Workers of the world, unite! [RFC RAND]

micbic

Optimistic Pessimist
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A bit N of 2 tiles W of Athenai
It is year 870 AD, in a planet very much similar to Earth, yet not identical. For many years, the Rus people were wandering around the lands known as "Eurasia", not too far from the newly developed cultural centers in Europe, like Frankia, or Alemannia, but more close to them than the mysticist nations of the East, like China. Following the examples of the previously nomads Goths, Franks, Burgundians, and many more, their chief leader has decided to, finally, settle down and build settlements, to ensure that the Rus people will exist in many years to come. The initial settlement was called Moskva, named after the Muskovi mountain range at the northwest. It is yet on their hands, to ensure they get established, and why not, go even further....possibly to a new world...

Welcome to the 2nd RFC RAND succession game, and first as part of the SG subforum! In this game, the players will attempt to do their best and write history as the, arguably, most important Eastern European nation ever; Russia, from the time it was an uncivilized kingdom somewhere at the north to when it became a world power! For those who don't know, RFC RAND is something like an Earth randomizer, taking concepts from Earth simulator RFC like real time civ-spawn and stability. Anyway, our poor victims glorious roster consists of:

AnotherPacifist
Jusos2108
DangerBird
youknowwhatitis
BurnEmDown
onedreamer
nody

And so what am I doing there? Being the host, doing a bit of storytelling, setting aims for the players and annoying you to hell.
Gamewise, each player will play a number of turns (10), and will post the save there for the next player, to play his turnset, etc. I think that we should give each player 96 hours for a turnset, but since this is my first SG, I am open to opinions.
And here is the starting situation. I am sorry that the capital is already settled (I did not do that!), but I autostarted it as Ethiopia, and saved just before Russia spawned, then switched to Russia. This way, I can see what the Russian AI does, by playing the save through and thus create the quests, which will be, of course, more difficult than what the AI does. :) It will also be a bit of an RPC game.
Spoiler :

AnotherPacifist, the burden honor to begin it is yours! No goals set yet.

EDIT: Save to be added, since my organization sucks. See, I already started hell annoying you. And the game hasn't started yet. :D
 

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Sigh, yet another river-less and mountainous Russia.
Um, a save would help.
 
I can see what the Russian AI does, by playing the save through and thus create the quests, which will be, of course, more difficult than what the AI does. :) It will also be a bit of an RPC game.

Ah, that's how you're going to set goals. Sounds intrigiung.

Just, I plead, set them well in advance. I don't want to have to drop all other plans for a goal that I just learned of, and that has to be achieved in 10 or 20 turns.

Sigh, yet another river-less and mountainous Russia.

Yes, too often rivers are lacking. I think Rhye should take a look at the PerfectWorld2 map script, because that creates very earthlike rivers and topography. Maybe too late to ask now, though, as the new patches are being tested.
 
For RAND, this is a very good starting location.

Of course in RAND, some resources are added nearby every starting location.
As far as I know: Wheat and cows for European civs and stone or marble for ancient civs.

We even start with silver. Remember, the cows also brings extra hammers.
And maybe that barbarian city in the south will flip to us.

A couple of questions:

- Do we need to make screenshots and how many?
- What is an RPC game?
 
Actually it looks pretty good for RFC RAND. To start up the strategy discussion:
-The initial settlers go west, as we sort of agreed, right?
-But also there is a possible production powerhouse location 1NW from the rice, which should probably be settled pretty soon?
-I am already annoyed with that gap between Moskva and that soon to be ours barb city, but perhaps there is a decent city spot 1W of the not really visible lake, at least it gets the sheep
-If that lake city is settled, one other city should most likely (unless there is a resource) be 2NW from the lonely Swordman on the hill
-The last settler should probably go towards the german borders
 
Here are my thoughts on the start:

(First, cancel the automove of several of the units.)

Cities

Agree with AnotherPacifist (in the first thread) that we should expand towards Europe first, so we need to send those horse archers to the north and west to explore as quickly as possible.
Hope we can found one city on the Baltic and one by a river. The third settler should be the exception, and go to the east for the copper and rice (unless we think the risk of flipping to Turkey/Mongolia is too great).

Edit:
-I am already annoyed with that gap between Moskva and that soon to be ours barb city, but perhaps there is a decent city spot 1W of the not really visible lake, at least it gets the sheep
Oh, didn't notice that we have 4 settlers. Yes, 1W of the lake might be a good spot also.
(Edit: No, just 3 settlers. My mistake.)


Barbarian city

If it doesn't flip to us, we should raze it. (I suspect that, though they may not know it yet, they are ethnic Turks.)

Technology

I'm never sure what to research at this stage of the game, but the present Engineering looks fine. Pikemen and 3 movement on roads both help a lot with defence.

Moskva's first builds

With the silver, (soon) Christianity, and 2 or 3 garrisoned units, we should be able to soon grow this city to around size 10, with 2 scientists and 2 merchants.

1. Forge (do it now because this city will build a lot)
2. Library
3. Market
4. units for defence/garrisons

Civics

I always revolt right away to HR, Vassalage, Slavery, and OR. (Serfdom is more useful for the first 20 turns or so, but then we would have to have another revolt to get to Slavery. Not sure which works out better.)
 
Playing my first succession game, I can't help thinking about the phrase of the Monarchy-tech...

"A multitude of rulers is not a good thing, let there be one ruler, one king." :p

I guess you can say every 10 turns a new king is crowned...
...and every 70 turns a king is being reïncarnated. :lol:

I assume everybody is free to do what he/she thinks is best on his/her turn.

I can already tell you that I'm not a warmonger, but an expansionist nonetheless.
 
"A multitude of rulers is not a good thing, let there be one ruler, one king." :p

I guess you can say every 10 turns a new king is crowned...
...and every 70 turns a king is being reïncarnated. :lol:

I assume everybody is free to do what he/she thinks is best on his/her turn.

Yes, that's the way I see it. Everyone is king during their turns. But we should all be advisors. Then the king decides what advice to follow.

The benefit of a succession game is that we can learn a lot from other players. My advice is based on what I usually do, so I very much welcome someone showing me that it is not the best course of action.
 
Of course everybody can make their own decisions, but the first cities can certainly be discussed, since it is a rather major thing. Also there should be a sort of consensus of what we are aiming at (other than Micbic's goals), since 10 turns doesn't let you finish anything you've started. For example, we should settle some distant location or that we should prepare for conquering some other nation, etc. So:

-IMO the barb city shouldn't be razed, though I am fairly certain that AP wasn't planning to
-It might be better to map out the European front a little bit before founding the cities (my first suggestions are just the obvious ones without knowing the map), one turn of waiting isn't that much, if that gives a better city location
 
-IMO the barb city shouldn't be razed, though I am fairly certain that AP wasn't planning to.

At least his name suggests that.

one turn of waiting isn't that much, if that gives a better city location

There is a Dutch saying that says: Hasty speed is rarely good.

In Dutch it rhymes, but you could translate it to: An act of haste or speed is rarely a wise deed.
 
1 horse archer goes east for exchanging techs and OB for trade routes (probably the most important thing to do).
2nd build should be courthouse and generate a great spy (no commerce from rivers is sad) to steal techs from the Turks when they appear, then whatever great people we want is fine.
I'll play when I get home today.
NB: played a couple turns and guess what, we're right smack on top of Asia Minor--the barb city is called Hattusas. So I'll conquer it for the gold, but all it's going to build is military units. DO NOT BUILD ANY CITIES SOUTH OF MOSCOW UNTIL 1300!
 
The first Russian czar, Nikolay I the Ravage, knew there was only one way to grow his nation strong; blood. He imagined a great Rus Empire, encompassing all the plainland and forestland around the Muskovi mountains, and the Azov lake at the southwest; having imagined the strategic meaning of the location, he ordered some settlers to establish an outpost somewhere in it. He had also heard of the wealth of some old, collapsed now, civilisations further in the south, and he felt it was Rus' destiny to capture these lands. However, he knew that to achieve that, his kingdom had to build and reinforce a good, melee specialized, army. And this, in turn, needed a good deposit of metals...

Quest 1: War Expansion: Capture as many cities as you can, by 1200 AD!
0 cities: 0 points
1 city: 1 point
2 cities: 3 points
3 cities: 6 points
4 cities: 9 points

Quest 2: Deposit establishment: Control copper and iron deposits, build mines, and extract valuable minerals. Deadline 1200 AD!
0 resources: 0 points
1 resource: 1 point
2 resources: 2 points
3 resources: 3 points
4 resources: 5 points
Each mine gives 1 point.

Hope they were not too late.
 
I would have bet that the barbarian city was Baku. Since it's Hattusas, we are likely to find Baku somewhere near as well. This would set our overall attitude as expansionist. edit: after reading Micbic, we are indeed expansionist :D
On city founding: I think that there is nothing bad with having cities that will later flip to Turkey, as long as we didn't found those cities or didn't waste an army to take them. Hattusas is almost guaranteed to flip to Turkey... but if we plan to have Gunpowder before they spawn, we could contend it. From my experience, newly spawned civs will not pose any serious threat because they will not willingly declare war and the general Civ4 AI is set to initially expand without war. This said, I would found a city in the blue circle and one NW of the wheat. The third city should probably be between Moskva and Hattusas. (edit: Micbic kinda gave us the goal to settle near the lake) I would be careful to settle the area around rice initially, because it's at risk of Mongolian takeover.
 
A couple of questions:

- Do we need to make screenshots and how many?
- What is an RPC game?

1) Only the most basic. 3-4 per turnset would be fine.
2) Role playing challenge. Madscientist has done many of them at vanilla BTS, and that means this game will be, at some points, a roleplay of Russia.
 
NB: played a couple turns and guess what, we're right smack on top of Asia Minor--the barb city is called Hattusas. So I'll conquer it for the gold, but all it's going to build is military units. DO NOT BUILD ANY CITIES SOUTH OF MOSCOW UNTIL 1300!

Yes, conquering it and training units is probably better than my idea of razing it. And now especially so, with the points system micbic has given us.

On city founding: I think that there is nothing bad with having cities that will later flip to Turkey, as long as we didn't found those cities or didn't waste an army to take them. Hattusas is almost guaranteed to flip to Turkey... but if we plan to have Gunpowder before they spawn, we could contend it. From my experience, newly spawned civs will not pose any serious threat because they will not willingly declare war and the general Civ4 AI is set to initially expand without war. This said, I would found a city in the blue circle and one NW of the wheat. The third city should probably be between Moskva and Hattusas. (edit: Micbic kinda gave us the goal to settle near the lake) I would be careful to settle the area around rice initially, because it's at risk of Mongolian takeover.

If we contend the flip of cities in the Turkish spawn area, how do we deal with our units flipping over while we are defending? (But I suppose that's an issue for later, as we definitely will be conquering cities down there.)

And, Do we have to take micbic's 'hint' and found near the Azov lakes? I'd rather not.

I would still prefer to send two settlers west-northwest, and one to the east by the copper (since we get points for controlling copper/iron deposits).
 
Does that mean if we build a mine without a resource we won't get a point?
And by capturing a city, does razing it count as capturing?
 
I am fairly certain (read: I hope) that the turkish spawn zone ends below the mountain ridge southeast of Moskva. Therefore I am willing to take a risk to found cities on that line or above. So unless scouting proves me otherwise, I think we should found a city 1NW from the rice. IMO the risk is minimal.
 
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