Tupac03 - Aztecs in Space

Well with all but one of my SG's having finished and me with all this free time I thought I might as well start up another SG.

Game Settings

Vanilla 1.29f
Standard
Continents
70% Water
Wet
Warm
5 Billion Years

8 Civs (7 random opponents)
Deity
All Victory Conditions enabled but Space Race is the only acceptable victory to us (mostly there to make things difficult, we have to get there before they win by culture)
Culturally Linked start locations: OFF
Respawn AI: OFF
Preserve Random Seed: ON

This is, believe it or not, the very first start I rolled up after opening Civ III!



Game Rules
As modified from LK Rules

The following tactics are PROHIBITED:

No 'Free Wealth' - Setting a city to wealth at the end of its project and then cycling through the cities at the start of the next turn and changing its project so that you still get the gold (commerce being calculated before anything else in the turn) but also get production

RoP Abuse Tactics - Denying resources, blocking key tiles, RoP rape, or other ways to screw-up a civ via the RoP. A scout in AI territory has an explicit RoP and is subject to this rule.

Peace Treaty abuse - If you get concessions from the AI you must wait for the 20 turns to end before declaring another war.

Resource abuse - You can't disconnect / reconnect a resource every turn for the sake of building cheap units to upgrade with excess cash.

Ship chaining exploit - you can move a ship, unload troops to another ship in the same square not using any movement, move that ship, etc. This allows you to ship an indefinite distance, and that is why I consider it an exploit.

The negative science exploit - you can run a huge deficit (-250 / turn) of negative cash with a token penalty of one lost worker / cheap building. If cash will go below zero, the research level must be dropped.

Worker baiting - You can't spread around and sacrifice workers to an oncoming attack. This is often done to avoid losing real units or cities. This takes advantage of the AI failure to prioritize targets.

Worker blockades - You can't fortify a bunch of workers along the coast to prevent invasions, or shut down the borders with workers. The workers must be actively doing something.

House rules:
1) Worker automation of any kind is prohibited.

2) Our reputation is golden - please respect it.

3)You ARE allowed to initially keep a city, move a settler to the same spot as the city, and then abandon and immediately resettle.

4)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.

5)We may keep or raze cities, and can keep slaves and you may whip at will, including captured cities or cities where all citizens are unhappy

6) Even if not covered under exploits listed, please try not to use tactics that take advantage of holes in the game design unless previously discussed and approved by the team.


SG Rules

24 hour got it
72 hour playing time
The first player will play 30 turns, the rest of the team will play 20 turns in the first round. Once everyone has played 1 turnset all players will play 10 turn turnsets.


Roster:

tupaclives
Andronicus
CommandoBob
Merlin
Open

Also with a save like that we should probably consider some sort of variant to make things a little harder.

The Save

If you dont mind another Aussie I'm willing to pitch in

I,ve never played vanilla but did play a few PTW GOTMs last year
Never actually launched a SS either - only attempt resulted in accidentally triggering dom limit

This should take we out of my comfort zone - just the challenge I need

Great thats 1 in! I can't remember the last time I launched a SS either, not since Chieften I think haven't even made it to the modern age in a SG yet either!

It has been a long time since I have played vanilla, I prefer Chocolate.

I will join this if you want and I am another Aussie.

Go the green and gold team!

Thats 3 in the team now.

I'd like to join. I don't think that we need any more difficult variant. The land is very narrow, so we don't get a decent core.

Welcome aboard Merlin!

Thats true about the narrowness. We'll see how things go. That makes 4 players, ideally I'd like a team of 5-6 so we'll wait until for another player or 2 to sign up.

Three cows do make up for that. It is going to be weird have armies that do not do what they do in

I don't understand the fuss about armies in vanilla. From what I gather they are a lot stronger in Conquests (i have never played conquests or PTW) however they are still very useful to have around in vanilla, and they can pillage just as effectively as in C3C if you are a little creative (a defensive army like pikes/muskets etc. covering a horse, the defensive army moves onto a tile and the horse follows and pillages, take 2 horses once you get to rails).

Looking at the start how do you think we can get the best out of it? i would move the settler 1NE to the grassland on the coast and found there, start roading the cow immediately with the worker. Max on pottery and build order of jag-->jag-->jag-->settler-->granary.

Vanilla or PTW armies are useless compared to Conquest armies. They cannot blitz and they do not have n extra movement and they do not heal in enemy territory. That is what makes armies so much better in Conguests. The blitz is perhaps the best ability that they have.

Armies do blitz in vanilla, just armies filled with 1move troops cant blitz as they only have 1 movement point. but fast moving armies (horses/cavs etc.) do blitz.

tupaclives said:

Looking at the start how do you think we can get the best out of it? i would move the settler 1NE to the grassland on the coast and found there, start roading the cow immediately with the worker. Max on pottery and build order of jag-->jag-->jag-->settler-->granary.

Click to expand...

I agree with NE settler move
SW is BG so optoins are W - poss too much coast, NW or NE - all get 3 cows giving 5fpt without irrigation. Advantage of NE is can work 2 cows when grow size 2 before expansion - a small difference, but could be sig.
With no river our commerce will be very poor, should we consider min or zero research?
jags for exploration and mp I assume
granary would be good - forest chop would help, but IIRC they are much slower than in conquests

Havnt played Aztecs before - would seem difficult to avoid despotic GA unless find iron before war

lurker's comment: Actually, if you can find iron fairly quickly, the Aztec are good for the super-promotion technique. As long as you haven't triggered your Golden Age, you can keep producing your unique unit. With a decent economy, you can crank out cheap jaguar warriors in just a turn or two in even moderately corrupt cities, then upgrade them instantly into the much more time-consuming MedInf or Sword or even Geurilla if you're that far into the game. If you have Leo's you can really afford to flood the world with some pretty decent units. Obviously the upgrades cost money, but the point is being able to produce the low-shield units quickly. I used this strategy on a huge map using the Aztecs and the AI could never keep up with my unit production.

Probably not a practical strategy for the upper levels, but up through Emperor it should work fine. I've always meant to try it out with Egypt, instantly turning war chariots into knights or cavs, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Forest chops take 10 turns for non-industrious civs in vanilla, 5 turns for industrious civs. I no we lack a river but what that means is we will actually benefit from our (mostlikely) early GA. Not a great tradeoff but won't be too bad. I'd still opt for max on pottery simply because we need a settler farm asap. We could then minsci to alpha hoping to get it first for trade... (assuming no commercial civs of course)

I would like to play this game but my non-Chieftain experience is limited. One win on Monarch (PTW) and several games in progress (see my sig) and SGOTM9 on Team Smurkz.

Mid week turns are not good for me due to Wednesday night church services. I get home after 9pm.

And if these things aren't enough:

Ideally I'd like a single player win on emperor but i dont think it would be much of a problem.... alright your in CommandoBob! Welcome Aboard

That gives us five players so lets start.

I put all the names in a hat and drew them out in this order

classical_hero
tupaclives
Andronicus
CommandoBob
Merlin

So thats the roster order.

Classical Hero starts us off (remember 30 turns for the first player). If anyone needs a skip or swap please try to post BEFORE your 72 hours are up.
Good luck Classical Hero!

tupaclives said:

I don't understand the fuss about armies in vanilla. From what I gather they are a lot stronger in Conquests (i have never played conquests or PTW) however they are still very useful to have around in vanilla, and they can pillage just as effectively as in C3C if you are a little creative (a defensive army like pikes/muskets etc. covering a horse, the defensive army moves onto a tile and the horse follows and pillages, take 2 horses once you get to rails).

Looking at the start how do you think we can get the best out of it? i would move the settler 1NE to the grassland on the coast and found there, start roading the cow immediately with the worker. Max on pottery and build order of jag-->jag-->jag-->settler-->granary.

Click to expand...

I believe armies cannot pillage in vanilla. In C3C they not only can pillage, they do not even use any movement to do it. That is very strong, and I tend to not allwo myself to use it.

Exta movement as was mention is a real big deal. Calv armies can move 4 and attack 4 times. They are much strong as well.

Check this:

if you load an army with all units the same type and supposing those units are 6/3/3 (i.e. Cavalry) then:

Attack bonus with:
Neither Pentagon nor Military Academy: (6+6+6)/6 = +3
Pentagon only: (6+6+6+6)/6 = +4
Military Academy only: (6+6+6)/4 = +4 (rounded down)
Both Pentagon and Military Academy: (6+6+6+6)/4 = +6

With Pentagon and Military Academy, assuming you load 4 units of the same type into each army, the net result is to simply double their attack and defense stats, because the bonus is (4*X)/4 = +X Which makes a 4-Cavalry army into a 12/6/4 unit.

Movement is +1 to the slowest unit in the army.
Armies have a built in radar function and can see two squares.
Free pillaging.
Units specail ability is lost if not homongenous.
Armies are treated as if you had battlefield medicine for healing. They fully heal in a city with a barracks, just like a individual unit.
Att/def is calculated for the currently attacking or defending unit, so if it is a mix army, they change to reflect the one fighting at that time.

tupaclives said:

Game Rules
As modified from LK Rules
...
House rules:
...
SG Rules
...

Click to expand...

Is it OK to check F10 to "discover" the other civs?
Are MapStat and CivAssistII allowed?

CommandoBob said:

Is it OK to check F10 to "discover" the other civs?
Are MapStat and CivAssistII allowed?

Click to expand...

I was about to pose same question

lurker's comment: Im not deity material. Lurker Hotel is where i'll be staying.