SGOTM 11 - Barley Demons

BtS SGOTM 11 - Welcome the Goddess

Welcome to your BtS SGOTM 11 Team Thread. Please use it for all internal team communication, turn logs and discussions. Subscribe to it to receive notifications, and do not visit the other team threads for this game until you have finished. Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest.

You are playing as Gandhi and, appropriately, your civilization is dedicated to the worship of the Goddess of Peace, Eldine, who will enter the world to bring in an era of everlasting happiness on the very day that you prove her righteousness to the world by securing a peaceful victory over the other civilizations. There is but one problem. Eldine is currently naked and must be clothed when she enters the world. In order to clothe her in a manner as befits a great Goddess, you must have access to fur, dye, silk and ivory. Your Holy books tell you that Eldine will use the fur as a portal through which to enter the world, and to demonstrate your devotion to her, you must have a welcoming party ready on the fur: Four great people (to symbolise Eldine's greatness) and four warriors (to symbolise the toil and labour as you raised Eldine's great civilization from a single settler). This will be no easy feat, since rumour has it that fur is so rare that only one unique supply exists, and that is heavily guarded by the most vile barbarians. Doubtless this was the result of meddling by the Devil Satan when the world was young and the Gods not paying sufficient attention.

Oh, and Eldine detests war and all its trappings. On the day she enters the world, she will question your brother and sister AI civs to ascertain how you have treated them, and will be distressed beyond belief should she discover that you have been excessively warlike towards them - in that case she will reject your civilization and look for more worthy worshippers.

Your aim in this game is to welcome in Eldine by securing a cultural or diplomatic victory that satisfies the following conditions:

• Every AI is still alive and running a state religion.
• All your cities have access to fur, dye, silk and ivory.
• You have the welcoming party of four great people and four warriors standing ready on the only fur in the world. (The great people can be of any type)
• You are running a state religion which has been spread to every one of your cities.
• No more than two AIs have a 'you declared war on us' negative modifier towards you.

The winner of the competition is the team that secures the earliest (measured by date) cultural or diplomatic victory where all these conditions are satisfied on the turn of your victory. Obviously your game is forfeit should you lose the game or win by some other victory condition. If you win a cultural or diplomatic victory without satisfying all the conditions, your game will be listed and ranked within a secondary group for the amusement of other teams (especially if you do something silly that makes it impossible for you satisfy the conditions, like letting ivory become obsolete, or having fewer than 4 warriors when your tech becomes too advanced to let you build any more).

Timetable
The start files will be published on Friday, April 23 here. There will be one start file per team. Please ensure that you only download your own team file.

The finish deadline is August 23 2010. 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 - Gandhi of India
• Traits - Spiritual, Philosophical (starts with Mysticism and Mining)
• Unique Unit - Fast Worker (replaces Worker)
• Unique Building - Mausoleum (replaces Jail)
• Starting Era - Ancient
• Difficulty - Emperor
• Game Speed - Epic (750 turns)
• World size - Standard
• Rivals - Six
• Landform - Fractal
• Sea level - Medium
• Climate - Temperate
• Other settings - No goodie huts, No events
• Victory Conditions - All enabled

Notes

• Versions
  This game will be played in Civilization IV Beyond the Sword, version 3.19, using the HoF Mod BUFFY-3.19.003. This HoF Mod version is available here.
  
  If a later BtS patch, or BUFFY version, is released during this game you will NOT be able to use it to play. You will need to complete this game in the above versions 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.
  
• Awards
  Teams will compete for up to four awards - the Gold, Silver and Bronze Laurels for the Fastest victory that meets the above stated conditions, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher.
  
• Rules and Procedures
  Please visit the Civ4 SGOTM reference thread to check out the rules and procedures to ensure that you are adequately prepared for this game.
  
  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

[size=+1]Roster:[/size]
Active:

• timmy827 (likely available again soon...)
• Swiss Pauli
• Compromise
• T-Hawk (Just played)
• regoarrarr (attempting mod install)
• SilentConfusion (probably back...)
  

Currently out of pocket:
MyOtherCar, sunrise089

Lurkers:
pocketbeetle, Adlain


[size=+1]Completed Turnsets:[/size]
Turnset 1: Met and Scouted Zara. Built first worker. Teched Agriculture and started BW. Stopped with worker completion
Turnset 2: Finished Bronzeworking. More exploration. Found Stone.
Turnset 3 (1st part and 2nd part): Scouted north coast. Lost and avenged a warrior. Prepared whippable settler.
Turnset 4: Finished Pottery; Founded Bombay; Found Marble.
Turnset 5: Nearly finished scouting continent.
Turnset 6: Founded 3rd city. Discovered Priesthood.
Turnset 7: Barb spear!
Turnset 8: Just before Stone City.
Turnset 9 (1st part and 2nd part): Founded Stone city. Working on Oracle and Pyramids. Spawn- and fog-busted continent.
Turnset 10: Oracle (Code of Laws), Pyramids. Founded Uberfood city. Workboats sent exploring. Met Isabella, Saladin.
Turnset 11: Met Mehmed, Tokugawa. Expanded. Popped GEngineer. Tech trades, inc. getting Alphabet.
Turnset 12: Met Justinian. Almost got Ivory Island. 1T from Lit and Great Library. Explored through Toku's land.
Turnset 13: Great Library. Just missed Ivory city. Got Buddhism.
Turnset 14 1st part and 2nd part Got Circumnavigation. Exploring Mehmed land. Academy in Delhi. Researched Civil Service.
Turnset 15: Two Great Merchants. Toku declared and peaced with Justinian. Bangalore founded, gifted to Mehmed.
Turnset 16 Implement Plan Oxford. Zara has "Enough". Mehmed is Friendly.
Turnset 17: Ready to start Physics.
Turnset 18: Spy-scouted barb/fur island. Polluted Bombay's Engineer pool. Got Physics, started Electricity.
Turnset 19: Shipping to Barb Island. Birthed UN-Engineer. Liberalized Radio. Started Mass Media.



[size=+1]Reference posts and threads:[/size]
Summary SGOTM11 Rules Discussion by SilentConfusion
Helpful post about barbarian behavior


[size=+1]SGOTM Submission links:[/size]
Table of all SGOTM team saves
Upload page for the save you make at the end of your turnset

Okay, we're in business. Time to talk strategy.

I've reserved Post #2 in this thread for summaries and pointers to the recent turnsets. This should make navigation easier for both those who are active and those who visit us only occasionally.

Also, I'd like to open up our discussion with thoughts about our attempted victory condition. I PM'd T-Hawk over at RB a few times to call upon his experience a little. He suggests that Culture will be the way to go. I noted that in three practice games I started quickly, I was able to land Polytheism all three times (but Buddhism would've been possible only once). He thought it better to let AIs spread the early religions and maybe found a later one.

So, feel free to sign in so we know you've found this thread and throw out some thoughts. Right now, we're in brainstorming mode, so get it all out even if you think it's ridiculous!

Checking in! I haven't read much of what exactly we're doing.

I think the first thing we need to do is make sure and build at least 4 warriors

Checking in and subscribing. I'm not a turn player - not interested in futzing around with the HOF mod - but will contribute as much as I can otherwise.

One big question is how hard are we trying to win? UN diplomacy can be done a bit faster than culture, which the HOF tables bear that out for Emperor/Epic/Standard size. But culture is much more reliable since you can't get sabotaged by a bad diplomatic break. Don't need to decide this on turn one, but do by around the time of settling city number three.

Eldine will use the fur as a portal

Click to expand...

What does that even mean? Is this like the closet to Narnia?

Checking in. Early thoughts on the victory conditions:

* Every AI is still alive and running a state religion. Can this ever be impossible? I guess the UN Free Religion vote would be killed, but we could defy. If we defy does that still make everyone else take the civic?
* All your cities have access to fur, dye, silk and ivory. Do one or two of these get obsoleted by techs?
* You have the welcoming party of four great people and four warriors standing ready on the only fur in the world. (The great people can be of any type). Easy.
* You are running a state religion which has been spread to every one of your cities. Easy.
* No more than two AIs have a 'you declared war on us' negative modifier towards you. Hard depending on where the resources above are.

sunrise089 said:

Checking in. Early thoughts on the victory conditions:

* Every AI is still alive and running a state religion. Can this ever be impossible?

Click to expand...

Spies can always knock an AI into a religion civic and state religion, so that's easy, just takes a bit of preparation. UN Free Religion should have no impact here. If we play for diplo, we better be in control of the UN. If we play for culture, the game has no business getting as far as Mass Media.

Fur and Ivory go obsolete at Industrialism and Plastics. I believe you can still trade for them even after it's gone obsolete for you. Don't know if the HOF mod tampers with that. (You're going to hear that last sentence a lot from me. ) Although of course the AIs won't trade it if only one fur exists.

SilentConfusion checking in.

So we think culture is on average faster than a UN victory?

EDIT: I see that we think that a faster UN victory is possible, but less reliable.

Here is a summary of the stuff discussed in the rule thread, which contains possible strategies and techniques that may be valuable for us to consider. It may also save us from making a mistake. It is listed here for convenience (i.e. so that lazy people can skip the first pages of that thread.)

*Some obvious questions by people who didn't read carefully were answered:
-The 4 GPs and 4 warriors have to be standing on the fur
-You may not eliminate civs as all AI civs must still be alive.

*Erkon admits the problem with AI adopting FR and therefore not having a religion may be tricky with an added evil face smiley.

*Erkon clarifies the following rules:
-No more than 2 AI can have the "you declared war on us" modifiers, but you may declare on those 2 many times.
-You are allowed to have other units on the fur tile such as defensive units
-You are allowed to build a fort or a city on the fur
-The "You declared war on us" modifier is permanent

*Erkon points out that learning Industrialism and obsoleting ivory would be a bad idea.

*LowtherCastle said he was looking in the War Academy and spied a solution to the FR problem, though didn't say what it was.

*Blubmuz asked what if the AI switch to FR in the in between turn after your third city is legendary or after the UN vote, and LowtherCastle said wisely "The art of winning involves first foreseeing and then preventing such possibilities."

*Gumbolt wonders whether it is guaranteed that no AIs will be eliminated by other AIs before contact and Erkon pointed out the value of exploration.

*You don't have to share a religion with the AI, just that you all must have a state religion and that yours must be spread to every city you own.

*kcd_swede pointed out that you may fight battles with every civ and may vassalize all but one civ potentially, just that you can only declare war on a max of 2 AIs. The AIs can declare war on you all they want.

*All types of great people count, even great generals.

*kcd_swede asked about what happens if an AI forms a colony and whether it counts as another AI for the "YDWOU" modifier and whether you can eliminate them. Erkon replied that they would have to think about that as they hadn't considered it before.

*Someone noted that when you declare on someone with a vassal you declare on all of them and when you declare on someone in a DP you only declare on one and the DP partners declare on you.

*bcool asked if the GG could be attached to a military unit, even on of the 4 warriors, and DS says no.

*The warriors must be actual "warriors" not just a general fighting person (military unit) who might be called a warrior.

*Regarding the turn of victory, it is the turn that the victory message is displayed and the final save with the conditions can be taken anywhere in that turn. This means that if the victory message may appear and you click keep playing and move the welcome party onto the fur before hitting end turn it counts.





My thoughts.

One thing to think about is that it might benefit us to piss off an AI so much that they declare war on us, just so we don't have to declare on them. So bad diplomacy may be useful.

They way I read it we do not have to control the fur, but we would have to either control it or trade for it. I am not sure if the AI will trade their only resource of a type. If this is true then we will have to control it, keeping in mind that it may be on the other side of the world. I think they won't trade their only fur unless they are your vassal.

There may be a benefit to gifting away cities at the end which are not able to be hooked up quickly with a resource or which do not have the state religion.

We will definitely want more than 4 warriors just in case.

Checking in, good to see you guys. I think it would be almost impossible for to get a UN win faster than a culture - besides the remarks about consistency, the "everyone in a state religion" requirement sounds dicey. It would be hard to assemble votes if the AI's are in different religion than us, and ensuring they are not likely means putting a lot of effort into missionaries (which takes us off the optimal Mass Media beeline). Maybe we could get lucky and be on a continent with only one religion that dominates, but probably not something to base a plan around.

Obviously there are some flaws in choosing the vic condition early. The biggest is required techs - we won't know for some time if Astronomy is required to colonize/trade for any of the needed resources. (of course, if they are tradeable we can hope the controlling AI gets Astro, don't necessarily need to research it ourselves).

I'm 99% sure that there being only 1 fur in the world means that either we must control it, or vassal the AI who does.

Don't quite get what the game organizers are going for with the 4 warriors. Even if we somehow lost warriors, any inland city can build more until Rifling/Mil Sci if we pillage the roads to it thus removing metal.

So seems like settle in place, worker/Ag would be our best move? Perhaps even back to back workers and then BW?

I could possibly be talked in to settling 1SE onto the plains hill, which also gets both corns.

This is Epic speed, so worker is 90 food-hammers. Settling in place means 4f-h/t assuming no "magic" tile in the fog, or worker in 23.

Settling on the plains hill makes 5f-h/t, but loses 1 turn in settling, so worker in 19.

Obviously we don't have (nor are likely to get in the first turn) any info about what is to the settler's SE

Almost definitely move to the plains hill. We already see 6 of the tiles that the move would lose, and there are no resources. Moving the warrior SW would reveal the 7th, although we can already see that it's forest so unlikely to reveal a resource. The plains hill hammer is big - 4 turns sooner on the worker accelerates our entire civ by 4 turns! And moving loses no resources, possibly gains some, and also looks to gain river tiles. The only potential loss is if the plains hill has metal, but that's tolerable, and even makes for a 3 hammer city center.

timmy827 said:

Even if we somehow lost warriors, any inland city can build more until Rifling/Mil Sci if we pillage the roads to it thus removing metal.

Click to expand...

IIRC, you can't pillage roads in your own territory. You have to get rid of metal civ-wide, but yes this can be done by pillaging mines (or replacing them with 'wrong' improvements) until Rifling.

Here are the 10 tiles that we can settle on that get both corns.

EDIT: Except that top right dot should be 1W of the warrior (not that we're really going to settle there)

Xpost with T-hawk.

So I agree with moving to the plains hill, so where do we send our warrior? 1NW to start scouting that way? Is there anything that he could find to the south or east in 2 moves (T0 and T1) that would make us move off our plains hill on T1? I wouldn't think so

Good to see discussion up quickly. Must post a quick reply b/c of RL.

I agree with capital on the plains hill. One possibility is that it has copper or iron thus making it impossible to avoid obsoleting warriors (without giving away the capital).

Still thinking about the warrior. Is that coast SW of the SW corn? Warrior either SW to scout possible coast or NE to go toward the two hills there?

I've been trying to meta-game this a little bit. I'm expecting to need Astro, but have no great reason to suspect that. I also don't expect a Terra-like empty continent simply because the planners hadn't contemplated whether or not to require the survival of any colonies. (They haven't answered that question yet, have they?)

Another possibility is that we're isolated from all, at least for a while. That would make both victory conditions more difficult.

Gotta run. Looking forward to more thoughts.

I'd think that an Espionage Economy might be a good approach to the game: spread your state religion to the target civs for a UN win, and use spies to bonk them into that religion often enough to get positive modifiers. This should mean that a missionary frenzy won't be needed; spread to major cities should suffice. Emperor is a reasonable level for espionage economy, and India has a shiny EP-UB.

Gifting UN to a state that you have cultivated as a pariah (e.g. by spreading your second self-founded religion) will also help a speedy win, so long as you're the number one in population. I remember CFR pulled such a move in a SGOTM years ago.

The location of the (sole) fur will be the key to the difficulty factor: not only do you have to get your units to that tile, but you have to have access to furs in your cities, which could be tough seeing as non-vassals won't trade unique resources, with the possible exception of resources that are obsolete for them but not for you (but I'm not sure about that). If the fur tile is easy to own then this is all moot, but somehow I don't think the SGOTM organisers plan on making things so easy

Checking in!

Brain dump:

• +1 for settling on the spot here.
  I'm not keen on the thought of losing a potential metal site (grassland warrior) plus also losing 2 mineable hills (plains and forested grassland) just for a +1 city hammer. There's clearly plenty of grassland around, would hate to get stuck with a low production capital.
  
• +1 for culture victory.
  Spiritual Gandhi is a good fit for cheap temples, means Sistine and lots of religions.
  
• Tech path.
  Early religion would be very nice, but suggest the priority is Agri/BW/Wheel to get REXing with those Indian FWs.
  If we do miss out on Hindu/Budd and maybe even Judaism, then 100% (imo) need to plan on getting the rest via out-teching AIs or bulbing (GSci for Philo, GPro for Islam and Theo, whatever Confu/CoL is (GSci?) etc)
  Beeline down the Mass Media path means lots of GSci would help with bulbing. TGLib fits with this play.
  
• Economy.
  The above suggests lots of GP, which combined with Spi/Phi Gandhi almost screams SE.
  Not so keen on Espionage Economy, mainly because of the Emperor difficulty - should be able to out-tech the piddly AI assuming no mapmaker rapage. Additionally - we'll never found any religions if we're always playing catch up.
  However I acknowledge that if there appears to be a dominant AI, then EE would work nicely, especially in helping out with AI civic/religion bumps. In that sense going CE early on would give the flexibility to switch to EE once Mausoleums are up.
  
• Wonders.
  As mentioned, TGLib for lots of GSci.
  Since we're spiritual, shouldn't be too hard to pick up Cristo Redent with +100% production for denial purposes. Most definitely don't want an AI 1 turn switching from a civic bump.
  If SE does appeal, then Oracle -> Metal Casting -> GEng -> Pyramids is always powerful...
  Marble would certainly be a nice find.
  
• Future problems.
  Free Religion: I don't think it's as big a problem as some people have been making out in the other thread. It just means we have to bump the AI twice every now and again - once out of Free Religion civic and another time into a state religion. I also tried playing around with spy bumping - it seems the State religion is retained in the background when you switch to Free Religion, and switching to Theocracy/Pacifism/OR brings it back.
  
  What we will have to look out for is an AI with favoured civic Free Religion. I'm thinking Willem of Orange/Eliz/Darius etc. May have to beat them to Liberalism, but I don't think it's worth playing denial games with Schwedagon Paya etc.
  
  Exploration:By land and potentially boat. (optics)
  Trading Obsolete Techs: pretty sure this all got removed in a past patch. From reading various articles I know it used to be possible to trade whales around even after Combustion, but I really wouldn't rely on anything of this sort nowadays.

T-hawk said:

IIRC, you can't pillage roads in your own territory.

Click to expand...

Had to check this one, you're right, can't.
But yeah, windmilling to avoid the coal unhealthiness is a standard move for me.

That's all I can think of for now.
Realise I'm in the minority for not wanting to move, but dammit I'm standing my ground with a view to gaining the all important
'I told you so' tech!

Now go build some settlers - Chop chop chop!

Edit: Oh and Comp - might be coast or lake yeah

We can sort out the other stuff later. I may be with pocketbeetle on staying put; another argument for that is that the plains hill would be another tile the worker could do pre-BW. (Not time now to do the math on if we research Ag->BW and build worker first, if BW comes in before both farms done.)

I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to moving the settler to the plains hill first to see what that brings in though.

Keep the thoughts and ideas coming...

On a "fair" start with Gandhi under these map conditions, I think there'd be a very good chance of founding Hinduism. If Saladin's in the mix, I suspect we couldn't do it, though. Are there other AIs who are likely to research Polytheism from turn one?

I ran two quick starts out to 35T (35 turns) to compare the very early in-place versus plains-hill starts:
Research order was: Agri, then BW.
Build order was: Worker, Warrior, Settler

Settle in place:
T13: Agri in; BW in 22T
T23: Worker finishes and starts farming (8T); Start warrior T23
T30: Farm finishes
T31: Worker moves to and starts second farm
T32: Delhi size 2. Grow again in 6T. Warrior finished in 11T
T35: BW in. Second farm will finish on T38, first forest can start getting chopped on T39.


Settle on plains hill:
T14: Agri in; BW in 22T
T19: Worker finishes, farms; Start warrior
T26: Farm finished
T28: Start farming second corn; Delhi size 2
T30: Warrior completes (grow in 4T, settler in 17T, BW in 5T, Farm in 5T)
T35: Second farm complete; BW researched; (Settler in 9T)

Bronzeworking finishes on the same turn because Delhi grows sooner and gets an additional corn-tile commerce for an extra 4T. More research overflow from the in-place start, of course.

It's always tough to try to fog-guess from a teaser screenshot, but here's my attempt:

T-hawk said:

Early religion is a million times overrated. Having your own religion at all is overrated. On Immortal you just want to pick the religion of the largest number of your neighbors, which is that much harder to do if you have to spread it yourself. I say to even ignore Monotheism.

Click to expand...

Different SG, but I mostly agree with this argument. Obviously having a religion later is important, but I don't think this variant is too much different from normal game in that regard.

I could be wrong if we are given an isolated start, but I think that's unlikely.

I have little experience with cultural or AP victories, so I have no idea how that plays towards chasing an early religion or not. That said, delaying two 6F tiles is a criminal act. Plains Hill/Fast Worker/Agriculture gets my vote.

Darrell