Jheronimus leader of Germany - for everyone SG

Q: What is a succession game?
A: A game you play for an agreed amount of turns, then you post a log of what happened and the strategy involved (see 2 messages below for example), inside this forum, you'll also attach the savegame to the post (where you left at the end of these agreed turns).
Q: Why should we play a succession game?
A: To see the diffrent strategies we use, to learn from eachother, to have fun and to discuss what to do best.

1) You first have to become a member, if you want to be one then post your request below.
2) Play the game only for the agreed amount of time (see below "Time", updated regularely).
2) Do NOT use cheat codes, the ritire function, a mod or anything what would give you an advantage over the other players in this forum.
3) Do not play further than agreed, this may give you a better insight.
4) I would recommend that people NOT read the commentary by folks who've done the turns already, since it'll give too much information to them about how things are set up, you can look after you've done yours and discuss it with us.
5)The deadline is 48 hours till we move on the the next number of turns the exact deadline will be posted below under "deadline". If you need a one day extension, then mention this before the 48 hours have expired. And ofcourse you may play and post your result game faster.
6) After you've played the game for the agreed amount of turns, you'll post your log of the game and the savegame, feel free to attach pictures to your post and you may discuss anything afterwards. To get an idea of how to post a log see 2 posts below.
7) You'll pass your savegame on to your teammate* (*except for the first session)(*see diagram below) when you've completed your session, you'll do this within 48 hours.
8) We don't use variant rules.
INFO: The latest savegame will be sent to you by your teammember (see diagram) or made availible in his post (as an attachment). Do not play the old ones and post about them. The first savegame will be attached below this post availible for you to download.
TIP: To be able to write a detailed log it's easiest to take a pencil and paper, this way you can write everything down each turn so you won't forget what you'd done. An other option is to use a mod, wich is capable of logging your game, click here for more details.



We play as Bismarck of Germany Expansive and Industrious:

Game: Conquest
Difficulty: Noble
Opponents: 4
Map: continents
Size: large
Climate: Tropical
Sealevel: low
Era: Ancient
Speed: quick
normal settings

For the first time we'll play the game untill 3500BC (you can make all your disicions in 3500BC and move all your units in the turn of 3500BC, but save the game at that point). After that save your game and mail the file to djreon@hotmail.com or attach it somewhere in this forum. Tell us what you did and what your strategy was in that past agreed amount of turns.

Well...

founded Berlin where the settler is. Not a great looking spot, but then, nothing seen that would induce me to move, either. (As it turned out, might have liked to move a bit south to get some floodplains. But couldn't have known that.)

Research: bronzeworking. Nice forests we got there in Berlin. For now.

Build: a worker. Might want to improve a few things. Like, forests, say. Trees are ugly when they could be nice stumps and logs and workers and settlers and such.

Moved scout in a circle around the city, starting with hitting the hut seen in the initial screenie. Looking for 2nd city sites, but also wanting to circle back to the goodie hut that is seen once the city-radius goes to 2. Found several other huts, got gold mostly but also Archery.

Result game:
Here

Image follows; it's a spoiler:

Oke here's what I done:

Turn 1 4000 BC: I see a nice river, I want to be a little closer to the river so I walked only one step to the south-east and settled there. I've named the capital Berlin ofcourse. I gave the city the order to start with building a worker, and also started to invent bronze working. This way we'll be able to chop some trees early on, giving us some extra hammers so we can get an early boost in our little economy, this'll get us some early advantage over the AI. I popped the tribal village with my scout. It gave us 84 gold, not bad...

Turn 2 3950 BC: I decided to head north-east with my scout.

Turn 3 3900 BC: Headed north, I see more and more tundra, it appears we are on the northern hemisphere.

Turn 4 3850 BC: Our borders of Berlin expanded to a nice fat-cross, I walked my scout to the east because of a coast to the north.



Turn 5 3800 BC: Went south-east along the coast and bumped into a tribal village. They gave me Mysticism, whoow that's really nice! We're now able to construct Stonehenge if we want to, but not just yet I'd say.

Turn 6 3750 BC: I headed east due to a mountainrange to the south.

Turn 7 3700 BC: Walked south through the mountains, to prefent getting to far away from our capital.

Turn 8 3650 BC: Buddhism founded in a distant land... I went south-west with my scout but I came face to face with a large bear! So I turned around and fled northwest.



Turn 9 3600 BC: I've got I grizzly following me, fled south-west

Turn 10 3550 BC: Discovered bronze working! We can now chop forrests down to rush the building of a settler to expand, at least when our worker is ready in 3 turns... Next I gave my science advisor they order to invent Polytheism (7 turns), because I want to get a state religion (Hinduism) (they can give you a good amount of gold). We probably won't be the first to discover it, but hey that doesn't matter we can always jump to Monotheism and cut our penisis With the discovery of bronze working we mastered slavery, but I don't see the need for it, given the fact we have to go through one turn of anarchy since we're not a spiritiual civ, no that's a waste. I move my scout south-west towards a hill to get a nice view into the unknown. Hey, I spotted a new tribal village to the south!

Turn 11 3500 BC: I've popped the hut and the tribal head gave me 79 gold, nice....

Evaluation/Plan:


The red line indicates the route my scout took. The next thing I would do is explore area A and B, because these places look nice for potential new city along the river bank. This gives us fertile grounds in our city area and we won't need to build roads straight away (the river already connects the cities). Maybe it would be nice to go atop the most southern hill to reveal some unknown area also... The marble in the south-west is intresting also, but if it's up to me that'll come in handy when we build our 3rd or 4th city. I plan to build 2 workers to chop vast amounts of forrests. Between the building of the 2 workers I would build one settler, these 2 units will come out quick when the first one begins to chop. We are on the Northern hemisphere that's for sure, I prefered starting a bit closer to the equator, so we could expand both North and south undesturbed by less fertile lands.

When we look to the most highest picture in my post we see the Berlin, places A, B, and C are very fertile lands, that's very good however this city hasn't got any resources or hills inside it's fat cross, that's not good, but it's compensated by the three fertile squares. This city will never become a mass producing powerhouse, but rather a GP-farm with potential.

Units: Scout
Cities: Berlin
Techs mastered: Hunting, Mining, Mysticism, Bronze working
Gold: 163

I'll download the game and run the 11 turns tonight.

I would recommend that people NOT read the commentary by folks who've done the turns already, since it'll give too much information to them about how things are set up.

You should also post a deadline, say 48 hours for people to have their moves in by. There's a lot of us with lives who would still like to play, and if you do them too quickly we won't have time either to discuss it, or get our moves done before the next one.

My initial moves are going to be to research bronzeworking, settle the initial spot and move the scout to the hut. At that point I will head for the nearest hill to get a good view. I will build a worker first.

My overall aim would be to chop workers, defense and settlers. I think that my approach would be to then research the Wheel, agriculture and pottery next.

From the location, it looks like this is not going to be the production city. I'll probably aim for it to be the GP farm, since there's one hill to provide hammers once mined.

The trees are history, there's way too much river valley there to be exploited--big city on its way.

Tom

Ok, I've updated everything rules etc. I hope more people will join now

Jheronimus said:

Ok, I've updated everything rules etc. I hope more people will join now

Click to expand...

Don't worry if we don't get more than three or four people playing. Some of the best succession games only have two players. I think that for the first few rounds, it's going to depend a lot on what each person gets out of the goody huts.

I'm rooting for getting BW, Agriculture or the Wheel out of one of mine.

Tom

What do you think of my intro design, looks nice eh This should pull in some people in.

What do you think; should we, A) All pass the save game on to someone else who'll continue, this way we'll get some diffrent games or B) Vote for who did best and all continue with his/her savegame, this way we'll have one game. The more games the more strategy to evaluate and discuss (and compare). But maybe to confusing. If we use B we'll always get the best result, wich may become to easy and it also cuts out the less experienced players because we never use their game. We could also draw lots instead of voting for the best in option B so we don't always end up with the best savegame, maybe more fair. I don't like the normal procedure everybody uses in succesion games, because you don't play for some sessions (you follow the diagram). You end up playing something you didn't play for a long time...

Jheronimus said:

What do you think of my intro design, looks nice eh This should pull in some people in.

What do you think; should we, A) All pass the save game on to someone else who'll continue, this way we'll get some diffrent games or B) Vote for who did best and all continue with his/her savegame, this way we'll have one game. The more games the more strategy to evaluate and discuss (and compare). But maybe to confusing. If we use B we'll always get the best result, wich may become to easy and it also cuts out the less experienced players because we never use their game. We could also draw lots instead of voting for the best in option B so we don't always end up with the best savegame, maybe more fair. I don't like the normal procedure everybody uses in succesion games, because you don't play for some sessions (you follow the diagram). You end up playing something you didn't play for a long time...

Click to expand...

Well, if we keep this limited to novices (folks who have never done a public succession game,) we're not going to limit anyone. In addition, your game setup is going to be a bear to win, anyway. Let's just vote on which one to continue, say after the deadline, we've got 24 hours to discuss and agree on which save to continue, or, we could even open the voting to the general public and go with what they want. Might be more fair, actually.

I'm going to run the game, now.

Tom

Ok, here's my 3500BC save. I have class tonight, so I won't do a running commentary right now.

I'll do the rundown of the first 11 turns tomorrow.

Thanks for posting. For the comparison:

My cities have more floodplains, thus more food, your cities got cows and 1 hill to mine thus extra hammers... Wreck has the same amount of techs as me, only I have Mysticism and he's got Archery, now mysticsim is worth 46 science beakers and Archery 56 science beakers, so Wreck does better than me, TCGTRF is one tech behind, but he's got more gold and maybe 1 undiscovered tribal village more than us.

It's still possible to join, join please! NEED MORE PEOPLE

Ok, time for my play-by-play, sorry that it was delayed, but Espanol has to take precidence....

Turn 1--4000BC

Moved scout to pop hut, got 84 gold. Settled in place, revealing cows 2 tiles east, good starting spot. Set city to build a worker and research bronzeworking to take advantage of copious forests. The river valley and tiles adjacent to Berlin will be deforested.

Turn 2--3950BC

Moved Scout to 2 North of Berlin to examine river valley north of city.

Turn 3--3900BC

Move to top of RH hill NW of Berlin. Spotted tundra, we're pretty far north, exploring south should take precedence.

Turn 4--3850BC

Berlin culture pops, revealing hut to west, head towards it with Scout.

Turn 5--3800BC

Hut pops gold, total now 173.

Turn 6--3750BC

Move to hill due south, across river, new hut revealed

Turn 7--3700BC

Pop Hut. Gold now 262. Damn, I wanted a technology badly

Turn 8--3650BC

Buddism discovered by someone. We've got a Civ opposing us that started with Mysticism. Looks like we're not going to get an early religion. Move scout to east, reveals marble 4S 1W of Berlin. Very nice, if we put our second city close enough to it, we can hook it up and we'll have a huge boost to the Parthenon, Oracle and Great Library.

Turn 9--3600BC

Move scout due east, nothing new. Bears visible ESE of Berlin near edge of city border, gotta watch out for them. There's jungle near the river SE of Berlin. We'll need early ironworking.

Turn 10--3550BC

Move scout east, find hut to pop next turn.

Turn 11--3500BC More gold! This is ridiculous, just what I don't need!

Bronzeworking finished. Start researching the Wheel. Why? Two major reasons for this--first of all, if I am going to chop a second worker, he's going to have to have something to do once the hill is mined. If we get animal husbandry next, we can build a pasture for the additional food and hammers, but could not hook it up for the health, *and* once that's done, the only thing that the worker could do is chop. I'd prefer to be using that second worker to be making roads towards other city sites to speed up our lines of communication for when the barbarians start showing up and for early resource hookup. If we build a mine on the nearby hill, we couldn't get the benefit of that *and* the pasture until our pop hits 3, anyway. Animal husbandry will be next.

Good news and bad news. I see 3 rice tiles and the cow, this means that we're going to have huge cities, especially with the river valleys and the Expansive trait. We'll need temples and Monarchy early to deal with happiness issues, but we're going to easily be able to out-science and out produce our opponents early on. I think that we should go for a minimum of six total cities in the early expansion and make sure we've got enough cottages to support our economy.

The bad news is that we popped no copper. This doesn't look good for early warmongering. We've got three choices if we don't find any in the next three turns:

1) Skip early warmongering entirely and go for initial peaceful relations with a neighbor on our continent. Go for the pottery-writing-literature track and build the Great Library early. Get techs lighting-fast and then overwhelm them with a late-classical/early Medieval war. This would also entail getting archery and using archers on hilltops at the edge of our Civ to distract the barbarians and keep them away from our burgeoning cities.

2) Get Ironworking early and hope for iron within our boundaries. I've found that often if there's no copper around, there's iron. Working the initial mine will also give us a small chance of popping a resource from it.

3) If there's an opposing civilization close and we find horses close, go the Archery--Animal Husbandry--Horseback riding route and do early warmongering with horse archers. We probably could not take their capital without having catapults, but we could take a couple of smaller cities and pillage to the point where they're permanently crippled, then take them out at our leisure later.

Of the three current saves, I would recommend continuing with Wreck's. Mysticism is not going to allow us to get a religion early--Hinduism should pop in a couple of turns from someone else, and Monotheism needs too many techs that we cannot afford to research right now in order to gain. We also do not have stone for a quickie Stonehenge, although it would be doable with the Industrious trait. We, however, desperately need the Archery that he popped. It will give us a big boost to either path 1 or path 3 above.

If we do not get a fourth or fifth player (btw, is Willem going to come back and play after his ban is lifted? How long was it for?) I would recommend just going into a rotation with J or I doing the next two sets of turns and Wreck doing the one three from now. This feels a bit too much like reloading, you're right, J.

Tom

Been thinking it over. I think Wreck is correct in researching Animal Husbandry next. Since the Wheel is only 5 turns to research, if you research it right afterwards, the second worker could mine the hill, build the pasture (which would give a 3 food, 3 hammer tile to work--not bad at all) and then start making roads when those are finished. Early Animal Husbandry would also reveal horses and let us know if we can pursue any kind of early warmongering strategy.

Tom

I'll join up, but I won't be able to contribute until tommorrow afternoon when I can get to my comp.

Crighton said:

I'll join up, but I won't be able to contribute until tommorrow afternoon when I can get to my comp.

Click to expand...

J, why don't we delay the deadline by 6 hours to give him a chance?


Tom

Yes we'll do that, Welcome to the game Crighton, I updated (see first post also link included with countdown) the deadline, so you've got more time now.

If we do not get a fourth or fifth player (btw, is Willem going to come back and play after his ban is lifted? How long was it for?) I would recommend just going into a rotation with J or I doing the next two sets of turns and Wreck doing the one three from now. This feels a bit too much like reloading, you're right, J.

Click to expand...

I don't think rotation like all other SG-games is my favourite. This means that if I screw up the game, because I am a rooky and never done an SG-before, you have to deal with the concequences, but ok that may be a challenge to you. On they other hand I would like this;

From now on we split this game up into four separate games; then we'll use this diagram:

We will have four players Wreck, you, Crighton and me we will form seperate or distinct couples, We'll put a rooky together with a prof; (for example)

Game 1
Start with Wreck's savegame
TCGTRF
Jheronimus

Game 2
Start with Wreck's savegame
Crighton
Wreck

The advantage: we all play one game after waiting for 2 days (instead of waiting 3 session = not playing for 6 days, that's a week! So now it'll be, two days playtime and two days off. The game will now feel more of yourself (because only one session is not yours), all the end-savegames of each member will be used and continued. This way we'll see some diversity after a while in strategy between the 2 games. We can compare the games, lots of fun. We will always get the savegame from the same member your partner and give it back to the same, to make it easy. We can even do a fair challenge against eachother starting even, one group or game against the other group or game.

I really prefer this idea, looks like great fun. We can always try, and if it's not what we want/ like, we can always pick one game and continue that one (only with one diagram).

TCGTRF said:

Been thinking it over. I think Wreck is correct in researching Animal Husbandry next. Since the Wheel is only 5 turns to research, if you research it right afterwards, the second worker could mine the hill, build the pasture (which would give a 3 food, 3 hammer tile to work--not bad at all) and then start making roads when those are finished. Early Animal Husbandry would also reveal horses and let us know if we can pursue any kind of early warmongering strategy.

Tom

Click to expand...

I agree, Wreck's savegame is probably the best, with his we will continue if Crighton won't come up with a better one. By the way we have to invent mysticism fast also to be able to build stonehenge giving us some GP-points for a great prophet, he will generate once settled in a city 5 gold and 2 hammers each turn, this way we can fund our budget on science and maybe a larger first or second expansion phase of our empire.

Buddism discovered by someone. We've got a Civ opposing us that started with Mysticism

Click to expand...

This means we've got a civ who's got the spiritual Trait;
This must be someone of these:
- Saladin (Arabs)
- Montezuma (Aztecs)
- Hatseput (egypt)
- Gandhi (Indians)
- Osaka (Indians)
- Mansa Munsa (Malinese)
- Isabella (Spanish)
Or in a very small chance, it could be an other civ wich popped a hut in the first turn and got the tech mysticism for free and thereafter started meditation emidiately, but this is not very likely. And seeing this screen it's obvious (from Wreck's savegame):


Jeez, this ain't look pretty. We now know it must be the Indians or the Aztecs who've converted to Buddism. This game will be a though one to win... There are 3 opponent out of the 4 civs with the Agressive trait, they have free promotions for every single unit they build! I think if we want to start a war we do it against the indians who are the only ones who haven't got the trait. We also know the Incans must be Huanya Capac [Agg/Fin] and the Aztecs must be Montezuma [Agg/Spi]. There's also something else we can see from this pic, they all didn't start with building a worker (in contrast to us) otherwise they wouldn't have capital cities with population 2.

If there's an opposing civilization close

Click to expand...

I don't think the chances are very high, it's a large world, even though there was a civ on our continent he could be miles away, making it difficult to reach him by a land invasion. But in a smaller chance there could be someone close. Take a look at the pic below, this map (not ours ofcourse) has the same settings as our game does. the little white square already covers 10 squares, so this world is pretty big.



So I don't think early wars will take place.

First of all, I am willing to go for the split into two two-person succession games. I don't think I've seen it, but I'm willing to try.

We've got three warlike and one builder civ opposing us. Just as well, I think a peaceful strategy is a bad idea anyway with a conquest victory needed on quick speed. We're going to have to skip some techs and backfill.

Now, about Stonehenge. It would be nice to get it. It would even be doable. However, it is far from necessary, and the Great Prophet would be totally wasted merging it with the city this early.

In the pre-Renaissance game, Technology and special buildings are everything. Take a look in the Strategy forums about things like the Code of Laws slingshot. What you do with Stonehenge is build it at a specific time along the tech tree and research all of the religious techs (but not Masonry) plus writing in order to get Code of Laws early (or possibly even Civil Service.) In any case, the GP would be wasted if combined with the city this early.

We've got no copper, so far. We can only win by conquering the world. This means we need to be thinking about how we can do that, especially against two Civs that get their special units really early. Just think, beyond that jungle, HC or Monty could be lurking waiting to send their quechas or jaguars towards us if we spend too much time researching religions.

Remember, if we don't research Masonry, we don't get walls. Even barbarians can take cities without walls.

Tom

Should we then use the diagram in post 16? And shouldn't we try to get the Oracle with the marble near us to get a slingshot from the free tech

Jheronimus said:

Should we then use the diagram in post 16? And shouldn't we try to get the Oracle with the marble near us to get a slingshot from the free tech

Click to expand...

If it's ok with Wreck and Crighton, we can switch to #16, as far as I'm concerned.

As far as the Oracle and slingshots go, let's see if we've got horses and how close the nearest civ is to us. In any case, we need to get more of the worker techs (especially the Wheel) before we start looking at wonders.

Before we can do anything with it, we have to get the marble hooked up. If we want to do that, we need roads and to found the second city with it in its radius.

Wait and see. No sense getting too far ahead of ourselves on limited intelligence. The warlike nature of our opponents gives me concern.

Tom