BtS SGOTM 10 - Armageddon

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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.

Starting Conditions

Current Techs

Optics
Engineering
Divine Right
Paper
Guilds
Banking and lesser techs...

Techs that can be researched

Astronomy (1600 base beakers on normal speed)
Printing Press (1200) --> Replaceable Parts (1600)
Gunpowder (1000) --> Chemisty (2000)
Education (1400) --> Liberalism (1200) and Economics (1000)
Nationalism (1600) --> Constitution (2000) and Military Tradition (1800)

Current GP bulbing order

--Techs without required prereqs in ( )
Prophet -- Printing Press, Education, Liberalism
Scientist -- (SciMeth), (Physics), Education, Printing Press, (Fiber Optics), (Computers), (Laser), (Chemistry) ...
Artist -- (Mass Media), (Radio), Nationalism, Printing Press, (Liberalism) ...
Merchant -- (Economics), (Corporation), (Constitution), (Railroad) ... Printing Press ...
Engineer -- (Assembly Line), (Industrialism), (Combustion), (Replaceable Parts), (Steam Power), (Steel), (Railroad) ... Gunpowder, (Constitution) ...

Available Civics

(up to 2 changes per 1 turn of anarchy)
Government--base, Hereditary Rule
Legal--base, Vassalage, Bureaucracy
Labor--base, Slavery, Serfdom, Caste System
Economy--base, Mercantilism
Religion--base, OrgRel, Theocracy, Pacifism

Currently Buildable World Wonders

Angkor Wat, Sistine Chapel, Notre Dame, Sistine Chapel, Spiral Minaret, University of Sankore, and Shwedagon Paya.
Earlier wonders (Oracle, Great Wall, etc.) are obsolete and can not be built.
Apostolic Palace and United Nations can not be built because Diplo victory is not enabled.

Miscellaneous

All available religions will be founded (fairly evenly?) on turn 283. (We start on 277.)
Our cities start with population 2, granary, forge, aqueduct (and lighthouse on a coast).

Questions

When can the AI attack us? -- Test games are probably best indicator.
What happens when a city (or other tile) is nuked? (To population, units, improvements, buildings, and fallout?) -- Mostly answered in post5.

Worker actions

-- Note that chopping and then improving (mine, workshop, etc.) takes 1 more turn than doing a combined action.
Listed values are for plains, grass. Tundra +25%, desert/floodplains +25%, snow +50%, Serfdom -50%.
Not sure how rounding works. Stuporstar's thread.
Road 3
Chop forest 5
Chop jungle 6(?)
Mine 6
Pasture 6
Farm 7
Windmill 7
Workshop 9
Lumbermill 11
Fort 14
Railroad
Cottage
Watermill
Camp
Quarry
Pasture
Plantation
Winery
Oil well
Scrub fallout

Reference

Roster

Xcalibrator
CommandoBob
Backwards Logic
30-day injured reserves: r_rolo1, zyxy, Renata, unkle

Information Links

BTS 3.13 tech tree -- Note that there is no longer a free Great Spy from Communism with 3.19. (Ooops, incorrect. That's only when espionage is turned off.)
CFC On-line Civilopedia
Civ4 SGOTM Progress page
Trade route rules and examples (see posts 76 and 80)
Barbarian spawning and behavior -- Note that new barbarian units can not spawn within a 2 tile radius (5x5 tiles) of ANY existing unit (including other barbs), even if tiles are fogged. Barb cites can appear in fogged tiles, though. Example screenie.

Test games, Spreadsheets, Plans

Latest spreadsheets (Turns 27-37, post 203)
Old spreadsheets: Turn 23/post 181, Turn3/post 105, Turn 9/post 150
Latest test game (Turn 23, post 181)
Old test games: Rolo's pre-start, Turn 9, post 142

Screenshots

Turn 33 (post 205), Indian domain, and our eastern domain (2 starting cities).
Turn 18 (post 155), newly explored land S and SW. This pretty much fills in our continent, and shows most of the silver island to the SE.
Turn 9 (post 140), NW and SW of Gandhi. NW shows a nice cows/clams/iron site for a city.
Turn 3 (post 115), western domain after settling
Turn 3 (post 107), eastern domain before settling
Turn 0 (1?) after moving the 2 longbows

Summary of Strategy and Play

Preplay discussion (to be written).
Since we have no libraries, we're running 0% research to start, saving up gold for later.

Turnset 1, turns 0-18, 1285-1375 AD, Backwards Logic: (x-18) -- By turn 9 we've discovered we're cut off to our north and to Gandhi's west. There's a nice site (cows, clams, IRON) NW of India that we must settle before Gandhi to limit him to longbows, so we can then throttle him. With luck we'll keep him to 2 cities. We discuss peacefully hemming him in with settler spam versus a more direct approach (steal workers, pillage, threaten any settlers). The latter method wins and BL revises his spreadsheets to produce a settler by turn 19 (for the iron site) and give us a decent military. Gandhi pops a Great Sci on turn 18, which is probably better for us than him getting a Great Artist who would put more cultural pressure on us. We do not road/camp the river ivory, figuring that it will eventually flip to Gandhi. Our continent is pretty well explored now, and we see an icy fish/silver/iron island to our SE.

Turnset 2, turns 18-33, 1375-1450 AD, CommandoBob: (18-23) || (23-27) || (28-33) -- We finish buiilding our first settler in Moscow and send him to the iron/cows/clams site NW of Gandhi, then concentrate on building barracks and units. By turn 23, Gandhi is roading his ivory, and next starts a camp. We attack on turn 25 and steal 2 workers. On turn 29 we capture another worker and continue pillaging everything in sight.

Turnset 3, turns 33-50, 1450-1535 AD, Xcalibrator: (33-37) || (38-43) || (44-45) || (45-50) -- Apart from one road and Delhi's clams (and we take out those soon with a trireme), we've pillaged everything Gandhi has and start shifting workers over to the west to keep the land clear of fog while roading. A little late--there's a barb axeman, but no barb cities. We meet Mao on turn 35. Broberg finishes a worker (we have 9!) to hook up the iron and cows and then starts a trireme. Moscow works on a settler for the 5-seafood site up north while a worker roads toward it. St Pete concentrates on military units and chop-rushes a knight as soon as we gain cultural control over the horses. Just in time, as the next turn (43) Gandhi culture bombs us and we lose a lot of tiles, including the horses, but we found Seaside (with 5 seafood) up north. Then, Gandhi moves a longbow next to Broberg; after some discussion, we move a pike to protect the iron from pillaging, and the longbow moves away--phew! But... on turn 45, a barb galley unloads a mace and spear on the cows next to Moscow, which has only a warrior guarding it. BL does some tests and after more discussion we decide to roll the dice and upgrade the warrior to a mace using our cash stash (duh) and take our chances. Our mace will have 91% odds if the barb mace attacks and may/might have enough strength after that to dissuade the spear from attacking. The next turn the barb mace attacks and dies, but then the spear attacks! We survive, barely (1.6/8 strength). After that we kill some units that Gandhi foolishly sends out, capture another worker, and get back to our growth plan.

Turnset 4, turns 50-75, 1535-1660 AD, BL: (52-57) || (58-61) || (62-66) || (67-71) || (72-75) -- We lose a pike attacking a catapult by Bombay but finish building a mace in St Pete. We meet Roosevelt via caravel and see that the barbs have set up their own little empire to our east. After settling our first GP, an Engineer, Moscow finishes a market and starts another settler, and Seaside starts on the National Epic since we're going to be running lots of specialists up there with all that seafood. Gandhi has a pair of caravels wandering around aimlessly, but we're worried he'll sit on Broberg's clams. We found Silverton (1610/turn 65) and help it get started with a workboat sent from Moscow. Gandhi's culture (courtesy of Bombay and the Sistine Chapel ) has infected St Pete to the extent that we now have 1 point of motherland unhappiness there. We meet DeGaulle, leaving just one more AI to find. Delhi builds a settler and Bombay pops a Great Merchant; both just sit there stupidly, along with the workboat in Delhi that was built ages ago. Come out and fight, cowards! Horsetropolis is founded on the coastal desert tile with horses and 2 seafood in BFC south of Moscow in 1640 (turn 71).

We then pause for, um, creative discussions of teching strategy (what to research, bulbing vs academies, etc.). We decide to drop Astro, which we've been working on since the beginning with 0% research, and go for Nationalism in order to be able to rush the Taj for a Golden Age with a Great Engineer we plan to pop from St Pete, and then go on to Constitution (for Representation) and Democracy (to build the Statue of Liberty--we're Industrious and will have copper once we settle to Gandhi's SW). Astro opens up trade routes, but since most/all of the AI will be running mercantilism for quite awhile that won't do us any good (apart from the 25% beaker bonus from observatories). Nor are we in a big hurry for Scientific Method since that obsoletes monasteries and we're hoping to catch and spread some more religions for the 10% beaker bonuses and Free Religion happiness (from Liberalism). We should be able to trade Nationalism for Education (or whatever) and then all the other available techs, hoping that an AI will have Liberalism available for trade by the time we get Constitution and still have a turn or two on our Golden Age to do the revolt to Representation and Free Religion. We'll hold a Great Sci (from Seaside) in reserve in case we need to bulb Printing Press as trade bait, but otherwise plan to use our first two Great Sci's for academies in Moscow and Seaside. Once the National Epic is finished and Seaside has grown to its happy cap to run specialists we'll burn a turn in revolt to Caste System to run unlimited scientists. We work on a Confucian missionary to send to Seaside (which has only Islam) to take advantage of the 100% GPP rate bonus from Pacifism during the Taj Golden Age, and to allow us to build a Confu monastery for the 10% beaker bonus.

But... then we get another barb invasion. Two barb galleys approach Horsetropolis. Both are sunk but one deposits a mace and spear. We chop a longbow in Horsey and then (74-75) sacrifice a worker to lure the spear onto a plains tile and next turn kill it with a crossbow.

Turnset 5, turns 75-92, 1660-1718 AD, Xcal: (75-80) || (80-86) || (87-88) || (89) || (89-92) -- After much discussion of our teching strategy, we decide to stick with Serfdom and not revolt to Caste Sytem. Instead we concentrate on growing our cities to run as many specialists as possible during the Taj Golden Age, and we give St Pete time to pop a Great Engineer with 100% confidence. Caste would let us run lots of specs now, but then Seaside would pop its Great Person before St Pete.

Back to the barbs. The mace kills our wounded Xbow but one of our longbows kill him. Also on turn 76 (1665AD) we meet the last AI, Churchill. The next turn he discovers Liberalism and takes Astronomy. We lose a healing mace to Gandhi out west. Seaside (our big seafood city) builds an Islamic monastery to spread the word and future happiness via Free Religion. Gandhi finally builds a settler in Delhi but we have him pretty well boxed in.

During turns 80-86 we finally crank up the research from 0 to 100%. We lose our best mace attacking a Gandhi catapult despite 97% odds, and trade our map around for gold, getting Mao's in the bargain, which reveals a lot. Gandhi attacks one of our pikes and loses, giving us our first Great General; we're saving these for Military Academies later. Moscow starts a settler for the crabs/copper site in the far southwest; we want the copper to speed the Statue of Liberty, as well as to deprive anyone else of that site. We're having some trouble containing Gandhi, but managing.

During turns 87-88 and 89 we keep building libraries in our minor cities and then crank up the food production to grow. We sacrifice a worker to lure an Indian longbow off Broberg's eastern hill so we can mine it and lose a mace while attacking, this time with 95% odds. We finish off the Lbow with one of ours. Meanwhile we're playing musical chairs with a barb galley in the east, using our caravel to prevent it from dropping troops on our mainland or on Silverton's island. At least Churchill doesn't attack us, after being in WHEOOHRN for quite awhile and then moving a galleon toward Broberg, to which we reacted with restrained panic. When we get to within 1 turn of finishing Nationalism we drop to 0% research to delay it and allow time to get the Great Eng, grow our cities, and build up more gold to run 100% throughout the Golden Age.

We've spread Islam to Moscow so it can build its own monastery and crank out some missionaries to other cities. Islam is Churchill's religion and since we're going to run Pacifism during the Taj Golden Age (for the GP bonus) we need to pick a religion, and Islam is the only foreign one we have--might as well please somebody. In Xcal's last session (89-92, 1718 AD) we get our Great Engineer in St Pete but lose our naval grip on Delhi when Gandhi kills one of our 2 caravels with his new caravel (of 2). Our lone ship sails north to Broberg, hoping to survive (Gandhi has the circumnavigation bonus) and help ferry a missionary from Moscow to Broberg before the Golden Age.

Turnset 6, turns 92-, 1718- AD, BL: After a few turns of running at 0% research to build up gold we build the Taj to start a Golden Age and run lots and lots of specialists. During the next 20 turns we get 7 more Great People, using one of them to extend the Golden Age. Along the way we discover Nationalism and sequentially trade that for Liberalism, Education, Printing Press, Economics, and Gunpowder. We discover Constitution by ourselves and revolt to Representation midway through the double GA. The 2nd GA ends in 1760, when war breaks out with Churchill and Roosevelt against Mao. More details later.

Can the UN and Apostolic Palace be built with only Conquest enabled?

Click to expand...

No. You can't build the diplo buildings if you can't win by diplo....

When can we expect barbs?

Click to expand...

AFAIK the mechanics are pretty much the same as in ancient starts ( besides the animals ). I assume that somewhere between t10 and 15, basing on this

When can they enter our borders?

Click to expand...

See link above.

When can the AI attack us?

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Hum... trick question. Technically the AI can attack us anytime. But they will probably take a while to even enter in hands full,...

What happens when a city (or other tile) is nuked? (To population, units, improvements, buildings, and fallout?)

Click to expand...

*must dig ol'Civ IV paper manual that had a nice explanation of nukes mechanism"

If a city is nuked directly the pop is halved. Improvements are lost if fallout gets in top of them and units get half strenght if nuked ( this means that 2 nukes clean everyone, no matter how much units are in the nuked tile... well, not totally because IIRC nukes are resistant to nuking ). The buildings... well, IIRC there is a RNG check to everybuilding and the ones below go down ( really , really need to refresh my memory on this ). Anyway when I nuke a city , I don't expect more than half of the buildings standing ( except wonders, that are nuke resistant )

Global warming will be a major concern, so we will need corps to counter the lack of workable tiles. So , in terms of teching we will need, before conquering cities:
Rocketry
Fission
Corporation
Medicine ( for sushi... this can be exchanged by the grains corp if the map is more suitable, but I prefer sushi because it comes earlier )
Railroads ( for Mining Inc )
Ecology ( not essential, but fallout-surrounded cities are pretty useless )

We obviously will want more than that

We also need to think if we want to grab land as fast as we can or if we go small and explode ( sic ) when nukes come by.

Oh, and this is a check in

Spamming to subscribe and stay current.

As you all know, my Civ4 skills are very weak. I can play with a lot of coaching and preplanning, which I really do enjoy. That planning (for me) is just so helpful. In any event, for the near future, I have an estate sale that coincides with the initial save being made available, so it is back to observing for a while.

Thanks for the info, Rolo! I hadn't thought at all about the benefits of corporations. My opening position is that we should go for rapid expansion, balanced against the need to defend ourselves (and preferably dissuade any attacks). On Emperor level we'll need lots of land and cities to keep ahead of the AI and the only way is by organic growth since we can't capture cities until the end, and by that time we need to be way ahead of them. Longbows are decent city defenders (+25%, plus +25% on hills) but we should think about building walls if we find stone, and settling on hills will be desirable.

Teching is going to painfully slow to start, so we'll need to rely very heavily on specialists for beakers and GPs. We're Industrious so we should chop out the Oracle immediately and get a free tech. I'm thinking Astronomy so we can find and settle islands before the AI; this may be very important. As far as normal teching, probably Education or Gunpowder. I'm leaning toward Gunpowder so we can build musketmen--not a whole lot better than longbows or maces for defense, but it would help our power rating. This would also fit well with bulbing Great Sci's--the first on the bulbing list is Education, and then Printing Press. We'd probably want to build an Academy first, though. After Edu we can work on Liberalism for that free tech, although maybe not right away--depends on how clever the AI are on their teching.

We should do a 4-civic switch the first turn: Hered Rule, Bureau, Mercantilism (for free spec; we aren't going to have any foreign trade routes for awhile, and need to run GPs), and Caste System (so we can run lots of specs, presumably sci's but maybe also an engineer from the free forge, right away). That will take 2 turns of anarchy, but it'll take at least 2 turns to settle the second city so now is the best time. Changing the religion civic would add another turn to the revolt (plus another turn to adopt a religion for the civics to do any good); I'm assuming we don't want to adopt a state religion for quite awhile to avoid diplo negatives. With those civics we'll be paying 4 gold per turn with 2 pop-2 cities, which doesn't leave a lot of room on the research slider, hence another good reason to rely on specialists for most of our teching. I don't think that using other civics will save us more than 1 gold or so.

We often rely heavily on slavery in our early games, but I don't that is a good idea here. We will be able to grow very quickly to decent-sized cities and I'm pretty sure it's more effective to have a lot of population and use the extra food to run specialists than to whip them away toward hammers. We need to think hard about our use of GPs for teching, corporations, wonder-rushing, and Golden Ages; probably we'll want the Parthenon if we find marble. It may be hard to balance the building of settlers+workers+defense against other stuff.

Ways to keep the AI down: Pillaging wars, spies, cultural pressure, fomenting war between them.

Longer range: tactical nukes cost half as much as ICBMs but have a range of only 4 tiles so we'll have to transport them on subs (and other ships?). There's no rush to build the Manhattan Project until we're ready to build nukes. Lots of nukes.

I've never played an advanced start and very rarely use nukes; most of you are probably the same. I suspect that this game will require even more long-range strategic thought than Back to the Future did, and we didn't do enough there. Test games will likely be vital, and I wouldn't be surprised if we've only played 10 turns by the beginning of September. Because there are so many tricks to discover this testing process could be a lot of fun, and the novelty of the setup makes it more likely that we can find a key trick that the usual high-ranking teams miss.

Can someone whip up a test game to play with, preferably one that doesn't require the HOF mods (since some of us are still finishing up BOTM20 with 3.17)? These tests would be more about strategy than MM, to get a feel for how troublesome barbs and aggressive Aggressive AI will be, what's the best way to tech, etc.

I think the best way we can deal with the game is pretty much getting the Kremlin ( c'mon, we are Ruskies after all ... but it is more for the -33% cost in hurry stuff ) and $ rush the nukes. As we will not need a lot of research after getting the techs I quoted above, we can drop the sliders to 0 and simply rush the nukes everywhere we can. If we have a nice corp going in a WS city, even better

Tac nukes can be rebased as planes.. we can put and launch them from cities ( duh ) and forts. That mitigates a lot the fact they don't have unlimited range.

Oh and the war loonies in Agg AI definitely get out of the charts in terms of rabid war lust. Too much for their own good, I should add... if we survive the first onslaughts, we will pass the rest of the game killing 2 eras below units and grabbing all the wonders, because the AI in Agg AI tech far slower ( that means we should not think on using tech trading to push us up, Niklas... I know you're there ) and makes far less wonders ( RL Agg AI game: Monarch, me ( as SB ), Genghis, Monty , Alex, Boudi, Ragnar and Shaka ( yes , handpicked ).... Mids undone in 1300 AD ). But they do invest on getting a nice army, so we can't go peacenik as we did last game. I might whip a game today for testing proposes....

Hi, I'm here. Without video card at the moment, so cannot start the game. Hopefully fixed in a few days.

I don't have a lot of experience with nuclear warfare or post-renaissance play in general, or with advanced starts. So some initial thoughts, but mainly lots of questions and things that I think need to be tested:

Game will consist of two phases:
1. The research phase
2. The conquest phase

In reverse order:
The conquest phase starts when we have nuclear capability (techs).
- Info center says both nuke types require Fission, Rocketry, Uranium; ICBM is 500 hammers, tac nuke is 250 hammers; need to doublecheck.
- Is there difference in effect between tactical nukes and strategic?
- What other armed forces are needed?
- This phase only consists of building nukes, and moves, so commerce and hammers should not matter much, except for upkeep & building nukes. If fallout only pollutes/terraforms tiles, then does it really matter?
- Small world, big and small, 5 AI's. How many enemy cities can we expect? How many cities do we need to have ourselves to build them quickly? Has to do with typical production & commerce output. Which civics, which city improvements, which wonders?
- We should aim for this phase to be short, perhaps 10-15 turns.

The research phase ends with rocketry and fission (or do we need additional techs for more troops?). Aim: research as fast as possible. Towards the end, build up enough conventional forces for conquest. Which type?
- Key events: Oxford; any others?
- AI as research partner, or should we try to keep them backwards? I suppose the latter will be better, since they are aggressive.
- Means to keep AI small: worker steals, pillaging, denial of worker actions, settler steals, economic warfare (corporations). Are spies any use? IS any of this feasible, and worth the investment?
- Economy type: SE, CE, HE, some hybrid? SE is probably most effective initially. Does the game last long enough that CE can work out better?
- Optimal size?
- How long will this phase be?
- Optimal civics?
- Any use for religion?
- Which wonders, improvements?
- Where will we get Uranium?

Let me pour some cold water in the "techies" of our team. This is Agressive AI, and that means that we WILL be attacked if we play peacenik and just care about research. We will definitely need to have a credible military and to be prepared to play defense ( I do believe that we are going to be attacked regardless )

@Xc

Where did you got the Idea that we are going to face leaders with the Agressive trait? That is not said anywhere... What is said is that we're going to play with the Agressive AI option ticked

Oh and a test save? WB file to work for both 3.17 and 3.19

City locations:
- 1E of scout looks very good for a capital, especially if there's another seafood in the fog out east.
- 2S of worker could be nice, need to explore that.
- 1N of crab will make a very good production or GP city.

r_rolo1 said:

@Xc--Where did you got the Idea that we are going to face leaders with the Agressive trait? That is not said anywhere... What is said is that we're going to play with the Agressive AI option ticked

Click to expand...

Where? From deep in my paranoid pessimistic soul! I never play with the "Agressive AI" box ticked so I misinterpreted to start, and then compounded my error once I saw, ticked, and understood the box in my test game.

Hi zyxy! You were on the 3rd-place SGOTM7 team, right? Let's hope we do even better this time! 10-15 turns for the nuking? Ambitious. I like it. We'll need airports in all our home cities to rapidly transport ground troops to capture/secure nuked cities and/or lots of transports.

I favor settling our capital in place to make it a food/GP monster, but that's what the test games are for, to see if that's really best. Thanks for that, Rolo. I probably won't get around to trying it out until later this week, since I'm still finishing BOTM20. Why won't the AI just die like they're supposed to? It would be great if everybody else could check out the test game. Speaking of everybody else, where's the rest of our team?

Good idea about the Kremlin, though we'll of course want our cities to have intrinsically good production, too. I'm glad you're also worried about being attacked by the AI, Rolo--Niklas really wouldn't be very happy in this game, would he? But it would be good for him!

Hehe, probably good for me to vent some pent up aggression.

Just a post to subscribe and cheer you all on. I'll be watching from the shadows, don't screw up...

How did I miss this for two days? Subscribing, more comments later when I have time. But regards aggressive AIs, do I remember something correctly from the signup thread about each civ getting a religion? Everyone would hate everyone, in that case.

I think it'll have to be a dual install for me; at the rate I play there is no way on god's green earth I'll finish BOTM 20 before this starts (or even within a week thereafter). Edit: Unless I do something stupid and get myself killed, that is -- always a possibility.

Hi, Renata! Who does that leave, just BL and unkle? Sympathies on BOTM. I've played several hours this weekend and it's slow going. Am just about to wipe out my 2nd victim but it'll probably take another 25 turns of slow bloody warfare to finish.

How do other people feel about the rush for Astronomy route via Oracle? We and the AI can already build caravels for exploration but we can't transport settlers. If we can that gives us a big advantage in terms of grabbing land. And settling smallish islands that can quickly be covered by our culture (or unfogged by a unit) means that we can skimp on defense for awhile because the barbs will be kept at bay. The big question is "How quickly will the AI go for Oracle?" I think we've gotta have it.

It would also be sweet to build the Great Wall (also a mere 150 hammers on normal speed) to really nullify the barbs and speed up our progress to a Great General (double GG points when fighting inside our borders, as well probably will) and the Heroic Epic. And more GP points of any kind are welcome, I think. A little contamination of the gene pool should be OK--we can always use a Great Spy (or Prophet) for a Golden Age, and the beakers and espionage points from settling are pretty good. Esp points <i>might</i> be especially helpful for sabotaging uranium mines in the late game. It's a lot of hammers in the early game, though, and the AI might beeline for it. Can the team code breakers decipher how intently the AI will aim for Oracle and Great Wall? This is an area where test games would be really useful.

XC, thanks for the welcome!

Yup, 10-15 turns for conquest is fast. And like I said, I have zero experience with this phase of the game. The statement was actually meant to indicate that the conquest phase is, IMO, a much shorter phase than the research phase.
Come to think of it, 10-15 turns may not be unfeasible. The biggest problem is to build the nukes in that time frame. A GA and well chosen civics will help.

Xcalibrator said:

How do other people feel about the rush for Astronomy route via Oracle? We and the AI can already build caravels for exploration but we can't transport settlers. If we can that gives us a big advantage in terms of grabbing land. And settling smallish islands that can quickly be covered by our culture (or unfogged by a unit) means that we can skimp on defense for awhile because the barbs will be kept at bay. The big question is "How quickly will the AI go for Oracle?" I think we've gotta have it.

Click to expand...

Why do you want to settle small islands? They are hardest to defend against the AI, easiest to take from the AI, and typically bring in little in terms of gold or production.

Apart from that, I think a lot will depend on our surroundings. Are we on a big continent, a small continent, an island, an archipel? Do we share our landmass with AI's, or are we alone? Judging from the map guide, anything is possible on a big-and-small map. And of course our esteemed game designer may have added a few tweaks as well.

An early focus on Oracle will come at the price of slower development and expansion. For me, that means we need a very strong reason to go down that path, because I think that development and expansion are our most pressing needs at the start. Being on a very small island could be a strong reason. There is a lot of water around us that suggests this could be the case, but there is at least room for three cities, and then there could easily be more downside. Well, nothing that a few turns of exploration won't uncover.

In any case, somehow I don't picture us settling overseas islands early on. There is so much to do that has higher priority in my mind. Such as settling our own landmass, building city improvements (lib, court, the occasional lighthouse, ...), workers, workboats, a few caravels, defenders, ...
Then the question is: when do we need Astro, and when can we research it without using Oracle or Lib?

Concerning GW: are there barbs in the game? Even if so, I suppose they will be more of a nuisance than a strategic threat, so GW is not a priority I think.

I agree that some tests are in order. But the actual game may be very different from the test situation(s).
I will start some testing as soon as my computer is healthy again.

Alright checking in finally, since I totally missed the start. I'll read up when I have time. I know I had a lot of thoughts initially about the game, but chances are most are covered in the various walls o' text that reside above.

EDIT: Got a chance to read the posts, and here's what I've come up with:

Starting buildings: From my separate test games I've found that our cities will start with a granary, aqueduct, forge, and coastal cities will have a lighthouse as well. Our cities will grow fast right out of the gate.
Civics: Swap to HR, Bur, CS, and Mer on first turn. Use an artist in secondary cities (ie, not capital) to pop borders, then switch to scientists or merchants.
Wonders: Buildings any wonders that come from the medieval age or earlier is not possible. That means no Oracle or Great Wall among other things. Wonders available from the start aside from National Wonders are Angkor Wat, Sistine Chapel, Notre Dame, Sistine Chapel, Spiral Minaret, University of Sankore, and Shwedagon Paya. I should also mention in my few side test sessions that AI producing engineers as their first GP are often used to rush wonders. Therefore, building any of these is probably out of the question. I'd rather have the GE for Mining Inc later.
Religion: Every AI will be founding their own religion due to all of the religion techs being out already. Chances are they all will convert to it immediately and thus all hopefully be hating on each other. We should consider not converting to ours simply to not get the diplomacy demerits.
Military: Cannot be neglected. At least one production rich city in the empire should be dedicated to military builds the entire game. As rolo says, we will be attacked. Catapults and later cannon will be needed for stack busting.
Later military: Since we have to nuke everyone, I suggest we stick with a speed-first route. Cavalry and tanks should make up the backbone of our forces.
Settling land: We have to be very aggressive with this, since we cannot take cities until nuclear weapons. Not only will it help our teching, it just means less to grab later. Whatever sites we lose out on early will bite us big time since rushing is not an option. I think our test games should revolve around seeing how many settlers we can crank out before all of the land is settled. Speaking of settling land, I see no value in settling one tile islands in this game. Chances are we'll be in CS for a while and thus whipping infrastructure in said cities will not be an option.

Well, dinner's on the table and I still have more, but I'll let you chew on that for a while.

Yay, BL is here! Yes, I confirm/agree with everything you said--missed the artists for fast border pops trick--nice! Didn't know about the obsolete wonders--bummer we can't get the Oracle. BTW, I wasn't suggesting that we try to settle small islands; it's just that I figure we'll probably run out of room on our big island fairly quickly and will want to get more land before the AI--maybe there will even be some unclaimed biggish islands out there. It may not be worth it, but on the other hand more land is almost always good and we can use overseas cities as bases for near simultaneous attacks after storing/airlifting units. Gunpowder will probably be a higher priority than Astro, though.

If we get the great lighthouse, those island cities are pretty worthwhile

Oh, and about the 10-15 turns to conquest: it is a big strech, but it is indeed possible, if we combine nukes and paratroopers ( unless BUFFY includes the Unofficial patch for 3.19 changes, that cut a little the paratroopers efficiency ( that one is literally my fault ) ... I already asked in the relevant thread, but no awnser. But as it doesn't appear in the mod comp list, I expect not to ). But we should expect more time than that...

Anyway the big gimp in to get the nukes, not using them

I agree with XCal on the need for a few tests of the setup before we try to start (i.e. rolo's WB file), and I don't mind delaying if needed so we can get comfortable with it and maybe pick up a few ideas nobody's thought of yet.

Besides, I'm still only on turn 170 in BOTM 20.

I'm doing the dual install today or tomorrow, though, so I'll be ready to look at the game file when it shows up.