HNDY09 Wonderless XAWM with additional restrictions

Wonder-less Xenophobic Always War Monarch with additional restrictions C3C 1.22
Tiny Map XAWM with a several restrictions on the human players.

This may turn out to be too easy, but the AI can always use a good whipping.
I’ll probably roll a start Wednesday night 11-10-04.
Anyone who has a solo Emperor win is welcome, AW experience not required.

As the Expansionist and Seafaring Portuguese on a tiny Pangaea map.
Restrictions:
1. Our scout must not avoid AI borders. If you see a border, you must approach it and declare war. We are allowed to scout in a “circular” fashion around the capital to reveal land nearest to the capital, but if you happen upon a border you must immediately proceed to meet them and declare war.
2. No trades allowed. Just declare war when you see a new Civilization.
3. No Glib. We will do all our own research.
4. We cannot build or capture any Great Wonders. We are allowed to build or rush Small Wonders. (Pentagon, FP).
5. All AI cities get razed. No exceptions.
6. No pillaging allowed by any of our regular units or armies, ever.
7. Must kill all slaves on the spot and must raze all AI cities. No disbanding slaves to speed city production. Kill slaves on the spot.
8. If we lose a city to the AI, we cannot later recapture it since it has been tainted by our enemies. It must be purified by razing it.
9. We are allowed to go to Monarchy if we want to.


C3C 1.22 Patch
Level: Monarch
Variant: Always War
Civilization: Portugal - because their traits are ill suited to war.
Map: Pangaea - perfect for Portugal.
Size: Tiny
Age: Random
Temperature: Random
Climate: Random
Barbarians: Raging
Rivals: Probably Persia; China; Celts
AI Aggression: Least Aggressive (so they won’t fight each other – just us)
Victory Condition: All are enabled, but conquest or domination are the only acceptable way for us to win.
Culturally linked starts: Off
Respawn : Off
Preserve Random Seed: On
Cultural Conversion: On
Patch: 1.22 C3C

Roster
1. handy
2. Bedhead_7
3. Microbe
4. Grahamiam
5. Sir Bugsy


Always War Boilerplate
You may only trade when you first meet a civilization, and must declare war on the same turn after trading is complete. If you see a new AI unit, you must make contact & declare war that turn. Absolutely no turn based trade (such as GPT) allowed. If you see a new face on F4, you are obligated to declare war that turn (after trading). Players must declare war if they are exploring and see AI units, but are not required to actually attack the units they come in contact with. No peace treaties, ever. You may check F4 as often as you like to spy on the AI's tech, resources, luxuries & city count. We are not allowed to build embassies .

Discuss any move that seems exploitive before doing it with the team. Although there are not too many exploits available in AW, we’ll follow the forbidden blatant exploits banned by GOTM and RBCiv such as no "Free Wealth". Other normal game exploits such as "Baiting the AI" with an empty city to create a kill zone are an AW tradition and are allowed. Also, you ARE allowed to initially keep a city, move a settler to the same spot as the city, and then abandon and immediately resettle. This is considered an exploit in RBCiv rules, but is okay in our AW games. In addition if you need to build a city one square deeper into enemy territory just to move borders to steal a resource, go for it. We may keep or raze cities, and can keep slaves. You may whip at will, including captured cities or cities where all citizens are unhappy.

SG Stuff
You have 24 hours for an "I got it" and 72 to play. If you need a one day extension, then mention this before the 72 hours are up. Players can work out skips between themselves, just post a message to the thread. If you can't play within 72 total, switch places or ask for a skip. We will play 10 turns at first, and possibly fewer later (5) if the turns begin to take too long.

Tiny? That should be do-able. Good luck to the players. (not a signup)

Rik Meleet said:

Tiny? That should be do-able. Good luck to the players. (not a signup)

Click to expand...

Yeah, this is kinda an experiment. Should be doable.

I honestly don't have the time, but this looks too interesting to pass up. So I'll play if you'll have me.

Sign me up.

sounds cool, i'll play

BTW – this is HNDY09. I forgot to place HNDY09 in the title, but hopefully a mod will soon fix that. Filenames can use the HNDY09_ convention.

3950BC
Pop a conscript Warrior from a hut.
We will go BW – WC for techs.
Nice little spot at the bottom of the map for us top expand.

3850
Ivory. No SoZ for the wonder-less Portuguese.


3800BC
Pop WC from a Hut. How nice. We’ll go IW next.

3650
Pretty decent lands around here.

3600
CB from a hut. Dyes are 8 tiles from the capital.

3500
BW -> IW

3000
Wines 10 tiles away.

Notes:
I love tiny maps. It takes a lot less time to MM cities.
With land like this on Monarch, this should be very winnable in unless we have neither iron nor Horses. As long as we get one or the other we will be okay.
If we have iron in the hills and are lucky and pop an early leader it could be all but over before we ever get to knights.

I suggest we settle red, blue, black and build barracks in each and then perhaps a worker. It will depend how close the AI is to us.
If you make early contact, don’t be afraid to switch a build to walls and / or pop a spear.

These rivers are going to be tricky so we will want to push our borders out some.
After the spear completes I suggest we go settler – granary then get on a spear – settler rotation.
Lisbon will riot when it grows Remember to bump the lux slider to avoid a riot.
Sugget we explore in a counter clockwise arc to reveal the darkness.
Remember - raging barbs so be careful about placing wokers near our border in range of barb horsemen once HBR comes in.

Wide angle lens picture in the next post.

3000 BC

Suggest we settle red, blue, black. CxxCxxCxxC city placement is very important (for the front lines) on a tiny map AW game in the early going.

You can still edit the title within some (5?) hours, I think.

microbe said:

You can still edit the title within some (5?) hours, I think.

Click to expand...

It worked. Thanks for the tip

Oh Boy! Great Players in this one.

Handy
Bedhead_7
Microbe
Grahamiam
open

No Statue of Zeus for us, but also perhaps none for the AI.
There may be other Ivory, but I doubt it.

Well, I guess I could have opened this up for discussion before I played, so I apologize for that.

If you are new to a tiny AW game, it’s an ancient age no holds barred fight.
Our best early strategy is to explore to locate iron or horses. We play defense early on using walls and cats to allow the AI to impale themselves on our spears. When we get a stack of together, we can go on offense a little bit. Gotta run, if you are new to AW, just ask & I’ll get back, or check a link in my signature

You want black or one tile SW? The only drawback is not on river, but gets the wheat immediately, keeps better spacing, and makes coastal.

microbe said:

You want black or one tile SW? The only drawback is not on river, but gets the wheat immediately, keeps better spacing, and makes coastal.

Click to expand...

That would work ok.
I was prioritizing obtaining 2nd lux (ivory) along with the river over getting the wheat. Also, a temple to grab the wheat is cheaper than an aqueduct. Size 7 cities get the extra unit support (Monarchy) we crave. In AW the city placement has to be tight, and invariably there is a city where you wish it was not.

But your placement would be ok also and we could then place a city N of the two elephants. We must make sure that ivory does not fall into the hands of the AI. Ancient Cavalry are a PITA. We already face 3.2.2 Gallics and immortals By the time China gets Riders we should be (better be) in steamroller mode.

I'm open to discussion and what ever the team feels is best is okay with me.

Handy
Bedhead_7 is UP
Microbe
Grahamiam
open

Okay, should be able to post the save relatively soon.

THE SAVE

2900 BC (2) - Spearman completes, settler due in 6.

2850 BC (3) - Lisbon grows and lux pushed to 10%, which luckily doesn't slow down research on IW, which is still due next turn.

IT - IW comes in, research begins on The Wheel, due in 11 turns.

2800 BC (4) - We have iron a bit to the north, but easily grabable with one maybe our fourth settler. This being AW, maybe our third settler. Our scout, sort of headed north, is now bogged down in the jungle, which may not be the worst thing in the world as it delays contact.

2750 BC (5) - Blue borders spotted. Yee-hah!

2710 BC (6) - Will be able to contact bluies next turn, I think.

2670 BC (7) - Oh dear! When I go to the hill, not only are blue borders visible, but green ones as well. No contact this turn, though. Oh, and settler completes, granary due in 10.

2630 BC (8) - Guess I'll go talk to greenies first, since they are farther away. Go to another hill, and there is a blue guy hiding behind the hill. So I guess it is bye-bye to our scout. War declared on China, Celts. Kind of funny, the Celts were Gracious with us.

IT - Our noble scout was slain!

2590 BC (9) - Oporto founded on spices, begins work on barracks.

2550 BC (10) - Without a scout, not much to do.

I might have made an MM booboo, doing something I have been doing in my test 20k HoF attempts, which is what I was doing before playing. Anyway, with a possible 4fpt surplus, I have been working a forest for four turns at 3fpt and switching to unmined grassland to get growth in a total of 6 turns instead of 5 with 8 extra shields. That might not have been right in this situation, epecially with building a granary. Anyway, if I were continuing to play, I would move a citizen from the forest to a grassland when there is 12 food in the box, which will happen in two turns. Anyway, you should be able to get the granary with no wasted shields, but the granary will only be partially full.

Hope what I did with the scout was right. I thought that was acting in the spirit of the variant, as I could have continued exploring without exactly turning away from the borders, but avoiding contact for awhile longer.

Not much else to report. Maybe the iron needs to be grabbed sooner, and the settler escorted by a few spearman, now that we are at war with two other civs.

On the dotmap that will be posted below, two alternatives for where to build iron city. Dark pink is better overall in a regular game, but the river is in the way and that spot won't work in this game (I would think, my only AW experience is on regent, though I read all Sid HNDY games and parts of the Zulu game on Demigod). Light pink is a bit close to blue, but is easier to reinforce.

Commander Bugs reporting for duty

Is this a "we must explore to meet the AI" AW game? I don't know why we scoued so much.

we not supposed to avoid them (once we see thier borders), but we are allowed to explore in a circular direction. i'm not sure that going due N was the best idea, but that's what happened. let see what we can do or how fast we get run over

do we want a spear before the barracks in Oporto? Probably should chop the barracks either way.

Sir Bugsy said:

Commander Bugs reporting for duty

Click to expand...

Sweet. Bugs is in the house

Hope what I did with the scout was right. I thought that was acting in the spirit of the variant, as I could have continued exploring without exactly turning away from the borders, but avoiding contact for awhile longer

Click to expand...

.
You did fine. It's kind of a wierd variant rule with lots of room for interpretation. Anyway, wer are at war and that's what it's all about.

Is this a "we must explore to meet the AI" AW game? I don't know why we scoued so much.

Click to expand...

Not quite. I almost made that a rule, but I chickened out.

we not supposed to avoid them (once we see thier borders), but we are allowed to explore in a circular direction. i'm not sure that going due N was the best idea, but that's what happened. let see what we can do or how fast we get run over

Click to expand...

Yes. Usually you want to avoid the AI, but AW was just getting too easy. So I tried to remove advantages in this game to see how it played. Hence no pillaging (way too powerful), not necessarly search for the AI, but don't hide from them, no wonders, crappy civ for AW, no slaves, xenophobic. Did I miss anything? basically this is a test to push the envelope of AW. Monarch should be relatively easy, I think.

Plus we needed to explore to find the Iron. [dance] Nice job Bedhead
With iron that close we are looking really good. Let's go get it.

Since this is AW, we want to settle on top of the Iron. Takes less troops to guard the resource, and we get a defensive bonus. Better safe than sorry, lets get the third settler to the iron with 2 spears for protection. That city will draw lots of AI attention.


Roster
1. handy
2. Bedhead_7
3. Microbe is UP
4. Grahamiam
5. Sir Bugsy

handy900 said:

Since this is AW, we want to settle on top of the Iron. Takes less troops to guard the resource, and we get a defensive bonus. Better safe than sorry, lets get the third settler to the iron with 2 spears for protection. That city will draw lots of AI attention.

Click to expand...

Right, should have realized that. You can tell how much pressure I got in AW at regent.