BTS Roleplaying Challenge: Churchill

Groogaroo · Mar 22, 2008

madscientist said:
You load the game, zoom in as close as you can to the settler (this is to avoid see too much), then enter world builder. Save teh game as you like, then quit worldbuilder. Go to the main menu and startup a scenario, the saved game will appear, and you should be able to select the game speed you want. Caution, once you start the scenario game you have a list of all the available AIs in the game, don't look too closely if you want to be surprised!

I think there may be a problem with doing it that way. I think the game turns go wonky or something. :crazyeye:

as a save already comes with a set number of turns. I don't really understand it completely.

This is a post by rolo, kind of explains the process of changing the speed from a start save. I havn't tried it, but I thinkthis is how he made the save for Noblesclub playable at all speeds.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6600464&postcount=133

By the way, I love the presentation of this RPC with the whole letter and everything, very nice touch.

TheMeInTeam · Mar 22, 2008

It also gives the leaders away, so no worries about that in this case =P.

TheMeInTeam · Mar 22, 2008

Cam_H said:
Refar and Rolo,

Spoiler :

Thanks for your interest! Just on the intent behind the game set up and strategic thinking;

Spoiler :

It was my intent to encourage the 007 route without being too prescriptive about it - I was nearly was going to force the player into Nationalism but decided to hold back. I also considered making the espionage slider equal to or greater than the science slider post-Alphabet, but opted not to on that one either on the basis of fear of being too constrictive. I think Rolo's right though that you could possibly get good mileage from just plonking ahead with a cottage economy and back-trading provided good expansion, but I was hoping to veer people to try a spy game, or at least build it into their game as a meaningful component. The Alphabet variant is in part designed to curtail a rush in the very early game (apparently rushes in the very early stages have spoiled some of the SGs played with a spy theme). Bee-lining Masonry for The Great Wall might be a risky approach given the Industrious leaders, but I'd think success might not beyond the bounds of possibility.

Spoiler :

Winston Hughes · Mar 22, 2008

Cam_H said:
Note that both Random Events and the Diplomatic Victory (a.k.a. The Winston Hughes nightmare! ) options have been turned off.

I'd just about managed to forget that sorry episode. Thanks for the reminder. :rolleyes:

I'll probably give this a go, if only to take some revenge on 'the leader that dare not speak his name'. Come to think of it, I should adopt an extra variant rule: I cannot win the game if there are any German-founded cities remaining on the map.

Olodune · Mar 22, 2008

Churchill's Triumph:

Spoiler :

Olodune · Mar 22, 2008

@TheMeInTeam

Spoiler :

TheMeInTeam · Mar 23, 2008

Olodune said:
@TheMeInTeam

Spoiler :

Did you really ignore spies AND siege? Thats too funny A nice victory

Spoiler :

Refar · Mar 23, 2008

Update around 1370AD

Spoiler :

Refar · Mar 23, 2008

Ok, finished it - Domination @ 1780

The gods were against me on this one: I lost 24 Spy's (Checked statistics) while stealing overall less than 20 techs over the course of the game (Traded stolen stuff to get the rest

). And maybe 10 times "Revolt City"-mission.
While everytime "chance of success" was around 75%. Looks more like 50/50 to me. Thats horrible.
Won't even start ranting about Curasiers and Cavalry lost to longbows at 95% odds.

Well stuff happens - i had games where it was the other way around.
This one was a bit frustrating in this regard.

Opening: Post #6 in this thread.

Midgame: Post #28 - just above this one

Endgame:

Spoiler :

Cam_H · Mar 23, 2008

Wow! Seems like an Eighteenth Century win is becoming the norm on the basis of the 'pre-spoiler' comments!

I've played (only) 100 turns to 375BC, and below is a quick 'text only' spoiler;

Spoiler :

While I quite liked the starting spot, the Warrior moved and revealed Wheat just outside the starting spot's fat-X, so I went one south-west to include it in London.

One thing about the English is that they can go for Masonry from the outset, so Churchill took the gamble and opted to go after The Great Wall, also setting the tone for what I intend to be an espionage-based game. The gamble paid off.

Scouting around revealed a Gold-Stone spot to the north, so York was founded there - also beneficial in creating somewhat of a vertical barrier to both Germany and China. I'll probably use this city as a unit pump, but haven't gone hardline with it, with both a Flood Plains Cottage and the Gold Mine pulling in some commerce.

Oracle slingshot? Why not ... aside from no Marble and four Industrious AI leaders! :crazyeye:

... well, we got it! Confucianism in York, and good trade bait. I'm unlikely to leverage Confucianism, but it does create yet another strategic option.

The first :gp:

was a Great Spy, and he did a bit of recon' in America before infiltrating New York. Roosevelt will be our first target.

Nottingham was founded to the south west, where there's a Corn and Sheep resource, and plenty of grassland; it should make a nice commerce centre.

With Stone hooked up, London took a swipe at The Pyramids ... and again, despite our rivals, was able to pick them up in 425BC. I opted for Representation, but I was admittely quite taken by the idea of Hereditary Rule. We are capable of getting Courthouses up and running Specialist Spies.

Other WoWs to go; Roosevelt has Stonehenge (which will be great given Churchill is Charismatic) and Mao has The Temple of Artemis. I popped out a Scout and have opened borders with everyone, so he's just roaming around and improving our map.

We're score leaders - not that important, but nonetheless a nice place to be. Mao and DeGaulle have Alphabet, but they (obviosly) won't trade it for Priesthood, which is preventing me from trading CoL. I'm a bit inclined to gift them Priesthood for the positive modifiers, and open up Alphabet as a trade. Not sure.

Mathematics is soon to be in, which will open up both Construction (War Elephants) and Civil Service for self research.

Roosevelt doesn't appear to have Copper, although there's Iron to his west but outside of his borders. I'm not that keen on either Mao or Bismark as neighbours either, but Bismark's battling with our cultural borders, so he might follow Roosevelt ... well that seems the plan at this point.

Refar · Mar 23, 2008

@Cam_H

Spoiler :

pigswill · Mar 23, 2008

Whizzed through a quick and messy game. Up to 300ad so far:

Spoiler :

patagonia · Mar 24, 2008

I've just played a quick and messy game of my own - domination win in 1804 (I'm more of a builder than a warmonger so that's pretty quick for me).

Spoiler :

Cam_H · Mar 24, 2008

@Refar,

Spoiler :

@TheMeInTeam,

Spoiler :

TheMeInTeam said:
Literally, my only offensive units the entire game were HA's, Knights, or Cavalry. I didn't attack a single AI civ outside my borders with anything else. I'd been debating elsewhere on the board about the potential in featuring flanking promotions on lead attacking units. I felt that mounted units could use flanking as a poor man's siege, but with the benefit of more movement points and comparable losses. I didn't want anything slowing them down, so I went them exclusively to see if it was viable. It turns out it is...if you can get enough early production. While you do need at least one flanking unit loss or withdrawal plus a second attack per defender on average, the withdrawals add up, so the losses are far more minimal than I expected a few games back. The mobility makes up for some of the lack in specialization, since you can hit cities with these before the AI can react. Not as strong as a spy + siege + well thought out SoD, but I think what I did demonstrates that it's viable. A non-HBR chariot/impi shaka variant is pretty tempting now too.

I think I might have killed 1 or 2 straggling units in my territory at some point after a HA withdrew and I had a longbow nearby. Probably the only AI units not killed by mounted (or one of my vassals, France took a fairly good city in 2 of the wars as my vassal).

You definitely played more like the OP intended! And man, you won FAST! Impressive! Very useful for me to read through, because honestly I only got BTS in the past week, and my usage and understanding of spies is still a bit iffy.

Thanks for all of your thoughts - especially on flanking. I've not read your reports (deliberately), but with an Ivory start I'm a little surprised you didn't go on the attack with War Elephants ... not saying that you're right or wrong, but it's different to what I've done. As before, I look forward to reading both yours and all of the other reports when I've wrapped up my own game.

... and congratulations again to those who've appeased The King :king:

with a victory!

shyuhe · Mar 26, 2008

Here's a short report of my game. I don't know what kind of economy I ran frankly. I had minimal cottages (except for the capital) but I wasn't running many specialists because caste system was banned. I did built wealth quite frequently in my game so maybe I should call it a hammer economy? But even that's a stretch...

Spoiler :

I settled in place and grabbed the copper north of the start. I stole a worker from Mao and I then proceeded to axe rush Bismarck. He was dead by 1240 BC. I then sent my stack north and took out Mao next - he was dead in 300 AD although it took 2 wars (I wanted to extort techs). He didn't have BW when I declared war on him initially. I finished CS around this time as well (with only cottages in my capital!).

DeGaulle was attacking Roosevelt at that time so I decided to go attack Gandhi. I took one of his cities and was getting to the next when DeGaulle backstabbed me. I was hoping he was going for a dogpile on Gandhi but alas. I took peace with Gandhi and sent my stack north to go after DeGaulle. He had LB but not maces or trebs, whereas I had teched all the military techs and had CR3 maces and CR2 trebs. DeGaulle didn't put up much of a fight but after I took Paris, I decided to take peace since it looked like he was crippled and I needed to heal my units.

After I finished healing, Gandhi surprisingly asked to become my vassal (1240 AD). I accepted his request and also decided to chain wars together to prevent Gandhi from escaping my grasp (I figured he'd want protection so long as he was at war). Vassalizing Gandhi had the benefit of being able to steer the one civ capable of beating me to liberalism - I sent him on a beeline towards astronomy on a pangaea map :lol:

I then declared on Stalin to initiate my chain war (he had pretty low power). He didn't have much of a military as I think he was concentrating too much on wonders. I captured the GL and after 3 cities, capitulated him in 1370 AD.

After Stalin was capitulated, I waited a few turns to heal my troops and to send them back to the French border. I re-declared and capitulated DeGaulle after capturing his new capital, Lyons. This was 1440 AD.

At this point, I was around 50% land with some cities still waiting to come out of revolt. I figured I'd go for a conquest at this point so I sent my stack eastwards and also triggered a GA using a GP that was born (I had built a few wonders in Berlin). I used the GA to change to theocracy + police state and attacked Roosevelt. Unfortunately he refused to capitulate for the longest time.... I had to reduce him to one offshore island city before he was willing to capitulate - this was in 1570 AD.

My final score was 130kish. I didn't even tech MT or gunpowder (I traded for it after capitulating Roos) :lol:

Talk about a crappy economy... On the other hand, I had massive production since I crossed the domination threshold on the same turn that I triggered conquest (and I had farmed over most of the cottages that I captured).

I did run a fair number of spies but that was mostly because I had the pyramids (rep) + courthouses and didn't have time to build many markets/grocers. I ran engineers where I could but frankly, my economy was terrible :lol:

I think I should have just played nice and used an EE instead of trying to run my entire empire's coffers through my bureau capital + the Hindu holy city + one hammer city building wealth (20 hammers). At least now I know you can't really do a good hammer economy or a good SE without caste system/libraries

Here's my VC screen:

Bleys · Mar 26, 2008

madscientist said:
You load the game, zoom in as close as you can to the settler (this is to avoid see too much), then enter world builder. Save teh game as you like, then quit worldbuilder. Go to the main menu and startup a scenario, the saved game will appear, and you should be able to select the game speed you want. Caution, once you start the scenario game you have a list of all the available AIs in the game, don't look too closely if you want to be surprised!

You will indeed end up with less turns if you dont edit the WB save after you create it. You have to open the save in Notepad, and then set the Speed=NONE, I think. That allows you to set it in the game menu itself.

Its really not that difficult to create these games in a more generic fashion, and allow players to play in their favorite MOD, at their preferred speed, and even at various difficulties. Rolo has it figured out, he created the last Nobles Club game and the most recent LHC game in this fashion. He even sets it so you do not get to choose the leader, by setting all the AIs to "PlayableCiv=0". Then they wont even show up on the choices list. There is something about setting all the AI civs to a starting postion as well, so that the choice of difficulty adds the correct bonuses on startup, but I cant seem to find the post that rolo explained it to me. I will look or it though.

I found out about it when I took the Gilgamesh LHC into the WB, saved it, and played it at Epic speed instead of Normal, which the game was created in. That made the game end in 1910, because it only allowed the number of turns you would get if played at Normal speed. Marathon is even worse, you will likely get told you have 50 turns left in the 1700s!

OK found the post by rolo, explaining how to edit WB files to have them be usable as Scenarios. Here it is

TheMeInTeam · Mar 26, 2008

Bleys said:
You will indeed end up with less turns if you dont edit the WB save after you create it. You have to open the save in Notepad, and then set the Speed=NONE, I think. That allows you to set it in the game menu itself.

Its really not that difficult to create these games in a more generic fashion, and allow players to play in their favorite MOD, at their preferred speed, and even at various difficulties. Rolo has it figured out, he created the last Nobles Club game and the most recent LHC game in this fashion. He even sets it so you do not get to choose the leader, by setting all the AIs to "PlayableCiv=0". Then they wont even show up on the choices list. There is something about setting all the AI civs to a starting postion as well, so that the choice of difficulty adds the correct bonuses on startup, but I cant seem to find the post that rolo explained it to me. I will look or it though.

I found out about it when I took the Gilgamesh LHC into the WB, saved it, and played it at Epic speed instead of Normal, which the game was created in. That made the game end in 1910, because it only allowed the number of turns you would get if played at Normal speed. Marathon is even worse, you will likely get told you have 50 turns left in the 1700s!

OK found the post by rolo, explaining how to edit WB files to have them be usable as Scenarios. Here it is

I picked up on it before I started this game. Pity it didn't help me not get pwnt in the madscientist RPC

. Im moving to epic speed from now on. This is a good reference for other players looking to get into these games but wanting different settings. I don't know how many beginners read these threads, but I think it would help them. I'm pretty much a beginner myself, and it's helped me to play the same game as other people and see how different the approaches within the same game can be.

Bleys · Mar 26, 2008

I really think playing common maps is one of the best learning techniques there is. I would have played this one, had the recent BOTM not left a nasty taste for Churchhill in my mouth (I lost on Prince, because I underestimated my diplo with my neighbor, Gilga, froakin backstabber!) I usually play these, Cam's games are always fun, with whacky conditions. I may still try it, after I see how others have leveraged the conditions, I am a total n00b when it comes to Espionage.

Now that we have some "regulars" on this board (its been done this way on some other boards for a while) who have the knowledge to properly create games that can be played at various speeds and levels, I think there will be more of them popping up. The LHCs and Nobles Club games are already going to be created with this technique, and I am quite sure Cam and others will look into it for their projects as well, its not too difficult. I look forward to it, especially since I am TOTALLY hooked on the HoF MOD, I simply cannot play competently without it, not kidding, I miss every border pop, ever Unhappy limit.

Cam_H · Mar 26, 2008

Bleys said:
I usually play these, Cam's games are always fun, with whacky conditions.

I must say that I was surprised that you hadn't signed up already!

Bleys said:
I am a total n00b when it comes to Espionage.

Me too ... which was my thinking here ... if I don't force myself to try it, I'll continue to ignore it or get frustrated by the AI's use of it. I hoped that a community game might help myself and others like me to get a better grasp of Espionage. Apparently I should have been more strict with the house rules to push that theme harder, but others such as Olodune have opted to take that next step themselves.

Thanks also for the link on the customisation! :thumbsup:

Bleys · Mar 26, 2008

I know bro, I know. I should be able to slaughter Churchill too, since I played 2 practice games with him before the BOTM, but man, I was so bummed to be run out on Prince so fast, LOL. Gilga . . . I will NEVER trust that dude again! It was my own fault, I denied him a couple tech requests, and instead traded them to him for peanuts, hoping a "our trade has been good" offset for the "you refused to help us" negative, but it didnt work out, he stormed me with a pile of Vultures supported by HAs then moved in with Cats and Ellies. I am actually keeping this game in the back of my mind, once I get this next Nobles Club rolling, and play my turn in the SG game, I will probalby play it. I downloaded it a long time ago, heh.

BTS Roleplaying Challenge: Churchill

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If A implies B...

If A implies B...

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Emperor

Emperor

If A implies B...

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

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Emperor

Deity

Deity

Deity

If A implies B...

Deity

Deity

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