SGOTM 22 - Insolita Suspicatur

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Good luck with the game, and - Have Fun!

checking in, subscribing to thread, and saying howdy

AlanH said:

Please wait until your team leader/administrator/scribe has reserved a couple of top posts in this thread for game admin information. Then post here to let your team know you have arrived.

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Well, we don't have a team leader/administrator/scribe nor team name yet. So I suppose we can go ahead and say Howdy.
We need volunteer(s) for those positions.
My availability has changed since signing up. I will be able to lurk most days. I will only be able to access the game/save and play ~ 30Oct - 14Nov.

Ideas for team name? Some combination of our former teams? IIRC, I've only been on Unusual Suspects.
I wrote Unallocated Suspects - how about that for a name?
I kinda like Slackers too.

Hello. checking in.

With me and KCD in the team this is a small resurrection of "the swedish love team" from last gotm. I thought about how to include the name in unallocated suspect but I didnt found a nice sounding name. U.S. works fine for me.

About me:
I've played this game since day one and quickly mastered the hardest levels of the game. But after the warlord expansion came out RL stole all my spare time and I played civ approx. 20h/year. After my wife started a new job a year ago I suddenly started to get a lot of events by myself that I spent on gotm(I had to pause the participation this autumn). So now my skills are up to Immortal/deity again.
I could take turns more or less anytime expect the last weeks. Since I have 4 kids the time around christmas is fully booked.

I've made a test game(attatched) of the start and tested a bit. Here are my findings:
For a normal game barbs comes around turn 45-55.
Getting a second city early seems to me as a good idea and I played to aim for this, but maybe someone disagree.

SIP seems to be the best choice. I've tested 1E,wine 2W and the hill 2W 1S.
1E miss the pig for some turns but have 2 riverside wine for the future.
2W1S have more riverside grass but less hills to get the first building up.
wine 2E also have fewer hills so if we aim to get a second city earlier the 1 gold bonus is not worth it.

AH first seems like a obvious choice and BW after the second city to.

For the second building I tested with granary and monument. The earliest I've manage to get the granary is turn 45 and with monument I manage to get the settler out at turn 38.
the problem with granary first is that I didn't manage to get a decent defence out before the first barb wave even with horses nearby. So my first suggestion is:
Tech:AH->Myst->Ag->BW
Build:worker(obvious)->waste hammers on warrior/barrack->monument->Settler
workerig->3 hills

Extra note:If there is no nearby horses or copper we could have the GWall as a barb defence out on turn 49.

Welcome to SGOTM#22

I'm glad we finally started this game! This scenario has a lower AI-level, but don't be over confident as it won't be easy! There's no fun without threat in Civ, at least that's what I think. So don't be discouraged if you bump your head: It's meant to happen.

As far as I know most admins and mapmakers before me have been quite silent during the game. But I like to stay in touch with the players. I read the threads and I might comment from time to time. If you want to be left alone, just tell me. It's your thread and if you don't want any visitors that's entirely your choice.

It would be nice if you somehow mark the posts (turn reports) in which you got new cities, so that we/I can check if you stick to the rules. And we all love to see screenshots all the time.

OK, that's all. Have fun and good luck with your game!
For the glory of Rome!

Checking in and saying hi.

Unallocated Suspects works for me. I was once on Un'usu'a'l Susp'ect's or whatever that team name was. Can't say that I suuuuper care though, .

Thanks for the test game Zhary. I'll get started in a few days.

Cheers,
Ben

Barring better suggestions, we could go with insolita suspicatur which is latin for unusual suspects - gets the game theme and some sort of continuity for some of us at least. Or not.

I can do captainy tasks like setting up play orders and keeping things moving. I should be able to participate through the whole term, with turnsets, silly comments, and some basic ideas/strategy. I'm not reliable for scribe duties or test-map-making or even test playing (except early on when those tasks are not too time-consuming).

I think most of us have a good record of not dropping out, so am looking forward to the game.

I'll PM the others and ask them to check in.

Checking in. Howdy to all from Texas!

Thanks for the test game, Zhary! It has been so long waiting for this game to start that I need to reread the scenario rules to make sure I don't suggest something invalid. A test round or three will certainly help get my mind back in focus.

I hope to have good availability, but my life has been consumed by medical issues in recent months including numerous trips to the hospital (planned and unplanned ). So I might disappear at times. But things have been better lately and I have no more surgeries scheduled so hopefully I will be present.

No preference on team name; I am happy to go with whatever is picked since I can never seem to think of anything clever for this kind of thing.

Looking forward to playing this game with you all.

Please let me know your team name as soon as possible so that I can set your save up correctly ready for Saturday morning.

I like "insolita suspicatur" better, like you said kcd it works fine with the theme.

Some more early thoughts about the game:

Laurels will probably go to the teams that manage to conquer the world early and then build the wonders.
I would guess that it's better to use a pillage tactics against many AI at the same time with the limited number off cities that could be owned.

If we found nearby horses or go for the GWall we could skip BW for a longer time and set up the cities we want in the begining.

An alternative to monument or granary for first building would be the GWall. If so we would have to settle the second city a bit later around turn ~48. But in my game with GW at turn 49 I needed BW for a forest chop. Without it some barb archers might find out that our warriors is an easy target.
Having the GWall means that we could use warriors in rome for 3-4 settled cities and then go HA rush with the saved forest.

Very preliminary thoughts.... We will be extremely limited in total number of cities (mostly by the capital population requirement I think, more than the other two requirements). So every city must count -- key resources, extremely strong locations, or preferably both. Conquest is less attractive than usual since we can not keep most cities, but will still be far faster than space unless conquest is impossible for some reason (AI civ unreachable, etc.). We do have praetorians, assuming we can get our hands on some iron, might be able to have some fun with them.

Strong production capital is a must to build the required wonders, but we also want as much food as we can possibly get. Only the pigs until Calendar unlocks bananna...wines, meh...probably going to need multiple farms.

AIs start with Priesthood, so Oracle is going to be a real gamble. Do we want to pursue it at all? It would be a wonder, but missing it would be very painful and we may have other priorities such as the Great Wall.

Should it be suspicatur insolita?
Does latin put the adjective after the noun? (I recall it puts the verb at the end).

Deckhand said:

Should it be suspicatur insolita?
Does latin put the adjective after the noun? (I recall it puts the verb at the end).

Click to expand...

I just did the google translate version. Depends more whether you want our short initials to be IS or not (some might confuse us with the Islamic State).

Make your minds up! I have to build the start saves real soon now!

AlanH said:

Make your minds up! I have to build the start saves real soon now!

Click to expand...

just do it with Insolita Suspicatur

For abbreviation our lurkers can refer to us as InSu

(Executive decision by self-appointed prime minister

Tested a bit longer game with the special rules. I used the pillage tactic and it worked fine at this level ie build three cities and HA rush your neightbour.
I didn't capture any capital but instead I pillaged everything took the small cities and parked 2 HA around their capitals. I would expect 1 or 2 AI's to grow big before we could attack them and we must take them with prat/cats later in the game.

Another thing was that 4 chairiots where killed against the barbs so the GW is not a big waste of hammers after all. But on the other hand without it we could prevent the AI from settling land we can't settle by the city limiting rule by. The trick is to "gift" (accidental leave a city unprotected) cities to the barbs and make sure that the AI don't send a to big stack to the barb lands. I don't talking about wasting expensive settlers, just the cheap border cities we get from the AIs.

Looking forward to see the real save and see the land count, thats important for what barb defence we should aim at.

The land count will be useful info. But we (probably) won't know right away how close any AIs may be, or how many. I am not sure there is much we can do to prevent the AIs from claiming land, since we can't take it ourselves -- the barbs are just not strong enough defenders against the AIs to really prevent them from taking cities. Delay them a bit, yes, but a determined AI will conquer barb cities given some time. Unless we are willing/able to interene militarily...in which case we should probably just conquer that AI directly.

Building the Great Wall to keep the barbs off our lands seems like it could pay off. But we are going to want/need a fair number of units sitting in our glorious capital anyway, due to the game requirements, so maybe we could just deal with the barbs that way? Of course the big wall would be one of our seven required wonders, and it produces G.Spy points too. Hmmmm.

It seems the perfect announcement post is something I will never be able to do...

It was missing another tiny detail again:

No tech trading or brokering

This will be posted in each team thread now.

Thanks for the update, Pollux! Definitely important info. Means we have a lot less reason to remain friendly with the AIs...and also that as a group they will be less advanced/weaker. Of course, it also means we must do all research ourselves...stronger economy will be a must. Do we want to focus on cottages, specialists, some of each?

Thanks for the update BSP! It made the game a bit easier according to me.
Apparently you also forgot to mention that the AI have an aggresive attitude agaist us.

I looked at the save now and it seems that the land count is a bit higher than the testgame. I seriously start to think that the GWall is a good play in this game and I have three options for that:

Safe:GWall first at trun 42 with second city at turn 48.
Not so safe:Settler first out on turn 38. Chop out GWall at turn 48.
Even less safer:Settler out on turn 38 no BW so 3rd city could be build with warriors. GWall is then finished at turn 52.

A note is that in the test game Shaka has stone and he build the GWall on turn 48 and 50 for two test.