SGOTM 02 - Fifth Element

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

Yay first in under AlanH! heehee

Fastest conquest... straight up warmongerin, yo. Let's take it to em!

(This one is also for team use)

Current Team Membership

Perugia: Lancing, UK -- GMT
BLubmuz: Vicenza, Italy GMT+01
BrianS: California, USA -- GMT-08
Doom Train: Cyprus -- GMT+02
gustavoghe
Merum: Dallas, Texas, USA -- GMT-06
Sweetacshon: Australia -- GMT+10

I think all Northern Hemisphere times operate daylight saving in summer, not sure about Sweetacshon & gustavogue, if they do it will be around October - April.


Past Members

Dolphan: UK (on BST) -- GMT+01 (lurker - retired)
Goodenuf: BC, Canada -- GMT-08 (lurker - sitting this one out)
Groin Apologist: Lansing, Michigan, USA -- GMT-05
gskur: Chicago, Illinois, USA -- GMT-06 (may join later)

A very big hello to our 2.5 new team members Blubmuz, Sweetacshon and gustavoghe. We now have representation in

Australia
Brazil - maybe
Cyprus
Italy
United Kingdom
United States

gustavogue. I see from your sign up post that you rate yourself noble/monarch. The players in this team are generally happy at noble/prince level in solo and have only played one or two SGs each. So we are helping each other win at Monarch level. With that experience you should fit in here nicely.

You have not played GOTM in any form so just a reminder that no reloading the game is allowed even if we get trashed by the AI.

Blubmuz. I see from your sign up post that you played all the 4OTM games and submitted 3. With that experience you should also fit in here nicely. How did you manage in the Monarch/Emporer games (submitted or not)?

I'm sure you will both find us good company and we will all learn something.

Please read and follow the "team rules" listed in the next post.

1. Ask to be skipped, or play your turns on time. Please don't just go missing in action.
2. Do not automate workers without first discussing with the team.
3. Do not order workers to make a terrain improvement over a forest or jungle, Clear the trees first.
4. Do not use city governors without first discussing with the team or clearly noting in your turn log.
5. If you change production in a city make sure you inform the team and leave any part-completed items on the build queue so all hammers invested can be seen.

6. Do not leave units on goto orders that extend beyond your set of turns. If for some reason this happens, then be sure to inform your team as to what the unit(s) is/are going.
7. Finish all your turns and upload the game saved at the END of the last turn.
8. When it is your turn to play, it is normal to pick the game up within 24 hours of the new save being made available, and to post a new save within 48 hours of that (so 72 hours in total). If you cannot meet the deadline then your team captain may grant you an extension or skip you at his discretion.
9. Only post a "got it" message once you have downloaded the save and actually opened it in the game. It is not unusual for something to happen that prevents the save being opened.
10. Post a turnlog which describes your set of turns. Provide enough information, not only on what you did, but what your intent was for the next few turns. "Where is that galley going?" and "Oops that palace build was actually a pre-build" are not uncommon comments in the threads.

11. Respect your team mates, and demand their respect. Take care of your writing style, accept that people whose first language is not English will use English in a different way than you are used to. Disagree by all means, but don't make it personal, and don't take it personally.
12. SG's are team games. Be a good team member. Post your ideas, argue your corner and encourage and praise your team mates. Don't be afraid to post in your game thread. That is what it's for.
13. The following Game Options are preferred except Wait at End of Turn which is mandatory.
14. Above all have fun.

The above is based on the guidance from the C-IV SGOTM Reference Thread and copied here so it can be amended to our own needs. Please note that only the guidance is copied here, for the mandatory rules and shortcuts to the submissions page for uploading and the results page for downloading follow these links
C-IV SGOTM Reference Thread
Games of the Month

Definition of Number of turns to Play
1. 10 turns during wartime
2. For every 2 turns at peace you can play 1 optional turn up to a maximum of 15 turns
3. As normal SG convention it is 'good form' to stop early if a key decision coincides with turns 9-15 or you feel your are getting out of your depth but the choice is yours.

Copied from SGOTM 01 05August06

Merum said:

Yay first in under AlanH! heehee

Click to expand...

Yah boo. Beat me to it.

Merum said:

Fastest conquest... straight up warmongerin, yo. Let's take it to em!

Click to expand...

I agree the map parameters are most certainly a warmongers charter.
AI Aggression - YES! - Yeh! let them DoW on us if they dare.
Barbarians - Raging!! - Yeh! forget about fog-busters use barb training to get to 10XP. Raging barbs/no fog busting is also good for delaying the AI recolonising land where we have razed AI cities while we retain only the best for ourselves.

We effectively have 2 settlers in this start with the first city already founded on a one hex island. The second is some distance away so maintenance is eventually going to be a problem even for organised but we can afford to explore a bit to find a really cool spot for the second city (one might be provided in the fog). This could be centred on the land mass and we could move the palace there to get really optimum distance for our core.

One other idea is to spread ourselves to 2 or 3 bases around the globe while we are in peace mode learning all the techs we need so we are ready to choke the more advanced AI when and where the opportunity arises while we make a beeline for Civil Service.

I think we are being encouraged to do this by Gyathaar.

This time story is ready, so i don t have to think about suitable story for spoiler thread

I'm going to play my broken record one last time for each team:

First post in this thread said:

Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest.

Click to expand...

Anything I post there will NOT be repeated individually in every team thread. You may even find some useful information there now

Checking in. This looks like a fun start. Welcome to Blubmuz and gustavoghe.

Here is the useful information which reveals that maintenance is going to be a problem right now so the second city had better be a good one!

AlanH said:

Some late breaking news about your game:

1. We now know that there are seven rivals on the map (not including the barbs).

2. Much pixel-counting effort has been expended to try to work out the distance between Kyoto and the settler. To settle the debates, and to help your strategy discussions move forward, we'll divulge that the second city, if built where the settler stands, would cost 7 gpt in maintenance.

Click to expand...

Blumbuz & gustavoghe. Please post your check in to this thead if you read this....

AlanH said:

Final call for the following players who signed up here but have not checked in to their departure lounges, or excused their late arrivals as far as I can tell:....

Fifth Element BLubmutz, gustavoghe
....

If these players are unaccounted for by the end of today, Saturday, their team places may be taken by up by standby players, assigned in order of greatest team need.

Click to expand...

Alan originally posted theabove in the maintenance thread.

Here I am
better late than never

hello to everyone

what have I to do now?????

just to let you know my time zome is GMT +1

eagerly awaiting for news

I've read our team thread, this is my answer to Perugia's questions:

No problems usually in Monarch solo games, and in Emperor i just modify a bit my starting position, after that I usually win (to be honest with some reloading).
I do NOT dare to go over Emperor.

Sorry for be in late, i just back home

Since this is my first SGotM, i need some help about stupid things like:
- where to find the file for DL
- is this the place where a "got it" has to be posted?
- BTW i did not found this thread was open since August 3rd ... what have I to check next SGotM?

beginning to speak about the game:
- what about settle 1 NW? fish + rice + fp = fast growth and we'll immediately (at least with sailing, or we'll have to wait astronomy? - in this case we'll never share them, we'll win before) share our resources with our capital (and viceversa)
- better try a CS slingshot or start researching in BW line and build axes? japan UU is an empowered maceman, so we have to wait this to be warmogering or start soon?
- I suppose we'll have to build a palace in our first or 2nd city, if we wish to keep up with research

Ciao!

BLubmuz said:

Since this is my first SGotM, i need some help about stupid things like:
- where to find the file for DL
- is this the place where a "got it" has to be posted?
- BTW i did not found this thread was open since August 3rd ... what have I to check next SGotM?

Click to expand...

- DL here
- UL here
- Yes a "got it" is posted when the player whose turn is next has downloaded the file and been able to open the save (just in case it was corrupted). You'll see how this works when we start.
- All I did was keep checking here until Alan started the SGOTM 02 - Fifth Element thread.

Thanks for your comments on the actual game. I'd like to see what the others have to suggest (and wait until we finish SGOTM 01) before posting again myself.

2. Much pixel-counting effort has been expended to try to work out the distance between Kyoto and the settler. To settle the debates, and to help your strategy discussions move forward, we'll divulge that the second city, if built where the settler stands, would cost 7 gpt in maintenance.

Click to expand...

Blubmuz, I agree that the site 1 NW is a nice looking spot, but given the above, we may want to consider exploring to the east before settling. If we find a good site to the east, we'll save some maintenance by being closer to Kyoto.

Moving the settler to reduce maintenance sounds good if we can find the right location to move to. There may be a gold mine lurking in the fog which will pay the maintenance for us. However, this may be a dumb question but as the minimap is not centred at the moment, How do we know East is closer to Kyoto than West?

Alternatively we could minimise the losses by working water and river to claw back some gold and build cottages as soon as possible. If we can find good sites for 2 or 3 new cities near where our settler is then switching the Palace will help as we will only have Kyoto far from the capital and Kyoto can pay for its own maintenance once it reaches size 3.

Delaying founding the second city is also an option as we effectively can use the settler as a scout as long as it stays close to the warrior.

@Perugia, Interesting question about whether we know East is closer to Kyoto than West. I played around in Worldbuilder and came up with some bits of information -- I'm no expert with this stuff, so somebody else may get better info.

Anyway, I found that -7 maintenance equated to about 35 tiles distance from the capital. I do not know what other factors go into maintenance, but that's where I ended up. By my count, a standard map is 84 tiles across so we're not quite on opposite sides of the globe.

Curiously, when I did this, I found that the minimap put the biggest gap in tiles in between the cities, so that the shortest distance would have been to travel to the edge, ie E in this case. What I found interesting is that it did this even though this resulted in a different east west orientation between the cities than was apparent when you were looking at the whole map in worldbuilder.

Maybe others could mess around with this?

Brian

Great analysis! I think you have answered my question as having the biggest gap shown correctly on the minimap makes sense to avoid the minimap actually "lying" as opposed to being economical with the truth.

If the factors scale, it sounds like for every 5 tiles we can move towards Kyoto we can drop -1 maintenance. The hill looks like a good place to move the warrior for the usual reasons.

Nothing to complain about maintenance costs, but having the settler scouting instead of building barracks, warriors and so on let us loose precious turns of development.
Of course we can delay 2 or 3 turns before settle, since we have a city and so we can research, anyway the spot 1NW is too nice to let and it would be good for our 3rd city.
Otherwise, if we found 1NW, we'll have a good settlers/workers farm, and late a GP farm and we can look for a good production site for our 3rd city.
Maintenance costs will ALWAYS be high, so we'll have to increase our income.

That capital is an handicap, especially considering this other problem: looking better to the "double spot", Kyoto is surrounded by OCEAN, so it can't trade with the mainland until Astronomy.
A big problem, 'cause the lack of luxury res. will let this city in revolt after it reaches size 4, reduced to size 3 when we'll move the Palace.
For sure is better build a warrior first instead of a WB.

@BLubmuz. I don't disagree that a wandering settler loses precious development turns and we definitely have to increase our income. That's why we need to spend 2-3, maybe 4 or 5 turns scouting for a location with better immediate commerce.

There could be an argument for finding metal ie researching mining & bronze working before settling second city but I'm not yet sure if that would be better.

I would have thought build queue for Kyoto should be WB > warrior > WB > WB > WB. As at size 2 there will not be revolt without a garrison. We should include Temple>Granary>Monastery in the queue when we have the techs.

The city will eventually have a lot of revolt so we should target BW so we can use that to pop rush Temple Granary etc in one turn.

We could connect Kyoto to the mainland for trading if we grow enough culture to cross the ocean but that might take longer than researching Astronomy if the ocean is a large one.

With the capital disconnected from the rest of our empire, if we connect cities 2 & 3 by road or river will they be able to share resources or is it "every city for itself" resourcewise?