Lonely Hearts Club, BTS Edition, Chapter XV: Suleiman

Welcome to the 15th edition of the Lonely Hearts Club for BTS. In the Lonely Hearts Club we explore strategies to cope with one of the most dreaded situations in Civ IV ( possibly the main reason for reloads after the military collapse one ): starting in isolation....

For the 15th game in BTS the choosed leader was Suleiman of the Ottomans:

The newest leader of the Ottomans....Phi/Imp is a nice combo for a SE, and that combined with a boosting building it gets better. The UU is a nice addition,especially if you beeline gunpowder and have some nice neighbours to conquer ( I wont give big details... If you want good intel about getting to Gunpowder soon and to leverage the Ottoman UU check the ALC 15 pre thread... having Phi and Imp helps a lot with some of the devised strats in there ) Of course that this is isolation and things are not as in more regurar games..... But I count that atleast Phi will be pretty useful in this

His UU.

The jannisaires are a pretty beefed musket with a 25% bonus against mounted, archer and melee units... That makes them a pretty brutal UU if you get them early, but pretty useless if you get it late or without enemies to attack in the early gunpowder era ( only if they retained the bonus when upgraded.... ). Their use in this game will depend a lot of how early we can contact a AI or vice versa

His UB.

Now this is what i like in the Ottomans, their UB.... A aqueduct that also gives 2 ... happyness is a big part of the early game and two more working citizens in every city with a Hamman can be huge, no matter how you use them.....

The start (for reasons that I'll explain below, the warrior in your game may not be exactly in that spot in your game ):

Ok, I've seen better.... but as we don't have a all forest start it means that there is another food resource in the BFC ( all forest starts only appear if there is less than 2 food resources in the BFC ( seafood count as 0.5 food resource )... it is a part of the "start embelishement " algorythim ( will post the link that describes this as soon as I find it... ) . So it is not so bad .... Maybe AH as a priority?

This time I made a functional scenario ( still some issues to learn about that... but that is why the warrior may appear in diferent places: the scenario has predetermined starting positions, not actual units ).... All the speeds are working well ( no more games ending in 1900 ) and the levels almost as well ( there are some discrepancies between the level dependant techs and the posted in the "official documetation , but it is not a big issue, hopefully resolved in the next instalement ) . Feel free to try in any speed , any level ... and please post the result I would really like to see how the diferent speeds influence the outcome of the same start.

Again a small request ( not mandatory ) :

We ask the participants to do, if possible, a write-up with the victory save and a description of your game ( strategies, techs researched, wars,...). All the info should be in spoiler tags ( to not disturb other people's games ). If you want ( we would like to ) post reports at this moments of the game:

Checkpoint 1 - when we have explored the island and are aware of what resources it has. Its not so important when this is, but this is a time to discuss city sites etc. Don't look into a checkpoint 1 spoiler until you have reached this point yourself.

Checkpoint 2 - first contact - when we have met all the other AIs. At this point we can discuss our strategy to get to this point and our plans for dealing with them.

Checkpoint 3 - when we are committed to a victory condition (or at least think we are).

Checkpoint 4 - Victory (or defeat).

The Scenario is here..... this time I had to resort to a external server ( my civfanatics space is nearly full and I'm still trying to reupload all the hack affected saves.... If someone still has some of the starting saves from the LHC from Wang Kon one until the XIII , please post them... I can reverse engineer the WB and repost the saves , or make a scenario like this one ). Sorry for the waiting time in the upload, but it is not my fault.....


The last words are to wish good luck to all . And let the games begin!



P.S We don't have any kind of problem with defeats and reruns. Just play and enjoy

Cool beans rolo!! You got it figured out already? Well done mate! I will take Monarch and play at Epic, and report my findings ASAP about speed/difficulty anomolies.

Can you do me a big favor, send me a PM about what I need to do to set up a game for the Nobles Club. I am not worried about any levels other than Noble and Prince, though, so does that matter? I have a post up in the C&C forum, but no responses yet. Heck, bro, I know you have enough on your plate with the LHCs and all, but if you could find a minute to set us up a game, we want to try Ramses, Hemispheres, no over-aggressive AIs near us . . . no worries if you cant, I totally understand, and I know I can figure it out, so if you could just send the PM about what I need to "fix" in the WB to make it right, that would be plenty.

Thanks for putting this together rolo! Will definitely give it a spin, probably on immortal. I may try an SE just for kicks but it'll depend on the lay of the land.

@Bleys

My last post in the Nobles club already has the instructions about how to edit the WB to get what you need ( except limiting the game to Noble and Prince... that would require to modify the handicaps file, making it effectively a mod ).

I can set the game , but i need a precise "shopping list"... Please post it in the Noble's club thread....

Roger that rolo, and thanks mate. I think we are after the simplest thing possible, so if confining to 2 difficulties is more work, no worries. Will put up a more precise list of our request now. You da man bro.

Now, a question about the file I just downloaded for this game. It didnt come with an extension of any kind, it just downloaded as "LHC", thats it, even properties didnt show anything. Do I have to manually re-name it? (going to try that now, anyway)

The save is a BtS WB file ( I downloaded it myself to check it... ). The safest path is to place it in My Documents/My Games/Beyond the Sword/Saves/Worldbuilder and launch the game and check if "LHC XV" appears in your scenario list.... If that doesn't happen I assume that your downloaded file is corrupted ( I bet it is... my download came correctly as "LHC XV" and classified as "worldbuilder save" ) and needs a replacement.

OK re-downloading, I am assuming corruption. Thanks.

Hmm, I dunno man. First, I have to wait 90 seconds to download the file because I am not a member, but thats not the problem. The download box comes up and says:

You have chosen to open LHC
which is a: application/force-download
from: http: //www55.uploading.com
What should Firefox do with this file?

Click to expand...

Then I have options for Open With or Save to Disk, and I save to disk and get a file named LHC with no extension whatsoever.

Maybe its because I use Firefox instead of Explorer as my browser? I am checking in game now, I re-named it "LHC XV" with the proper extension.

EDIT: It appears to be the case. I am in the game, with the correct starting position and everything. Should be fine. No worries, will keep you appraised of any problems if they occur. Sorry to be such a pain, heh, its one of my worst personality traits, LOL.

Will try to make it on Emperor (though my time is sparse nowadays...) - well as soon as possible.

Btw, won with Gilgamesh to space on Emperor No time to report

Duuuuuuuuuuuuddddeeeeeeeee!~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the Links all work, and the games are there....

Now if I've read it right, the Financial smack down, tokugowa, and Montezuma.

Here's the Link to your OWN lonely hearts club BULL PEN. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=6148900#post6148900

Now if I've miss understood...my biggie....

My first LHC and I'm looking forward to it, I'll probably play it on prince but I MAY try monarch..

IPEX, you were rigth at the first time ( the saves were needed to recreate the ones that the hack attack of two weeks wiped out )..... But no worries .: I got the saves.

I am going to give this one a shot on Epic, monarch. Thanks for doing this.

Okay I'm playing it on monarch, normal speed:
Checkpoint 1 - 2200 BC:

Might have a go with epic emperor.

I've gone for emperor (normal speed).

Some map-related stuff around checkpoint 1:

Playing multiple games, but have managed Checkpoint #1:

Alright, made it much farther than checkpoint one, but I kept notes so here it is (again, monarch and epic):

r rolo--just checking did you correct the AI starting units at the higher levels?

Yup, the AI in higher levels is starting with the extra units ( I checked all levels , just for sure.... )