Gotm 124

[Magic_gorter]

Game of the Month 124: july 2011


Game Settings:
Civilization: Zulu
Map: Large map (75x120); 3 civ's, flat
Difficulty: Emperor
Barbarians: Villages only
Restarts: On
Victory: By conquest or spaceship


Starting Techs:
~ Bronze Working
~ Ceremonial Burial


This month a normal game.

Games will be due on August 16th, 2011.


Please be sure to follow the submission guidelines when submitting your game (please do not send your files in a .zip file. Attach them directly to your e-mail with your name in the save file). No extra save is needed.


Please sent the savegames only to civ2gotm@gmail.com.

Have fun.

Starting save is here

[Jokemaster]

Hummm.

I haven't played a large map with 3 civs in a really long time. It is going to be interesting to see who will be able to get trade started the earliest, especially with 67% odds of no purple civ.

I'm guessing that early expansion will be a bigger focus this time around. So far, I'm thinking of building HG 1st, but Pyramids 2nd, and Marco's only 3rd, and to gun for Mikes/JSB ASAP and to bet on raw population to get trade started the earliest. I probably won't bother for Lighthouse.

[Ali Ardavan]

Resource seed is 26 or 58. Starting location is one special (grassy fish). One tile west and two tiles east are both 3 specials. The one west is obviously a better choice.

[Ali Ardavan]

Originally Posted by Jokemaster

I haven't played a large map with 3 civs in a really long time.

I do not believe I have played any Civ2 game with merely 2 rivals. Last such game that I remember was a Civ1 game. I cannot even remember which nation I played, but my rivals were French and Zulu. Zulu built 3 cities on their medium-small island and never left. French and I shared a huge continent. I picked Zulu as trading partner and French as adversary. I cannot remember anything else other than it was quite an interesting game; it must have been or else I would not have any memory of it more than a decade later.

Originally Posted by Jokemaster

It is going to be interesting to see who will be able to get trade started the earliest, especially with 67% odds of no purple civ.

Geography is going to play a big role in this game. The world is large and flat. We are in a corner of it and could be very far from our 2 rivals. Our homeland is #54 meaning that there are a lot of islands in this world.

I have not decided what strategy to use in this game yet, but here are some points to consider:
1. If purple is missing, Early landing becomes significantly more difficult.
2. If 2 or more of purple, orange, and cyan are missing then OCC becomes significantly more difficult as well.
3. If rivals are very far, massive trade becomes difficult. This hurts a landing strategy more than OCC or conquest.
4. With restarts on, over 50 land pieces, and a large world, conquest is not easy either.

[Peaster]

Originally Posted by Ali Ardavan

1. If purple is missing, Early landing becomes significantly more difficult.
3. If rivals are very far, massive trade becomes difficult. This hurts a landing strategy more than OCC or conquest.
4. With restarts on, over 50 land pieces, and a large world, conquest is not easy either.

1. "significantly" is debatable. Purple is a tool to lower tech costs, which is often a good thing for EL. But if capped vans can carry most of the research, then a high cap is actually better (for more gold). I'd say "probably more difficult".

3. Distance makes trade slower to start up, but once a ship-chain is established, the payoffs are much better. A large map generally favors a slow strategy (like PD or my anti-respawn strategy). There are not too many GOTMs where EL is better than EC, but the worst EC maps are large ones with restarts on, like this one. I'm not sure if I agree with 3, except that you qualified it with 4.

4. Agreed, except that with only two rivals, a conquest player might get lucky and see no restarts. Luck may be a big factor on this map. I may not play this one for lack of RL time, but if I do, I'd consider "going for broke" - playing for EC as if restarts were off, hoping I didn't have to chase down too many new civs. Because of the long travel times, one could probably mix in a fair amount of growth with that plan, for a higher gotm score than is typical for EC.

Or, for you PD fans, this seems a good chance for you to shine IMO. You will have to be patient with early trade, but most other factors seem favorable.

[Ali Ardavan]

I have technically started playing the game: I moved the settler and looked at top 5 cities the next turn (in -4000 it was empty). The information there is helpful in deciding what strategy to pick. Even though that information technically belongs in the spoiler, I suggest we share it here since it is so borderline spoiler.

[Catwalk]

I'll have a go at this one as an OCC. Location looks decent enough, even though I'm worried about the distance to other civilizations. I'll be doing some minor cheating (checked the early tech path to see if I'd get Republic without delay and plan on making sure I get maps from enemy civs as I think there's something screwy with how the AI decides whether or not to trade maps with you), so it probably shouldn't be admitted to the HoF. I didn't reload any hut outcomes, though. Should I keep the saves anyway?

Also, what is a PD strategy?

[Ali Ardavan]

Welcome to GOTM.

Originally Posted by Catwalk

I'll have a go at this one as an OCC.

I have not started yet and will very likely do an OCC partially because I have not done one in quite some time and partially because of real time.

Originally Posted by Catwalk

I'll be doing some minor cheating (checked the early tech path to see if I'd get Republic without delay and plan on making sure I get maps from enemy civs as I think there's something screwy with how the AI decides whether or not to trade maps with you), so it probably shouldn't be admitted to the HoF. I didn't reload any hut outcomes, though. Should I keep the saves anyway?

Keep the saves. I am not sure what cheating you are talking about. If you are not using the cheat menu and not reloading to change hut/battle outcomes what is it you are doing that you think is cheating? Tech path is deterministic once you know how tech hiding works. If you do not, look it up here on the forums. Calculating how many off tech paths you need to get to Republic is certainly not cheating, it is detailed planning. There is nothing screwy about map trading with the AI, once both of you have map making and their attitude towards you is cordial or better, they will exchange maps with you. There are rare exceptions to this, but they go away after a turn or two.

Originally Posted by Catwalk

Also, what is a PD strategy?

Power Democracy. If you do a search on it, there is plenty to read about.

[Catwalk]

I'm cheating in the sense that I've backtracked a few times in cases of dire miscalculations (forgot MPE was 200 shields, was about to waste a full 100 shields by preproduction on another wonder), and to avoid having to calculate tech paths

I'll do the next GOTM fully legit, this game I'm just using minor reloading to fix rusty mistakes that I'm making a sad amount of right now. That said, I didn't reload when I realized that my early game plan was suboptimal (due to flawed unrest calculations), as that was a bad plan rather than a simple mistake.

[Ali Ardavan]

Reloading due to minor oversights is not considered cheating. For example: If you hit the wrong button and a unit ends up where it should not have; if you end your turn prematurely (you meant to partial rush buy something but accidentally hit the end turn button too soon); ...
Anything you planned to do and neglected due to an oversight is legit; things you could have, should have, thought about but did not are of course not legit.

[Catwalk]

Ah, didn't know the rules were that generous. I'm (almost) not cheating then

I notice that using <nil> caravans seems to be legal. Is this really the case? Why is this not considered an exploit? Seems to me like it bypasses an integral part of the game design, limiting how many caravans you can send at any one time. If it is indeed legal, I'm certainly going to make generous use of it in this game!

[Ali Ardavan]

As far as I remember in certain versions of the Multiplayer Civ2 you can get <nil> caravans. I believe they are considered a bug and not legit. It is certainly impossible to get them in the single player version and since all our games are supposed to be playable in that version any significant departure from that is not allowed. Perhaps you need to upgrade your version with a patch. Others who are more knowledgeable about the subject can tell you which patch to use.

[Catwalk]

Yeah, it's not working for me Was difficult to look up information about it, may be a good idea to clarify it in the rules thread.

[grigor]

You get <nil> caravans when you bribe them from the AI when they are closer to an AI city than one of your own.

[Peaster]

What is a "<nil> caravan" anyway? Grigor is guessing it is what we usually call a "NONE" unit, eg one that is not supported by any city. AFAIK these are legal, as long as you don't home them (and even that might be legal, since the rule probably refers "REhoming" vans ... not sure).

Also, I wonder how the game treats those wrt bonuses ? IIRC this came up in an old PBEM, but I forget the answer .... IIRC it computes distances (and ongoing benefits) based on the original home city (an AI city in this case), but it computes foreign/domestic based on the current owner. IMO these vans are rare, and would be hard to exploit in a GOTM. I wouldn't object to people using them.

[Ali Ardavan]

<nil> is definitely different from None. I recall seeing a discussion about it years ago in the forums. Under some circumstances when playing multiplayer Civ2, a city that has no commodity caravans left can produce a <nil> caravan. Since my Civ2 version is single player, I have never run into this, nor did I have a method for testing it at the time. I recall vaguely that this is a bug which was fixed in the later versions.

[Catwalk]

Yeah, I was referring to the MP exploit. I didn't know it was MP only, saw it referenced in the rules thread. Back to the drawing board...

[Magic_gorter]

It's in this thread.

If I understand it correctly it only can be used when playing an OCC game with MGE.

I never played OCC with MGE edition so I don't know if the agressive AI is causing more problems to win the game.....how many players use this trick? I still have no objection against it but if the majority is against it I don't mind to change the rules in this case...

[Ali Ardavan]

Originally Posted by Magic_gorter

If I understand it correctly it only can be used when playing an OCC game with MGE.

That is not true. The bug appears when playing certain versions of MGE and it can be exploited once per turn according to SowThinker (See response 220 of the same thread). Since this is obviously a bug and only available in certain versions I think it should be illegal to exploit it.

[Magic_gorter]

I just tried it myself and you're right Ali.....it's indeed working as SlowThinker describes.

I will copy this part of the discussion to the rules thread (where this discussion can be continued).

Please do not discuss the <nil> caravans in this thread. Thanks.