SGOTM 02 - Memphis Blues

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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

Hey - the discussion thread is open!

We have some things to decide:
1. Do we want to keep the name Memphis Blues, or ask AlanH to change it?
2. We need to work out early strategy
3. We need to decide a playing order

Let the discussion begin!

Starting position...

Not a whole lot in view in the way of resources. Just the rice and the fish. Moving 1 NW would get both, but what is to the east that we might miss? Moving the warrior to the hill to the east first would get us a view though there seems to be a forest east of that hill which would block the view going very far. There's a river mouth off that way (to the NE). I wonder if there's some flood plains to go with it?

Any thoughts?

MadProfessor said:

Hey - the discussion thread is open!

We have some things to decide:
1. Do we want to keep the name Memphis Blues, or ask AlanH to change it?
2. We need to work out early strategy
3. We need to decide a playing order

Click to expand...

1. I don't really bother with the name, it's up to you.

2. it's going to be really, really hard this one...

3. Don't let me play first... i don't want to lose our second city to barbarians in the first 20 turns...

MadProfessor said:

Hey - the discussion thread is open!

We have some things to decide:
1. Do we want to keep the name Memphis Blues, or ask AlanH to change it?
2. We need to work out early strategy
3. We need to decide a playing order

Click to expand...

1. I don't really bother with the name, it's up to you.

2. it's going to be really, really hard this one...

3. Don't let me play first... i don't want to lose our second city to barbarians in the first 20 turns...

Oops. The connection I have here gets a little "flaky" sometimes and things grind to a halt. When I tried to post my last post, that happened but it looks like I got through - a couple of times!

radiopill said:

2. it's going to be really, really hard this one...

Click to expand...

I never played a game with raging barbarians turned on. I presume it increases the number of barbarians spawned, but does it change the date? Like does it make them appear earlier?

Mad Professor said:

I never played a game with raging barbarians turned on. I presume it increases the number of barbarians spawned, but does it change the date? Like does it make them appear earlier?

Click to expand...

I don't know if they come earlier, but goody hut aren't that good...
I try to begin a game with the same settings, and I popped 3 hut, 2 of them give me 2 barbarians (that is not really good, when you popped it next to your new defenceless city...) and 1 tech .

Other point about my test, I'm not sure if we should settle directly... The maintenance cost really kill the science research... In my test game I'll have -7 gpt for my 2nd city, but it wasn't exactly the same distance as in this game probably...

radiopill said:

I don't know if they come earlier, but goody hut aren't that good...
I try to begin a game with the same settings, and I popped 3 hut, 2 of them give me 2 barbarians (that is not really good, when you popped it next to your new defenceless city...) and 1 tech .

Click to expand...

OK, so popping huts is not necessarily a good thing. Huts are more likely to be barbarians?

radiopill said:

Other point about my test, I'm not sure if we should settle directly... The maintenance cost really kill the science research... In my test game I'll have -7 gpt for my 2nd city, but it wasn't exactly the same distance as in this game probably...

Click to expand...

Ouch. That's a good point. But what can we do about commerce? Our city is a one tile island, and the work boat will take 23 turns to build, so no extra commerce until it grows in 17 turns time. Do we want the settler hanging around for that long? It may not survive the animals.

Mmmm. that's an aspect I hadn't thought of. This is a hard one!

Hi guys! Looking forward to some tough challenges!

1. Regarding name I'm fine with the one we have but changing to Kyoto Blues also has some logic to it.

2. It is indeed a challenging starting position. Like radiopill I did a few tests from similar opening positions and as he mentions our key difficulties are the huge number of barbs and the distance from palace maintenance cost. Other problems are the absence of trade routes due to the isolation of our capital. This means less gold and less happyness/health. We don't have to settle directly - waiting will cost us some turns of production but in terms of science we won't loose much since we already have the gold from the palace. So an initial search for a better spot might be an idea. As I see it our 2nd city should be a production city because it needs to produce a lot of archers to fend off the barbs. A plains hill spot with a grassland hill and some grassland forrests within the initial square border seems like a good choice to me. A mined hill will be easy to defend from barbs since a defending archer will be able to get the hills defense promotions. Ideally we would want to move closer to our capital if possible, so our initial search should be focused on the NE direction.

3. I don't mind going first.

A few more thoughts on early strategy/tech path:

1. Archery: We need this ASAP for defence.
2. Bronze Working: We need slavery (pop rush in Kyoto) and we need to locate bronze for Axemen.
3. Writing: Kyoto kan only grow to size 5 and it has lots of food so it's ideally suited for running specialists. We could pop rush a library here and hire two scientist. The first Great Scientist we use for Academy and the next we could use for researching a tech. We should note, that a GS will give us Astronomy if we have Optics and even CoL but NOT meditation so we might want to avoid researching Meditation to keep this option open.
4. Iron Working: If Bronze is too far away to be safely hooked we may have to go for IW.
5. Monarchy: This is the only way to increase happyness in Kyoto - remember that we won't have any happyness ressouces there before Astronomy and probably no religion either.
6. Move palace: When we have 4 cities we can contemplate building a Palace in one of our cities to get trade routes and reduced maintenance. We need a city with good production and either a loot of food (pop rush) or a lot of forrest (chop) to speed up the build. Ideally it should also have some tech city potential due to the benefits of Bureaucracy.

I think we can forget about building any wonders - we must concentrate on what we need to survive for the first 4000 years or so!!

Hi Guys - just checking in. I'll read the posts and respond in a bit.

Hello folks,

Checking in. Looks like I am the only new team member. Hope you all don't mind.

I've been playing around with some custom games. It seems like settling our settler right away could be disasterous. It looks like from the screen shot that the settler is about 35 tiles east and 6 tiles south of Kyoto. Settling in place puts us at -7 GPT and 50% average research. Ouch! It would be nice if we could find some gold or gems to the west, and maybe some bronze. So I like mining->BW as a research path. Of course if our settler gets eaten by a bear, it's game over.

As far as trade routes, any chance that Kyoto's first border expansion will connect it to the coast? The screen shot of Kyoto is cut off at the bottom so it's a possibility. And does the water look a little lighter at the top of that shot?

ShannonCT said:

Hello folks,

Checking in. Looks like I am the only new team member. Hope you all don't mind.

I've been playing around with some custom games. It seems like settling our settler right away could be disasterous. It looks like from the screen shot that the settler is about 35 tiles east and 6 tiles south of Kyoto. Settling in place puts us at -7 GPT and 50% average research. Ouch! It would be nice if we could find some gold or gems to the west, and maybe some bronze. So I like mining->BW as a research path. Of course if our settler gets eaten by a bear, it's game over.

As far as trade routes, any chance that Kyoto's first border expansion will connect it to the coast? The screen shot of Kyoto is cut off at the bottom so it's a possibility. And does the water look a little lighter at the top of that shot?

Click to expand...

Welcome to the team

When you measure the distance I guess it is across the small map in the corner of the screen shot. But what about the distance going in a NE direction from the settler towards Kyoto? Can we measure this or does it require Stonehenge or Calendar before the world is seen as round? I mention this because if this distance is shorter we should move NE with the settler and not west.

EDIT: We now the map size so we should be able to figure this out.

In my test games going directly for axemen (mining + BW) was a bit of a gamble because if copper is not very close you could be in trouble. Did you test with raging barbs? In my tests I was alone on an Island - that might make things even worse.

The water color does seems brighter to the north. I wouldn't bet that it's coast though.

ShannonCT said:

Hello folks,

Checking in. Looks like I am the only new team member. Hope you all don't mind.

I've been playing around with some custom games. It seems like settling our settler right away could be disasterous. It looks like from the screen shot that the settler is about 35 tiles east and 6 tiles south of Kyoto. Settling in place puts us at -7 GPT and 50% average research. Ouch! It would be nice if we could find some gold or gems to the west, and maybe some bronze. So I like mining->BW as a research path. Of course if our settler gets eaten by a bear, it's game over.

Click to expand...

Hello Shannon,

Welcome in the Memphis Blues team!

Fredericksberg said:

But what about the distance going in a NE direction from the settler towards Kyoto? Can we measure this or does it require Stonehenge or Calendar before the world is seen as round? I mention this because if this distance is shorter we should move NE with the settler and not west.

Click to expand...

I agree with you, if we can rely on the short map, it will be better to move NE.

Fredericksberg said:

In my test games going directly for axemen (mining + BW) was a bit of a gamble because if copper is not very close you could be in trouble.

Click to expand...

That's also true, I arrived at the same conclusion, BW is a bet we couldn't afford, and axemen are less good at city defence. Nevertheless we are aggressive, so our axemen receive a free combat promotion which is not the case of the archers...

ShannonCT said:

As far as trade routes, any chance that Kyoto's first border expansion will connect it to the coast? The screen shot of Kyoto is cut off at the bottom so it's a possibility. And does the water look a little lighter at the top of that shot?

Click to expand...

It's possible hopefully, but Gyathaar is a vicious , it could also be a false hope...

I think I found the answer to one of my own questions. A standard map size is 84 tiles horizontally and 52 tiles vertically Map Sizes. Using ShannoCT's estimate of 35 tiles between settler and Kyoto across the small map he is absolutely right that we need to move west with the settler - actually the settler is almost at the opposite side of the globe right now!! Fortunately it looks as if there is more land to the west and I definitely think we should explore this with our settler. Does anyone know when animals start to appear? Having our settler eaten is not a nice thougth .

EDIT: I did a few tests using the world builder and it seems that animals do not appear in the first 6 turns.

I count 84 tiles East-West also. So it's Westward Ho! all else being equal. The turns until wild animals is a nice number to know. Our settler could make a nice scout for a while. I tried popping some huts with a settler and I guess maybe 20% turned out to be barbs, which means likely death even if our warrior is defending. I wonder if certain units have better or worse success in popping huts (of course the huts may have been edited out of the game).

As far as our research path, if we go for hunting and archery first, I think we'll probably have to settle our first settler before finding the bronze, which isn't so bad if we can find some food near some gold/gems. But I did play a few practice games with a similair setup where I went for mining, BW, hunting, archery and was able to found cities on plains hills near bronze and defend it with an anti-archer upgraded warrior and then with the archers I built. Slightly risky but a bigger reward if it works.

Looks like BSouder is the only one not to check in yet.

Welcome ShannonCT!!

The more I think about this start the more horrifying scenarios I think of. Losing that settler is not an option. It would be a long way to astronomy with just Kyoto.

There is a tinge of lighter colour up north of Kyoto isn't there? I'll be looking for the first cultural expansion with great interest. If there is land there, getting a settler in a galley to the mainland is a real option.

We have good commerce near Kyoto so the idea of popping a library has good merit.

Going hunting->Archery would delay BW a little, but not many turns. We could have both fairly early couldn't we?

A good spot for defense from barbarians would be one that had hills at several points of the compass from the city. That way the extra defense bonus can be utilised (especially forested hills) and units stationed out from the city tend to draw barbarians like magnets, and that reduces the plunder damage done by the barbarians, which is something we might find very handy.

It's good that there's a few "safe" turns from animals, but once they start, if the city has not been settled, it will be a nervous existence for that settler.

I tried a couple of starts on raging barbarians and it seemed to me that producing military unit after military unit was the only way to survive. We need to think of ways to "Get ahead" too! Fog busting in the early stages unless you're on a small island, just means that you encounter the barbarians further from your city. That's not all bad, but they come anyhow.

In terms of settling, I believe we should do so ASAP, and that 1NW of our current location is the place to do it. We have to take the distance penalty for this settler at some point anyhow, not settling him immediately just costs us the extra hammers, food and commerce. If we were going for an early religion I’d argue differently, but with Fishing & The Wheel as starting techs, I don’t think this is a possibility. We should be able to grow to size 4 in 36 turns, by which point we’ll be generating 5 commerce in (what will be) Tokyo and almost self sufficient.

Thoughts?

Mad Professor said:

There is a tinge of lighter colour up north of Kyoto isn't there? I'll be looking for the first cultural expansion with great interest. If there is land there, getting a settler in a galley to the mainland is a real option.

Click to expand...

If there really is land in sight of Kyoto, then the other settler will probably want to settle as close as possible to Kyoto, since we could keep our palace there. Though it does seem like from the scenario description that the settler will ultimately control the action.

Mad Professor said:

Going hunting->Archery would delay BW a little, but not many turns. We could have both fairly early couldn't we?

A good spot for defense from barbarians would be one that had hills at several points of the compass from the city. That way the extra defense bonus can be utilised (especially forested hills) and units stationed out from the city tend to draw barbarians like magnets, and that reduces the plunder damage done by the barbarians, which is something we might find very handy.

Click to expand...

After playing around some more, I'm tending to agree about going for archery before BW. I think the key for the second city (Tokyo?) is defensibility. I would look for a nice piece of coastline to reduce the number of directions that the barbs can come from, and try to hook up bronze/iron/horses with the third city, once the second city is secure. Settling near another civ would be a plus for free fog busting and a good first target.

Mad Professor said:

It's good that there's a few "safe" turns from animals, but once they start, if the city has not been settled, it will be a nervous existence for that settler.

Click to expand...

If we try to settle around the time archery comes in, we're looking at 8-10 turns with the settler in potential danger. Escorting our settler with the warrior after turn 7, sticking mostly to forests and hills, and using some decent tactics (e.g., moving the warrior ahead before using the settlers last movement point in case a bear pops up) should minimize the danger.

Mad Professor said:

I tried a couple of starts on raging barbarians and it seemed to me that producing military unit after military unit was the only way to survive. We need to think of ways to "Get ahead" too! Fog busting in the early stages unless you're on a small island, just means that you encounter the barbarians further from your city. That's not all bad, but they come anyhow.

Click to expand...

I tried a few starts as well, one game settling in the middle of a landmass on a hill with Cathy to my south, and another game on the coast with water to my south and west and Monty to my north. On the first game, I got crushed. On the second, I easily held of the barbs with two archers on jungle hills.