SGOTM 9 - Smurkz

AlanH

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Welcome to your game thread. Please use it and subscribe to it, and do not visit the other team threads for this game until you have finished. 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 November 11th, at midnight, server local time.

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

You are the Viking leader, Ragnar Lodbrok*. You have met the Indian leader, Gandhi, and you have signed a pact in blood. The Vikings agree to teach india the art of war, and make them strong through conflict. In return India will take the Vikings to the stars.

* Vanilla players play as Einar Ragnarson, but he had the same craving for space travel as his father.

You start the game as a near neighbour of India. Following the pact you are at permanent war with Gandhi, and must remain so for the rest of the game. You are allowed no peace treaties with India. And India must win by space victory. All victory conditions are switched on except diplomatic, but the winning team will be the one that gets India to Alpha Centauri, and does it fastest.

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 - Scandinavia / Vikings
Opponents - Seven, preselected, including India
World size - 100 wide by 100 high. (Standard)
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Continents
Barbarians - Roaming

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

Game mods:
The AI races have Deity level unit support.
Otherwise, this game uses the default rules as defined in the SGOTM Reference Thread.

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.

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.

Gyathaar's SGOTM 8 created some new challenges for everyone. I hope you will enjoy this one as much. Good luck in your efforts to lose with style and honour. :D
 
Alright!! :D

... but I have to get to bed now, so I'll post something more useful in the morning. ;)

Looking forward to a great game with you all! [party]
 
Wardance checking in.
 
I've been keeping a little notebook with ideas for this game and of course I can't find it right now... I'll see if I remember some of the things I was thinking about.

--Government: we want fast research so of course we need to get out of Despotism as soon as possible. The problem then is Republic and constant war make things tough. Monarchy? No war weariness is a plus but there is no added commerce. Unit support is good. We'll still need some MP's in big cities. I have very little experience with Communism. It may be something to consider later in the game. The problem then is not being able to cash rush anything. With the AI having Deity level unit support we may be able to get some juicy gold per turn deals and all that gold would be unusable in Communism. I think Democracy is pretty much out of the question because of war weariness.

--Scientists. Or should I say: SCIENTISTS!!! This game is going to be all about scientists, I think. We saw in the last one how important they were to keep research going quickly. SGOTM8 was the most I have used specialists ever.

--Our UU: India begins on a one tile island... our UU has the ability to launch amphibious assault... it would seem to me that Gyathar chose the Vikings on purpose for this reason. At some point our UU can be used to "help" India make a free palace jump to a spot more suited to a productive core. Heck, we may even be able to set up some nice RCP for them if we plan it right!

--The early game: We have 2 options as I see it. We can help India get off their island early and let them get started colonising. Or, we can completely ignore them until some time in the Middle Ages maybe. It may be to our advantage to keep them a one tile island nation for some time and concentrate on our own expansion and research. Then some time in the MA we start leaving cities undefended for India to capture and expand their empire.

--Getting technology in the hands of the Indians: Being a monarch game it should be easy to quickly become the tech leader. But since we can't trade with India directly we need to find a way for India to acquire the necessary technologies. We need to find a way for them to become economically strong enough to trade for what they need. They may need to have resources they can trade away and of course they will need cash flow. Another option is the Great Library. We may want to build it ourselves and let India get a hold of it. Letting them capture the GL late in the game is an option too.

That's all for now. Where'd that darn notebook go? I know there's more stuff I though about...
 
Table of Contents (Turn Logs)


AlanH announced a significant rule change between Turnset 12 and 13 that resulted in much discussion.

  • Turnset 13: 0050 AD
  • Turnset 14: 0250 AD
  • Turnset 15: 0350 AD
  • Turnset 16: 0450 AD Post #0767 zyxy 01/13/06
  • Turnset 17: 0550 AD Post #0786 Niklas 01/15/06
  • Turnset 18: 0650 AD Post #0839 CommandoBob 01/19/06
  • Turnset 19: 0750 AD
  • Turnset 20: 0850 AD Post #0884 zyxy 01/26/06
  • Turnset 21: 0950 AD Post #0899 Niklas 01/29/06
  • Turnset 22: 1050 AD Post #0914 CommandoBob 02/01/06
  • Turnset 23: 1110 AD
    • Post #0926 ControlFreak 02/02/06 (Turns 0 to 10)
    • Post #0941 ControlFreak 02/06/06 (Turns 11 to 14)
  • Turnset 24: 1250 AD Post #0965 WarDance 02/10/06
  • Turnset 25: 1285 AD
  • Turnset 26: 1340 AD Post #1038 Niklas 02/20/06
  • Turnset 27: 1385 AD Post #1056 ControlFreak 02/22/06
  • Turnset 28: 1450 AD Post #1107 WarDance 03/03/06
  • Turnset 29: 1485 AD Post #1128 zyxy 03/05/06
  • Gandhi and Apollo Post #1138 03/06/06 33 turns from 1545 AD
  • Turnset 30: 1535 AD
  • Turnset 31: 1600 AD
  • Turnset 32: 1625 AD Post #1251 WarDance 03/25/06
  • Turnset 33: 1675 AD Post #1255 Niklas 03/25/06
  • Turnset 34: 1690 AD Post #1260 zyxy 03/26/06
  • Turnset 35: 1725 AD
  • Turnset 36: 1770 AD Post #1290 CommandoBob 4/02/06
  • Turnset 37: 1792 AD Post #1306 Niklas 04/07/06
  • Turnset 38: 1800 AD Post #1313 zyxy 04/10/06
  • Turnset 39: 1810 AD Post #1317 Niklas 04/12/06
  • Turnset 40: 1832 AD Post #1322 Niklas 04/18/06
  • Turnset 41: 1854 AD Post #1339 Niklas 04/25/06
  • Turnset 42: 1908 AD Post #1349 Niklas 04/27/06
  • Turnset 43: 1950 AD Post #1360 Niklas 05/04/06




Coming Soon

ControlFreak’s worker dissertation:
Part One
Part Two

Links to MM insights.


Links to the “creative” spoilers.


Original Post Below


CommandoBob checking in.

My pregame thoughts: Only two civs are important in this game: India and the Vikings. The flip side is that none of the other civs are important. If they die, so what? If they live, they get in the way of India reaching the stars.

So my first (and I stress, this is off the top of my head) thought is to conquer the other civs and get them out of the way. Unless we conquer India, we do not trigger that victory condition. We build ourselves up enough to conquer, then expand outwards, leaving the cities around India undefended, as WarDance has already suggested. We stay big and let India become big and thus avoid a Domination VC. We can ignore the UN and work around a culture victory by keeping our culture at 75% of India's.

If we do this, how can India lose? Only Gandhi and us will be on the planet, except perhaps a few One-City-Civs that we allow to exist so we can give them things that they in turn give to India.

Not as clear as what WarDance suggested, but not as well thought out either.
 
Good to see some planning going!

Our objectives are:
  1. Get India the techs to build a spaceship.
  2. Get India the production power to build a spaceship.
  3. Prevent India from winning by other means.
  4. Prevent all other teams (including ourselves :crazyeye: ) from winning
  5. Keep India in the game.
And do all that as quick as possible :).

The last 3 should be easy to do, especially as diplo victories are disabled, and India is safe until marines, or until we kick them off their island. The biggest problem might be to prevent Scandinavia from winning by 100K culture.

On production: India will need a core at the latest by the end of the MA, to have time to build infra etc. In order to keep up in the tech race, they probably need a core much earlier - those early MA techs can be a real hurdle for weak civs. Starting on a 1 tile island, they will not be able to do much themselves, and we'll have to make room for them. How we're going to do that is not so clear to me. Perhaps beat up another civ, and then let India take the land, maybe even resettle it, I don't know. Giving away our own core region is not a good idea IMO, but an Indian palace jump, kicking India off their island at some point to a somewhat far away region, sounds good. We would need to use Berserks to do this, and that would start our GA, a little too early unfortunately. Maybe we can postpone this to late MA, especially if we let India take the GLib. Another alternative would be to make room for India near their capital, but that would probably mean moving our core region.

On techs: This is monarch level, so we can probably be the tech leaders from halfway the AA on. That means we need to have a way to pass techs to India. Two ways, as mentioned by WD:
  1. The GLib trick is neat, but risky. It involves building the GLib, keeping India backwards (meaning keeping her isolated from the other civs, naval blockade probably), and late in the game letting India capture the GLib city. Two problems:
    • What if they raze the city (do AI's raze wonder cities?).
    • By keeping India backwards they will not be able to establish a productive core. They need the techs for factories and such early on. So the GLib trick might work nicely in the middle ages, to bring India back if she gets stuck in the AA, but not much after that.
  2. We cannot give techs directly to India, so we'll need the other civs as intermediary. We probably should keep many rivals alive, that keeps last civ tech prices low. Sell contacts with India asap, to give them trading chances. Sell or gift any techs India doesn't have to all other civs ASAP. Drain their economy. If India falls behind early on (not unlikely), then perhaps beat up one or more other civs so that India can pull herself up using the stragglers.

Governments: Republic would be good, but WW might be killing. It depends on how many luxes and happiness wonders we can get, and I think our early game strategy should be to acquire as many luxes as possible, by any means. Otherwise, monarchy is not bad - it has cashrushing, and high free support levels. I never tried communism, but it doesn't sound good, as the ability to cashrush is very powerful IMO.

GA: our civ is expansionist + militaristic. Berserks are a bit too early for a GA IMO, from last game I get the impression that an early IA GA would be ideal. Looking at the wonders, Colossus + Cop + Newton in one city would be a great combo. To trigger the GA we would also need a militaristic wonder, and they don't come with great timing. Leo's or US perhaps.

Btw, India is commercial + religious.

Conclusion:
  1. Trade away what we have to everyone.
  2. Keep the other civs weak - eternal warfare among them maybe, or just drain their economy for tech.
  3. Acquire as many (homegrown) luxes as possible.
  4. Make room for a new Indian core somewhere, preferably early MA.
  5. Start GA with Berserks kicking India off their home island -> palace jump to the new core. Or start GA using wonders, trigger with Leo's or US.
  6. Useful wonders: Colossus - Cop - Newton, Bach (perhaps), Sistines, and the usual ones: Smith, ToE, Hoover, perhaps even US.
 
As for wonders, I'm a big fan of the Hanging Gardens, too. Could help our happiness situation a good deal and it's useful until steam power. Here's our chance to be builders AND warmongers at the same time :)

Another thing that could be kinda wacky with this variant is that because India starts so weak in this game we may find ourselves having to position units to block rival civs who may see India as an easy conquest. Pretty ironic having to defend the country we're "at war" with. :crazyeye: Luckily we won't have to do that until India gets some cities other than their starting one... until amphibious warfare anyway.
 
CommandoBob said:
My pregame thoughts: Only two civs are important in this game: India and the Vikings. The flip side is that none of the other civs are important. If they die, so what? If they live, they get in the way of India reaching the stars..


I agree to some extent, but I don't think we should kill off any civs completely (especially if there are any scientific ones!), as we need the other civs around for India to buy and trade techs from. The free techs from any scientific civs will be extremely valuable to us, even if it means shaving off only 4 turns the entire game.
 
Another quick visit, I'm afraid. I hold lectures Mon em and Thu am so Tue and Wed are fairly tight for me.

I'm glad to see the discussion under way, and I agree to most of what's been said. Here are some quick thoughts of my own.

Being a Monarch game, we a) should be able to dominate the world quickly, and b) must lead the tech race ourselves. The only way to get techs across to India is by trading via proxy, or making sure the Indians research them on their own. In both approaches, the chances of India getting a tech will increase when the cost decreases, which means as many other civs as possible should have the tech. The more civs alive with the tech, the cheaper the tech becomes. IIRC the formula for the tech cost factor is (1 - N/CL) where N is the civs knowing the tech, and CL the total number of civs left. The best quotient we could hope for is 7/8, i.e. everyone knows it except India.

I'm thinking we should practice some imprisonment. :D
We can almost kill off the other civs and then put them in prison camps, small 1-tile cities where they can't do anything useful (including killing one another) except act as proxies for tech trading to India. Shouldn't be too hard to set up I think.

One thing I object to though is the notion that India starts weak in this game. On that island, with all that fish, they'll be the world's tech leader in the early game for sure. Their building capacity will be suffering slightly until they get out of Despotism though.

Early moves is scout 2E to see if the land around the cow is as good as it looks?
 
Any preferences on the roster? I'd prefer not to go first this time, I'm pretty tied up right now and if I were to get some time left over I still have GOTM 48 to finish. :sad:

Preliminary roster (taken from your posts (or non-posts :p) in this thread):
WarDance
Methos
CommandoBob
zyxy
Niklas
ControlFreak
 
Hey everybody!

Guess I joined the party a little late since all of my ideas I've been developing for the last two weeks have already been suggested.:goodjob:

As I see it, having India win by Space Ship is the easy part. Doing it fast is the hard part. So we need to find ways to accelerate that. The trick to a fast spaceship is:
  1. Cheap Techs
  2. Good Cashflow
  3. Enough sheilds to build markets/libs/unis/spaceship parts

Our job is finding a way for India to get those things.

Cheap Techs
There is nothing cheaper than FREE. I had come up with the GL "donation" idea earlier and it's appearantly a good one since you guys had the same thoughts.

To make this work best, we would actually want to slowdown India's research rate. The trick is for them to capture the GL just before they learn Education on their own. Hopefully, the rest of society will be way ahead of them and they will get all the fruits of our research for free. I'm not sure how slow we can make them because all those coastal bonuses are going to make them a researching machine in the ancient age. I've even thought of building galleys with express purpose of "pillageing" their tiles. (Units you're at war with prevent citizens from working that tile.)

We're going to have to isolate them from the world. This may not be that hard to do, if the pond they're in is small. If we can settle all around the shores of their pool, no AI can make a boat on the lake and therefore contact them. If not, a galley blockade is an option.

BTW, The only time AI's raze cities is if they are over the Optimal City Limit or if they autoraze. I have never seen an AI raze a wonder.

Good Cash Flow/Shields
As I said, India will have a lot of revenue from the coastal bonuses. They'll be putting 100% of that into science in the Ancient Age. But since we don't care about them researching until the GL Gift happens, we don't want to help their cash flow until after the GLib gift. What I'm hoping is that we can get to steam power before they get to education (I was close to that in my last GOTM game.) That way we can rail their core before handing it over. Note that they can possess the Library and not receive the free techs until we sell their contact to someone else.

Since we're better managers than the AI, it would be good to build/rush markets for India before surrendering all their core cities. I think Libraries and Unis will be destroyed when the city is captured because they're culture buildings but I'm not positive about that.

My PlanTM
  1. Scout towards the cow, if theres another food bonus then we could have a settler factory. Depending on the layout we my be best served to settle on the BG. I have a feeling the water to the NE is fresh allowing us to get the extra sheild in our capitol at size 7. If not, then I might be willing to take three steps to get the settler on the other side of the cow/BGs.
  2. Take advantage of our expansionist trait. Scout for contacts, trade for all techs. Start researching Alphabet at 0% to block that path. If we trade for all the lower techs, start writing at min to keep blocking that path. If we do it right and get lucky with goodyhuts, we may be able to get to Monarchy quickly and free! (I think Monarchy is our best bet because we're going to have to "lose" a lot of cities to india and the war weariness will be killer.)
  3. Expand quickly to engulf India's lake, trying to prevent contact. If we find out that they're in a large ocean, then we'll have to use the galley block (very difficult, requiring many boats).
  4. Build Glib near the shores of the Indian Ocean.
  5. Setup our two cores. I prefer to build RCP around a desired FP location. Build the FP early by hand or by leader. Then conquer a second core and jump the palace there. I tend to be rather slow this way though, so input is welcomed.
  6. Setup India's core. If we plan to keep them backward until the early industrial age, this can wait and can be done by conquering rival civs.
  7. Allow the GLib to be captured by India.
  8. Allow their new core to be captured by India
  9. Capture Delhi with Berserks and jump their palace to their core.

I'll post my strategies for later ages in another post.
 
I'm fine with the roster Niklas. With these comments:
  • For what it's worth, I'm located in the US in the Eastern Time Zone (GMT-5). I've been on SG's that staggered the roster by Timezone to permit faster play but reading SGOTM8, I know you guys are more interested in discussions. That works great with me too.
  • I can sometimes play and post on the weekends, family permitting, but I am more likely to contribute during the week.
  • We probably want to adjust the schedules to work around the vacations coming up. I'll add my time away to my Sig if that helps.
 
Once India has a core, and the GLib has expired, we're going to need a way to force the AI to give India the techs we give everyone else. I think we should crush several AI and leave them sort of helpless. Then when it's time to upgrade techs, we should gift some towns to our pawn, gift the techs to them. Buy an MA with them against India and hope that India can capture those towns and sue for peace.

As I see it, the things that affect what peace is "worth" are:
  • Relative strength - If India has a core and the pawn doesn't this should favor India.
  • How much damage was done - Capturing towns count's the most, killed units count's second. India should stomp on the gifted, probably undefended, pawn towns near their core.
  • How many civ's you're at war with - This will be in the pawns favor if they are only at war with India but India is at war with us as well. We could do a multiple MA so that the pawn is at war with India AND someone else. (I suspect we're going to be at war with half the world, all the time.)
  • Presence of a treaty - it will be harder to get the pawn to settle for peace if our MA is still active. I don't think we can control this. We're going to need our rep to rinse and repeat this strategy. I just hope losing those gifted towns will be enough for the pawn to break their word and settle for peace. Otherwise, we'll have to plan on this cycle of gift/MA/peace to take 20 turns per phase.

Another alternative would be to declare on a pawn and have them Buy India in. That would only work if embassies exist and we would have much less control over that happening.
 
I was wondering about the city improvements that remain intact when a city is captured and ControlFreak brought that up. I know that aqueducts and markets stay. Do courthouses? Banks? Factories? I know I've seen harbors and barracks in captured towns. Just wondering.

I'm fine with the roster. My only problem of course being that I can't play on weekends much at all. A few quick turns are possible sometimes but as the game progresses and turns get longer I need to be on autoskip if I'm "up" on the weekend.
 
As best as I can tell, there is some random event that determines if a building is lost when it's captured. There have been places that I know had a barrack (instantly healed defenders) that don't have it when I capture it. I think I've captured harbor towns sometime keeping and sometimes losing the harbor. If anyone knows of a study or article on the subject, I'd love to read it.

I agree that aquaducts don't get destroyed, at least in towns above size 6. If markets don't get destroyed then we should definitely build/rush them before India takes over.
 
Niklas said:
One thing I object to though is the notion that India starts weak in this game. On that island, with all that fish, they'll be the world's tech leader in the early game for sure. Their building capacity will be suffering slightly until they get out of Despotism though.

Well, when I said they start weak what I meant was it will be quite a long time before we see India sending a stack of horses and swordsmen anyone's way ;) Hey, maybe the game is modded so India has every resource available on their starting hill :crazyeye:
 
WarDance said:
Hey, maybe the game is modded so India has every resource available on their starting hill :crazyeye:
Is it possible to have more than one resource on a square? If so, they I agree, they will have every one.:lol:

On a side note, what's India going to do with their worker? Think he's smart enough to join him to Delhi? Nah...

Any other thoughts on the initial settler moves? I just noticed that there is a plains tile that would provide a quick way to road from the incense to the cow area. It's possible to settle one tile to the north on the insence, quickly irrigating the plains tiles and roading towards the cow. Our build order would go scout/scout/warrior/settler with the settler going down to start settler factory by the cow. We might even want an early worker after the scouts.

I like this plan because then I don't build a granary in the capitol (allowing me to palace jump without destroying 60 sheilds worth of improvment). Downside is our expansion is delayed a little.

And I guess it will depend on what the scout spies.
 
ControlFreak said:
For what it's worth, I'm located in the US in the Eastern Time Zone (GMT-5). I've been on SG's that staggered the roster by Timezone to permit faster play but reading SGOTM8, I know you guys are more interested in discussions. That works great with me too.

Texas, too, is in the US and is in the Central Time Zone, GMT -6.

Lot of discussion is fine with me. The more the better.
 
Hey, I'm in Texas too! Houston to be exact.
 
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