SGOTM 01 - Fifth Element

Welcome to your C_IV SGOTM 1 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. I hope you enjoy the game.

This game will be played in Civ4, patched to v1.61.

This first SGOTM will not feature any advanced variant.. the winner simply will be the team that wins the game at the earliest game date with either domination or a diplomatic victory. All victory conditions are still enabled though, with exception of Space Race, so you have to avoid getting another type of victory (and of course prevent the AIs from winning).

Individual start files for all teams will be available on the SGOTM Progress and Results Page at midnight, server local time, at the start of May 12.

Here's the start position.


Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Hapshepsut of Egypt
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Mystery
Game Speed - Epic

Permanent Alliances are turned on (can form permanent alliances after either communism or fascism is researched)
Space race is disabled.
Egypt is locked into war with Huayna Capac of the Incas.
Egypt is locked into peace with an unknown civilization.

The map is hand built, and therefore may not have a standard configuration.

Please visit the following links to ensure that you are adequately prepared:
Civ4 SGOTM reference thread

Notes:

A. ONLY Civilization4 v1.61 is supported for this SGOTM. All teams will compete for a single award - the Gold Laurels.

B. All teams must play the sponsored variant - victory will be awarded for the fastest victory by either domination or diplomacy.

C. 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.

Good luck to your team, and remember rule #1: Enjoy your game

Checking in...

I guess with domination comes diplomatic pretty much automatically... if we try to build the UN, I'm sure we won't be among the first to finish.

I suppose first things first. We simply can't go running about with the name "New Team 5"... so, what shall we call ourselves?

Based on what I can see in the screenshot, moving 1S will get us the cow on the first expansion. Still a good mix of tiles, should give us a pretty versatile capitol. Thoughts?

New Team #5
BrianS, Dolphan, Doom Train, Goodenuf, Groin_Apologist, gskur, Merum, Perugia

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There should be a sticky topic that contains information who belongs to which team.

Our team name should be something different. "CIV 101" is my opinion its like university course.

and for the game, i think we should focus on domination if there is 1 continent. Otherwise it will be logical to go for diplomatic.

Hopefully naming the team will be easier than naming a band (it's a running joke with a band I've been in for years). A couple thoughts for a team name playing off the 5 in Team 5: Fifth Circle; Fifth Regiment; Fifth Wing; Fifth Column.

We also need to have a team captain. This is my first SGOTM, and I think it would be good to have someone who has done a SGOTM before help with that. Have any of our team members done this?

BrianS said:

Hopefully naming the team will be easier than naming a band (it's a running joke with a band I've been in for years). A couple thoughts for a team name playing off the 5 in Team 5: Fifth Circle; Fifth Regiment; Fifth Wing; Fifth Column.

We also need to have a team captain. This is my first SGOTM, and I think it would be good to have someone who has done a SGOTM before help with that. Have any of our team members done this?

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Agreed. Who has done SGs before?

Well, this is me checking in. Strategy thoughts - they've been quite clever with this. The main risk with a domination strategy is the always peace with an unknown civ. Sods law says they're on the other side of the map and have a nice start. If they do well, we're faced with a possible situation where we can't get domination, and this is especially likely on a higher difficulty level like monarch. If we go all out for domination and that happens we could end up having to use diplomatic anyway - in which case we'd get it slower than teams who went straight for diplomatic.

I'm guessing since we know Huayna Capac it's reasonably likely he'll be nearby. If he is we might as well see if we can pull off a worker steal, seeing as we're locked into war. It'll be in our interests to wipe him out as soon as we can, whichever victory we're going for - which I'm guessing is why they chose the Civ with the earliest UU for this role!

Merum - I would suggest 1SW rather than 1S for the capitol. We still get the cows, but settle on the plains hill for the extra hammer and defence.

According to the members list, gskur doesn't exist? Is it an abbreviation? Perugia is our team co-ordinator to start with, although he hasn't checked in yet.

Having a look at the sign-up thread, do we all normally play on prince or below? We could struggle to survive, let alone win.

Fifth Element?

I've played in one abortive SG, where a bunch of the players bailed and then it kind of petered out from there. I understand the concepts and mechanics, though.

Personally, I think of myself as a "high prince" player... that is, I win greater than 90% of my prince games, yet I lose pretty much consistently on monarch. I agree if we don't have a true monarch player we're going to struggle a bit, but I suppose if we put our heads together and play as a team, we'll at least learn a trick or two.

As far as weaknesses, I tend to lean too far towards building, and I'm often unwilling to go to war with "short stacks", which can lead to some paralysis by analysis for me. I'm getting over this, however, by playing predominantly with a goal of early conquest or domination. I also hate micromanaging, and quickly grow bored with it.

@Dolphan yes, after looking some more, 1SW might be the better choice, and give us a chance to squeeze another small city in on the coast, if we find it's worthwhile to do so. The defense from the hill is a nice plus, too.

I agree that we should definitely try to toast Huayna as early as possible. Do unto others, then split. We don't need a locked war dragging at our necks for the entire game.

Looking forward to playing with you guys!

Doom Train said:

There should be a sticky topic that contains information who belongs to which team.

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Done. I intended to do it, but got sidetracked. Good call

Fifth Element works for me.

I'm a noble player. However, I believe that collectively we will play at a higher level than we play individually. Also, I have a horrible tendency to rush my turns when playing single. I've been trying to put on the brakes and am hoping this exercise will reinforce that.

Agree on SW to the plains hill.

I also am looking forward to this game. This is gonna be fun!

One other thing. Do most people run a mod to help keep track of what's happened in their turns? Is this what the HOF mod is all about?

Not quite sure what mods are allowed... I'm not sure if we can even use one, since we'll be opening a save. Perhaps our esteemed leader can enlighten us.

If any, I suspect it would turn out to be the HOF mod, but like I said, I don't know exactly how that works when opening a save.

Hm… This is gskur checking in. Well, I do exist! There is also my sign-up post somewhere there…

I’ve never played teams before, but will do my best.

About the square for our capital… I tend to save the 2-hammer hills for production use. Why would we be that desperate for an extra hammer to start with? Besides, going SW will, from what can be seen thus far, make the cows the highest production square. This is not what I would like to have in our capital. On the other hand, moving S will get us 2(!) plain hills and the cows. However, I would prefer to settle SE: this is both high hammer production (4 hills) AND high food/commerce yield location. The only detriment with both S and SE is higher that average pollution due to the abandance of the flood plains in the city area, which usually is not such a big problem, but who knows how it will turn out here. Also, I am not a “chopper” and, with the v1.61 patch, wood chopping is not as effective initially. So this might not be an extra argument for SW, I would think.

To summarize:
1. SW gives an extra starting hammer but lower overall resources in the capital in the long run, esp. hammers.
2. S E gives more of everything, but one-hammer-slower initial development.
3. S is a middle ground between 1 and 2.

Are there any techs we will have at the start? This could bare on the choice of location.

I have no doubt we will have more then enough opportunities to settle a city or two on the coast later on.

I think that Huayna Capac will need to be eliminated ASAP if he is close to us. I wonder what is the discontent level for “locked in war” situations—I never played this one. Usually, prolonged wars create lots of unhappy faces. If this is not the case here, and if Incas are not our immediate neighbor, then we might be able to avoid facing the task of taking him out, or at the very least will manage to postpone it (we might want to avoid active participation in the war)—being at war and waging war are two different things altogether.

What are these “mods” some are talking about? I am totally ignorant here. So, what are mods?

Fifth Element sounds a bit corny (considering the movie with this title), but will do just fine. Also, there are eight of us in the team, so we could be, say, The Fifth Eight, or The Fifth’s Eight (both a mouthfull and a bit cryptic). Maybe just “The 5th” is all we need? Then there are “Random 8” and “5th Chance” and “Fifth Corner” (why, it reminds me of Pooh Corner!)

Let's have a fun game! (and win it too!)

Now I realize why I made that comment about The Pooh Bear: it was a freudian thing, for I have made a funny spelling error. That phrase should read

"Are there any techs we will have at the start? This could bear on the choice of location."

Now, I just realized I could have just edited the post above.

Oh well... Live and learn!

The starting save will have Locked Assets to dissuade players from using game breaking modifications. Unfortunately this will mean it will also not allow the use of fair mods - those that don't disclose additional game information.

We are looking at using the HOF mod in future, but it is not ready for prime time in the GOTM series of competitions yet, so it will not be included for this game. However, we do hope to provide you with a facility to dump the log information when you upload your end-of-turn-set files.

Maybe just “The 5th” is all we need?

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"The 5th" suits me.

7 Players checked in as of 11 May, I have pm'd Goodenuf.

BrianS
Dolphan
Doom Train
Groin_Apologist
gskur
Merum
Perugia

Fifth Element is fine by me besides I like corny and many of the old Civ3 SGOTM team names were corny. Relying on having eight team members is not good as over the course of several SGOTMs some may drop out some may join if the team is fun.

SUMMARY: Fifth Element was proposed by Merum, seconded by BrianS + OK for 2 others. No other suggestion so far has even been seconded it looks like our team name will be Fifth Element unless your poststhere is .

I have completed one SG so I guess that's why Alan made me the coordinator.

Agree with @Dolphan #5 about always peace with an unknown civ on a remote continent could scupper an early domination victory especially as this is a hand-built map. We should factor this in to early exploration. We could get a Great Engineer factory (Stonehenge, Pyramids) up and running to mitigate against this. Were Eqypt aren't we so maybe were supposed to build the Pyramids to win!

I agree with the sentiments that we should target Huayna Capac from the start. Let's steal his worker then use 3-Horse Chariots and other units to conquer rather than settlers to found [edit].

If you do not mind I will comment on the settle spot later. Please keep your thoughts coming in. Please refer to others ideas by post number

Do not be afraid to use the edit function to expand on on a strategy. Once a strategy is agreed instead of repeating it on endless posts its OK to edit the original post at least until a major strategy change is required.

Looks like we won't be using any turn logger so its back to standard SG practice. Please try to use a short narrative style avoid being banal, only list really interesting stuff/decisions and please use general movement descriptors eg 3w5sw plus screenies to show the outcome of scouting/encounters not boringly describing every turn move.

...then use 3-Horse Chariots in place of settlers

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I am not familiar with this. Could you explain, please.

gskur said:

I am not familiar with this. Could you explain, please.

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I think he just means using units to conquer rather than settlers to found.

On the site for the capital (Post 12) - take a look at the borders of the hidden tiles. 2SW of the settler and 1W of the cows are both plains hills. The desert hill to the E is less valuable, and 1SE takes us away from the forests, whereas SW gives us 3 adjacent to the capital for chopping. Plus its monarch and we're expecting an early war, so the defence bonus is worth considering - as is the health penalty from all those floodplains, as health limits are going to kick in pretty quickly. Lastly, as I've learnt to my cost in some of the GOTMs, on higher levels the AI expands fast. Moving away from the coast makes for a better land grab. I still say 1SW.

I'm fine with '5th Element'. As for a captain, Perugia is our team co-ordinator and knows what he's talking about, so he seems to fit the bill.

Oh, and we'd better consider our leader. Hatsheput is spiritual and creative. Spiritual is a pretty weak trait IMO, but I guess it can be useful switching easily to war mode (flick to vassalage and theocracy for powered up units) and back again. Creative isn't great either, but it means we don't need cultural buildings for border expansion in the early game - we can build war chariots rather than obelisks or stonehenge.

Perugia (Post 16) - the great engineer factory would require us beating the AI to stonehenge and the pyramids. Stonehenge we could chop if we needed to, but is that the best use of our forests? And how likely are we to get the Pyramids? These are serious questions, rather than me dismissing the idea - I don't know monarch level well enough to measure our chances.

Re: Dolphan, #18,19
1. I do not think we’ll have enough forest to effectively chop even Stonehenge. If Incas are nearby, chopping military units would be the thing, right?
2. I agree with this most powerful point on AI’s expansion habits. This might be one of our biggest concerns in choosong a strategy for the beginning of the game. Whatever strategy alows us to settle the second (and the third) city to stake out a good chunck of land ASAP with a good overall hammer capacity for building units—that would be it. That’s why an extra early hammer from the SW location could be very helpful. Also, +2 culture from the Spiritual leader is quite fitting for early expansion and it helps to assimilate the captured cities.
3. I do not know about Monarch level and health penalty either vs., say, Lord or Prince. Anybody?