GOTM23 Succession Game [civ3]

This game is to be played in v1.29.

We are replaying the GOTM23 as a Succession Game for those who were unable to finish the "real" GOTM or just like the idea of playing it as a team.

Our roster is short so if you would like to sign up, go HERE

AlanH
smackster
Karasu
Alweth
MacBaldrick



Civilization: Arabs
Difficulty: Monarch
World size: 5000 tiles (standard)
Landmass: Pangaea 58% H2O
Geology: 3 billion years old
Environment: Warm and Arid
Barbarians: Raging
Rivals: 9 Preset
Upgrade Swordsmen/Longbows: ON
Differential Naval Movement is Engaged
Class: OPEN

Lurkers@
This game requires the GOTM23 mod file installations. Go to The Game Announcement Page for GOTM23 for more information.

This thread contains **SPOILER** information for GOTM23.
Even though GOTM23 deadline has passed, if you were planning on playing the game under competition conditions, you should wait to read this thread until you have completed your game.

OK Team, post to check in here.

AlanH, you get to start us off.

All players, please save your uploads with the filename:
SG23C_BCXXXX.SAV or SG23C_BCXXXX.ZIP

XXXX should be a four digit number for the date. e.g. BC0010 is 10 BC. All letters should be capitalized. This is so the saves sort properly in the uploads and in the save directory.

I will continue to advertize for more players as I think 4 is too few. If you run into trouble, I will be serving as a sub on both teams.

Go Get 'Em!

Knock knock.
Checking in and warming up...

Originally posted by Karasu
Knock knock.

Click to expand...

Who's there?

OK, I've got it and am loading up to play tonight. You should all get to laugh at my start in about 24 hours. Treat me gently!

[Edit] For anyone who hasn't followed the history, as I understand it we are starting with the GOTM 23 OPEN 1.29 game start file and playing to GOTM rules on allowed and prohibited exploits.

I switched the order for the PTW team based on my immpressions of who was a newbie and who was an experienced player. I wanted to get the newbies alternating with the experienced players for team survival and for learning opportunities.

I trying to do that here, I realized I'm not sure where people fall. Looking at GOTM22 results, Karasu is top dog here followed closely by smackster. AlanH and MacBaldrick have no game submitted. AlanH is higher in the global player ranking but I think that may be because smackster only has one game being registered.

As time zone's turned out not to be a factor, if there is a different order you think would be better for the team in terms of ability levels, please let me know. For now, I will leave it as it was.

Again, I'm just looking to make this game more fun for eveyone, I'm not trying to insult anyone nor criticize.

AlanH@ you are correct that we are playing from the GOTM 23 OPEN save and following GOTM rules. We are also going exclusively for the Medal Play Target which is Domination. Do not entertain any other victory condition (unless it's possible in multiple victory win ).

I only have one win and one loss in GOTM, and by no stretch do I count as experienced. Shall I still play first?

I was already proposing to position for domination, since that or conquest would be the obvious free choices given the very strong medieval fast-knight UU plus pangeia.

Given that we have to go for domination anyway, I suggest we start with max research on the Wheel to find the horses, to be followed by a beeline through Mysticism and Poly to Monarchy, to eliminate war weariness and then take over the world. I've already opened the game and checked F10, and Wheel is not available from any other Civ as a starting tech. We do have lively barbs, and our scouts may be able to harvest some techs by popping huts. If the Wheel comes up we can switch to Mysticism early. Either way we might get ourselves an extra early tradeable tech.

Cheap temples and an immediate granary mean we should be able to grow our land area fast. We shall need to discuss city placement options, plus Forbidden Palace strategy. I may get the first settler before turn 20, so does anyone have any strong views about RCP, ICS, OCP, XYZ .... ? I usually put cities three of four tiles marching distance apart in the early game, and I might build the first settler before my 20 turns are up, so please shout now if this spacing for the first city would upset you.

I'm looking forward to this game, and I hope to learn a lot from you guys, so please put in your 2 cents. If I don't hear any howls of anguish or derision in the next hour or so I'll dive in and report back tomorrow.

Hi. I would like to join this game too. I hope it's not too late.

I would not consider myself a Civilization newbie, but my skill level is definitely very low. As it is, my crowning achievement in Civilization 3 is my victory by Domination on the Regent difficulty.

I am a newbie to this forum and CivFanatics in general, though, so please let me know if I don't "get it".

PS. See, what a newb I am? I even signed up in the wrong thread. *Sigh*

I decided to "try" to play this as if I hadn't seen the map before.

We are religious and expansionist - cheap temples, scouts for fast exploration, and short revolutions. We get Pottery and Ceremonial Burial as starting techs, we have raging barbs and a pangeia. We might pop some techs from goodie huts, we'll certainly meet all our rivals early for trading opportunities.

Our UU is a knight on steroids, so our strategy should be to get horses hooked up, build lots of horsemen ready to upgrade, beeline to Chivalry, save some cash for upgrades and then take over the world. A prefer to fight in Monarchy - saves all that nastiness with smoke pouring out of cities - so I propose we first get the Wheel to find the horses, then take advantage of our ceremonial burial starter and move up the Mysticism/ Polytheism route, trading for everything else.

OK, here we go.

SG23 timeline 4000 BC to 3050 BC.

T1 4000 BC. 10 gold.

Check F10/space race. We are up against:

Egypt - ind/rel
Rome - com/mil
India - com/rel
Persia - ind/sci
Zulus - exp/mil
France - com/ind
Carthage - com/ind
Ottomans - sci/ind
Spain - com/rel

No Japanese with wheels, so I think wheel is still the right first project.

We have a scout a worker and a settler.
We need food - more than 2 fpt, so check out the river first.
Scout East. Sees wool and another mountain range.
Scout South. Sees the start of some flood plains.
Settler SE. We get the wool and the flood plains in range and keep the goat hill in the radius as well. Two flood plains plus wool gives us 5 fpt, and we should have enough shields around to get a 4-turn settler farm going.

Worker E, heading for the wool.

T2 3950 BC. 10 gold

Settler builds Makkah, starts Scout (4 turns)
Set research to Wheel, ETA 22 turns with Slider at 0.10.0. Break-even gpt.
Worker SE to wool
Scout SE, E to mountain. Sees spices in the next valley.

T3 3900 BC. 10 gold. Slider 0.10.0. Wheel 21 turns
Scout S, SE. Sees olives, gold, river.

T4 3850 BC. 10 gold. Slider 0.10.0. Wheel 20 turns

Scout SE, SE to hill. Sees flood plains and desert
I'm using alternate flat ground and hills/mountains where possible to get scouting distance and visibility.

T5 3800 BC. 10 gold. Slider 0.10.0. Wheel 19 turns

Scout E, E across river.

IBT. Makkah completes Scout 2, starts Scout.

T6 3750 BC. 10 gold. Slider 0.10.0. Wheel 18 turns

Scout 1 N, E. Sees Orange border. No contact.
Scout 2 W, W. Sees olives.

IBT Worker finishes irrigation.

T7 3700 BC. 10 gold. Slider 0.10.0. Wheel 17 turns

Worker moves SW towards flood plain.
[Sorry, this was a bad move in retrospect. As a roaded wool plain gets no extra gpt in despotism I decided to move straight to the flood plain, and road the wool later. But if I'd done the sums I would have realised I had time to build the road - and get the lux advantage - and still get the flood plain irrigated in time for the city growth].

Scout 1 E to mountain, closer to Orange border, still no contact.
Scout 2 W, W. Sees wool

T8 3650 BC. 10 gold. Slider 0.10.0. Wheel 16 turns

Scout 1 SE. Still no contact!
Scout 2 W, W. Sees more wool.
Worker S to flood plain.

T9 3600 BC. 10 gold. Slider 0.10.0. Wheel 15 turns

Worker starts irrigation on flood plain
Scout 1 SE. FInds Sogut. Contact with Ottomans
Scout 2 W. Finds Carthage.

Ottoman is polite, has 10 gold, has Bronze working and Masonry.
Needs Pottery but not CB. No deals. Sogut is built on incense.

Carthage is polite, has 10 gold, has Masonry and Alphabet.
Needs CB but not Pottery.
Offers Masonry for CB + 3 gold. OK - it's cheap and we might not get another chance.

Makkah is about to grow to pop 2. No problem as we get 2 contnt citizens at Monarch level.

IBT. Ottoman complains about our contact scout.
Makkah completes Scout 3 and grows to pop 2. Starts Warrior (ETA 3 turns)

T10. 3550 BC. 7 gold. Slider 0.10.0. Wheel 11 turns

Scout 1 E. Sees some coastline.
Scout 2 SW, S. Sees more wool.
Scout 3 N, NW. Sees goats in desert.

T11. 3500 BC. 7 gold. Slider 0.10.0. Wheel 10 turns

Scout 1 NE.
Scout 2 SW, S. Sees more goats, olives.
Scout 3 N. Sees goats olives, gold.

IBT. Makkah borders expand.

T12. 3450 BC. 7 gold. Slider 0.10.0. Wheel 9 turns

Scout 1 N in mountains on east coast, sees oysters.
Scout 2 SW, SW.
Scout 3 N, N across desert.

IBT. Makkah completes Warrior 1, starts Granary (ETA 12 turns).
Worker completes irrigation on flood plain.

T13. 3400 BC. 7 gold. Slider 0.10.0. Wheel 8 turns

Warrior 1 fortifies in Makkah. Needed as MP for next pop growth.
Worker 1 starts road on flood plain.
Scout 1 N in hills, sees spices.
Scout 2 S, SW
Scout 3 N, N, Sees desert, lake, river and jungle.

Our extra unit is costing us -1 gpt. We can afford it, and we have nothing else to spend it on, so stick with 0.10.0.

T14. 3300 BC. 6 gold. Slider 0.10.0. Wheel 7 turns

Scout 1 N in hills.
Scout 2 SW, SW
Scout 3 N, N.

T15. 3300 BC. 5 gold. Slider 0.10.0. Wheel 6 turns

Scout 1 NW, N to spices.
Scout 2 SE on hill.
Scout 3 N, W. Sees blue border. Contact with Persia.

Persia is cautious. Has 0 gold, and Alphabet, needs nothing we have.

IBT. Worker finishes road.

T16. 3250 BC. 4 gold. Slider 0.10.0. Wheel 5 turns

Scout 1 E, N on east coast.
Scout 2 W, W. Sees Egyptians.
Scout 3 W, W onto hills.
MM Makkah to complete pop point in one turn instead of two, using flood plain.

Egypt is polite, has 10 gold, needs Pottery, has nothing else to offer. Has furs hooked up.


IBT. Makkah grows to pop 3.

T17. 3200 BC. 3 gold. Slider 0.10.0. Wheel 3 turns

Scout 1 W to hill.
Scout 2 W, W. Sees south coast?
Scout 3 W. sees silks.

Ottoman now offers Warrior code or Bronze working plus cash for Pottery.
We sell Pottery for Bronze woking plus 9 gold.

T18. 3150 BC. 11 gold. Slider 0.10.0. Wheel 2 turns

Scout 1 N, N along east coast.
Scout 2 NW, NW. Sees gems and mountains, east coast?
Scout 3 NW, NW. Sees light blue border.

T19. 3100 BC. 10 gold. Slider 1.9.0. Wheel 1 turn

Scout 1 N, N
Scout 2 W to mountains confirms west coast.
Scout 3 SW, W to investigate light blue border. Contacts Spain.

Spain is cautious, has 22 gold, Alphabet and Warrior code. Needs nothing we have.

IBT. Complete Wheel. Start Mysticism.
Zulu scout shows up near Scout 3.

T20. 3050 BC.

We can see horses on the other side of the eastern mountain range, towards Ottomans. There are also two sources further away in the north and west.

Scout 1 NE, N in east coast desert.
Scout 2 N on mountains on west coast.
Scout 3 N on mouontains

Zulu polite, has 3 gold plus Warrior code and Alphabet.
Carthage offers the best deal for Wheel - Warrior code plus Alphabet plus 42 gold. That's a deal.

Here ends the first chapter in the glorious saga of the great Arab nation.

The bad news:
We have the lowest score and weakest army of the known civs. We don't know much about our local territory, so we need to do some local exploration to find the best city sites. We haven't found a single goodie hut yet.

The good news:
We have pretty well cleaned out all treasuries but the Spanish and we have jumped ahead of most known civs in technology, with all the first level techs in our kit bag. We have a fast settler farm on the way to completion, and our explorers have spanned the continent to the east and west. We have met all out rivals except Rome, India and France. We haven't met any raging barbs yet.

Here's the minimap:



And here's the detail we know of around our Bedouin encampment at Makkah:



And this is the link to SG23C_BC3050.SAV, my save file at end of turn, 3050 BC

Over to you.

AlanH - just played
MacBaldrick - UP NOW
Karasu - Ondeck
smackster - on the bench
Alweth - Welcome to our game and to CFC!

Remember
24Hr to claim "Got It". 48Hr total to post the game but I'll look the other way until 72Hr. If you can't play, post a skip out of kindness.

Great Job AlanH! Looking good.

The wheel was a fine idea and it looked like it payed good dividends.

Granary is a good idea. I think we can get a settler every four turns from this position once we have four irrigated plains. We should have at least one of the plains mined for MM purposes but that should be last on the improvement list.

About the warrior in town: Don't be afraid to raise the luxury tax. We're at min science now. (I assume you turned the slider down on Mystism, maybe you didn't) The Luxury slider is a great value, paying 1gpt for a happy citizen that gives you 3fpt +2gpt. Use the warrior to make a loop around the capital so we have a better idea where to settle next. (If you're wary of barbs you can wait until the granary is done but then you only have 4-6 turns to scout before your settler pops out. Next player should raise lux and move the warrior around a bit. We have the wheel, knowing where our closest horses are should be a priority.

Alweth@ Welcome to CFC and to our little game. When you said you posted to the wrong thread I assumed you meant "instead of the signup thread". I put you in this game but if you really want to be in then let me know. Are you familiar with SGs and how they work? If anyone needs more clarification please post or PM me.

@ControlFreak. Thanks for your positive and helpful feedback. Very welcome after half a night's sleep.

My last turn completed the Wheel, and because I wanted to do that deal I didn't want to turn down science during my stint. And because of my bad worker move at T7 I therefore needed the warrior in town for my last 5 turns. I could have moved him out of town on my last turn, as I was able to reduce the science one point and still complete. We grow again in two turns so we'll need some lux then anway, and we do need to get the wool road in asap.

In my saved game I left the slider at max, and left a decision to be made whether to turn it down. I think I'd turn it down to 10%, and up the lux tax and get the warrior out to explore now, as you recommend. I guess I should have saved the game in my recommended state - it was late/early - sorry!

We probably already have most of the info we need about the locale to place our next town - it has to be towards the horses, and it looks like the river near them is favorite, with the incense in range, if Suleyman doesn't get there first. So we *could* wait five until the granary is built before we move the warrior and then head for the mountains to the east to scout that area further.

I don't usually worry about barbs too much, but for the next five turns we don't want the granary work to be pillaged. After that we could build another warrior before we start a settler, or take a small risk of losing a pop point or some gold. I haven't done the sums yet on when the first settler should pop.

Good luck, MacBaldrick, and welcome aboard, Alweth

Very good start, AlanH.
In particular, I think going for The Wheel right from the start was a very good move.

I agree on a relatively close city placement.
We may want to discuss the feasibility of a 3 or 4-tiles distance RCP around Makkah.

I also think that Monarchy is a good government choice if we play aggressive enough and manage to get it very early (even though it is often argued that Republic is a better government in most cases).

It would be nice to set up a small (10-20) Swordsmen army for an early war on Persia or the Ottomans.
In this sense, founding immediately a city next to the horses may not be top priority -we will expand there anyway: it may be better to concentrate on building a reasonably productive core of four-five cities (open to debate, of course).

Good start, I already have a feeling that Arabia will dominate the world in this game. I agree with Karusu that we don't need to settle next to the horses quite yet, I suggest we settle in the next best growth area which may be the Olives to the NW on this map. I'm judging this from looking at your map, not the game so I might not have the location right.

Even when waring if I have enough luxuries hooked up then I switch to Republic (or if I have a wonder like HG). I agree that we should go to Monarchy first and then do the Republic switch when the happiness looks fine.

Personally I would not move that warrior more than a square or two from home, there are bound to be some barbs coming our way and its not worth the risk.

Don't forget that you have 1 turn anarchy as a Religious civ. You can switch at will with very little penalty. When at peace, Republic or Democracy. When at war, stay as long as you can in the high cash/low corruption government until happiness forces you to switch. If your wars are short, you never need to switch. If they are long, switching to Monarchy or Communism erases the war weariness.

Agreed that we can switch, personally I hardly ever do that, I guess I would in a really bad long war, but I feel that I would prefer to switch up the happiness slider than change to monarchy with one turn of Anarchy. If you add up the loss of the one turn and what you lose in Monarchy I think one or two clicks on happiness slider might be enough to keep it ok in Republic.

This is great. I'm looking forward to seeing how this game progresses.

Some questions:

For your final save, do you save at the end of your last turn, or the beginning of the next turn?

Is there a way to generate some of the timeline automatically, or do you have to record all of it yourself?

Also, I can't download the Full Game of the Month Setup, since they seem to have taken it offline currently. If I can't get it I'll have to skip my turn, which would be very disappointing.

Originally posted by Karasu
Very good start, AlanH.
In particular, I think going for The Wheel right from the start was a very good move.

Click to expand...

Thaks, Karasu. Luck played a part, as the AI could have popped it from a goodie hut. Fortunately there's only one other expansionist - the Zulus. Check out the PTW timeline for an alternative approach that didn't look too clever to me, until they popped *two* techs from goodie huts, lucky B___s.

you've made some interesting points. In the hope of getting some educational debate going, here are my comments ...

I agree on a relatively close city placement.
We may want to discuss the feasibility of a 3 or 4-tiles distance RCP around Makkah.

Click to expand...

I'm still in two minds about RCP. It looks good on paper, and I see great reports of its effectiveness, but (a) it flies on the face of "normal" placements wrt resources and (b) it locks you into a specific Palace/Forbidden Palace placement strategy.

To explain point (b) further: RCP round your Palace assumes your Forbidden Palace is going to be distant, because if you build a local FP and then move or jump the Palace your carefully constructed RCP loses its effectiveness. RCP round your expected FP site *should* cover that, but Qitai had shown that rank corruption round the FP is not affected by distance from the FP, but rather by distance from the now-distant Palace. So RCP has to be on the Palace site, and you are tying yourself down to a Palace/Forbidden Palace strategy that could fall apart in the face of reality. It may be argued that this doesn't apply until the FP gets built. But that should be asap after we get to the (eight?) cities required, in order to get a second core going fast. Before that time the rank corruption effects are low anyway because there aren't many cities and the higher rank outer ones are generally small. I haven't done the sums on this, but these are my gut feelings about RCP. I'd love to see them debated, and this seems a good time to do it.

I also think that Monarchy is a good government choice if we play aggressive enough and manage to get it very early (even though it is often argued that Republic is a better government in most cases).

Click to expand...

I've been bitten twice trying to fight in Republic and had to flip to Monarchy to keep the cities under control, but I may just be bad at minimizing war duration, and keeping troops alive and out of enemy territory, the three tricks for minimum war weariness in Republic/Democracy. Our fast and powerful UU ought to make all three easier to achieve, of course.

It would be nice to set up a small (10-20) Swordsmen army for an early war on Persia or the Ottomans.
In this sense, founding immediately a city next to the horses may not be top priority -we will expand there anyway: it may be better to concentrate on building a reasonably productive core of four-five cities (open to debate, of course).

Click to expand...

That's the other way to get to the horses - let Suleyman or Xerxes settle them for us. Nice idea, so long as they do a good job of placing the city. Until Ansars arrive swords are stronger than horses. It kills two birds with one stone - weakens a neighbour and wins the horses. It does assume that iron is easier to reach than horses, of course, as we need iron for the swords. Without prior knowledge there's no guarantee of that and we have to wait a while to find out. It also needs a fair bit of "long-term" planning, so everyone needs to buy into it to keep a consistent build program going through several player cycles. We need:

1. Iron working to find the iron - preferably via trade or goodie hut, as the AI usually researches it early so we probably wouldn't be able to sell it but will almost certainly be able to buy it with Mysticism and cash. This could take up to forty turns if we have to wait for Mysticism to trade for it.

2. One or more productive core barracks cities not connected to the iron to produce a stack of vet warriors, plus one city to snag the iron tile into our territory. The easiest way to leave it unconnected is to avoid putting it on an intercity trunk route and road it when we need it. Make the tile it's on a spur road that could be added or removed without disrupting the city trade network. The problem with this is we may road it without knowing during the 40 turns when we don't know where it is.

3. Gold for tech trading and for the warrior-sword upgrade - is that 20 gold per unit? We need to make maximum use of roaded river tiles to keep the cash rolling in.

4. Workers to build the road network to get the forces to our target fast, and to hook the iron up to the trade network when we are ready to upgrade the warriors. That should happen soon, because once we have the granary, we can build a few workers as the settler farm gets up to speed, as we *must* avoid it going over size 6 to prevent the granary emptying.

For anyone unfamiliar with settler farming, we are already at five food per turn in Makkah, and so when our granary is built in five turns we shall expand every two turns, and we are nearly at pop 4 now. Makkah won't stop at 6 because it's on a river. But until we improve some plains and/or the goats we won't produce the 30 shields we need for a settler every four turns to keep the population under 7. However, while we have insufficient shields we can produce workers to keep the population under control. They only need 4 or 5 shields per turn. Most of us can slip up on this sort micromanagement occasionally, so in an emergency we should switch citizens from flood plains to plains tiles to slow down food production and avoid pop 7, but this is not best use of Makkah's good food resources.

Your save should be the last of your turns after you moved all the units. That means, make sure your preferences have "Wait at end of turn" selected. Note that it's bad form to do diplomacy on the last turn. It's very bad form to have units on goto. Make sure any goto moves you make end before your turn does. No automating workers either.

You should download GOTM21 full install and GOTM23 addon. Install them in order and you should be ok. Once installed, you will need to check that the installer has created files] for spain.flc, spain1.flc ... spain7.flc. Eight spain files total in the Art/Flics/ directory.

Also note that the resource file in the art directory will now only work for GOTM. You will need to swap the resource.pcx files manually if you are playing other games as well.

Post or PM if you need further help.

Originally posted by ControlFreak
Don't forget that you have 1 turn anarchy as a Religious civ. You can switch at will with very little penalty. When at peace, Republic or Democracy. When at war, stay as long as you can in the high cash/low corruption government until happiness forces you to switch. If your wars are short, you never need to switch. If they are long, switching to Monarchy or Communism erases the war weariness.

Click to expand...

Quite right. Once we have access to both we can swap, and we should when it's appropriate, give our short revolution time. If we want to move out of Despotism fast for productivity then Monarchy is probably going to happen sooner than Republic. Monarchy is quicker to research than Republic, and is on a path with more trading potential and with fewer prerequisites. It will also fund a decent army better than Republic until we get some markets/banks built. We shall need to sustain our cash to upgrade all those horses and/or warriors.