SGOTM 01 - V Q

Welcome to your C_IV SGOTM 1 Team Thread. Please use it for all internal team communication, turn logs and discussions. Subscribe to it to receive notifications, and do not visit the other team threads for this game until you have finished. Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest. I hope you enjoy the game.

This game will be played in Civ4, patched to v1.61.

This first SGOTM will not feature any advanced variant.. the winner simply will be the team that wins the game at the earliest game date with either domination or a diplomatic victory. All victory conditions are still enabled though, with exception of Space Race, so you have to avoid getting another type of victory (and of course prevent the AIs from winning).

Individual start files for all teams will be available on the SGOTM Progress and Results Page at midnight, server local time, at the start of May 12.

Here's the start position.


Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Hapshepsut of Egypt
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Mystery
Game Speed - Epic

Permanent Alliances are turned on (can form permanent alliances after either communism or fascism is researched)
Space race is disabled.
Egypt is locked into war with Huayna Capac of the Incas.
Egypt is locked into peace with an unknown civilization.

The map is hand built, and therefore may not have a standard configuration.

Please visit the following links to ensure that you are adequately prepared:
Civ4 SGOTM reference thread

Notes:

A. ONLY Civilization4 v1.61 is supported for this SGOTM. All teams will compete for a single award - the Gold Laurels.

B. All teams must play the sponsored variant - victory will be awarded for the fastest victory by either domination or diplomacy.

C. All saved game files uploaded to the server are parsed through software that extracts and archives data about your save, including reload count for each turn set.

Good luck to your team, and remember rule #1: Enjoy your game

ChrTh checking in. So we're permanently locked into peace with an unknown civilization? Hrmmm ... if we do a permanent alliance, we shouldn't do it with that Civ since they should already be positively pre-disposed towards us.

If we move the settler one tile east, we'll have 14 Flood Plains in our fat T. Ignoring the health issue, we will have two river access which should help early on with access to other cities.

EDIT:
By the way, I think we should go for a diplomatic win ... and to make it challenging, let's try for the exact vote!

Always peace... means if we go domination we'd have to make sure their landmass never eliminates (mathematically) our chance of covering land. Population is fudgable, but land mass not so much... Ick

As far as city sites - 1 tile east seems to be a better site. Just having the rivers for quick hookup is pretty big, plus it utilizes the far east hill better then a second city would (cleaner city borders). The other option is to move gives up the northern river one tile SE. That brings the cows into our cross as well as the 4th hill. It does pick up a useless desert in exchange for the lake. Too bad the warrior and settler aren't switched!

bobrath said:

Always peace... means if we go domination we'd have to make sure their landmass never eliminates (mathematically) our chance of covering land. Population is fudgable, but land mass not so much... Ick

Click to expand...

I *think* that if you do Permanent Alliance, your landmasses and population get added together for victory conditions, so if we go Domination we will want to PA with them.

EDIT: So I need to qualify my comment in the earlier post: PA with always-peace if going for Domination but not Diplomacy ... probably.

eektor checking in. I was thinking with bobrath about going south east for the city, so we can get a lot of floodplains and still have the cow. ChrTh brings up a good point with the two rivers. Although with just one road we would be connected to the two rivers right a way.

Although I think domination might get the quicker time, I would like to go for diplomatic. What do you guys think?

Is the river bonus to health cumulative? ... EDIT: I guess it doesn't matter because current location is next to fresh water too.

How about 1 south? Get the cow and pick up the hill due east.

1 SW is the plains hill, people allways say its nice to have the 2 hammer CC early on. Grabs the Cows too...

But with this food... We will be working the hill soon enough I think, promoting the Hammerless FP to having a hammer is just as good in my book....
Then again we could simply jump on the hill, look around and deside to go 1 east anyway...

Tho if its a 'generated' map there should be some goodies hidden in the fog...

Lets the fun begin gays and galls

Thinking, thinking, thinking ...

Some initial thoughts:
By giving us a permanent enemy and a permanent friend, TPTB have essentially ensured that there will be no quick victories in this game. Throw in the fact that this is epic speed, and we're in it for the long haul.

That being said, the faster we can research, the faster we can win. While I don't advocate a direct path to Mass Media, regardless of whether we're going for Domination or Diplomacy we should head towards Communism or Fascism.

I think, then, we're going to want to Cottage-spam the flood plains. We might want to turn our capital essentially into a research+worker/settler generator and make our second city our military producer.

I agree going 1S, not only for the cow, but the extra production. There's a ton of hills in the SW, and with all the FP we can mine them all...


I don't think the river bonus is cumulative, but I haven't found a definitive answer one way or another.

As for the always-peace with <unknown> civ, We'd have to still cultivate the relationship with them in order to get a perminent alliance or anything. The wildcard is, how they end up getting along with Inca. If they get friendly with Hyana, we could be in a pickle.

Ok, I'm assuming I'm going to start. I was thinking of an order like this:

Maquis
ChrTh
GreyFox
Eektor
namlaiM
bobrath

Anyone have another thought? We've got GreyFox and namliaM that can poosibly take turns off-hours for us USA folks... so alternating those can possibly help to speed up the game...

Or maybe we don't want to worry about any kind of speed, rather take more time to facilitate more discussion?


Ok, one last thought... what to research/build at the start? Since we're at war from the start, we can't leave the capital undefended... just in case HC comes wandering by with a Quecha! At least another warrior to start with?

For research, do we try Buddism or Hinduism? It's Monarch, but with the extra commerce from the flood plains and lake tile, we should be able to grab one (I wouldn't try for both though, there's bound to be another spiritual civ)

Well, short of going for Stonehenge, I don't think there's anything we can build early on except for Warriors (obviously won't want to go for Settlers/Workers right off the back).

We're spiritual, so revolutions are anarchy-free. With all the commerce from the (cottaged) flood plains, we should be able to easily finance Organized Religion for the build bonus in the early going, so maybe heading for an early religion is a good idea.

EDIT: We can build barracks, but I don't see a need for them unless we plan on the competition pretty early.

I agree going for an early religion may be good, we'll just have to watch ourselves, and maybe try to get our religion spread to our peace parter (at least, more spread would be good)

I don't think stonehedge is worth it, since we are Creative. The only benefit would be the GPP points for a shrine, but we can get that elsewhere (hire priests or maybe Oracle)

Maquis said:

I don't think stonehedge is worth it, since we are Creative. The only benefit would be the GPP points for a shrine, but we can get that elsewhere (hire priests or maybe Oracle)

Click to expand...

Agreed. Hmm, perhaps we should farm a few of the flood plains so we can switch to GPP Factory if needed.

Took a look at the game. It's about 34 techs to Fascism, and 29 techs to Communism. However, if you add Mass Media as your second target, it's 34 techs to Mass Media via Communism, and 45 to Mass Media via Fascism. Therefore, heading towards Communism (again, doesn't have to be a beeline) is a quicker path regardless of which method of victory we're going for.

Here are some of my thoughts for a starting strategy. With all the floodplains around, I think we should try to make our capital into a science city. Cottages on the floodplains, with an early library and academy and we will be making lots of beakers. Also, if we can get bureacracy that will be an additional 50% commerce to add to the beakers. Here's an idea for a research path.

1. Animal Husbandry (to see where the horses are for our uu the war chariot. Also, if we settle with the cows in the big fat T we can create a pasture.)
2. Pottery (this can be saved later if you want but if we have a worker we should research this asap to get the cottages up)
3. Writing ( To get a library up and running. Once this is done I would suggest to build a library in the capital and then create 1 or 2 scientists to try to get a great scientist to create an academy)

After this I would add mining and bronze working or if things are going well with our chariots then go mysticism, meditation, and priesthood to start working on the Oracle.

While working on the Oracle, research Code of Laws and then use the free tech to discover Civil Service for macemen.

Anyways that's some of my ideas.

As for religion, I wouldn't go for an early one, I prefer to get Confucianism with code of laws.

As for building units, I think we should definitely start with a warrior. We can send the other warrior out and hopefully we can create some trouble for the Incans. Either stealing a worker or just making sure they keep their worker in the city.

After a warrior or two, start on a worker and then settler. I would try to build the library as quickly as it comes up though.

A couple more thoughts:

Using the assumption that all moderators are by definition evil, my guess is that we share the landmass with our "Always Peace" civ and there are no other Civs on the landmass. Further along that assumption, the Incans will be far far away. Just a guess, but one I feel good about.
If this is the case (we'll find out pretty quick), we'll want to make our capital a Settler-spamming city.

The nice thing about having an Always War opponent is that it makes one part of diplomacy easier: the mutual struggle bonus. Getting other people to fight the Incans will help in our relations with them. Also, it's possible that since we're locked into war with them, we won't get the 'you declared war on our friend' penalty...but I'm not sure.

On: Oracle/Civil Service slingshot ... how hard is it to do on Monarch? And does the reduction in chopping with 1.61 make it harder?

You know, I always thought the Incans would be close by because if we are at always war it could slow us down since we have to worry about the incans at the very beginning.

Although that would be very evil if they put the always peace civ right next to us and the always war civ far away.

As for CS slingshot, that's a good question about the change in chopping. If the CS slingshot isn't possible, we could always try to research it after maybe alphabet (so we can trade for all the early techs we didn't get).

As for trying for the Oracle, the nice thing we have going for us is the number of hills. We should be able to get a decent enough produciton going. I don't think that we'd have any trouble getting the Oracle built, as long as we try to prioitize it somewhat. I'm just not sure if it would work out to get the CS slingshot or not...

I do wonder if the incans will be far away. I think it would be just a little too hard on people if they were right next door and the Quechas start rushing in...

It's good to see we're already beating the other teams in number of posts!

There's just not enough information at this point to determine how we're going to handle the capital. I suspect we may be replacing some towns with farms at some point in the future.

BTW, Maquis, that roster looks good. Are we thinking 30-20-20 for # turns?

In terms of religion, I'm thinking we should head towards Judaism, i.e. get Masonry first, then Polytheism, then Monotheism. We can get Animal Husbandry and Pottery at any point (i.e. I'm not saying we should beeline to mono)