SGOTM 08 - Fifth Element

Testgame is here. It's about as good as I could do. I suck at world builder. Mainly because it's hard to do on a laptop touch pad and I'm too cheap/lazy to buy a mouse for this thing.

I put all 7 industrious leaders in. If there is some glaring errors let me know.

Still Testing, I modified the initial test game to reflect what we know. The biggest difference was eliminating any pre Astro path to the landmass to the east.

I am still of the opinion we are moving to fast. We are too excited, and want to get started without adequate planning and discussion, of course, this is exactly what I do in my own contest games....

Merum. I am challenging you for the grump title.

WW is not as bad in BTS as it was, but there's another problem: Maintenance for overseas acquisitions is unbelievable, forcing the creation of colonies. Does anybody know whether wonders controlled by vassals counts in the master's score?

This might force a modification of a conquest strategy to raze only offshore.

My mistake about IW required for MC. I doubt we could pull off a CS slingshot on Monarch in BTS, and MC gives us more bang for our buck, both improving our production and enabling the Colossus early. The extra gold from the Colossus on an island start also improves our research, possibly more than CS would in just our capitol.

Answer to Merum's question: Wonders controlled by Vassals or Colonies do not count

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7187410&postcount=29


National Wonders built by others do not count so we have to build them ourselves. This could also effect our considerations on which enemy cities to attack, those with just NW can wait.

Playing the tests and assuming we are in the "small" part quickly the issue becomes city specialization and room for such specialization insofar as wonder rushing goes. Are we just going to let the chips fall where they may for the capital and try to have low pollution elsewhere? I mean going oracle-colossus-library2xGS will make for a real crapshoot. Of course in my testgame making the second city a GS pump is ideal.

Wasting Time had a good idea. Put the Oracle in city #2 for GP generation. Pyramids in city #3 for GE generation. Combine the Oracle with other GP wonders/specialists and the same for the Pyramids and GE.

Using the Oracle to slingshot MC sounds like a great idea. Not only will that set up the opportunity to build Colosus, but we can also add a forge and GE to the Pyramid city early on.

We are still getting a little bit ahead of ourselves though. Let's wait to see what the first couple turn sets reveal and plan after we know more of what we are up against. The best laid plans of mice and men...

It seems you don't care my previous post.
How can we talk of a strategy if... (see above).

Specialize cities is mandatory.
If city 3 will be on marble island it will produce not much.
Let's hope to have another good production or another good food site.
The capital is a powerhouse and is almost a waste use it for only the GLib, but i guess this will be our choice, if we're not lucky enough.

Too soon to debate this, let see where we are.

Merum i never played a normal game in 3.17 (i'm having fun with Road to War). Do you affirm that the WW in 3.17 is less than in 3.13? and that the overseas maintenance is raised between the 2 versions? Is it an impression of yours or is sustained by some article?

You can be right about the MC sling, but - again - is too soon to debate this.

Your question about vassal's wonders is already answered.

BLubmuz said:

Let's hope to have another good production or another good food site.
The capital is a powerhouse and is almost a waste use it for only the GLib

Click to expand...

This is a big concern of mine as well.

Blub, I can't say much about the differences between 3.13 and 3.17. In general, the maintenance cost for overseas cities in BTS is crazy outrageous. We all know how to manage WW, so I don't think that's a huge issue. Fight short, decisive wars and WW doesn't become a problem.

I'm fairly certain that there's not enough time to get a second city productive and still get the Oracle built there. At any rate, the capitol should be dedicated to priest wonders, with other wonders going elsewhere. This supports an early Stonehenge strategy, and the power of settled priests in the capitol is formidable.

I would (and often do) target Stonehenge, Oracle, Chichen, Shwedagon, Angkor, basically all the prophet producing wonders for the capitol, and relegate the others to other cities. A specialized GE city could build the Pyramids and the HG, as well as the Kremlin if for some reason we're playing that long. I'd probably either stick the Colossus in the Capitol or the engineering city. I usually use a third city to build the Parthenon and Glib, and any other wonders. This makes the appearance of a GS lsss certain, but it's a risk I'm personally willing to run in my own games, and one that can be mitigated to a large extent both by the scientists given by the Glib and by running additional scientists.

Here is the autolog from the first 12 turns.

Yasodharapura founded
Fifthburg begins: Worker (15 turns)
Research begun: Animal Husbandry (13 Turns)
Research begun: Fishing (13 Turns)

Turn 1/500 (3960 BC) [14-Sep-2008 01:40:59]

Turn 2/500 (3920 BC) [14-Sep-2008 01:41:18]
Fifthburg's borders expand

Turn 3/500 (3880 BC) [14-Sep-2008 01:41:25]

Turn 4/500 (3840 BC) [14-Sep-2008 01:41:32]

Turn 5/500 (3800 BC) [14-Sep-2008 01:41:43]

Turn 6/500 (3760 BC) [14-Sep-2008 01:41:49]

Turn 7/500 (3720 BC) [14-Sep-2008 01:41:56]
Buddhism founded in a distant land

Turn 8/500 (3680 BC) [14-Sep-2008 01:42:07]

Turn 9/500 (3640 BC) [14-Sep-2008 01:42:17]

Turn 10/500 (3600 BC) [14-Sep-2008 01:42:23]

Turn 11/500 (3560 BC) [14-Sep-2008 01:42:32]

Turn 12/500 (3520 BC) [14-Sep-2008 01:42:42]
Tech learned: Animal Husbandry
Fifthburg finishes: Worker

Turn 13/500 (3480 BC) [14-Sep-2008 01:43:46]
Fifthburg begins: Warrior (15 turns)

Here are some screenshots.

Fifthburg is the name of our capitol. Our one population is currently working the unimproved cows, but that can be changed if the team decides there is a better alternative.



This is the area west of the city. Looks like we will have company soon. Are those Shaka's borders? Only time will tell. A lot of jungle to clear. Cows, ivory, and rice are visible on the land and that is a fish tile north of the cows.



Here is the area to the south. Those are pigs on the hill. It might be tough to see in the shot, but there are more fish to the northeast of the marble island and also fish in the southern portion of our BFC.

Here's a link to the post I referred to before... it's a walkthrough by Obsolete with some interesting wonder economy concepts.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=231222

I played the first 12 turns and saved at the beginning of turn 13. We have finished building a worker and finished researching AH. A warrior was in the build queue and Fishing was set up to research next, but those can be changed if necessary. I have shared the autolog and screenshots from the first turnset in the posts above to start discussing strategy.

I am having trouble submitting the save game file and have sent a PM to AlanH to figure out what the problem is. Hopefully the problem will be resolved soon so that the second turn set can be played.

This is the error message that I get:

No GOTM information available in your submitted file.

greatbeyond said:

National Wonders built by others do not count so we have to build them ourselves.

Click to expand...

Did you really mean this? The link you referred us to says "Wonders controlled by your vasalls don't count". Is what you wrote above also true? Are you saying we can't capture a National Wonder? I'm guessing not. Please confirm.

@Mesix: next time, can you turn on resource flags for the screen shots, pls.

Sure. Anything to improve the screen shots. I haven't taken too many screen shots before. My average game lasts a couple of hours and all I generally share is a quick single paragraph synopsis. The autolog is a new feature to me and screen shots have seldom been of much use. This is my first succession game and I am learing as I go. Sorry for the inconvenience.

WastinTime said:

Did you really mean this? The link you referred us to says "Wonders controlled by your vasalls don't count". Is what you wrote above also true? Are you saying we can't capture a National Wonder? I'm guessing not. Please confirm.

@Mesix: next time, can you turn on resource flags for the screen shots, pls.

Click to expand...

Here is the link to Gyathaar's post where he states NW can not be captured

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7187410&postcount=29

I'll work on having a revised test with the new info before nap time tonight.

Mesix - it is acceptable to attach the save (even if not the official one), to your post so we can examine it

As far as the error reason, did you have autolog turned on and did the save directory for it actually exist? HOF tab 1

@Mesix: Apologies. There was a case sensitivity in the upload script that cased the error you saw. I've fixed it, so you should be able to upload your file now.

Here is the save file. Thanks for your help AlanH.

I copied the turn log from the submission:

Here is your Session Turn Log from 4000 BC to 3480 BC:

Turn 0, 4000 BC: Fifthburg has been founded.

Turn 2, 3920 BC: The borders of Fifthburg have expanded!

Turn 7, 3720 BC: Buddhism has been founded in a distant land!

Turn 12, 3520 BC: You have discovered Animal Husbandry!

Click to expand...

We are the first to submit a turnset. That means we are currently in first place...hehehe.

Sorry if it went a little too fast. I have to work a 12 hour shift tonight and our commercial Internet is down at work, so I had to get my turn set submitted before then. I'll try to poke my head in to the strategy discussion over the next few days, but it is tough to participate when working shift.

I took my original Test and modified it to match what has been revealed. After testing with the various colors that civs start with, it does look like Shaka. I tried to hand edit my worldbuilder save to replace Gilgamesh with Shaka but haven't quite got it right, so Gilgamesh is still there. His starting position has been changed to match what we see.I was able to do this successfully with our last SGOTM as we discovered new civs.

Let's play test and see how things go.