GOTM 177

Game of the Month 177: April 2016

Civilization: 2 Mongol settlers
Starting tech: Horseback riding, Bronze Working, and Wheel
Difficulty: Deity
Total players: 7
Restarts: off
Barbarians: Raging Hordes (+25)
75x120 game generated map

Special rules:
1. You may not own more than 20 cities at any point in the game. (Once you have 20 cities, you must save before popping a hut. If you get an advanced tribe, you reload till you get a different outcome.)
2. You get to choose the best of 2 outcomes for your first hut. Save before and after you tip the hut. Then choose the best of the 2 saves and move on.

Deadline: June 7 21, 2016

Please be sure to follow the submission guidelines when submitting your game (please do not send your files in a .zip file. Attach them directly to your e-mail with your name in the save file). No extra save is needed.

Please send the saved games only to civ2gotm@gmail.com.

Have fun.

Resource seed is 26 or 58. One tile SW is 2 specials and OK (but not great) for OCC.

Wonder what people will do as far as colonies are concerned. Potentially big payoffs available esp late game for far-out cities, but idk if it might come too late. I'm guessing a few will be sharing land with an AI (who will most likely be stuck at size 8 cities). SSC mandatory, Pyramids can be skipped.

Unusual in the sense that tightly rung expansion is discouraged, which makes building faster ICS less attractive. But on the other hand, you can't simply capture the AI cities if they build a wonder, so if you lose one you're not getting it back unless you let a barb ship kill a city of yours... 7 players too! 2 settlers, we'll see what happens with the strats. (Going to be playing mostly for score.)

Is this only landing, I'm guessing?

Jokemaster said:

Unusual in the sense that ...

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Thanks. I try real hard to keep the games interesting and forcing players to rethink their tried strategies.

Jokemaster said:

... unless you let a barb ship kill a city of yours...

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You can always disband a city by a combination of starvation and repeatedly making settlers. Last one will disband the city.

Jokemaster said:

Is this only landing, I'm guessing?

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No you can win by conquest or landing as usual. To make conquest more feasible, restarts are off.

Very interesting idea for a game. It will be interesting to see how people react to it. I can't remember the last time I built a courthouse but I guess I'll be building 20 (or 19 with shakes) of them in this one.

This would have been a good opportunity to relearn map studying using the resource seed as specials will be important, but that program doesn't seem to work on 64 bit comps.

Also, is an MGE AI patch allowed for GOTMs?

CharlieChuck said:

Very interesting idea for a game.

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Thanks. I appreciate the feedback as I try to keep the games interesting.

CharlieChuck said:

This would have been a good opportunity to relearn map studying using the resource seed as specials will be important, but that program doesn't seem to work on 64 bit comps.

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You do not need any special programs. Run map editor, choose the map size to match this game, set the resource seed, find the starting spot, and you can see all specials around you. The only tricky part is the translation between map coordinates and game coordinates. If you do not recall the details take a look at
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=191447

CharlieChuck said:

Also, is an MGE AI patch allowed for GOTMs?

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Yes, many of us (myself included) play on classic. It is allowed to use the patch to make the AI behave as it does in the classic version

It is.

Speaking of MGE patches, can you tell me what specific patch you used after you're done? The attitude.exe file that I got from the forums doesn't seem to work, so I had to use a foreign executable (clean, don't worry) That being said, it bugs out when I use the Find City function, which is mighty
annoying. help pls

edit: rip outsped by Ali on the reply

Ali Ardavan said:

Thanks. I appreciate the feedback as I try to keep the games interesting.

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This one certainly adds an extra layer of thought and strategy. I think switching to communism for short periods every now and then to batter the AI may be an idea. Also the temptation to build all 20 cities as soon as possible may be prove to be costly/ delay the final goal.

Ali Ardavan said:

You do not need any special programs. Run map editor, choose the map size to match this game, set the resource seed, find the starting spot, and you can see all specials around you. The only tricky part is the translation between map coordinates and game coordinates. If you do not recall the details take a look at
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=191447

Click to expand...

The problem I have is the Map editor CIV2MAP.EXE doesn't appear to work on my laptop (I assume it's still 16bit ? or it's 32 bit but the various patches haven't upgraded that file.) I read somewhere else you have to run the patch program on the map editor as well as the CIV2 file. It works now. I remember doing map analysis back in the day, with the coordinates being doubled or halved. I should be able to do it now.

Jokemaster said:

It is.

Speaking of MGE patches, can you tell me what specific patch you used after you're done? The attitude.exe file that I got from the forums doesn't seem to work, so I had to use a foreign executable (clean, don't worry) That being said, it bugs out when I use the Find City function, which is mighty
annoying. help pls

edit: rip outsped by Ali on the reply

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Ali Ardavan said:

Yes, many of us (myself included) play on classic. It is allowed to use the patch to make the AI behave as it does in the classic version

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I was going to use the patch in this thread. Is this the one with the Find City problem?

forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=154251

However, with the map editor not working I think I'm better off getting an old copy of windows and using Oracle Virtual Box. They seem cheap enough on ebay, just a shame I can't find the XP cd I know I've already got.

Ye, that's the one. The attitude.exe that bugs out is later on. Maybe using the attitude.exe is the cause of the FindCity bug in the first place, we can find out methinks.

Jokemaster said:

Ye, that's the one. The attitude.exe that bugs out is later on. Maybe using the attitude.exe is the cause of the FindCity bug in the first place, we can find out methinks.

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It took a bit to get it to work. I had to run the 64bit patcher on it but it now works (and I can see videos again now too.) However I'm now running an upgraded, patched and repatched version of Civ2 - it's a wonder it works at all!

I'll do a test first on my old GOTM 175 files to see if the AI does remain as it should be before starting this. I never really used to use Find City, but will give that a go as well.

Hi guys. I just installed this little gem of a game again after way too many years and after three or four patches it runs quite smootly (vanilla -> mge -> ai -> 64bit).

So far, I can confirm cool ai behaviour with the given patch (Find city is NOT working for me). Squeezed out some tribute, no war, everything seems to be fine. In my opinion Ai looks a bit more reserved in general compared to vanilla but don't count to much on my observation since I lost most of my empirical values.

But muscle memory is coming back slowly but surely. I'm slamming those i and r keys again as if i never stopped playing. I was even able to remember the oedo years for deity

Welcome back Hexer. It is always a delight to see players back from a long absence.

Is the special OCC rule in place for this game? Once you have 20 cities, you save before popping a hut. If you get an advanced tribe, you can reload?

I'd be inclined to believe so, yes. However, if you are close to a number but still planning to build a few outpost cities, you might be inclined to skip popping huts if they're located on suitable AT terrain if you can't afford to rush a settler ASAP.

Side note: I learnt during this GOTM that building a city near an AI and disbanding it gives you a NONE settler/engineer (similar to how popping a mercenary hut nearest an AI city gives you a NONE). Food for thought if you REALLY have lots of cash to spare! (And some out-of-city military units guarding the place.)

That being said: maybe worth it to get some dedicated 40-shields cities early on post-Industrialization to produce the engies that will be converted to NONE? Usually conventional PD strats eschew early Hoover/factory rushes in favour of freight spam and sewers/mkts/trade routes. But if food is an issue (GOTM176??) then maybe worth it to create some factory cities to pump out those near-AI size1's (and immediately IPRBing an engie for 170/210g) and get some NONE engies out of the deal instead of having to bribe them at 1500g apiece. Especially efficient once you get Railroad.Could even maybe do it pre-Ind, pre-RR by building KRC near an AI civ and celebrating it to cap. GL getting out the Darwin's/CfC/Hoover out in a timely manner tho. It's a lot of vans that would need to be saved up.

Would mean that optimal play would involve leaving a single AI on every major continent tho, (instead of conquering all but purple) and containment earlygame might be an issue. (Can't go for Leadership w/o learning Chivalry outside of very specific/lucky cases since AI research speed usually isn't up to par past Renaissance techs) Especially once they get Feudalism. Can't really allow the Celts half of my landmass... but properly petting them for inexpensive NONE engies is gonna be tough.

Anyways, I'm ranting: and I apologize if it's common knowledge here, really wanted to share. GL guys!

haleewud said:

Is the special OCC rule in place for this game? Once you have 20 cities, you save before popping a hut. If you get an advanced tribe, you can reload?

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Absolutely. I meant to put that in and I must have forgotten. I will edit the first entry right after this.

Jokemaster said:

I learnt during this GOTM that building a city near an AI and disbanding it gives you a NONE settler/engineer[/B] (similar to how popping a mercenary hut nearest an AI city gives you a NONE).

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That is true and it is a known fact.

Terrain improvement is always a concern unless you are playing ICS and None engineers always very valuable. They are more so in this game due to the limited number of cities. I usually do maximum improvements only around my science city but in this game it probably pays to do so for all 20 cities.

City structures also take added importance in this game for the same reason.

Welp. Now I finally understand why you value KRC so highly. Getting them out pre-Ind is very worth it if you have the van flow to back it up.

Might be very useful in this game since lots of cities have 40+ shield output per turn (although I was able to disband all but one of my engies for score and finish farmland work anyway). But fair warning: funds won't be very plenty if you miss LH.

I've still got nobody to submit his/her game. Should we extend the deadline?

Several are still playing; myself included. I will extend it by 2 weeks. The new deadline is the 21st.

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