SGOTM 13 - TNT thread

also i kinda have the feeling, in one of those hills we will find copper. This would open a debate to rather or not to settle ON the corn. (this would also provide a 3 food city center tile.

After all that corn will never be irrigitated...
 
^ I tried settling in place. Good work with the WB save, fiz! :thumbsup: It looks like we have to decide which of three possible sites to settle -- SIP, the corn for plus one food, or the plains hill for +1 hammer. A move to the hill would set us behind by a move and would likely mean only one island city. SIP might allow up to three cities - all to be discussed, debated and decided.

We are going to be up against some of the best players in the game making up the backbone of the other teams and I'm thinking we might want to consider how me might even the playing field. If anyone has ideas that might give us a leg up, that would be excellent.

For example, so far we have players from eastern Europe to the west coast of North America. We might want to agree on a time where once a day (or twice) we all agree to try to be online. That way there would be immediate dialogue and players don't have to continually check the forum or wait for a notification. I haven't seen other teams set this up but when you read their posts, it really helps if there's always someone available.

It would be good to know when a person was playing their turnset and hopefully overlap with one of those meeting times. That way someone would be available to answer questions or help when the game takes a twist - like meeting an AI or anything important not considered in the PPP.

Any great ideas?
 
AlanH would like us to get our name decided ASAP, Tuesday deadline. We haven't heard from all the team members so once we get everyone aboard we can choose. I'm leaning towards the simple TNT. It could stand for The New Team if The Ninja Team isn't your style but everyone knows what TNT is.... :cooool:
 
LowtherCastle is one of those great players who can turn a team into a winner. He has some fine advice from the signup thread:
Some principles for building good teams:
1. Follow the key brainstorming principle: Never criticize anyone's ideas. (Instead study, test, and learn from them.)
2. Have a good leader. (Erkon was the best of the best, so ask him how he did it.)
3. Study the SG2 CFR thread for basic principles on how to play a good opening and then keep the peddle to the metal throughout the game.
4. Try to foresee how the scenario might unfold, by testing MM, playing test games to their conclusion, etc. You're looking for unexpected stuff, like not being able to scrub friendly AIs' fallout.
5. The klarius Principle: No matter what just happened, no matter what you were expecting to happen, start each turnset anew, ready to turn your previous strategy on its head, if necessary.
6. When in doubt, interrupt your turnset immediately and discuss.

Edit: Sorry, AlanH, not trying to go off-topic. Just thought this might be helpful for some new to SGs.
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A warning about thread viewing on the maintenance thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=412588
-keath
 
im here every day betwen 10:30-11:30 Edit: GMT+1

btw, as far as im concerned, the goal for this game is to get a victory for sure. A late date is better then a loss... or?


yeah, Erkon, LowtherCastle great players. And very enjoyable threads. I can encourege you all to read them! (and btw, funny as hell)
 
10:30 am in central Europe would be 1:30 am on the west coast. Hmm.... I wonder if there's a time when everyone would be awake as this is 4:30 am EST and a bit early, just as the 1:30 am PST might be a bit late. Maybe somewhere from 16:30 GMT (8:30 am PST and 11:30 EST).There would be a five hour window we might target within.

@ fizbankovi -- I think we must get a win, and I think we will. We can play it safe to get the win or dare to compete for a place in the trophy room. Our strategic plan will decide - either a safe, gentle ride or a white knuckle conquest charge... :ar15:

One way or another, it's going to be war, baby... :D
 
Well I check in at all hours but if we decide on a time to try to be on at once I'll do my best to do so.

As for an overall strategic plan I don't really have one as a maritime war is something I've never even attempted before.

Finally, as for the Team name I can get behind TNT as a team name, as it can stand for what each person would like.
 
One way or another, it's going to be war, baby...
Good news ;)

maritime war is something I've never even attempted before.
I think I can help, as from a galley-workboats struggles to modern days seaborne tactical nuke -powered attacks - I have done them all.
 
Hi, signing in. Sorry for the delay. Was visiting grandparents over the weekend and they don't have the best internet connection.

1. Timezone is GMT (London) most of the time.
2. TNT sounds great. No problem with the long form - The Ninja Team - either. At have at least one matching avatar.
3. Captain - No, not me, but I'm happy to vote for Keath.
4. Playing Times - Mostly evenings. I can post during the day, but not open the game, since I work on Ubuntu during the day.
5. Why SGOTM - I tend to loose focus/patience and finally interest when I play alone. Usually around industrial era. By discussing the game with the team investing the time in doing more analysis becomes more interesting. And it keeps me focused.
6. Something of both, altough I find balancing war and economy tricky. I'm comfortable at Monarch. I'll try some Emperor games now as preparation
7. Not sure yet.
8. Bjartur is fine.

Looking forward to a great game!
 
jj signing in.

1. GMT +1 (Norway)
2. TNT / The Ninja Team
3. Keath
4. Uncertain / variable
5. I'm an "old" chess player, and I like strategic games. I often play Civ4 with my brother. When we do, we usually have to make hour-long pauses from time to time to discuss our next set of moves. I figure that makes us some kind of mini-SGOTM team.
6. I can plan 50+ turns on a piece of paper (and in fact often do, especially at the start of a game). I consider myself more or less an expert in mm, fast research and diplomacy. My experience with warfare is usually limited to small wars (usually with better units since I'm "always" have the tech lead). I usually play Deity, and lately (in xOTMs) I've several times been surprised by how slow the AIs do research even on Emperor or Immortal (like the last Shaka BOTM). I appologize if that sounds cocky. Please note that fast research like this means not putting more into military than absolutely necessary, and using diplomacy to avoid getting dragged into war. (In fact, I don't think I've ever experienced an AI declaring war on me.)
7. Analysis, micromanagement, fast research, diplomacy, mostly peaceful playstyle.
8. john = justjohn = jj
 
About a year or two ago, I played quite a lot of Immortal/Deity Achipelago games. These were intended for HOF, so they had been chosen (by mapfinder) as extra powerful starting locations. Therefore my experience might not in every aspect apply to our game, but they should still have some merit. Anyway, here it goes:

As pointed out by others, there are 3 natural places for our capital:
1) SIP (settling in place): While this preserves all resources, it looks like a slow start to me. When trying for a HOF record, I would normally never play an un-accelerated start unless there were some other really big benefits. So I think we should do 2) or 3). Oh, before I forget, there is one thing in favor of this settling location, and that is if we need room for more cities on our starting island. But I would like to move the Warrior before deciding this. :/
2) Settling on the corn: If we decide to do this, then I think workboat should be our first build. I can do the explicit calculations later, but by experience the first think to focus, is growth. That often means building a Worker, but if we settle on the corn, the Worker can only mine the hills, which only give more production. This Workboat first.
3) Settling on plain hills: This would normally be my choice, but in this location, we will have very little early production. An ideal seafood Archi start (Note: there are better Archi starts than the seafood ones, but that doesn't matter here.) would mean settling on a plain hills with stone and having a plain hills with forest next to it. That would give 6 production towards the Workboat. 5 production is also good, 4 good enough if there are other favorable things, but 3 feels to little. So if we settle on the plain hill, I think we need to build a Worker first to improve corn and hills, and Workboat second.

Of course, our first turn starts with moving the Warrior to the hill. Our settling plan must depend on what he sees. If he sees more food, I would prefer settling on the hill. If not, I'm not sure. I notice in fizbankovi's screen shots that the island extends north, but from what I can see on the starting image, the island only consist of the six squares that we already see. If that is true, then we will only fit 1 or 2 cities on the island. And more important than settling two cities, is how fast we can settle other islands. And i think SIP gives our capital too little production for a fast early island expansion (even with slavery). So again I believe option 2) or 3) is better.

OK. Those were my first thoughts. I apologize if I was rambling. :p But the starting sequence is very important, both where to settle, wether to build Worker or Workboat first, and our research path. As I said before, I'm a fast researcher, which means I always go for a fast Alphabet (at least on the higher difficulty levels). For me this usually means skipping Bronze Working and trading for it, but with such little production, we might need Slavery earlier, but I'm not yet convinced. Very well, I'll shut up for now.

-jj-
 
Well I check in at all hours but if we decide on a time to try to be on at once I'll do my best to do so.

Hi Windfury. :wavey: I too will be online all the time I'm near the computer. I hope everyone who can will check the site regularly and contribute often. This is the key to our success. The idea of a window for online collaboration is just an idea for meeting up in real time. Not everyone can be online continuously but it might be nice to know when a majority of the team is online.

Hi bjartur and jj. :wavey: So far we have 8/11 signins, just cottagechris, the Dude Esq and enKage to check in. I hope we can all be logged up before we make any team decisions.

There are 5 players from Europe and three in NA so far and it seems to me that we have the makings of a pretty good team:
- we have our cartographer, fizbankovi (you'll have to coach us on World Builder),
- a couple of experienced warmongers - 2metraninja has won at Diety!!
- jj is also adept at MM/Diplomacy. Good stuff!

With team members who can win at Diety, make every hammer count and command a navy we are in good shape to take Napolean's Revenge. :mischief:
 
Just signing up now. Will post more about early strategy on wendesday. This moment I'd only say forest plain hill is tempting - we really need worker and then workboats faster (as at least 1-2 we should contribute for scouting)

1. What time zone are you in? -- Central European (oh yes, that's where Poland REALLY is)
2. Team Name - doesn't matter, i'd accept even Biebers fanclub, can be those Ninjas - but it's rather short and simple - cannot it be The (adj) ninjas?
3. Captain - if you would like to be the team leader or not - Not. To liitle expierience :)
4. Any known issues with playing times? -- usually weekends, but can be everyday
5. Why do you like to play Civ and/or what do you expect from this SGOTM? --- The sight of beaten Stalin :) priceless ^^ I expect from this game to check if I am able to learn some tricks from others :]
6. Are you a builder, war monger or.... ---- or so. Early builder, modern warmonger...
7. Special skill? - I'm special :] not my skills. Oh, maybe causing bad luck, some kind of fatum - but always ending good :]
8. Preferred short nickname? - I already have short one
 
3) Settling on plain hills: This would normally be my choice, but in this location, we will have very little early production. An ideal seafood Archi start (Note: there are better Archi starts than the seafood ones, but that doesn't matter here.) would mean settling on a plain hills with stone and having a plain hills with forest next to it. That would give 6 production towards the Workboat. 5 production is also good, 4 good enough if there are other favorable things, but 3 feels to little. So if we settle on the plain hill, I think we need to build a Worker first to improve corn and hills, and Workboat second.

-jj-

We dont have other choice than building worker first. We don/t know fishing :] As we are on the island warrior is useless, so the only thing we can build is worker :]
We know agriculture.

Research - Fishing (for fishing boat also for scouting, so need lot of them and quite early - so additional hammer from plainhills is worth settling on the forest)
After Fishing - mining, so we have all our island worked :]


Need to test - what would be better - first mining, then fishing, or first fishing, than mining (I suppose after we build farm on corn, our worker will not have much to do, so i consider taking mining before fishing)
 
Hi guys! I would realy like it if we all tonk some time to play 50 -60 turns on our preffered start. While my gut feeling was that settling on cosn would speed things up im not so sure anym6re. Just try the save and post a screeny at asnund 2400
bc. Make sure to get a wb to scout and dont forgdt we dont start with fishing.
 
Hi guys! I would realy like it if we all tonk some time to play 50 -60 turns on our preffered start. While my gut feeling was that settling on cosn would speed things up im not so sure anym6re. Just try the save and post a screeny at asnund 2400
bc. Make sure to get a wb to scout and dont forgdt we dont start with fishing.
 
EDIT: cross post with Fizbankovi

Hi enKage! Fizbankovi has prepared a test game (one page back) that works great for testing out our build sites. Just a couple of thoughts about the early game:
1 We could SIP research FISHING/MINING/BW, revolt to slavery and start taking advantage of a food rich capitol. The other advantage of SIP is we don't lose the two island tiles. There might be an important resource there. And the extra clam is lost if we move.
2 We could go for an early settler if there's something interesting on the other side of the island.
3 I don't want to suggest wonders in a conquest/domination game but wouldn't Stonehenge be a great early wonder? We'd get an extra happy from the monument (unique to the French) and every city we build gets a 10 turn border expansion along with the extra happy. Not bad.
3 If Stonehenge, we'd have to do it early or we won't be successful. This opens the way for the ever popular Oracle and on the same tech path, the Colossus might be a winner, too, with one extra commerce per water tile.
4 The Statue of Zeus for a war advantage would be useful, too.

It looks like a maximum of three cities before SAILING. Another advantage to rapid expansion (REX), is we start a navy which will be of utmost importance a little later. Control the seas and we are immune from early attacks. After Astronomy - Privateers! Avast Mateys! :trouble:

All in all, it looks like this is a pretty interesting start. There is one very good thing about this start for us newbies -- being on an island we can experiment with lots of different ideas knowing that we won’t have an immediate visit from an unruly neighbour to spoil our plans. Therefore, if we pick the right plan we need not fall out of the race against the other teams. We just need to figure what that plan is…
:scan:
 
I agree with you, Fiz, that we should all play the test game for a particular start position. Last night I was able to get Stonehenge after SIP but it's very close to a failed effort. At first, I missed it but a 2POP rush worked. More testing is required.

*** Please note, everyone, that the game will start Sunday morning, Feb 27. Maybe by then we'll have a handle on our course of action. We do need to move that warrior. The plain's hill start could be a winner.
 
Well you can expect a pro and contra table for the different positions. I am leaning toward sip for a globe theather slavery hammer fest. 2 days till i have a computer again..
 
I, too played the game for a little while and I settled in place and went the Fishing, Mining, BW route. Revolted to slavery and started whipping out things like crazy. During my test run I started on a worker but switched to a work boat as soon as fishing was done as I thought that was more important. Seemed to work, but anything further I did was just tainted by the different map I feel so not sure what value it would have.

I feel that if we go the heavy whipping route we should also prioritize Pottery for a Granary, but I'm sure that's not a new suggestion. Obviously Sailing should be high on our list as well.

Oh and I think I discovered my special skill... stating the obvious ;)
 
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