RBP11b - We, the People - Emperor Team

RBP11b: We, the People - Emperor game

ROSTER for easy reference:
Arathorn
Renata
Mazarin
Stuck_as_a_Mac
TriviAl
Snaproll

Game Concept: Democracy replaces Despotism as the starting government for all civilizations.

Rules Changes:
DEMOCRACY government requires no tech and is the starting government type.
REPUBLIC tech cost is halved to 14.
PRINTING PRESS and DEMOCRACY tech costs are reduced from 36 and 68 respectively to 20 each.

The tech cost reductions are there to reduce the impact of the AI researching the useless technologies. Despotism is unchanged; both it and Democracy are available from game start.

Civ: America (or up for discussion)
Difficulty: Emperor
Map: Standard, 40% land, continents
Terrain: Standard
Opponents: Random
Barbarians: Restless
Victory: Any

I've started the thread and will make the save file (will ensure in the editor that it's a decent map). Arathorn, I'd like you to be in charge of keeping things moving and such. Play can be under your usual 24-to-claim/72-to-play rules.

Do the players of this game want to use America for the civ to match the Deity team, or do you want to try it with a different civ, perhaps one not Industrious?

I'll do a map and post the 4000 BC save once we see any discussion or preferences on the civ.

America sounds good to me. I like the cut of their traits... and havn't used them for a while, althogh certainly open to change if anyone has strong feelings about not using them. Rest of it looks fine.

As for playing, at the moment I don't have net access at the weekend, but if I pick a game up on Friday I can play it and post on a Monday...

I'm fine with America...but I'll go with what everyone else wants.
Stupid question--is this PTW, or Vanilla?

I'm fine with America as well

PTW, 1.21f is standard unless announced otherwise. America is fine...I've not done a UU-less game in a while.

And, sure, I can be responsible for keeping the game moving. 24/48 or 24/72 is fine. We'll make it work.

Let's just go with the order that T-hawk listed us in (barring a request otherwise). So I'll go first and get us started (once the 4000 BC save is posted) and then Renata. I'll play 20, Renata 15, then 10 per player. Especially with 6 of us, we want to keep the turns short and try to keep it moving.

One word of "warning", though...I'm moving in a week and will be out of commission for a while around then. Shouldn't be a biggie, though.

Arathorn

PTW 1.21 is fine with me as well.

If things start very quickly then you may want to move me further down the roster, as I lack internet access over the weekend.

Sounds ok.

Renata

Here's your 4000 BC save. Enjoy!

I generated the map in the editor and chose which starting position to assign to the player; other than that the map is unaltered.

Here also is the .BIX scenario file with the rules edits applied, for anyone that's curious.

Arathorn, that'd make you up now, if you aren't prohibitively busy today and tomorrow.

is there room for one more? if so, im interested

Stuck_As_a_Mac, you can have my spot; I'll lurk, but I think this game is probably above my skill level.

Thanks ChrTh. So that puts me at the bottom of this roster.

I scouted around with both the scout and the worker. There are good lands around and some justification for moving in a few different directions, but I like the start position for a couple reasons and just found there, in 4000 BC. Washington begins a scout. We also start researching Ceremonial Burial @ max sustainable, which is 60% because of unit costs, but that's still a ton of commerce.

3950 -- Our first goodie hut, in what will become a habit, gives us a conscript warrior. Moves science down to 40%. Worker begins irrigation, because we need people and we need them yesterday.

3850 -- Road completes. Democracy bonus and industrious means one turn to road flatland. Means we can go back to 60% science.

3800 -- Pop a hut with our worker, because he's not busy and I've had better luck using units to pop huts than culture expansions. Since we're expansionist, there are no worries. And, we get a settler! Scout to north pops another hut, this one with a conscript warrior inside. Bleeding cash now.

(I) Scout completes and granary begins.

(6) 3700 -- New York founded in tundra to the south. Begins a scout. Contact English, who have two techs we don't but won't trade intelligently for nothing. They also got either a settler or an advanced tribe, as they have two cities, too.

(7) 3650 -- Another warrior wishes to be on the American payroll. They're starting to get expensive.

Exploration years!

(11) 3450 -- England has a worker for sale, along with Bronze Working, Alphabet, and Ceremonial Burial (lucky with huts or did they meet someone?). Masonry from us gets the worker, all 10 gold, and the rest of Ceremonial Burial. We start Warrior Code (cheapest tech, so we won't "waste" a hut) at max sustainable.

(12) 3400 -- Something useful from a hut, as the Apaches teach us Mysticism.

(14) 3300 -- Contact Aztecs. Mysticism from them gets us Bronze Working, Warrior Code, and 11 gold. 40-turn run started on Polytheism, as buying/brokering gains importance.

(18) 3100 -- Pop two more huts -- for yet another warrior and Alphabet, bringing us up to full tech parity, with essentially all the cash on the continent.

Save is at http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/rbp11b-3000bc.zip

I, foolishly, cash-rushed nothing. We might want to encourage New York's granary that way. A chop will complete soon to help with that (maybe short-rush barracks ASAP and then switch back to granary). No worries either way, though.

Dot-map suggestion to follow,
Arathorn

Follow the rainbow. Red first, then orange, yellow, green, blue, violet (sorry, no indigo). Gray dots are later hopes/reaches/villages. We might well get much further NE than this indicates.

Keep exploring.

SaaM, I'm putting you into the rotation after Mazarin, so that TriviAL will not delay us at all.

Arathorn -- just played
Renata -- UP NOW
Mazarin -- on deck
SaaM -- in the hole
TriviAL
Snaproll (long time, no see! Been a while since RBD23, no? )

Have fun and expect no :whip: from me!

Arathorn

Snaproll (long time, no see! Been a while since RBD23, no? )

Click to expand...

Thanks Arathorn, I'm actually a bit surprised you remember! I took a long break due to a number of factors, but I'm hopefully going to start being much more involved.

Several similarities between the first turns of this game and the Deity one. We're also researching Polytheism already, after getting Mysticism from a hut, and traded it for a worker.

This combination of the two fastest-starting civ traits, plus the Democracy government, really kicks the game into overdrive really soon. And yeah, early cash rushing can be a great boon, that the AI won't leverage well at all.

BTW, I edited your roster into the first post of this thread for easy reference.

This is playing out already to be pretty interesting...

I think it's been 24 hours

You know, I could have sworn I checked this yesterday and found no additions. Most likely it was just having checked it and seen T-hawk's previous post showing as 'last poster', then checked it again and seen his most recent, and assumed it was the same post.

My apologies. 'Got it' and will play within the next few hours.

(That is if I can ever get this posted! mysql errors for the past half hour .... )

Renata

Pre-turn: Short-rush barracks at New York for 60g? Why not? Chop due next turn. Everything looks good, and I can live with the dotmap.

2950 BC (1) England has the wheel; we're still up alphabet on the Aztecs.

2900 BC (2) Start pulling some explorers back towards the homeland for barb defense - the gray guys gotta be showing up soon.

2850 BC (3) New York granary-settler.

2800 BC (4)

2750 BC (5) Washington settler-archer.

2710 BC (6) Iroquois warrior contacted northeast of Aztec-land. They have three cities, 11g, but lack both alphabet and mysticism. England and Aztecs both have iron-working, and Aztecs still lack alphabet. Trade alphabet plus 50g to Aztecs for iron-working. The only iron in sight is on the east coast east of pink dot. English have plopped down Nottingham on the little lake to the north by the gems -- we really are a bit short of lux, aren't we?

2670 BC (7)

2630 BC (8) Red dot founded (otherwise known as Boston). Because of where the iron is, I think it might be best to skip orange dot in favor of pink dot (after the ivory site). There are barbarians to the southeast.

Variant note: Looks like the AI are in fact using their ability to cash-rush. I just gave the Aztecs 60 gold last turn, and they're now down to 23 without having gained any tech (they're still at parity with us).

2590 BC (9) Barbarians to the west, too. Washington archer-worker. New York settler-worker.

2550 BC (10) Rush rest of worker in New York. Archer kills a barb near the ivory.

2510 BC (11) Washington and New York both worker-settler.

2470 BC (12) Philadelphia founded by ivory. Lux can't be dropped, but it should keep New York happy at size 4 at 20% instead of having to go to 30%.

2430 BC (13) Iroquois have picked up the wheel, as have Aztecs, but Iroquois still lack our other three techs. They give it up plus their 13g for ironworking. There are horses on the river NW of Boston, and more over by 'our' iron. No one else has a fourth city yet. I was thinking if we could get enough gold we could start rushing a few settlers, but I haven't been able to make more than 8gpt yet, and that only temporarily.

2390 BC (14) Archer kills another barb. The camp is just west of Philly.

2350 BC (15) Washington builds settler. Can be changed to military or temple as desired. We're up to 12 gpt, so cash-rushing may once again be an option. England just picked up writing, we're even with Aztecs in tech, and still 2 up on the Iroquois. The power graph shows everybody about equal. I intended to have the current worker head east toward the pink (violet?) dot area, to try to secure that source of iron for us. There's a warrior and worker in the area for escort/roading. We're still ahead of everybody on cities.

I wouldn't mind any constructive criticism if there's anything obvious; sometimes I feel I'm getting a little lazy .

Have fun, Mazarin!

Renata

2350 BC

The map.



Renata

Mazarin -- you're up, dude!
SaaM -- on DECK

Sorry I wasn't quite as up-to-speed on prodding Renata as I should've been. Thanks, Snaproll, for taking care of that. It's gonna be crazy for me the next couple weeks, but then things should settle down.

We're looking fine. Just keep the settlers flowing and don't worry too much about having a city raided by barbs -- but make sure to protect settlers heading out to build new cities!!! And keep the amount of cash we have low by cash-rushing or buying techs as needed.

Arathorn