SGOTM8 - Durkz

Welcome to your game thread. Please use it and subscribe to it. Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread for this game here, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest. I hope you enjoy the game.

The starting saves will become available on the SGOTM Progress and Results page on August 5, midnight, server local time.

Thanks go to Gyathaar for coming up with the variant and developing the map.

The variant is Hydrophobic Conquest. You are America, your goal is to conquer your archipelago world, and you are afraid of water.

The rules are simple:

1. You will build no boats. Seaborne units are all disabled for America.
3. You must win by Conquest. America must be the only civ standing at the end of your game.
4. Red and Gold Laurels will be awarded respectively to the members of the C3C and Classic teams achieving the fastest conquests.
5. PTW and Vanilla teams are not permitted to leader rush Great Wonders before 1000 BC in this game

Here's the start:

Map Parameters
Playable Civ - America
Opponents - Six, preselected
World size - 80 wide by 80 high. (Small)
Difficulty - Emperor
Landform - Archipelago
Barbarians - Raging

The map is handbuilt, and therefore may not have a standard configuration.

Game mods:
- America can't build boats. The AI can.
- All victory conditions are available except Diplomatic and Spaceship.
- Settlers, workers, scouts, explorers, leaders, cruise missiles and tactical nukes can be loaded into helicopters.
- A side effect is AIs can load tactical nukes into any boat with transport capacity ... so beware
- Bombers have lethal sea bombard only (lethal land bombard removed)
- Cruise missiles, stealth bombers and F-15 have both lethal sea and land bombard.

Additional change:
- C3C will use the same contact and map trading rules as Classic. Contacts can be traded between two civs when one of them knows Writing. Maps can be traded between two civs when one of them knows MapMaking.

The SGOTM Mediterranean resources are included in this game. If you have played SGOTM 7 then you will be ready. If not you may need to download and unzip a small graphics mod pack. Vanilla/Mac players need to install the GOTM mods. The best way to achieve this is to use the relevant All-in-one GOTM Installer for your OS, linked in my signature.

Please visit the following links to ensure that you are adequately prepared for this game. Vanilla players in particular should understand the late-game equalisation modifications that we don't often have to worry about.

The GOTM Reference Thread.
SGOTM Reference Thread.

Notes:

A. The Classic (Play the World and vanilla 1.29) versions of Civ3 AND Conquests version 1.22 (C3C) are all supported in this game. Because of the different game play, Classic and C3C teams will play for separate awards.
B. All teams must play the sponsored variant.
C. You MUST play from the start file assigned to your team. 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.

Reporting for duty!
Still on vacation though, so I don't know how much I will be able to contribute right now. Nothing planned for the moment however, and no lengthy trips away, so I'll be around.

Ok im cheking in and saying hi to members of this team and lurkers (if any )

Ok the team is:
Durkz
Methos
Niklas
The Adjudicator
WarDance
zyxy

Signed in
Not yet
Other

Roster is not defined and we wll define it later when everybody is signed in and should start some discusions then too.

This should be an interesting game. I havent fought a MA war in a long looong time. Maybe i should play one short tiny map MA conquest game.

Hey Nk if you have time you should make a spreadsheet again 8if you have time and will)
because you made it last time and we had the best start of all teams (including C3C, we were prety even to Wacken though).
I could make it but it wouldnt be good as yours and i would brake my head making it.


btw: i just saw that you spent 66 hours of play in the last GOTM , that's 11 times longer than my play time. Talk about MM...

Reporting in.

I really hate that this happens again, but I'll be unavailable to play until end of august. I might be able to play sometime in the first half of the month, don't know yet.

First strategy issue: how can we gain cities overseas? Some ways I can think of:
1. Culture flips
2. Popping a goodie hut (by culture expansion).
3. In a peace treaty.
4. By traditional conquest, once we get a city on another continent by one of the first three methods.
5. By conquest, using either paratroopers or helicopters. What units can be transported by choppers? Tanks? arty? or just foot units?

I guess we'll have to play alone, without friends or enemies, for a long time. So libraries, and possibly the great library, would be very useful. Libraries will also help with potential culture flips.

no problem zxyx, this game will go till the MA so you'l have plenty of time to play
1. If the city is close to our core we can probably conquer the other civ using only that city but if it's corrupt we have no use of it.
2. Might go for us, but it thnik that they will make us pop only workers from goodyhuts.
3. Not likely , maybe some pop 1 tundra/desert no resurce town.
4. just what i was thinking , but it's a low prob. that we will get a productive city (is it allowed to jump palace in that city?).
5. most probable scenario and they aimed to this.

i dont think that we will be far from other civs. Because this is a small arhipelago map, so we can expect that it will probably be full Galley crosable.
Libs and GLib will work just perfect, we want to get to MA as soon as posible.
I think that only foot can be loaded in helicopters but they made some modifications to this. Regular arty i dont know but they said you can load Cruisers in them

Checking in.

Edit: According to AlahH in the mainenance thread (post #18) only foot soldiers can be loaded into a helicopter.

hey methos, wellcome to the team

Thanks! Looks like I'm the least experienced of the group so I hope I'm not too much of a hindrance.

Need to finish my SG's tonight than I'll try and discuss this one.

Going off of the screenshot I suggest we move the settler 1 NW and settle. The worker should go 1 W and irrigate. I’m not too sure about irrigating but figure it’ll help speed up growth. I don’t feel we should settle on the hill as we’ll need it for production. Plus moving 1 NW will bring the mountain into range.

Another possibility is moving the settler 1 SW (from the starting point) and settling there instead. This will give us better productive capabilities and better terrain. In truth I believe this may be the better option.

I can’t remember off-hand how much food you get on watered floodplains so don’t know how effective a settler-factory would be here. Would it even be worth it in Despotism?

What are your alls preferences on science?

I'll be happy to make a spreadsheet, but we need to know where to settle first.

I agree with Methos that we should get off the hill, the start is extremely food high and utterly shield poor. I've done a few calculations, and my suggestion is to settle directly S, on the desert tile.
Moving NW doesn't really give anything new, just more food.
Settling on the FP SW is a nice option since it basically switches 3 coastal tiles for 2 grasslands (either could be a BG) and a plains, and 2 FPs for a hills and a mountain.
Settling on the desert however will give 7 grasslands in range (3 of them forested), and there will be only one unproductive coastal tile in range.

Speaking in pure numbers, settling the desert gives 39 F and 10 Sh within the 20 tiles with 3 irrigated FPs and a mined hill, and 14 tiles that could be either irrigated or mined for an extra F or Sh. Settling on the SW FP gives 36 F and 13 Sh with 4 irrigated FPs and mined hills and mountain, but only 11 tiles that can give an extra F or Sh. This is disregarding despotic penalties, if those are considered the FP start is worse off.

Also if we're trying for a settler factory initially, which I say we should, we need two BG tiles for a 4-turn factory. The desert start has 4 unforested grasslands that we can't see (at least I think they are grasslands, any fog gazer who could confirm?), and 3 more with forests on them, giving us good chances of finding two BGs.

My vote is S.

Oh, and I always seem to forget my manners. Hi Methos, and welcome.

Regarding how to aquire towns in remote lands, I see only two really viable options, which would correspond to numbers 3 and 5 on zyxy's list. 5 is rather obvious, but I think there's an interesting opportunity regarding getting towns in peace deals. The scenario I envision is the following:

• Gift the selected opponent a number of our towns.
• Immediately declare and retake all the towns.
• Wait until the opponent will talk.

Since the opponent will now think that we have captured a number of his/her towns, it's not unlikely that several towns could be ceded to us in a peace deal. I should state clearly that I consider this an exploit, but it is one that is allowed according to the rules. Sounds feasible?

Niklas said:

Regarding how to aquire towns in remote lands, I see only two really viable options, which would correspond to numbers 3 and 5 on zyxy's list. 5 is rather obvious, but I think there's an interesting opportunity regarding getting towns in peace deals. The scenario I envision is the following:

• Gift the selected opponent a number of our towns.
• Immediately declare and retake all the towns.
• Wait until the opponent will talk.

Since the opponent will now think that we have captured a number of his/her towns, it's not unlikely that several towns could be ceded to us in a peace deal. I should state clearly that I consider this an exploit, but it is one that is allowed according to the rules. Sounds feasible?

Click to expand...

I never thought of that , nice going Nk . That changes things a lot. But those cities we get in peace treaties will be rather corrupt. And it will take some time to ready them for a palace jump. And we should make sure we build a FP in our core before doing the jump.

Obout the start i think that we should move SW or W to get the first ring to be complete and to maximise our reasearch by it and there are graassland there. Settleing near given start is a bad idea, what if we get disese from the FP, we could never grow to the size of three. I think that we should build our second or third town there. Moving 4 -5 times before we settle wont kill at at Monarch/Emperor especialy if we are alone on our island, but it can give us considerable advantage later.

Niklas said:

I should state clearly that I consider this an exploit, but it is one that is allowed according to the rules.

Click to expand...

I agree, it does sound like an exploit. The one thing is since we can't build ships to get to another landmass it may be the best way. Just in case it might be wise to PM AlanH and ask him if it would be considered an exploit.

Durkz said:

Obout the start i think that we should move SW or W ...

Click to expand...

I don't believe I quit understand your reasoning. Without being able to see beyond our current sight do we want to chance getting a great spot for the 2nd city?

S of the starting position would allow for us to adjust the city to what we require. Hmm, hadn't thought of that. I was too focused on keeping both the mountain and lambs in the radius.

Checking in. Hello everyone.

Regarding starting location, I think we should move to the desert as well. Who wants to be on the coast when you are hydrophobic, anyway.

Regarding conquest: I think we need to be active in fomenting wars overseas, and hope for one of those peace treaty deals, but the main focus needs to be getting advanced flight and helicopters.

I have been playtesting this rule set. You cannot transport artillery or wheeled vehicles in helicopters. We might want to get marines just to have some foot soldiers with firepower. Paratroopers are pretty weak still. I have been able to get to the MA while others are just beginning the IA. If we end up having to invade against tanks, it will get very tough.

A good invation strategy would be to use a mass helicopter landing of infantry and a settler to build a city, then rush an airport for landing the wheeled vehicles.

Methos said:

I don't believe I quit understand your reasoning. Without being able to see beyond our current sight do we want to chance getting a great spot for the 2nd city?

Click to expand...

well ikm a guy who likes to risk, but i was thinking some more about this start , and i dont thik it's a good idea now, because we will jump the palace in the future and disrupt the RCP anyways. So it's good to settle 1 tile S. I just fear the disese.

Hi The Adjudicator. Ehm, that's kinda long, mind if I call you something shorter, like Judge?

Only WarDance missing then, and I can almost swear I've seen him online not too long ago. Good to know we'll have a full team.

I think we have more or less decided to go for the desert tile, I will try to come up with a nice spread sheet for that start on the morrow. The rest of you are more than welcome to come up with some as well.
One minor point though, since we're expansionistic we have a scout to start with, we could send it to the mountain 2W, or to the forest 2S which would be my choice, and only then decide for real. I don't think it will change very much though.

What's a good starting sequence? I'm thinking we should go for a settler factory asap, do a farmer's gambit the way Wacken did last game. It's another archipelago, chances are good we're alone on our islet, and we have a scout for scouting. We start with Pottery too, so we could go straight for a granary. Whaddy'all say about it?

I agree on sending the scout 2S.

Farmer's Gambit? Never heard of it. Would SGOTM7 Wacken be the best place to learn it? I'll check there later.

I agree on the settler factory ASAP. Though instead of going straight for granary should we build one more scout first? Wait, this is a small world so our landmass shouldn't be very big. Hmm, not for sure. I'd suggest maybe one warrior for MP.

Hey TA wellcome to the team.

We should rearrange the roster now as it was made in alphabetical order

The settleing part of civ is the part i hate the most (and suck the most) so i would like to be the last to play if possible.

So at the moment our roster is:

Methos
Niklas
The Adjudicator
WarDance
zyxy
Durkz


Btw- I will PM WD, he's been active since the last game