STR-01: The Scorched Lands

After a few months of participating in SG's, I've decided to start one myself.
STR stands for Strauss (yes really)

This game will be almost purely warmongering; just a heads up for all builder people

And we will be playing as:



One of the greatest conquerors of all time, Genghis Khan. When his rule was defied, he would become a ruthless slaughterer. And cities in CIV always resist against foreign rule.


Therefore we will raze every city we encounter and burn the land around it if we get the chance. Not one enemy city must be left standing when the game ends!
This won't be an Always War game however, as I haven't really played AW often.


The settings:
Difficulty level: Monarch
Map type: Continents
Map size: Standard (Large isn't very realistic considering our variant)
Game speed: Epic
Civ: Genghis Khan
Victory conditions: All are enabled. However, we must win by conquest.
Opponents: Random, amount depends on map size
Barbs: On

A summary of the variant rules:
1) Burn every enemy city to the ground.
2) When we have met 2 civs, we must always be at war with at least one of them. There will be no Pax Mongolia!
3) We will not have a State Religion.
4) Our civics will be: Police State-Vassalage-Slavery-Free Market-Free Religion as soon as they are available.
5) The autolog can be used, but a little feedback on it is necessary. You don't have to write an epic story, just a couple of notes to clarify things

Everyone is welcome.

Who will follow the Great Khan?

Roster:
1) Strauss
2) Ralph_Jackson
3) Pvblivs
4) blastoidstalker
5) Kanga_DU

1 or 2 alternates are still welcome of course!

Well I am interested - you may generate more responses from posting in the sign-up thread at the top of the forum as quite a lot of people (like me) tend to look there for new SG's.

Re Settings my Normal Level is either Prince or Monarch but in view of the non-trivial restrictions we are placing on ourselves I would probably err on the side of Prince level. Also standard as opposed to Large for similar reasons but Epic definitely feels right for a based game.

Cheers

alph

You're in Ralph.

My normal level is also Prince, but if the other three players are comfortable on Monarch we could play that as well.

I think standard would be the best map size as well, as you said the razing variant will make Large much harder

Hey Strauss. I know you're a great warmonger and I would like to participate in this great slaughtering.

My proposals: Standard map size and Monarch difficulty. As there are no restrictions to economies like in our last game, Monarch will fit, though will be difficult enough.

Hope for early horses. This will open up some great city sites in the beginning of the game. I experienced and believe warmongering is easier on Monarch then some other play styles.
Though the razing-every-city policy will put the players into difficulties often enough: When we would like well-grown cities to produce units after conquest we have to build up a city ourselves. When we want to take the benefit of a wonder we will have to build it ourselves (we will hardly build any wonder on Monarch except maybe Oracle and/or Stonehenge). When we want to build strictly military we may have to build settlers

On Prince it will be winnable easily. On Monarch it will be a challenge.

I'd love to be in!

Pvblivs said:

I'd love to be in!

Click to expand...

Guess what? You are

Edit: I will post the starting save tonight

Looking forward to it. Happy to play on Monarch if others are as I need the practice

You don't need practise for Monarch. You just need to be more straight-forward.
1. Avoid unneccessary builds, build more military.
2. Specialize a little more (so you can leave some buildings: no tech buildings neccassary in a commerce poor production powerhouse).
3. Build more cottages.
4. And be bigger than others (usually through wars as the AI can expand faster early on) to be better in tech.

As we have Keshiks and are aggressive [1] and [4] is easier. [3] will be more difficult for one who always has war.

What bothers me is the war weariness. Because of this our expansive trait will be quite useless. We will need very many happy resources and happy buildings. Before free religion those issues will be serious. Afterwards a little better because we can benefit from any religion. Slavery of course is our friend to make quite a good production out of cities that need to be kept small because of war weariness.

As we'll have no Pax Mongolia, there will always be small cities. So the earlier we can build more cities (courthouses, markets) the higher will be our chance to keep up in tech.
In the beginning everything above 3 (max. 4) cities is hurting our economy seriously. As we have to raze every cities this management will be much easier though. We only found cities we can afford and in real good (razed capital) places. Happiness resource cities are important as well, as I said before

lurker comment
This game looks pretty sweet, wish i had the time to play it.

ahh well...

My normal level is also Prince, but if the other three players are comfortable on Monarch we could play that as well.

Click to expand...

w/SGs, i've found, it's always good to play on the level above where you're comfortable with. The extra input frmo SGs makes it easier, IMO.

I'll join in, I have enjoyed making the world tremble as the Mongols (albeit with Kubla) in GOTM6. I usualy play and win at Monarch but I agree that with the varients, Prince would be the right level to play. I also would want standard so we do not get bogged down at the end. I have never played a S.G. before but am eager to try it.

Welcome blastoidstalker! I hope you'll find this SG a good step-in.

A couple of thoughts on our endeavor.

-Getting Animal Husbandry and Bronze working ASAP is key; we need to know where the copper and horsies are so we can get control of one or both with our second city. We do not get mining as a start tech so unless there is a particular good reason (like a start on the coast with a sea resource and no rivers). We should get these first (which means going through mining).

-Keshiks are great for pillaging, which we will do in abundance since we will raze the cities anyway, give some visibility to act as pillager scouts and give other flanking 1-2 to be useful in attacking cities.

-In terms of wonders, I do not see many being useful, I think we could get and use the great library and maybe the Pyramids (for police state) if we have stone.

-We need to create a settler/worker production farm. A city with 2-3 food resources and lots of farms. This way we can produce settlers quickly (whipping when we have to) to replace cities in good sites when we destroy them. When we do not need settlers this can then convert into a GP factory.

Some good thoughts there blastoid. I put Heriditary Rule up there as our government civic, however after looking through a bit of the Khan's history Police State is a better alternative both in historical accuracy and for gameplay (we'll need the decrease in WW)

Police State is Genghis' preffered civic in the game, Heridary rule is Kubla's. I think Police State would make more sense for sticking with his personality.

Pick me! Pick me!

Still looking to play my first SG. Haven't tried higher than Noble, but this looks the perfect opportunity to dip the toes in.

Kanga, you're in.

I'll start up the game now. The difficulty will be Monarch, for the reasons suggested by Pvblivs and pholkhero. For those of you who are somewhat inexperienced at Monarch level (like me ), you should probably discuss the plan for your turnset with the rest of the team. That way the new people will learn and the experienced players can pass on their wisdom

And here's a screenie for you all to drool on:



Only Rice in sight for now, but I doubt that's all.

I will play the first 40 turns tomorrow, it's a bit late now.

After that, it will be 20 turns each in the first round.

Please don't hesitate to throw in suggestions on settling spot, research paths etc. (although blastoid has already made some good comments, if someone thinks another way is better; post it! )

See you tomorrow

Lurkers comment:

If you settle on the spot, you will only have two hills in the fat cross (and both are grassland). So you guys might consider moving the settler if you want some decent production in the capitol.

I am thinking maybe move the scout SW then maybe NW depending on what is out there. I would like to get more than one resource in our fat cross so if something is present to the west we could slide over 1 or two spaces, do not be afraid to settle on turn 2 or 3 if we can get a resource advantage out of it. I like the idea of settling on the river.

For tech I think Mining-BW to start then maybe AH or agriculture. After that will depend on what we find

if we go Mining-BW I would start with scout-worker for builds, we could use soom goodies and a worker will not have much to do until chopping with BW.
Time to start the carnage

I agree, move that scout SW and have a looksee. Though as I understood it the start locations normally are resource rich, but sometimes need to be 'unlocked' by research. Fingers crossed for copper/iron.

We have 3 resources in our capital cross: deers, cows and rice. Deers and cows are very good since they give us both a food and a shield bonus. The only 'problem' is that they are all health resources, and our Leader Trait is expansive (+3 health). I considered moving to the sea, but then we would lose a hill, rice and deer, while rice gives us the same advantage as a fish.
Thus:


After looking at the lands around him, the Great Kahn decided to 'settle on the spot'.

Considering the resources around us, I decided to go for a Worker and Animal Husbandry.

The Mongols soon met the Malinese under Mansa Musa and the Egyptians under Hatshepsut. Little do they know that their doom is approaching.

After the Worker, I built 2 Warriors. I started production on a Barracks as well, however that is just a placeholder to let the city grow to size 3 (in 1 turn), then I suggest a Settler.

Animal Husbandry has shown us that horses are quite far away from us to the north. This shouldn't be too much of a problem, unless there is another civ closer to the horses. Bronze Working is being researched now to look for Copper, I hope that's closer by.

And so ends the reign of the Great Strauss Kahn:



I'll post my dotmap in a few minutes. Others are encouraged to post theirs too if they wish, or any ideas about how to continue.

I have also decided to 'loosen' variant rule #2, we don't have to declare war until 2000 BC. You may, of course, declare before then if you see a golden opportunity. But in 2000 BC, we HAVE to declare war on one civ. This way we might know more about Egypt's and Mali's locations.

I'm sorry for some inconsistencies on the variants, but this will be the last one.