D1-The Indian Payback

Fed up with warheads interfering with your peaceful quest for space? This is the place to strike back!
I want 4 partners in this mission and the goal is to destroy/dominate 7 militaristic civs that we've honestly had enough of.
Monarch/Emperor players are welcome to join.

Payback setup:
Civ: India
Rivals: Mongols, Zulu, Germany, Aztecs, China, Japan & Scandinavia
AI aggression: Max
Barbarians: Raging
Victory Conditions: Only Domination and Conquest

Payback rules:
Can't do:
Give in to demands
Declare war
Sue for peace
Razing/autorazing cities
Sign MA's, MMP's or trade embargos
Break ongoing deals
Turn down peace offers so war continues
Starve population on purpous
Must do:
Give immediate boot orders to foreign troops
Assimilate all captured slaves in Indian cities of choise
Optional:
Sign RoP's
Haggle deals
Demanding tribute
All lux/tech trade


How we play/post
24 hrs to post a 'got it' and a further 48 to play. First turn set for the first player of 20 turns (up to 3000BC) followed by 10 turns thereafter.

The Payback Library
On War Weariness
On Artillery Defensive Offensive
On AI attitude
On City Tile Production . Scroll down in thread.



The idea is to win by striking very hard/fast at those who dare to declare on us but to otherwise follow the peaceful path. Annoying neighbours to make them declare is definetly allowed/a must (we want their money to build nice temples, right?).
Is it possible to win this way? I don't know but I'm curious to find out. This is my first attempt att starting an SG so we'll see how the logistics work.
I will post a starting position in a couple of hours and then we could have a pre game discussion.
Interested are welcome to discuss/comment the set up. I'm open to suggestions

I'll play, but won't be able to post until late friday/early saturday.

By slaves joining cities you mean workes and such putting the population up?

A hatful of highly volatile civs and the aggression cranked up! No chance to pursue the war when we have the upper hand and they offer peace! Assimilate slaves into our own natural population to destabilize our own cities! I just love to take the moral high ground and I could do with a challenge. This has got to be crazy! Count me in please!

One question (and I suspect that the answer will be 'no'): are we allowed to negotiate when they offer peace or do we have to take the PT with no haggling?

lurker's comment: Not a sign up but this is a difficult but fun game and it plays a level above normal. You've added a few things to Arathorn's variant like adding slaves to your cities. Whoa! A few things from his variant includes any civ that razes one of your cities must be eliminated and all peace terms must be better than even up.
Arathorn's variants including defiance.

@Chunky Kong & Tone
Hi Buddys, you're in. Welcome up on the high horse

By slaves I do mean captured workers. We nice Indians don't like poeple to be slaves so we invite them to live in our culture packed cities. Could as noted lead to some diturbance but we'll handle that.
Read the link to Arathorn's variant and this looks a lot like his defiant game.
As I said, rules are up for discussion. I'd go with the "No trade embargos" sice we like nations to come together and benefit from trading. Even if someone's been bad to us we will be forgiving and give him another chanse (or a 7:th). I'm not sure about the immediate boot order, but it would be a great way to get the party started without having to declare. In line with good manners (we R good manners!) you should ask for permission before entering someones home so I guess I vote for that one too. Peace deals can be haggeld, we're traders and dealers, but not to the point that prolonges the war. If Shaka bends over then peace it must be, but we will squezze as much as we can out of his sorry butt.
I will edit rules within the 1:st post as we state them.
As for the kick off it will be apr. 8th. I'll be off for some skiing fri-tue so a bit of a delay suits me fine. In the meantime we can start planing the campaign.
How will we use UU?
What wonder to build?
Research order preferred?
Dense or spacy city layout?
I'm certain we have different styles of playing and there will be plenty of room for that, but I would also enjoy drawing a big picture together before we head off.
We should also decide on time limits on playing/posting. If you guys have done an SG before and have advice on that then post it. Is it good to do lesser turns each in ancient or not? 10/15/20 turns?

A starting position is soon to come and it will be Pang for sure.

This is what we've got and it looks nice to me. Plains to the west could mean ivory (Zeus anyone?), lots o bonus grass and who knows, if we move Mr. Worker in the lucky direction we might hit wheat/cow. It also looks like we're smack dab in the middle of the map so we could be completely surrounded by warheads.
Settings:
Pangea 60% water, standard size
Normal, temp., 4 billion yrs

Interested, if isn't filled

I'll play if there's still room in the roster. I normally play builder style on emperor level, going to war only if needed. Might fit here.

@ Beorn-eL-Feared & Lullaby
Welcome Brothers/Sisters? You're on so the team is complete *trumpets*! Nice to see we have an international touch with Sweden (me), Canada, England and Germany represented, Chunky?

I suggest we make a little brief intro to ourselves as civvers just to mingle a bit so here goes:
I've played for 2 months and quickly got to monarch. There I stayed for a while trying emp but failing mostly. I've applied things I've read here along the way and today I'm quite comfortable at emperor. I normally build inside-out with a dense productive core and an odd Lux-city on the outskirts. I micromanage some but wouldn't say I'm that good because I enjoy some flow in play and haven't reached the level where MM comes naturally. I've got no wonder addiction but will build if appropriate. I favour non-militaristic civs but appreciate a good fight every now and then, especially when striking back

I do make mistakes and urge my fellow players to be generous about this towards each other. I will encurage discussion as we play along and constructive critisism will hopefully benefit us all.
As previously mentioned I'm new to the concept of SG's but it seems straightforward enough. If we get the downloading of files going I guess there's no probs.
I have a full patch with barab fix but no other add ons so I suppose it will fit all in the team.

My views (in no particular order)...

I like 24 hrs to post a 'got it' and a further 48 to play, but the second might depend upon the type of game and number of turns. IMO first turn set for the first player of 20 turns (up to 3000BC) followed by 10 turns thereafter works well.

Research: We start with a monopoly on Alphabet which is a valuable tech to have. I would normally start on Writing (maybe Pottery first if we have food), get a few warrior scouts out and look to trade when we have a few contacts but we might be under pressure to trade earlier than we might want with our agressive neighbours. Longer term, get to a higher form of government quickly (Republic slingshot?) and then head for Chivalry!

Whatever we do, we are going to be under pressure to appear strong otherwise the dogpile could be intense so I would tend not to build spears. Barracks might also be a luxury early on. Reg warriors and settlers and workers will be the order early on. If we can find a decent food source nearby, a granary would be great. Our capital can pump out units with those bgs mined.

I think this is going to be a less than peaceful early game unless we can keep the AI sweet. (It's going to get nasty at some point as we can only win by conquest or domination.) If we can get trades going and use some of the proceeds to fund embassies we might keep out of early conflicts and give us a chance to expand.

Wonder? I wouldn't bother. FP close to our core will be worth it though, once we have a few towns up and running. Are SGLs on? If they are and we get lucky early on; Pyramids!

We should be OK with a reasonably spaced out city build (3.5-5) but I sometimes wait to see if we have any close neighbours and what the surrounding territory is like. I doubt whather we'll see hospitals so we should be using most of our territory with size 12 cities.

Of course I'll go with the flow on this game. I'm always prepared to state my views but in the end I'm just here to have fun.

BTW have you 'fixed' the barbs (No AI patrol=0) or are they only going to head on a NW-SE axis? Edit-answered:cross post!

Lullaby said:

I normally play builder style on emperor level, going to war only if needed. Might fit here.

Click to expand...

"Build it and they will come" is a quote from the movie Field of Dreams and I think it fits here. We will build and they will surely come (to get it), but we're not building what they expect us to . When they come they will be up to their ears in spears. They've been razing our tempels for too long!
I suppose we will try to balance the Indian trait advantages with the militaristic build. Beeing religous will serve us well since we'll be going in and out of war like (my hopes/fears anyway).

Daghdha said:

I suggest we make a little brief intro to ourselves .

Click to expand...

I've played for a couple of years now and I'm comfortable at around Emperor/DG but it depends on the start. I've never lost a GOTM/COTM since my first game (GOTM 16) by they are often kind starts. I've recently got hooked on SGs (first SGOTM was #4) and even more recently the HoF. I'm a recovering builder but my HoF space and diplo attempts have sent me into relapse I have played my SGs with the city gov switched off (thank goodness for MapStat!) and no automated workers as even I can concentrate for 10 turns at a time. In general I try to follow the rules and etiquette posted on the SGOTM pages.

Daghdha said:

I do make mistakes and urge my fellow players to be generous about this towards each other. I will encurage discussion as we play along and constructive critisism will hopefully benefit us all.

Click to expand...

Sounds perfect!

ps-hope the skiing is good. This is the only the second year that I haven't skied since 1990 and I'm missing it badly

SGL's are on but if we're lucky and have ivory I'd go for math and Zeus. Getting to Republic I'm not sure about, nomally yes, but I suspect we will have to deal with a great deal of WW then, and if we have a spacy layout with fewer/bigger cities I think Monachy is better due to unit support, correct me if I'm wrong. Chivalry sounds good if we don't have Zeus. I general I believe a militaristic research program is needed alternatively we research upper level techs and trade for mil. tech as soon as avaliable. We should see to it that we don't lag behind in military advancements.
You're right about spears! Offensive units impress AI more and are a better "peacemaker". With raging barbs some spears would come in handy for settler escort thou. Monarch barbs are weak but they will come in dozens and a warrior (especially reg.) sometimes fail to manage that. I would like one early Barrack for the sole purpous of pumping archers.
As for having fun I'm with you 100%. This will be loads

We won't be declaring and we will accept PT requests so I don't think that we'll suffer from WW. Knowledge of iron or horses will be important but I was hoping to trade for these. We should be able to get a couple of settlers out before the barbs come knocking by which time a barracks or three will be fine. If food is low there will be not a lot else to build in our core anyway!

Downloaded MapStat few days ago and can confirm. It's truly great, but the Happiness pop up everytime a new citizen arrives can be a wee bit annoying with 40 cities.
Btw, I think every utility that doesn't alter the rules/settings are up to each team member to use.

I have 2 slots in HoF myself but that is mainly because I went for vacant ones, ha, ha.

You're probably right about the iron/horse research. Our neighbours will have them soon enough and it's a waste to do double research. I'd go along with the "research peace/trade for military"-agenda. If we have a decent army AI will trade, but a decent army is the least. Hopefully we'll build a sleeping tiger.
My experience with raging barbs is they do come kind of soon in the game so a bit of precaution is good. It's a drag loosing settlers
About WW I have very limited experience in doing long wars when attacked. The 40 turn wars I fight will normally be initiated by me. I get pissed and slow everything down by dragging every available civ into war giving them what they want. In this game that will of course be a no go.

This is a testfile with the same settings as in The Indian Payback (but with Osman). If everyone on deck can get it going then we should be fine when it's time to play.

Excuse me if you have already seen this but I found this article on WW very useful. Don't fight extended wars, don't leave your units in enemy territory, don't let them attack you and you have a very happy population. IMO this is why horses are so valuable.

Excellent! Will study before we start. Seems we've kicked off the research agenda allready . I'll edit such suggested reading in 1:st post.
Also, added an obvious rule that makes our misson different from the defiant variant. We can't raze AI cities (defiant must) so they'll have to be pop 2 or have grown by culture. It wouldn't be prudent for a peaceful civ like ours to raze.

Pretty confident on the team here, ideas carried are pretty much what I had in mind myself:biggrin: About reg warriors/settlers/workers, I'm all for it, but I think barracks should not be such luxuries, once we have horses, so we can start building our army of jumbos. Aside from that, I think we should stick to grans/temples/raxes/markets in most instances, temples in the frontlines and raxes in the high-prod cities mainly. Note that if we don't find horses, we shouldn't build barracks much earlier than chivalry: jumbos are the spearhead of what we want to do, isn't it?

For research, I'd go writing at full speed, then try our shot at CoL->Philo->Republic, all at max speed. This often makes for very good trading opportunities, especially with our monopoly on alphabet. I'd suggest not trading writing before we have philosophy started, so that we can less likely be beat to philosophy.

If our first-out scout finds a couple good food cities AND we haven't been able to get it off alpha/burial, we could take pottery after writing. I take it we'll gamble on not taking pottery first - to gamble or not to is fine by me, since republic can be much rewarding, for us as a government and as trade money.

On a personnal note, I started playing 3 months ago, made my way through to regent the first week, then onto emperor with this site's help and I'm slowly moving onto demi-god on what spare time I have off school work. I thought of SG's as a relaxed way to keep playing while setting back from the computer a bit to prepare my term exams
I do MM quite a bit, especially units during war - long exposure to warcraft does that to you.

Prepare for a lot of stupidities from me and whacky renamed units when I went through my 10 turns. I'll volunteer for any order in the roster, so if everyone else is too shy to take the first one

Just call me B, it's the short I usually go by, online. Glad to be part of this, we'll have a blast