, not Tolkein and I always name my cities, and it's Quenta Silmarillion, Akallabeth, Lay of Leithian, Narn i Hîn Húrin and other tales that inspire me more than, say, a false religion with the essence of "nevermind, what sucks maybe won't suck for me in the next life so why lift a finger for anyone else, or even for myself"
Awaiting for 200 million invented gods to strike me down for my blasphemy.

Instead will probably be banned from the game by others who take a less-fanatical view of religions.
No, I don't mind playing any in-game religions, I'm just not too fond of certain "faiths" in RL.

Don't take me too seriously, I get carried away with my ranting

Yep, move the warrior and settle wherever others agree.
Wouldn't Drone be a realistic name for a warrior?

Game file is posted, but I am off to bed. Will move the warrior in the morning, 8-10 hours from now. If anyone wants to fog gaze or object to the warrior move, this is your chance.

High King J.J. said:

I guess I won't be allowed to name any cities, not after what KCD commented on Botm49 results thread...
BTW it's Tolkien, not Tolkein and I always name my cities, and it's Quenta Silmarillion, Akallabeth, Lay of Leithian, Narn i Hîn Húrin and other tales that inspire me more than, say, a false religion with the essence of "nevermind, what sucks maybe won't suck for me in the next life so why lift a finger for anyone else, or even for myself"
Awaiting for 200 million invented gods to strike me down for my blasphemy.

Instead will probably be banned from the game by others who take a less-fanatical view of religions.
No, I don't mind playing any in-game religions, I'm just not too fond of certain "faiths" in RL.

Don't take me too seriously, I get carried away with my ranting

Yep, move the warrior and settle wherever others agree.
Wouldn't Drone be a realistic name for a warrior?

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LOL... In BOTM49 I had to go through every replay file and try to figure out when the Sampo was assimilated. It was only a problem when someone had renamed all the cities after they were founded. OTOH, I thought it was very thoughtful of you to actually put a in-game sign to say when you got the Sampo. Without that, I'd have had no way to know where to look in the files. Its my own fault for setting up the challaenge that way, anyhow.

You can (and are encouraged to) rename any unit or city made during your turnsets.... that goes for everyone. It makes discussing micromanagement easier. But short names are best.

Suggested list for units: Lotus, Guru, Raji, Mogli, Yoga, QEM (short for Quick-E-Mart)...

City: Bollywood.

ChrisShaffer said:

Game file is posted, but I am off to bed. Will move the warrior in the morning, 8-10 hours from now. If anyone wants to fog gaze or object to the warrior move, this is your chance.

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Go for it.

Fog gazing. Looks like tile E of stone has river on its E edge. I think the tile NE of stone have the river that is giving the stone tile its commerce. I think Neil has provided a balanced map such that teams settling on marble vs stone won't make a difference in their results. i.e. similar number of hills to mine and rivers to cottage.
We will know in the morning.

Deckhand said:

I think the tile NE of stone have the river that is giving the stone tile its commerce.

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I agree. Don't see any other possibility.

Deckhand said:

Fog gazing. Looks like tile E of stone has river on its E edge.

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I don't see that. What an I missing? Please educate this half-blind.
Even though forests don't get the 1 from rivers I still don't see any indication that the river is there. I agree it's possible though.
Edit: You are one sharp fog-gazer! How did you know that?
Sorry for splitting hairs. Guess I'm just awaiting for the evening (it's dark here already) though others see it as morning. We are truly a Civ4ilized planet!

OK, there's a very big surprise here, Neil is one evil genius, but let's get that warrior move out of the way first. Nothing special in the big fat circle. We do find a deer on a hill and some mountains in the third ring of the stone city location. Perhaps 1E or 1SE is a good location for the second city? At any rate, I think we should continue with our original plan to move the settler to the marble.



Here are the map settings. Standard world size, cylindrical, tropical, low seas.



And now for the surprise, it's a doozy.



And, with that out of the way, take a look at the demographics screen:



Did you see that rival best GNP? People, we have a problem. The whole world is the wrong religion. And there must be something else contributing to that whopping 37 gold per turn too. Any ideas what it is?

So, what next? My plan is to move the settler to marble at about 8:00 AM Pacific (GMT-8), i.e. in 24 hours. Your comments and responses more than welcome.

Edit: how are we #10 on the demographics screen? Aren't there only 8 AI, which should place us #9? And how can Rival Worst GNP be a whopping 19????

Well, obviously the AI cities are pre-founded. That lets Neil do whatever he wants to them. It would not suprise me if he made 9 Bhudist shrines, one in each city. But that doesn't seem to be the case. Only 1 city seems to be showing the shrine - that's probably the high GNP. Might have market/grocer/bank everywhere I suppose. But I think the most likely scenario is that he has pre-settled some GPro and GMercs in those cities, or some combo with bonus buildings.

The good news is that the GNP from gold from GP and shrines cannot be converted to science, so we should win the race to Poly.


I think 1E and settle turn zero is a viable option, maybe even preferable if we anticipate a longer game. But I think the marble is faster start. If we make good on the faster start, it would be better. I like the marble because it leaves the deer for city2, and more importantly lets us get a couple explorers out before the worker. We really don't know what we need to do until we explore, so it would be foolish to make a long-game decision right now.

Unless someone objects, Chris can make the move at the designated time (24hrs from his post) I think. Like to have some others chime in with their view though... its a big decision. The first of many.

By "explorers" you mean "exploring warriors," right?

Any comments on the direction the starting warrior should explore when the city is founded?

High King J.J. said:

I agree. Don't see any other possibility.

I don't see that. What an I missing? Please educate this half-blind.
Even though forests don't get the 1 from rivers I still don't see any indication that the river is there. I agree it's possible though.
Edit: You are one sharp fog-gazer! How did you know that?
Sorry for splitting hairs. Guess I'm just awaiting for the evening (it's dark here already) though others see it as morning. We are truly a Civ4ilized planet!

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Hmmn, it was clearly visible for me. Perhaps different HW/SW configurations display differently (monitor, monitor size, OS, etc). Not as clear in the screen shot as it was in the game.

I agree with kcd, 1E will be a powerhouse of a city; but marble will be better immediately.
I agree with Chris, let's build some warriors and not wait for Optics to start exploring. :fishslap:

We can assume no civs other the the Buddhist one, have Mysticism. We should start with Hinduism because as SH pointed out Myst+Poly is faster than Agr+Poly. And no one will go for Meditation now.
Question: when an AI is first to Meditation, do they ever then go after Polytheism immediately? [doesn't matter, we can't do anything about it (except settle on turn 1)]
Question: Can Buddhism be "gifted" to an AI (along with holy city), without Meditation also being gifted?

Perhaps someone would like to use worldbuilder to investigate possible city contents to explain the 37 GNP?