FM01 Team Barbarian OCC (Prince)

Our city-state of anarchists will have as little to do as possible with the decadent so-called "civilisations" of the world. We hanker for a world led by the so-called "barbarians" where man can truly be free from the chains of the the nation-states.

Goal: Win by Team Barbarian, excluding Conquest

Civilisation: Elizabeth of the English (financial, philosophical)
Teamed with the Barbs!
World: Normal size / Epic speed / Pangea / Raging barbs / OCC / Prince difficulty
Opponents: random, 1 less than normal (to provide more room for barb spawning)

Game Notes: As this is an OCC, any cities we capture will auto-raze. Therefore we need to be in position to help our team-mates to capture cities without destroying the last defender ourselves. Barbarians share our technologies for their built units (as opposed to spawned units) so building a tech lead would obviously be advantageous! As the Barbarian Team we initially start off in contact with and at war with all players, but normal diplomacy is possible after this.

I have tried this with a noble/quick/tiny game, and won by domination. I'm not sure if prince is the right level on a standard size map, buts it worth a go

I first thought of this concept after reading a comment by Gyathaar in RAT12.

Gyathaar said:

Another interesting setup is putting yourself in a team with raging barbs.. (it is possible.. you have to make a worldbuilder save, and then edit it in a text editor to set the player to play in team 18)

Click to expand...

OCC enables us to concentrate on helping the barbs, without building up an empire ourself. It would be great to see a Barb cultural or spaceship win, although domination is probably easiest and perhaps more fun, but the team shall decide.

I did a forum search about barbarian behaviour, and found the posts by JerichoHill in this thread to be the most useful. It would be cool if he wanted to play in this game, I am sure we will learn even more about barbarian behaviour

This is the second start I rolled, notice we are at war with all our opponents initially:


My plan is to build an early tech lead similar to that undertaken in the Gauntlet OCC spaceship game (check the HOF forum), so the plan is:
worker, worker, worker, chop/build Granary, Library, Pyramids (for representation) and Oracle (for Civil Service/bureacracy). Great Engineer builds Great Library (or something else, in my test game I used it on Globe Theatre). Work scientist specialists for a GS and the Academy.

Hopefully by then there may be some barbarian cities around the place so we start producing units to help them expand

What do people think? My only other thought is it will probably be essential to get a religion at some stage, as we can spread this to our barbarian friends to help them expand their borders.

Note also that teaming with barbs means you start off with *no* techs, I could have edited this but wanted to make as few changes as possible. We will get some techs from the barbs when they get them, such as hunting, archery etc which we can probably wait to get from the barbs.

I'll play about 40 tonight, first round can be 30 then either 20 or 15 each.

I want to keep a few reserved slots for any Rat11 players that need a game in the next few weeks while waiting for the next warmonger game to start, also if JerichoHill wants to play I'd love to have him. So will have one or possibly many more open slots.

Roster:
Friskymike
JerichoHill
Pvblivs
rddc05
open slot

Standard 24 to post a 'got it' and 48 to play. If you need an extra 24 no problem, more than this arange a swap or skip.

This is a pretty cool idea. I would love to be a part of it!

Man, i wish i had the time to play in this, it sounds like fun.

GL guys

Lurker comment:

Teaming with barbs? This sounds awesome, but I'll have to ditto AyanamiRei. Question: is this exactly like having a permanent alliance? Can you direct research and see inside their cities?

Also, do you see when they spawn from fog and does your fog-bust prevent barb-spawn?

Comment: Difficulty is a two-edged sword as the higher difficulty makes your teammates appear sooner, but it also gives the other AI a higher bonus against those teammates.

Welcome aboard JerichoHill, I'm glad you could make it!
I played 50 turns through till 2000 BC as nothing much happened, JH can play 40, then I think 20 from there. Plenty of slots open for other players so shout out

(0) 4000 BC Trust the map generator and settle in place, discovering some clams and cows in the fat cross. The hut disappears. I've found that you can't enter huts when playing on the Barb team, just as they can stand over a hut without popping it. Damn.
Dial up Fishing so we can work the clams, and its on the way to Pottery.

(5) 3800 BC Barbarian animals start showing up.

(7) 3720 BC We now have a pride of our friends the lions exploring near London for us


(11) 3560 BC Sailing is in, change production of worker to workboat as the bonus food will be huge for early growth.

(16) 3360 BC Asoka has discovered & converted to Buddhism.

(24) 3040 BC The Wheel & Workboat completes. Resume worker and dail up Pottery.

(26) 2960 BC Hatty has discovered and converted to Hinduism.

(29) 2840 BC Worker completes, start on Barracks to let the city grow as Bronze Working is some time away. Change citizen from the default grass forest to the clam nets for faster growth and research.

(36) 2560 BC Notice that London grew to 2 some time ago, and extra citizen is back on the grass forest. Change it to the lake to get Pottery a turn earlier at the same time worker finishes road, so it can start cottage straight away. I should have just changed the automatic governor to emphasise commerce, and I do this now.

(38) 2480 BC Pottery in, start on Mining -> Bronze Working, and building a cottage on the river. The other river grassland site had a forest grow on it, it will get chopped.

(40) 2400 BC London grows to 3, so I switch from Barracks to a Worker. Check the city governor, it works crabs, lake and coast. Worker is in 19 turns and Mining (3) + Bronze Working (17) in 20 turns... lovely.

(43) 2280 BC Mining is in, start on BW. Worker completes river grass cottage, check on city and the governor has automatically changed from the coast to the river cottage for the extra food. Good man.

(49) 2040 BC Non-river grass cottage completes, check on the city and the governor (on emphasise commerce) has changed from the lake to the cottage, a short time reduction in commerce for long term greater commerce due to growing the cottage. This has increased the time for BW from 8 to 9 turns. I considered moving the citizen back to the lake, but figure that delaying cottage growth by 8 turns is worse than delaying the ability to forest chop by 1 turn, as the forests will always be there.

(50) 2000 BC Barbs have explored well for us, the pangea is 'C' shaped with us in the top right, with our only neighbour being Peter:


Asoka, Washington and Monty are further round the C, with Hatty at the bottom right (not shown):


Nobody will make peace with us yet, but I think some barb warriors and archers should appear soon (which should be more interesting to watch than animals!), after the AIs have lost units to the barbs they will usually offer peace. We only have one warrior, we probably need one more to defend our workers just in case but I don't think need more as the raging barbarians are keeping Peter busy.

After BW comes in, we can chop a warrior then another worker (3 are generally optimal for OCC games, later we might need more to help the barbs) then a Granary. I think we should chop most of the grass for cottages, leaving the plains forest for future lumbermills, before moving our lumberjacks out.

Next I'm not sure whether we should research Writing for a Library or Masonry for the Pyramids first??? Maybe Pyramids first so we generate a Great Engineer sooner.

After this, we may want Alphabet to trade some techs with the AI, as we prob want Priesthood for the Oracle and the Civil Service slingshot (hopefully founding Confuscianism when we research CoL). Or maybe we will want Iron Working earlier if we don't have a source of copper??? Leave it to the next player to decide.

Later goals are working some scientists in the library for a GS and an early Academy (possibly helped by the Great Library), and the Globe Theatre to eliminate unhappy problems forever!

Good luck JH!

rex_tyranus said:

Lurker comment:

Teaming with barbs? This sounds awesome, but I'll have to ditto AyanamiRei. Question: is this exactly like having a permanent alliance? Can you direct research and see inside their cities?

Also, do you see when they spawn from fog and does your fog-bust prevent barb-spawn?

Comment: Difficulty is a two-edged sword as the higher difficulty makes your teammates appear sooner, but it also gives the other AI a higher bonus against those teammates.

Click to expand...

It is exactly like a permanent alliance in that you can see inside their cities, and direct research and diplomacy. However as there is no way to contact the Barbarian Leader, you can't direct them to attack a specific city, or ask for gold etc like in a normal permanent alliance or team with an AI. You also get awarded techs when the barbs do, we will probably be awarded with Hunting then Archery fairly soon... I hope! This should make up for starting with no techs.

As you can see from the write-up above, you see where they spawn. I'm not sure about whether our fog bust prevents them spawning, in my practise game I stayed inside my city until a barb city spawned (which was right next to me, fortunately).

Good point about the difficulty, I'm really not sure whether this would work above Prince due to the AI advantages against the barbs, hell I'm not even sure it will work on Prince

nice idea here, but I will be lurking only. I need to reduce my SG's and will start Rat15 in a week's time.

I'd play now, but since we lack other teammates, I want to wait for them to sign on, so we're all coming from the same place.

Agree with the overall plan though.

Plus, I've got an JH vs. the Barbarian World to finish up

Cool. We'll pause and wait for some sign-ups. I would encourage any lurkers to join, as its a OCC time commitments should be much less than a normal game.

You can count me in even though (or because?) this is a weird variant

Well, I've never played an OCC or a teams game before, but I would like to join in if you can put up with my questions as the game progresses. If you'd rather wait for someone with more experience under these rules, no hard feelings, I'll just lurk and learn.

Welcome Pvblivs! I actually googled Publius to find out about Publius Valerius Publicola, "friend of the people", one of the first consuls of the Roman Republic is that the guy in your avatar?

rddc05, what level do you normally play? If you can win at Monarch you should be fine, even if on Prince you will still probably be fine with some coaching
I would play some OCC practice games and read the Beta Gauntlet VI thread, which was a OCC spaceship challenge and has some great tips for teching fast with one city (although it was a couple of difficulty levels lower, so in this game we will need to be more aggresive getting the wonders we really need). Also mm13:Incan Insanity-AWP-1CC is a good read for a warmonger OCC game. And of course read JerichoHill's comments about barbarians in this thread.

So basically its up to you if you think you are ready I'll add you to the roster. This game is really to test the concept, so I am not so much concerned about winning or losing but having a good discussion and learning about how the barbs act for future similar SGs.

Still one (or two if rddc05 doesn't play) open slots lurkers

It would be nice if we could survive longer than I managed in my 4CC vs. the Barbarian World test game.

I didn't make it past rifles before the Horde consumed me. I had wanted to test if the technological advancements that they do make independently would enable a new unit and that they would produce it.

I did see them with cavalry, which is rare.

I started a new 4CC game, and I'm currently holding my own, now at 3 cities captured by culture (I am only allowing myself to expand via culture).

But the barbarians are at the gate!

Actually I am calling myself Pvblivs Avrelivs (Scriptor) because of a German PBEM game I played a long time ago for some 2 or 3 years. This name was the one role I kept as my online name of those many roles that I played in this game.

The avatar is just one of many images of Caius Iulius Caesar. I was using this image for a long time as an avatar because of this game as well

Now you know everything...

I actually played OCCs never successfully (being quite successful on Monarch though), but that won't matter. Before I'm up I'll learn what is neccessary reading what you suggested. Very curious I am

Well P, if there's any comments you'd like to make before I make my turnset tonight, holla.

I'm thrilled with this experiment. I totally want to get that Oracle CS sling in so that our barbarian brethern can produce macemen that much sooner.

I'm about 50/50 on Monarch (only playing Monarch for regular SP games at the moment). I'm up to the challenge if you'll have me.

I've got no comment. Feel free to continue. As I said: In OCC I am actually a learner

Cool guys, we have a team, welcome rddc05 (and still one opening, 5 players would be good)

I have no further comments, the only thing I am concerned about is that with Buddhism and Hinduism out already we may have a race to build the Oracle after Pyramids. Anyone know around what date the AIs build the Oracle usually? This would be quite useful information, if nobody knows I might try a test game with the same opponents if I get the time...

PS JH your 4CC vs Barbarians sounds interesting... I take its raging barbarians with no AIs? What difficulty level?

It was raging barbs (and I gave the barbs ALOT) diety level, on marathon speed, on terra vs. 6 civs...set up in a way that the AI civs fell fast. I started on diety with 4 well developed cities, so I've got a sizable tech advantage (though they have closed the gap quickly)

they have like 30 cities to my 6 now.

of course im the only one alive...they keep crashing units that are one tech behind mine against my maginot line (for the 4 cities) and I now have 2 cities beyond my line.