SGOTM 06 - Geezers

AlanH

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Welcome to your C_IV Warlords SGOTM 6 Team Thread. Please use it for all internal team communication, turn logs and discussions. Subscribe to it to receive notifications, and do not visit the other team threads for this game until you have finished. Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest.

The Game

Gyathaar is playing this one close to his chest. Here's all the intelligence I've been able to wring out of him:

  • Prince difficulty
  • Epic speed
  • You play as the Charismatic, Protective Churchill of the English Empire.
  • You start with Fishing and Mining.
  • Your unique unit is the Redcoat, replacing the Rifleman.
  • Your Unique building is the Stock Exchange, replacing the Bank.
  • The map is a highly modified Cylindrical Big And Small map, using the BtS map script. It is Standard, Temperate, Medium sea level.
  • Always war. All VCs are enabled. I think the barbs are at default setting.
Here's the start - click the picture for one a bit bigger.


Versions
This game will be played in Warlords Version 2.13, on Windows only, with the DLLs as installed with BtS.

It will be played using the current version of the HoF Mod. This is version 2.13.002 for Windows. You will need to ensure that you can run the Asset Checker v2 before you attempt to load this game. Typlically, players who have upgraded to Beyond the Sword will have the right assets. Alternatively, you should be able to make your installation compliant by installing the new .DLLs released for WOTM 15. If you have a Steam installation then you will need to look at this post by ArcadicGamer for inspiration.

If later versions of Warlords or the HoF Mod are released they cannot be used for this game, and you will need to maintain a copy of your installed software at these versions to complete the game.

Timetable
The game will start on December 14th. I recommend you plan for a 4 month deadline for completion.

You will be able to download your start save from the SGOTM Progress and Results Page on December 14th, at midnight local server time.

Notes
  • Please visit the Civ4 SGOTM reference thread to check out the rules and procedures to ensure that you are adequately prepared for this game.
  • Warlords v.2.13 is supported for this SGOTM. No other versions can be used, and you will have to stick with the same version throughout the game.
  • Teams will compete for up to four awards - the Gold, Silver and Bronze Laurels for the fastest finishes, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher. The number of awards may be reduced, depending on the number of teams who sign up.
  • Awards will be given to teams who win in the least turns.
  • All saved game files uploaded to the server are parsed through software that extracts and archives data about your save, including reload count for each turn set.

Enjoy your mystery tour of the World of Warlords.
 
Checking in. :)
 
Turn 1a: 4000BC - 3580 BC - Settle London & meet Mansa & Hannibal
Turn 1b: 3580 BC - 3100 BC - Meet Alex
Turn 2: 3100 BC - 2500 BC - Find horses
Turn 3: 2500 BC - 2170 BC - Discover copper to SW of London.
Turn 4: 2140 BC - 1570 BC - General exploration and build of first settler.
Turn 5a: 1570 BC - 1390 BC - Alex settles nearby as do the barbs.
Turn 5b: 1390 BC - 1030 BC - Discover iron to S of London.
Turn 6: 1030 BC - 850 BC - Preparing for horse city, Alex scouting/pillaging group.
Turn 7a: 850 BC - 790 BC - Mansa settler appears.
Turn 7b: 790 BC - 745 BC - Mansa settles near horses.
Turn 8: 745 BC - 550 BC - Found Nottingham and scout the enemy.
Turn 9: 550 BC - 385 BC - Corinth razed and sighting of Hannibal's lands.
Turn 10: 385 BC - 235 BC - Demise of Mansa skirmishers and further scouting.
Turn 11: 235 BC - 85 BC - Take Kumbi Saleh, Hannibal gets Numidians.
Turn 12: 85 BC - 50 AD - Amphibious attack by Alex.
Turn 13: 50 AD - 185 AD - Iron city founded.
Turn 14: 185 AD - 350 AD - Iron city defends valiantly against greek HAs.
Turn 15: 350 AD - 500 AD - Knossos razed.
Turn 16: 500 AD - 650 AD - Lots of defence, lots of AI casualties.
Turn 17a: 650 AD - 740 AD - Bits and pieces.
Turn 17b: 740 AD - 815 AD - Defence of Iron city and bombardment of Thebes.
Turn 18: 815 AD - 950 AD - Demise of Thebes.
Turn 19: 950 AD - 1055 AD - Discover location of Athens.
Turn 20: 1055 AD - 1160 AD - Capture Athens & Pharsalos
 
Turn 21: 1160 AD - 1208 AD - Beat off multiple attacks.
Turn 22a: 1208 AD - 1238 AD - Continue defending.
Turn 22b: 1238 AD - 1274 AD - Take stack into Hanny's lands.
Turn 23a: 1274 AD - 1304 AD - Hadrumetum razed.
Turn 23b: 1304 AD - 1334 AD - Take Hippo & Kerkouane.
Turn 24: 1334 AD - 1394 AD - Take Carthage, spill the blood of many of our units.
Turn 25a: 1394 AD - 1418 AD - General fighting.
Turn 25b: 1418 AD - 1466 AD - Take Djenne
Turn 26: 1466 AD - 1520 AD - Raze Eritrea, Discover Utica.
Turn 27: 1520 AD - 1550 AD - Take Utica.
Turn 28: 1550 AD - 1574 AD - Raze Gao
Turn 29: 1574 AD - 1610 AD - Take Timbuktu
Turn 30: 1610 AD - 1643 AD - Demise of Mansa.
Turn 31: 1643 AD - 1673 AD - Zhou, Cherokee, and Khoisan all razed.
Turn 32: 1673 AD - 1700 AD - Hannibal comes to a sticky end.
Turn 33: 1700 AD - 1706 AD - Sally puts a dampener on proceedings.
 
Hi guys. On to a new one. :)

Did anybody check the AW SGs that have been played ? If not I will post some links to some of them. Obviously there is pretty useful stuff in them.

What about practice games ? I know eric played some. What about the others ? I also played 2 practice games and I will start another one today.

Another very useful thread is here. It is not concerning AW, but it is for a general approach to games. I implemented some of the advice in my gameplay for GOTM25 and found it very easy.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=248435
 
I have shown up and found my way here. I think practice is essential for success here.

We need to do something DIFFERENT from our previous games (i.e. win).

There must be a trick here somewhere. It is Prince level with Gold in the capital zone. All War can't be the only negative. Maybe we are on a tiny island or something.
 
I do not think there is a trick. AW Monarch can be pretty hard. Obviously quite discouraging for playing AW in a SGOTM the first time. AW anyway in Civ 4 is very different to Civ 3 for example. Even AW Prince on a difficult map can be quite tricky.;)

I will check in BTS what "cylindrical big and small" means. I have not played something like this before IIRC.
 
Good luck Geezers. I wanted to join this game since I will be getting a newer computer. But my company reassigned me to a office that require a longer commute. So, sadly not enough time to commit to play a SGOTM game. Good luck and kick butt while having fun.

Hi Htadus. Good to hear from you again. It would have been nice to have you with us.
 
I have shown up and found my way here. I think practice is essential for success here.

We need to do something DIFFERENT from our previous games (i.e. win).

There must be a trick here somewhere. It is Prince level with Gold in the capital zone. All War can't be the only negative. Maybe we are on a tiny island or something.

We have to do all the teching ourselves, no tech trading so once the AI get Alpha they get a real advantage. It also means no foreign trade routes, so there's no :commerce: from trade. In the practice game we were getting a lot of :commerce: from foreign trade.

Discussion topics:

Scouting - I think the scout should circle the area clockwise, there is jungle S & E of our starting location so are second city is likely to be N, W or NW of the current location.

Settler: Either settle in place or move settler to NW gold hill to scout. The current site is good but a little more food would be helpful. It might be useful to know if there is a food supply to NW for working that other gold.

Early Tactics: If we have neighbours, I'm expecting leaders like Mansa and Shaka with early UU. I've tried a game with an early Great Wall and leaving the capital empty. This generates an early engineer (for GL or Pyr) and an early general. With barracks we can have drill 3 archers or CR2 axes very quickly.

Early tech: Ag, Ah, Wheel, Pott, BW, Masonry - we need the cottages out early otherwise we can fall behind quickly after the Ai gets Alpha. More emphasis on early REX and economy this game will help us.

Builds: Warrior, Warrior, Worker, Warrior, Worker, Settler. We will be able to grow to size 7 before Calendar just on what we can see now.
 
Scouting : I guess you mean our warrior being our scouter as we do not have a real scout. In the S you can see the river ending, so obviously there is coast. I would move the warrior 1E on the gold hill. South is just jungle. The settler I would move 1 NW if the warrior does not reveal anything really convincing.

I am not that sure on the build order. I would make this a bit dependable on our settling. The same is valid for the tech path.

IMO we have to get the cows and the gold online asap, so most likely I would build a worker first. The AI does not have any additional units on prince IIRC, so we do not need to be afraid of some archers appearing to take us out. Furthermore I do not think that we will have any too close neighbours.

Tech order : I would have a look at hunting -> ah. We cannot see any corn or wheat now. Hunting leads to ah and archery. If we have a close neighbour we can research archery pretty quickly to get some decent defenders. Still this depends on how our surroundings look like.

One more thing we should consider is founding religions as this will give us happyness. We do not have to worry about relations, so adopting a religion early is good.

In my test games I was able to get either buddhism or hinduism and build stonehenge and pyramids. These two wonders would be nice to have. Prophets are very nice to have for the gold and production (if settled).

If we go more of "The-Hawk"-way and steamroll the AI this might not be that important, though.;)
 
I generated a game last night and then edited the WB file to mostly resemble the start screen. Just haven't worked out how to get 2f1h on the hill S of the lake. :confused: The game is here.

Disclaimer: I don't know whether we are isolated or which AI are in the game. After an unfortunate experience in a test game with no metal :eek: I did check that there is some metal somewhere around.

As far as the actual game is concerned I did note the comment of "highly modified Cylindrical Big And Small map" in the description. The " plan for four months" is also interesting. It could just mean that Alan's decided that four months should be long enough for everyone to finish or more likely that Alan & Gyathaar expect the game to take a while. Perhaps we'll need Astro to get to some of the AI or alternatively that we can use galleys but we'll have to keep building cities and waiting for the borders to pop.

It's possible that the reason for the gold is to speed our research in which case we may well need to get Astro. Whilst experimenting with AW I did notice that the AI has a nasty habit of spamming my land with units. In the end I found that early archery was a good way of getting rid of them. However I suspect that we will have at most one AI near us. Quite possibly none to nerf early rushes.

I would favour sending the warrior 1E and the settler 1NW.

EDIT: I found a small glitch with the original save so I've replaced it.
 
That was my plan, too. :crazyeye: Corrected that in my post.
I see no point in going 1 E with the warrior. It only exposes 2 tiles if there is jungle there which is very likely. Moving 1 SE or better 1 SW will expose more tiles.

What is the point of moving the settler 1 NW are you thinking of settling there or is it just to expose more tiles?
 
I generated a game last night and then edited the WB file to mostly resemble the start screen.

I've been playing GOTM25 and conspicuously not practising the right kind of game. I'll have a go with this one - tonight if I can get the computer-time that isn't always possible, especially in the run-up to xmas.

Talking of playing time, what are we thinking of as our actual start schedule?
We'll obviously not be diving in as soon as the save's available. Spend a while discussing the early game. Someone presumably will play a turn or three to get us settled. I'm guessing we'll be seriously under way just in the middle of the holiday period. And that's both good and bad for getting everyone together. :D:rolleyes:
 
I see no point in going 1 E with the warrior. It only exposes 2 tiles if there is jungle there which is very likely. Moving 1 SE or better 1 SW will expose more tiles.

What is the point of moving the settler 1 NW are you thinking of settling there or is it just to expose more tiles?

Warrior 1E is on a hill, so should reveal some tiles. 1SW is just coast. 1SE gets too far away from the settler. Usually in SGOTMs it is enough to move the settler just a bit if at all.

The settler is just for revealing more tiles, although I would be fine settling in place.
 
@Aged One - I'm ready to strart any time but I hope we start until we are ready.

@markh - I can't tell for sure if 2 S is coast or not but if it is coast that's a good reason to check it out. We have fishing and if there is seafood there then I would consider moving the settler to the mouth of the river. Moving the warrior 1 SW would expose all of the coast between the two rivers, we could have a capital with the gold, bananas and dye as well as seafood 1S of the warrior with a harbour. If we do have to get Astronomy to win this game a capital with a harbour would be very heful. It would also leave room for a second city to have the cows and gold.

The current site is excellent, it has lots of production and river tiles but it's a little short on food. If we settle in place I would farm the banana's, pasture the cows and then mine the gold. If we pasture the cows and then mine the gold we will only have +1 :food: and our capital will not grow. Farming the banana's and working the cows will give +5 :food:, so we can grow to a size 3 city 5 times faster. That will save us a ton of turns in our development. We need food. I would not look E for food, I would look S & W.
I would also cottage the dye for the fourth tile to be worked by London.
 
I would move the warrior 1SW. Then stopping to assess whether or not we want to move the settler at all, either to settle somewhere S, or to explore to the N or W.
 
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