News: BOTM 88 (Hammurabi, Deity) - Starts 19 March

BOTM 88: Hammurabi of Babylon.

A standard deity game. Good luck!

(Sorry this is a few days late. Blame my work deadlines...)

Game settings:
Playing as: Hammurabi of Babylon
Rivals: 6 AIs
Difficulty: Deity (But barbarians do not start with archery)
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
Options: No goody huts, no events
Victory Conditions: All enabled

Map settings:
Map: Fractal
World Wrap: Cylindrical
Mapsize: Standard
Climate: Temperate
Sea level: Medium


Hammurabi is Organized and Aggressive, and you start with The Wheel and Agriculture.

The Organized trait gives -50% civic upkeep and double production speed of Courthouse, Factory and Lighthouse

The Aggressive trait gives free Combat I promotion for melee and gunpowder units and double production speed of Barracks and Drydock

Unique unit: Bowman (replaces Archer)
The Bowman benefits from: 50% combat bonus against melee units. This compares with the Archer which has: no directly comparable benefits.

Unique Building: Garden (replaces Colosseum)
The garden gives +2 health in addition to the +1 happy (and +1 happy/20% culture rate) of the colosseum.

Starting screenshot

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




Note that in this game, any espionage-culture victories will be counted as cultural victories.

Adventurer Class bonuses:
You play on emperor level (but the AI still starts with deity level starting units)

Challenger Class Equalizers:
There is no challenger game this month.

To Enter the Competition:

This competition will open at 00:01 am on 19 Mar 2015, 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 19 Apr 2015.

Here is a link to a list of the differences between Vanilla, Warlords and BtS.

Software Versions

Windows: This game MUST be played in Beyond the Sword (NOT Civ4 Vanilla or Warlords), patched to version 3.19, and with the BUFFY mod version 3.19.003 installed. You can download the BUFFY mod here. Players using Windows Vista or Windows 7 are encouraged to read the notes on Vista fixes here.


Macintosh: This game MUST be played in Beyond the Sword (NOT Civ4 Vanilla or Warlords), patched to version 3.19, and with the Mac BUFFY mod version 3.19.003 installed. You can download the Mac BUFFY mod here.

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.

3 corn visible! What, are you trying to make it up to us after kcd's Eeeeevil BOTM87 map? We don't need your pity! [size=-2]Hmm, maybe we do.[/size] Not sure if I'll have time for this after the debilitating exertions of the previous game, but maybe if things look promising early on.... I hate to settle on a green hill, but moving 1W would mean our future worker loses a turn moving to the corn. Maybe burn a turn and settle on the plains hill to the north for an extra hammer--we can get to the corn immediately and maybe there are more resources in the 9 fogged tiles up there. But maybe we'll end up sitting on copper, which would be a waste. Settling 1W would provide a ferocious production city but very little commerce. Can the warrior provide any helpful info? Go NW for a peek at what the plains hill site would provide?

Warrior moves 1NE Plains to see across of that water.

Settling where the Warrior starts is a decent spot for REXing, but it would be annoying to settle 1 away from the Coast if those water squares are not a Lake.

So, settling NE + NE of the Settler's starting location could be a good compromise if that's not fresh water.


Actually, NE + N of the Settler looks pretty strong, even if it would put us 1 away from the Coast, making for a very well-balanced capital.

i was thinking also about setteling NE+NE, looks to me like a nice great lighthouse spot but yea going for it could take too much time and will be hard to pull this off on deity anyway need to find a way to got some commerce from this...

I think the great lighthouse looks to good to give up. We have many hammers, and island to the south, cheap lighthouses and coast both north and south.

To me SIP looks like a good idea. 2N is good for for the faster start but I'm not wild about where to put my other cities and if/where to build the GLH.

2NE also looks good but not as many hammers.

waht meen SIP xD sry iam new here and dont know dictionary yet xD
well settling 2N gives doesnt looks good imo u give away coast for 1 hammer in capitol its not worth it imo especialy when u have good food

yyeah said:

waht meen SIP xD sry iam new here and dont know dictionary yet xD
well settling 2N gives doesnt looks good imo u give away coast for 1 hammer in capitol its not worth it imo especialy when u have good food

Click to expand...

SIP = settle in-place (in other words, don't move the settler, just found the city where he's standing).

And welcome to the games! Have fun playing!

ty a lot and yea so SIP look much better then 2N and i think tahts what iam goona do then streight to GLH eh preeety tough,
i was thinking about 2NE and pottery 1st so i can put some cottage but it isnt worth it since u have 1 cottage spot be4 bw ;/
anyway try to do my best this game xD i dont know but iam winning on imm preety constantly but i just cant pull out deity game wtf xD

Deity is normally very tough. Usually when we run deity level games, more than half the submitted entries are defeats. We've even managed a deity game before where *no one* managed to win.

If anyone feels deity will be too tough to be truly enjoyable, anyone is welcome to play the adventurer save btw.

yyeah said:

ty a lot and yea so SIP look much better then 2N and i think tahts what iam goona do then streight to GLH eh preeety tough,
i was thinking about 2NE and pottery 1st so i can put some cottage but it isnt worth it since u have 1 cottage spot be4 bw ;/
anyway try to do my best this game xD i dont know but iam winning on imm preety constantly but i just cant pull out deity game wtf xD

Click to expand...

I had only won one emperor game when I played my first deity game which I won. But then I played a SGOTM in between which is the best way to learn they game. (in my opinion, I know someone has the opinion that playing far above your level is the best way)

yyeah said:

waht meen SIP xD sry iam new here and dont know dictionary yet xD
well settling 2N gives doesnt looks good imo u give away coast for 1 hammer in capitol its not worth it imo especialy when u have good food

Click to expand...

Nothing wrong with asking, but here's a list of abbreviations if you're interested. Curiously, it doesn't include SIP.

wow Folket thats v immpressive i play civ 4 since january after liike 1 month i start winnning imm and about 2 weeks iam trying deity and wel i have 1/10 or sth xD i won BTS 28 witch well xD taht wasnt rly deity game imo way too ezy, but rly fun to play didnt play isolated be4
DynamicSpirit witch game was taht ? and btw formula is cool everybody can find sth for themselfs
deity is a real challange for me now so good to have a nice map xD and i didnt play this competition yet xD
lowthercastle thanks for link i google it be4 i asked and SIP wast there xD

yyeah said:

DynamicSpirit witch game was taht ? and btw formula is cool everybody can find sth for themselfs

Click to expand...

It was WOTM 18. The results are here showing all the losses.

Wondering how many barb cities Bowmen can take versus archer-less barbarians? Even if not teching quickly for Bowmen given this unique situation, barb control will certainly be less of a hassle.

ShiVvV said:

Wondering how many barb cities Bowmen can take versus archer-less barbarians? Even if not teching quickly for Bowmen given this unique situation, barb control will certainly be less of a hassle.

Click to expand...

this gives some space for teching and u give me a nice idea u can ezy get lvl 4 guy from just rush barb city with like 1 warrior healer and 1 bowman oooo yeah i think i wont fogbust somewhere just to do it

From the screenshot, there seems to be a band of grassland in the bottom, while the top is more plain-like. Someone pls give me some advice - does this mean we're in the north? Is there any specific rule regarding the appearance of corns? Like terrain, lattitude, etc...

How fast will the barbs get archery? How big is the window?

Folket said:

How fast will the barbs get archery? How big is the window?

Click to expand...

Wish I knew the answer to that, Folket. I don't know what mechanic governs barb tech rate. Obviously it can't be anything like "# of civs that know the tech in question." So, for no justifiable reason whatsoever I'll tell myself it's T50 . Any codedivers still around to enlighten us benighted souls?

Not sure I'd actually go for fast bowmen--was just something that struck me about the game settings. Postponing Pot>Writ or Mining>BW for Hunt>Archery might be too much of a sacrifice in long run. I'd rather have TGL too .

The deity AI's on the other hand--well, they're gonna have a field day with the barbs.

Here's how I understand Barb research

Barbs pick a tech and research it at only 1 bpt.

However, without even picking a tech or having the pre-requisite techs, barbs get bpt towards techs that other players know.

With 7 players alive and 6AI knowing archery...
Barbs will learn 2% (rounded down) per turn.

If you get archery, then the barb rate goes to the maximum...which is only 3%/turn

So with a small tech like Archery, the tech barbs choose for their 1 bpt is significant. Normally you can ignore it if you're looking at a tech like feudalism (longbows).

Summary:

Archery is 70 beakers for the AI/barbs on a standard size map.
2% of that is 1.4 bpt (rounded down), so only 1bpt

It will take 70 turns for barbs to get archery IF...
you don't get archery and the barbs don't pick archery to research:

It will take 35 turns for barbs to get archery IF...
you don't get archery and the barbs pick archery to research:

If you get archery, the barb rate can go as high as 3bpt.