SGOTM 02 - Geezers

Welcome to your C_IV SGOTM 2 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.

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

You are cast in the role of Tokugawa, mighty leader of the Japanese. Tokugawa's brother has left the island city of Kyoto to avenge the death of his wife and only son. He has travelled to a distant land without finding their murderer. So the brother of Tokugawa will settle and found a new Japanese colony, and the Japanese have sworn to conquer the rest of civilization in order to hunt down and destroy their enemy.

The game is on a Standard size fractal map, modified as only Gyathaar knows how, at Epic speed. All victory conditions are enabled, but the laurels for this contest will be awarded to the fastest teams to achieve a Conquest victory. The number of AI rivals has not yet been revealed. It will be played using version 1.61 of Civ4 with locked modified assets.

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 August 8th.

Here's the start position.


Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Tokugawa of Japan
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Fractal, hand modified
Game Speed - Epic
AI Aggression - YES!
Barbarians - Raging!!

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

Notes:

A. ONLY Civilization IV v1.61 is supported for this SGOTM. All teams will compete for up to four awards - the Gold, Silver and Bronze Laurels for the fastest finishes, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher.

B. All teams must play the sponsored variant - victory will be awarded for the fastest victory by Conquest.

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.

I'm sure you'll enjoy this game

here we go.

what is the roster? who is the (administrative)leader?

on a side note. i will be moving back to the states next weekend (aug 13th). i might be busy around this time, so dont worry if i am not around during this time. i will be back. i would volunteer for the leader, if it was not for this.

anybody want to do a practice game with world builder?

Hi guys. I think we are in the wrong thread. Alan's list says none of us is in this team anymore. We have vanished, so I do not know the complete roster. 1 or 2 new players will have joined us.
We should do the roster according to time zones. That will be most effective.

I did a practice game which ran quite well. The biggest difficulty I have is the high maintenance of cities in the early phase. I tend to conquer too fast. Much at the start depends whether we have copper. I had it right beside my capitol. As we are aggressive our units start with combat 1 and with raging barbs promotions come quickly. My first axemen were at combat 4 very fast and the first AI that met me was somehow unlucky.

wee, well...I think I'm not qualified to be the leader either for multiple reasons. (first SG, 'the new guy', going on vacation from Aug 5th to 14th)

I'll be back after that, so don't worry, I'm not AWOL

as for practice games...I've done 3 random maps with the same settings, and I can safely say that barbs really suck. lol

Ideally we should go for a CS-slingshot, but with ragins barbs it could be pretty difficult(I haven't managed it in 3 attempts although I got CoL once and missed the Oracle by 2 turns!!!).

Wonder building by the AI seems immensely slowed down, only once was the Oracle built before 800BC!!!

anyway, I've got other notes somewhere on my computer...I just gotta find them

I'm gonna run a practice game without trying for the slingshot
I think it'll be a little more successful.

I will start another practice game in the evening. The copper in my practice game made it too easy I think. I did not have any problems with barbs due to that.

as a side note...where did the logs come from that I saw people posting during the last SGOTM?

do the SGOTMs use the HOF mod or something that has logging in it?

When you played your turns you have to upload your save on the "SGOTM Progress and Results Page". The link you can see here in the first post of AlanH. After uploading the save you will see the log and you can just copy and paste it, but to be honest I do not like these logs. Especially all the detailed fight statistics make it very long. If you copy the important things it is ok, but I would prefer "handwritten" logs like we have done in the first game.

I always have the editor running in the background and switch to it to write down everything immediately. We play just 10 turns each, so this really does not take very long.

yeah, I just wasn't sure...obviously it will be easier to remember what happened when if you only play 10 turns at a time

so here's my notes on my 4 test games so far:

Test 1-3 were on the possibility of a CS-slingshot(UU is Samurai, so CS early CS could give us pre-AD Samurai, which would then steamroll over the AI)
Test 4 was to do a more traditional, militaristic approach

Test 1: I got wiped out by barbarians around 1000BC, while building the Oracle. I only saw archer and warrior barbs, but they overwhelmed my 5 warrior fogbusters. I killed off 30 barbs before finally losing.

Learned: CS is extremely risky, distant neighbors means barbs are very heavy, and it appeared wonders were delayed by raging barbs.

Test 2: I went for archery on the way to a CS-slingshot. I had much heavier barbs, but survived because of archer fogbusters, and because I had a close neighbor I managed to be friendly with. I got CoL, but failed to get Oracle by 5 turns(should have MM'd the city better to get them at the same time).
I warred a more distant neighbor, and managed to capture a city and raze 2, but then couldn't get farther along because of a very bad RNG that made me lose repeatedly to archers and chariots(she had no metals, and I still couldn't beat her)

Learned: Oracle was built in 800BC, very much delayed from normal monarch games. A friendly close neighbor can be helpful for barbs.

Test 3: I was on a small, jungle continent alone...I almost quit right when I saw that. I stayed on to see how bad the barbs were...by 1000BC, I had one city, had lost 9 troops and killed over 75 barbs.

Learned: If there are no close neighbors, we need to expand to 2-4 cities fairly quickly to minimize the area that barbs can spawn in.

Test 4: I tried a more standard approach to the game...I built a few warriors, researched to archery, then to BW...I have no copper. Not in the radius of either of my cities at this time. The closest copper I can see is smack dab in the middle of New India. I promptly begin teching up again, and eventually get to IW fairly early for me....I have no iron either, not around any of my 4 cities by this point. Oh...and Huayna apparently knows this because he then declares war on me and sends axemen and spearmen against me.

Does aggressive AIs give additional experience to AI troops? cause every single unit Huayna sent against me was lvl 4 or higher. I obviously couldn't beat him back with archers and chariots...so after trading Edo back and forth a few times, I stopped to report in.

Learned: BW early could be useful, but if we don't have copper, we are in big trouble. if we have copper, a CS-slingshot going by way of mining>BW>CS tech path could be possible. We'd need to have founded a second city though.

SGOTM specific thoughts:

Distance penalties will rack up really quickly with out capital out in the middle of the ocean like this...once we've got the barb situation under control and have a few cities up and running, I think we should consider moving the capital to the mainland. That'd give us only one distant city, not several.

CS-slingshot could be the most powerful weapon in our arsenal. if we get Priesthood, BW, and Writing done, then Kyoto could pop-rush a library, run a couple scientist specialists, and then work on nothing but the Oracle until we get the CS-slingshot, leaving Osaka and future cities to focus on military.

Finally...if we have multiple close neighbors, I'd suggest leaving our closest one alone to help with barb problems, destroy everyone else, and then go for our closest one.

What are your thoughts? I'll probably try an attempt for the CS-slingshot going through BW next, to see if axemen fogbusters make it easier to do.

i have played some test games using the same settings. since i have never won a monarch game, this will be my first, on my own. the raging barbs were a problem for me the first two tries. but after i went for archery, everything seemed to be ok. in the current game i am playing(the successful one), i did not have copper at first, i had to steal it from the egyptians. but what i did learn is that there is more of an importance on either getting copper or archery. and then fog busting like crazy. including the shores, the pirates caught me off gaurd a little later in the game and i lost a lot of fisheries.

i did not try for any slingshot, because i didnt want to waste time on non-military techs and production. maybe there is an arguement for getting the samarai faster.

i have two rivals left at about 1500ad, off shore, so i am having to beef up my economy while i research to astronomy. then i should make short work of them, they are ahead in techs, but way behind in an army.

the aggressive personality traits never seemed to come into play, they were more willing to trade with me than i was with them. i was way more aggressive than they.

i sued for techs a lot and would attack someone else in the mean time. to keep everybody down. i found that knights are totally useless and not worth upgrading your horse archers to, unless the enemy has a standing army that makes it on your land. with vasalage and theocracy i was making samarai with two levels of city raider and the free one star. they easily took out anything in my way.

and yeah, are there any automatic logs? i know there are mods, but i dont have any of those. let me know and i will look through it and pull out a tech path.

I did not go for the slingshot, too. I built units as here the winner will be with fastest conquest. I put all my efforts in building up an army. After bronze working I went directly for alphabet to enable tech trading. I went fairly ok with that and I was second in score when I quitted that game.

markh said:

I did not go for the slingshot, too. I built units as here the winner will be with fastest conquest. I put all my efforts in building up an army. After bronze working I went directly for alphabet to enable tech trading. I went fairly ok with that and I was second in score when I quitted that game.

Click to expand...

yeah i wish i had tech trading earlier in the game. i could have sued for more techs sooner.

but we should explore going for a slingshot.

trippstowe said:

yeah i wish i had tech trading earlier in the game. i could have sued for more techs sooner.

but we should explore going for a slingshot.

Click to expand...

Of course.

as far as where to settle:

i vote that we move the warrior to the hill and see what is east. if there isnt something 'must have' over there, then we should settle NW. this would give us both fish and rice, for lots of , we would be on the coast, and on a river for health and trade.

Hi everyone and a warm welcome to Thrallia. I see from the maintenance thread that markh has been trying to recruit another member.

trippstowe said:

as far as where to settle:

i vote that we move the warrior to the hill and see what is east. if there isnt something 'must have' over there, then we should settle NW. this would give us both fish and rice, for lots of , we would be on the coast, and on a river for health and trade.

Click to expand...

Sounds quite good to me. It almost seems be a trademark of Gyathaar's maps to put the 'starting' settler in not quite the best position.

My attempts at playing test maps haven't gone too well but since I haven't quite got the hang of anything above noble this doesn't surprise me too much.

For me the interesting thing is Kyoto i.e. why is it there apart from making the background sound better?

@markh The idea of organising the roster by time zone sounds good. I am in GMT + 1 aka British Summer Time.

On the subject of city maintenance we need to remember that the laurels are only for a conquest victory. Also all the victory conditions are enabled. As a result we will need to be more discriminating about which cities we keep and make sure we don't get domination victory by accident. Of course we will also need to make sure none of the AI gets a chance at any of the other victory types. I am sure you all know this but better to mention and not be needed than the other way around.

EDIT: I'm sure copper or iron will be in the neighbourhood as this is a modded map. The only question is whether Gyathaar has been evil enough to put it on another island or within another AI's territory. Actually perhaps he did both.

I think 6 players might be a little low. Thrallia is going on vacation for two weeks from this weekend and trippstowe is moving back to the US, so I think seven is better to keep the game moving. Skips and swaps will be easier then.

Agree on warrior on the hill to have a look what is there. Settling NW would be my preference, too as fishing is one of our starting techs, so we can get the fishes online much sooner than the rice.

Played another test map and this time I had no copper near. It was much harder. Much more barbs.

NW does look nice...we'd still have 5 forests for chopping, 2 food resources, and a flood plain for cottaging or farming.

as for the slingshot...I think the best bet for it might be to use Kyoto for that. It doesn't need to build military anyway, will have massive pop after getting all those fish and crabs working, and if we have BW, we can pop-rush a library(then use two specialists to speed up CoL) and a lighthouse, and then just run max growth and Oracle building in it until we can pop rush that as well.

Hopefully we do have metal near us cause without it barbs are a hassle. Archery relieves it some, but axemen would be much nicer than archers.

I'll see if I can get time to run a couple more test games to find a range of years that the AI will build the Oracle with raging barbs.

ugh...Either I'm a lot worse at this game than I thought I was, or my RNG hates me tonight.

I did 2 tests...the first one, I lost my first two warriors to lions(I was defending on forests), then lost Kyoto in 2700!!!BC to a barb warrior while building a warrior to replace my lost ones.

Second one...I lose a warrior to a lion while defending on a hill. My other early warrior gets trapped behind a wall of early persian cities while exploring and can't come back. I then get swamped by barbs, starting in 2700BC. I was unable to do anything but build warriors nonstop until 1800BC when I built a settler, sent him N to get floodplains and gold to maybe do more research. Unfortunately, a turn before I would have had an archer to defend Kyoto, I lost all 3 warriors I had defending to 2 archers and 2 warriors.

Conclusion...unless we want to gamble for copper early, we should do hunting>archery before doing mining>BW. I have yet to actually have copper near me on a fractal map in 6 games.

edit: I couldn't do worldbuilder while using the HOF mod, I'll see if I can without it active. If so, I'll try to mimic the start for some of you better players to attempt some starts, for CS Slingshot and otherwise.