Chinese Dynasty (Emperor)

OK I'm still not 100% clear on how this works with me starting a SG so I'm hoping I dont screw it up...

the rules

5 player roster (hopefully we'll get that many)
20 turns each round
You have 24 hours after the save is posted to tell us you have the save
You have 72 hours to play your turns
In war all enemy cities must be razed, you may not keep enemy cities regardless of wonders. Also you may not capture the city and then sell off the improvements, the city must be razed! You may accept cities in culture flips and may recapture cities we founded however.

Ok

Civ VANILLA
Large Map, 70% water, continents, 4 billion years old, random barbs
12 Random civs, conquest and domination are the only victory conditions
We are china
emperor difficulty

Ok i hope I havent forgotten nethign (I also hope someone signs up lol)

I'll play the first 20 turns

4000bc - a good start location, 2 cows on plains, a river and a fresh water lake. Move the Settler 1 tile SW in order to be on the river. Move the worker 1 tile NW to start Irigating the cow
3950bc - Beijing founded, production set to warrior->warrior->warrior->settler-> then a barracks as a granary prebuild. Warrior in 4 turns growth in 10. Worker starts irrigating, research set to pottery at 100% due in 27 turns
3900 - nothing to do
3850 - worker finishes irrigation, starts roading cow
3800 - nothing
3750 - first warrior finished, tile roaded. Move warrior 1 tile s toward mountains move worker ne 1 tile to start irrigating the 2nd cow
3700- worker starts irrigating, warrior moves a furth tile s and discovers a cow on grassland and plenty of mountains
3650 - move warrior onto mountain to the south see a few hills and a bit of grassland
3600 - 2nd warrior finished, ordered to fortify. 1st warrior heads se, worker finishes irrigation, starts roading
3550 - warrior moves onto hill to the south, sees tip of peninsula, nothing more here.
3500 - move warrior north, worker has finished roading and is moved sw to start mining shield grassland
3450- 3rd warrior finished, beijing grows culturally, settler due in 6 growth in 4 worker starts mining shield grassland warrior keeps heading north along the mountains, reveals a wheat
3400- worker continues, warrior reveals a forest by travelling along the mountains
3350- worker continues, warrior reveals grassland
3300- worker finishes and starts roading, warrior reveals game tile
3250- worker continues, warrior reveals more grassland
3200 - worker finishes and moves 1 tile sw, i think ill send the settler toward the unexplored south as i can see a wheat tile and several shield grassland
3150 - worker starts rounding tile, settler finished barracks (as granary prebuild) starts, warrior moves north
3100- settler continues to move into position, warrior reveals a river and another forest.
3050- the settler moves into position and reveals a second wheat within the new cities immediate radius, looking good for that spot btw, it will be costal. warrior heads east off the mountains toward the river, worker heads 1 tile sw
3000- bronze working comes in research set to alpha at minimum, gpt is at +2, worker starts roading, settler arrives in place and reveals a cow on grassland within culture expansion also appears to be a 2 tile chokepoint to the north. warrior moves onto lone mountain and discovers the coast, barracks switched to granary due in 10 (growth to size 3 in 5)

End of turnset - settler in position to found city straight away...

now that the starts done lets see if anyone signs up

Ok heres the start, the end of turnset, the wealthiest nations of the world and finally the save

woops forgot the saave

Looking back I think that the rules were a bit unfair so I'll make a slight modification

You have 48 hours to tell us you have the save (thats 2 days instead of 1)
and 120 hours to play your turnset (thats 5 days instead of 3)

Hopefully that will make it a bit easier for people to sign up

I'm willing to join. Was just about to start a new one myself. Current games seem stuck due to civ4. Would prefer a 36/72 time scedule though, as otherwise there will be to much time between turns, and people start to forget they're up.

OK thats not a problem for me, a simple enough adjustment.

so seeing as how I've already had my first turnset would that be

1. nerovats
2. ????????
3. ????????
4. ????????
5. tupaclives

or would you prefer someone else to play the second turnset?
it doesnt worry me and maybe we should wait for some more people before i go crazy doing up rosters

I suggest to give it a day, people a less inclined to join if tehre are already a number of turnsets played. I could take teh 2nd turnset or someone else, does not matter to me. When some more people join we could make a decent roster, ordering by skill or time zome.

I'll join too, no civ4 for me (yet) .

Not sure I've ever won at warlord though ....

I like the idea nerovats about rostering based on skill and timezone. we'll wait to get enough people and then we'll work something out.

@zyxy - welcome aboard! Oh well not to worry I guess it'll be a learning experience for you

Count me in! I haven't played an SG (apart from the SGOTMs) for a while but work pressure is easing and I now have the time to commit again.

This game could become quite aggressive so you may want to reconsider the 20 turns per round in the later stages. I guess that we'll cross that bridge when we come to it though. The AI civs are going to really hate us in this game.

I'd like to be in if you'll have me. Never played in an SG but I've been looking for one to get into for a while now. I'm hoping it will be a learning experience for me as I'm a strong Regent / just getting into Monarch player in my single player games. Timezone is GMT -5

Tone and McLman great to have onside. I was thinking about that actually tone with regards the turnsets as in my current diety single player game each turn is taking close to half an hour to complete so we'll revise the length of the turnsets as we get further into the game but for the first round at the very least it will be 20turn turnsets. I know the AI is going to absolutely hate us and we are likely to get stuck under an AI dogpile at some point. To top it all off any wonder we dont build is gone. We can't get it since we cant keep captured cities... its goign to be interesting and difficult, hence me choosing emperor over diety.

I think acting in an honourable manner is going to be really important for this as even if they hate us they will still trade with us if we have a good reputation.

@McLman - dont worry this is my first SG too! And yeah I was hoping it would be a learning experience, not in a training game sense more in the sense that from the couple of times Ive played this variant its proven quite hard and we arnt going to be able to build any strategies around wonders really. (whereas normally, Sun Tzu's, Smiths, Hoovers and Universal Sufferage - if i missed any of them id go out and capture them).

I wanted a 5 player roster so that there isnt too much waiting for your turn, we have a 5 player roster now... do we need any more? It doesnt bother me too much so whatever the general consensus is I'll go with. Also start thinking about spots on the roster you would like, most specifically whose going to take the next turnset and who will follow them? Since I played the first 20 turns I'll go last.

Great, never played with any of you, should give some new insights. Hope to be able to contibute like that myself. I suggest Tupaclive makes up a roster. I'm in +1GMT and usually do ok on deity.

Roster of five is good for me, don't like rosters of more then 5.

In some SG's people even play 5 turns a set near the end., especially when warmongering on large maps. But 20 is fine for now.

We should not try to upset every AI around, make friends and sign alliances.

for the roster first lets look at the timezones

we have 2 English members so they would both roughly be around GMT 0
we have 1 Dutch member so thats GMT +1
we have 1 Australian member (me) so thats GMT +10
and we have 1 American so thats GMT -5 I believe

also I dont really know your skill levels but I'm not exactly comfortable at diety but i am content, Nerovats says he does ok at diety and McLman is getting up to monarch so my preference would be for a roster that looks something like this (bearing in mind I've already played 1 turnset)

Nerovats
zxyz
Tone
McLman
Tupaclives

does anyone want to make any changes? if not then feel free to start 'er up Nero

As for strategy I think we can still follow fairly basic expansion and early game tactics. Expand hard and lets look to get ourselves into a good tech position. When go to war we'll try and avoid the dogpile by bringing in allies. Also just because we are going for conquest or domination doesnt mean we have to fight everyone straight away. really the only different strat i think we need is to be aggressive when it comes to building key wonders as we cant capture them later.

For me the key ancient age wonders are the Great Lighthouse and the Hanging Gardens. We'r playing continents so the Great Lighthouse will be important and I personally love the happiness wonders. Anyway I'm getting ahead of myself again lets do some exploring and expanding first!

Great!

I'm happy with the roster. I should have said that I'm comfortable on Diety and have a few Sid wins under my belt on C3C. Then again I have found myself treating the AI with too much contempt at lower levels recently. For example, in the previous COTM (Emp difficulty) I had a tech lead of almost a whole age and gifted the scientific civs into MT to speed up my space race, only for them to get Fission and just pip me to the post on a UN vote. I should have beaten them to this but I was too arrogant and didn't take all the steps required to get to the UN first so I'll try not to do anything like that in this game!

Once Alpha comes in I think that we need to head for Monarchy. Hopefully we'll be able to trade for CB and Myst from contacts. I'm not too bothered about the AA wonders as they can stunt early progress and we are building all our own towns. However things change in the MA and Leo's is a must IMO!

Question: Can we take cities in PTs? Accept them as our own, as they will have our citizens in them? Accept them but raze immediately? Never take cities as part of a PT. I suspect that the answer is option 3 but if you don't ask you don't find out.

my skill level = emperor - deity.

Roster is fine. I can usually play in the evening.

Allright can play tonight if that's ok, or do we want to discus a dotmap first?

I usually don't build AA wonders as well as it hampers expansion. Lighthouse is usually not a must on continents, we have a fair chance of finding most ai even without suicide attempts. Only build HG in 20K attempts.

Which govt do we go for, Tone suggested monarchy, I prefer republic. There's some fresh water so no problem getting a couple of cities over size 6 to for unit support.

@ Tone - Ok I agree about the wonders. We might need to wait and see about the size of our continent before disregarding the Great Lighthouse completely. I agree about Leo's, considering we cant capture it later I think we should definately try for it when we get that far, the same for smiths as it can save so much gpt, especially on Large Maps. CB should be pretty easy to come by and in fact I think our first contact will probably already have it on Emp.
Hmmm I was actually thinking abotu that just before and I realised I hadnt said anything about it, and I realised I hadnt actually thought about taking them as part of PT. My preference would be to not be able to accept them but if you would all rather be able to take them as part of peace I'll be happy enough to concur.

@ nerovats - yep get started whenever you can. I dont think dotmaps are really necessary, if anyone feels differently we can do one now but I think the settler is in a good position and theres a cow on grassland and wheat on grassland and game on grassland (when the forest chop is done) so theres plenty of food bonuses. My preference for the next settler would probably be to go for the game as theres some BGL around there too but whatever suits you best.

as for the governments Republic is my favourite government and as this isnt AW we can probably handle the WW at the start so I'm all in favour of a Republic. I think Tone's idea about Monarchy is quite a good one actually in terms of researching it as the AI tends to go for Republic before Monarchy so it might give us some trading power, especially if we go for it straight away.