News: BOTM 24 - Starts 16 November

BOTM 24: America

[img=right]http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/botm24civ.jpg[/img]

Game Details:

This month you won't have to suffer the insufferable stone ages, or trudge through the dreary dark ages. You will start the game with a rather comfortable standard of life, being sent right into the glorious age of enlightenment - the Renaissance!

Game settings:
Civilization: America (Leader: Lincoln; Traits: Philosophical, Charismatic)
Rivals: 6 AIs
Difficulty: Prince
Map: Continents
Climate: Temperate
Sealevel: Medium
Mapsize: Standard
World wrap: Cylindrical
Starting Era: Renaissance
Speed: Epic
Options: None
Victory Conditions: All enabled

Lincoln:
Lincoln is Philosophical and Charismatic and for this game starts with all techs up to the Renaissance. The Philosophical trait +100% Great People birth rate, and +100% production bonus towards University. Charismatic gives +1 happiness, as well as +1 happiness from Monument and Broadcast Tower, and further reduces the XP needed to promote units by -25%.

Unique unit: Navy SEAL (replaces Marine)
Like normal Marines, Navy SEALs start with the Amphibious promotion and receive +50% attack vs Machine Guns and Artillery. On top of that they also start with the March promotion, allowing them to heal better in enemy territory, and also start with 1-2 first strikes.

Unique building: Mall (replaces Supermarket)
On top of the +1 food and assorted health bonuses that normal Supermarkets give, the Mall also gives +20% gold and +1 happy face from Hit Singles, Hit Movies and Hit Musicals.

Starting screenshot
This is the start of the game (click for a bigger image):


Adventurer Class bonuses:
Game will be played on Noble level.

Challenger Class Equalizers:
Game will be played on Monarch level.

To Enter the Competition:

This competition will open at 00:00:01 on 16 November 2009, server local time (UTC-6:00). From that date and time, you'll be able to get your chosen starting save >>>here<<<.
Submit the save after your victory (or defeat) here, by 16 December 2009.

PLEASE NOTE that there will be no separate "Saves Available" thread for this game.

Civ version

This game MUST be played in Beyond the Sword (NOT Warlords or vanilla Civ), patched to version 3.19. It must also be played with the BUFFY mod version 3.19.001. Note that for game security reasons this BUFFY mod version requires you to be logged in with an account that has admin privileges when you are playing for your game to be a valid entry to the GOTM competition. You'll see a warning dialog if you attempt to start a session without appropriate privileges.

While playing...

Remember - for your entry to be accepted, it MUST be your first attempt to play this game, and you MUST NOT replay any turns. If you make a mistake while playing, you have to live with it, learn from it, and carry on the game without replaying.

We will open 'spoiler' threads during the month for players to discuss what happens in their games. Do not discuss any details of your game outside those threads.

philosophical leader needs more food, please!

Interesting. We start with 2 settlers, and one worker, right? I agree with Gosha it would sure be nice to find another seafood in the fog to make settling choice easy.

You start the game with 2 settlers, 1 worker, 1 explorer and 2 longbows.

Surely some of the things learned in SGOTM10 will be useful here

Gosha190 said:

philosophical leader needs more food, please!

Click to expand...

Phirst study the filosofy of pharming...

Fluroscent said:

Surely some of the things learned in SGOTM10 will be useful here

Click to expand...

Right, Gosha?

LowtherCastle said:

Phirst study the filosofy of pharming...
Right, Gosha?

Click to expand...

I suffer Moderator Action: DELETED lack of food in my capital... seems it can happen again

SGotm10 had extremely particular game setup. We got number of additional techs there. Here we have classical setup.

Wow, renaissance start. That's definitely going to make for a very different game from normal (and slightly increases the chance of America's unique unit seeing some action before military games are over). Thanks Niklas, a very interesting challenge.

And a settling dilemma... Stay in place and lose chance to work the 2nd extra silver, or move 1S and lose the additional production from horses. Hmmmm...

@Gosha: Surely you want lots and lots of food in your 2nd city, not in your capital?

Ask jesusin! He looks more hungry than me

DynamicSpirit said:

And a settling dilemma... Stay in place and lose chance to work the 2nd extra silver, or move 1S and lose the additional production from horses. Hmmmm...

Click to expand...

Moving to horses irrigates the corn. tempting

With all those units you can scout a lot and then think about city positions.
I wonder if we are north or south. There is ice in the south, so it must be south. If that's the case we might get stuck seawise.
A Renaissance start is an interesting adjustment. Ah and epic speed makes the game not that short, but also emphasizes warfare strategies.

How does religion work with such a start?

They get randomly distributed among the cities a few turns into the game. With 7 civs, each should get one, most likely in the second city. It means there are unlikely to be any religious blocks.

Some things for people not familiar with Renaissance starts:

-Cities start at size 2 with granary/aqueduct/forge/lighthouse(if coastal), but settlers are damn expensive to compensate.

-The techs that can be researched are Nationalism, Education, Gunpowder, Printing Press and Astro.

-Start with all earlier techs, including banking.

-Most earlier wonders are not available.

-Techs are cheaper than normal, but still not cheap compared to initial beaker outputs. The first tech will take a while to complete with raw beakers.

Fluroscent said:

Some things for people not familiar with Renaissance starts:

-Cities start at size 2 with granary/aqueduct/forge/lighthouse(if coastal), but settlers are damn expensive to compensate.

Click to expand...

- Most Civs will get an early Great Engineer (because of forge) which likely will be used to pop one of the available wonders.

With the Renaissance Start, you will have multiple Civics choices available on the first turn. Tough choice: change them all and suffer 2-3 turns unrest, or change a few at a time and try to spread the unrest out a bit. Looks like an interesting game

Grifftavian said:

With the Renaissance Start, you will have multiple Civics choices available on the first turn. Tough choice: change them all and suffer 2-3 turns unrest, or change a few at a time and try to spread the unrest out a bit. Looks like an interesting game

Click to expand...

What if I go to anarchy without settling ? Can I use the anarchy period to wander around
without drawbacks ?

Do the AI start the same as us, without cities I mean ?

What if I go to anarchy without settling ? Can I use the anarchy period to wander around
without drawbacks ?

Do the AI start the same as us, without cities I mean ?

Click to expand...

There may be stuff like not being able to use the worker immediately, but in general, it gives a nice opportunity to spend a few turns exploring.

The AI start with settlers like us, and will settle one immediately like usual.

toller pretzl said:

What if I go to anarchy without settling ? Can I use the anarchy period to wander around
without drawbacks ?

Do the AI start the same as us, without cities I mean ?

Click to expand...

Fluroscent said:

There may be stuff like not being able to use the worker immediately, but in general, it gives a nice opportunity to spend a few turns exploring.

The AI start with settlers like us, and will settle one immediately like usual.

Click to expand...

Yes, you can change civics and go into anarchy, and spend a turn or two moving units around to bust some fog. Don't wait to long to found a city, the religions will be assigned after the third or fourth turn. The worker should be able to build roads, but nothing else until you found a city.

AIs will pretty much start with the same units as the player. The Adventurer/Noble save should have exactly the same units. The Contender/Prince save, the AI may have an extra Worker or Explorer. The Challenger/Monarch save, they may have extra Longbowmen. You could create some test games at the various levels, and open up Worldbuilder to take a look at exactly what extra units the AIs start with.

Sounds great. I have never even played a game that didn't start from scratch in Civ3 or 4. I think I might even start up a test game first, somethin else I have never done.

Should be interesting.....