SGOTM 11 - Smurkz

Welcome to your SGOTM 11 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 here, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest. I hope you enjoy the game.

The starting saves will become available on the SGOTM Progress and Results page on September 9th, at midnight, server local time.

Thanks again to Gyathaar for coming up with the variant and developing the map.

You are Shaka of the Zulus, and your mission is to dominate the World. The world is standard sized, but crowded with 13 rivals grouped into several power blocks locked into mutual protection pacts. You are out in the cold.

All victory conditions are switched on, but the winning team will be the one that achieves a Domination victory earliest. Domination is defined for this game as 75% of world land plus coast, and 75% of world population.

Here's the start.


Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Zulu
Difficulty - Emperor
Opponents - 13: America, Arabia, China, Egypt, England, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Ottomans, Russia, Scandinavia.
World - Standard, Continents, 60% water, 4 billion years old, temperate
Barbarians - Roaming

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

Game mods:
The game uses the default rules as defined in the SGOTM Reference Thread, with the following modifications:

- Domination requires 75% of world territory and 75% of world population.

The SGOTM Mediterranean resources are included, as you can see from the starting screenshot. If you have played SGOTM 9 then you will be ready. Other players will need to download and unzip this small graphics mod pack. Details are provided in the SGOTM Reference Thread..

Please ensure that you have incuded the line: NoAIPatrol=0 in your conquests.ini text file.

Please visit the following links to ensure that you are adequately prepared, skipping references to PtW or Vanilla versions of Civ3.

The GOTM Reference Thread.
The SGOTM Reference Thread.

Notes:

A. ONLY Conquests version 1.22 (C3C) is supported for this SGOTM. All teams will compete for a single award.

B. All teams must play the sponsored variant - the laurels will be awarded for the fastest Domination victory. The wooden spoons will go to the team with the lowest final Jason score, having completed the game.

C. You MUST play from the start file assigned to your team. 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.

Enjoy your game

Lucky me, first post.

Later (today/tomorrow) I will edit this with the a story start.

Right now all I see is a knife fight with our close neighbours in an AWE SGOTM variant.

Hey, all! It's good to be back in the saddle. And welcome dojoboy!

There were a few SGs with the variant that the Zulu's were only allowed to build impis. They were so dominant (because they're so cheap) that they had to modify the mod to make it harder. I wish I remember which SGs they were, but it was a while back.

I'm thinking our long term plan should be

1. Meet everyone, find out their alliances.
2. Pick the group we can expand our empire earliest and take them on in mass.
3. Get an MA with one of the other groups against the group farthest away and let their World War-like feud keep them weak while we expand by force.
4. If the Impi are still making headway, press on. If not, we switch to horses/knights?

Usually domination is helped by cheap culture. Since we have neither cheap librarys nor cheap temples, and we're going to be spending our GA in despotism anyway, we may want to stay in despotism, use pop rushing to build temples in captured towns. Impi are cheap so we won't need a better government from the production standpoint. Research can be slow and there's high unit support so we could handle despotism from a commerce point of view.

We're not starting near a settler farm as far as I can tell. The cow is a nice bonus, but unless the coastal water is fresh, it's just going to get mined. The scout must go south to keep it's two move advantage, so he can check out the water salinity. The worker will move to the cow and the settler can move to the forest on the water or stay put. We may want to move the scout and then post for strategy.

Checking in. Hi all!

This looks like a minimal research, maximal fighting game . IMO we should make an effort to conquer the world with swords and catapults.
Ingredients:
- use the alliances to our advantage, by dragging the AIs in continuous war amongst themselves.
- fight oscillating wars ourselves to keep the AI's down. Perhaps try to knock out a few early on.
- research a few needed AA techs, after that lone scientist or nothing.
- stay in despotism. No WW, high unit support, pop rushing (for corrupt towns), no anarchy. Poprushing can be used for swords, galleys, catapults, or even temples (culture). Republic is not needed and perhaps not even benefcial, Monarchy is not really better than despotism, Feudalism comes too late.
- use money for upgrades. Disconnect/reconnect iron every turn or so, then a sword will cost 10 shields + 60 gold or 10 shields + 1 pop.
- military needs: swords, catapults, impi's for defense and pillaging, possibly galleys.
- infrastructure: perhaps a few towns with granaries, lots of towns with raxes, some temples where needed for culture. We may need to build the GLight.
- tech needs: early on we need IW to spot and settle iron - it's a crowded map. We also need Alpha for curraghs and Writing for alliances. Later Math for cats and possibly Map Making for galleys.

A lot will depend on the geography of the map, in particular whether it's pangea or not.

Hey, it's begun.

I'm not an impi fan, rarely play Zulu. We may want to build a few scouts early, if anything to deny our rivals the goody-huts. I like the idea of doing a mass-build of warriors then upgrade in one turn by connecting iron - not as cheap as it use to be, I think, in Civ3/Ptw. ??? Anyone know? I like CF's idea of using key MA agreements to project our power more so.

Looking forward to this, my first Civ3 SGOTM.

Edit: We should also try to map land and sea ASAP to prepare for any surprises thrown in.

Signing in!

Glad to see the discussion going already. I haven't really had time to think about strategy yet, but what you guys have said so far seems reasonable.

I'll be back...

I'm sure I am stating the obvious, but those mountains gems are just about worthless to us. Each one will take 9 WT to connect! And at the game start, when every WT is a matter of great import and debate. Spending time to connect one gem (10 turns, one to move onto the mountain and nine to make the road) will take almost as long as to road three flatlands (12 turns, one to move onto tile1, three to road, one to move onto tile2, three to road, one to move onto tile 3, three to road).

If this luxury were on a grassland instead of a mountain I would be tempted to connect it early on, perhaps before the second city was founded. But on a mountain, , it has to wait, perhaps until we have our third or fourth city in place (and more workers).

CommandoBob said:

If this luxury were on a grassland instead of a mountain I would be tempted to connect it early on, perhaps before the second city was founded. But on a mountain, , it has to wait, perhaps until we have our third or fourth city in place (and more workers).

Click to expand...

What if we capture some extra workers? I see what you're saying. Would it be best just to bump our luxury slider 1 point?

dojoboy said:

We may want to build a few scouts early, if anything to deny our rivals the goody-huts.

Click to expand...

I agree that scouting will be very important to find everyone before the borders close down. Impis travel just as fast as scouts and dont get killed by barbs. Plus they can run pillaging raids on their way back home. I don't think we should build any scouts.

Regarding swords/cats, I think they're too slow and don't retreat. The impi is fast, we need attack forces that can keep up with them. I would rather build a bunch of chariots and upgrade them to horses. We can get to the Wheel faster than Bronze/Iron Working.

EDIT: Forgot we need Bronze Working for impis. I guess a scout build isn't out of the question, and that makes swords look more favorable.

Initially, because the impis retreat, I am ok running the AA wars with impis only. Especially if we need to capture resources for better units.

The key to this game is going to be workers. We need to get captured cities connected quickly so they can make the unit of choice and gain the luxury happiness we acquire. Also, we need settlers to get to their destinations fast. We also need lots of irrigation to build up our population for whipping. We can count on some slaves but we should really focus on building workers early.

Basically, each town should have a shield per turn target. For impies thats 5, 7 or 10 spt. For swords/horses that's 5, 8, 10, 15spt. If we're going to do the warrior upgrade thing, its 5 or 10spt. When a city hits the target spt, any extra pop is worthless so when it grows, build a worker and drop it back down. (This can be modified on a case by case basis depending on available food and total sheild potential. We also may want to build settlers instead.)

I agree with CB on the gems. We will be keeping our pop low and expanding rapidly so there is no need for the gems early on. Unless we need a road head toward the NW to speed our expansion, it makes sense to delay and use the luxury sliders.

lurker's comment: lurker reporting.
By looking at the fog, it seems we are surrounded by hills behind those mountains.

BTW, is it allright if I post stuff like opinions on moves and stuff as if I was a player, even though Im not playing?

Ansar the King said:

lurker's comment: lurker reporting.
By looking at the fog, it seems we are surrounded by hills behind those mountains.

BTW, is it allright if I post stuff like opinions on moves and stuff as if I was a player, even though Im not playing?

Click to expand...

As long as it doesn't affect your schoolwork.

@Ansar: I thought that was the whole point of being a dedicated lurker - that you could join in the discussion, since you wouldn't have read the other team threads. And yes, I think you're right about the hills.

Before I go on to say anything else, I should note that I've never played Zulu. Ever. Ok, now that's out of the way...

I must say I agree with CF regarding swords vs horses. We have a fast, cheap defender who could be used on the offensive when needed despite the low attack rating (because of retreating). If we use swords and cats we will not be able to fully utilize the power of the Impi. We could go the "ordinary" cat/sword route, and then not use the Impi. I think that would be short-changing ourselves, the Impi are truly powerful if used the right way.

Also I've found the upgrading tactic from PTW much less useful in C3C. 3 gold/shield is a lot more than 2, at the same amount of gold we can only upgrade 2/3 as many warriors to swords. If we stay in despotism, which I agree we should, I think the 10 shields + 1 pop is a much more useful tactic. But I'd rather use it for horses than swords.

One thing I think we should really consider is very early warfare. In the early game the other AI won't be on the ready, and the MPPs will be less effective. If we can quickly get a few Impi out, we could possibly go to war on one or more of our closest neighbors without their MPP partners ever entering the picture. On this very crowded start, I fear that such a strategy might be crucial for survival. Or perhaps fear is not the right word...

On the start itself: We really want to know if we have fresh water before we decide anything else. With the crowded start we don't have the option to walk at length, and the start seems good enough. I'm thinking that 1SE on the forest might be a good location, having both the cow and the goats in the first 10. Scout E as first move?

can i lurk

Checking in!

An Impi & Chariot/Horse war early looks like the way to go. Settling early will be key with such a crowded map.

Looking at the minimap we will be expanding North, so a road through the gems might need to come sooner than we'd care to use 10 worker turns. I really doubt the coast is on fresh water, but Scout E should give us the best view during the 1st turn. We should also consider settling on the coast. A strong coastal town could turn out to be key in this game. Settling SE would likely accomplish this with the cows, goats, and 2 gems in the fat cross.

@dimaliok - WELCOME! We love lurkers...they taste yummy.

Please feel free to read along and post comments. Are you planning on being a dedicated lurker to our thread? (If not, please don't post spoilers of any kind.)

I was also thinking that SE is the best settling spot, not only because of the coast, but to get us a little more grassland. Plus the goat is an instant mined BG. (And if mined would give +3spt in despotism.)

Disadvantage is we're moving father from the rest of the land we need to claim.

I played the Zulu once, years ago. A variant game: AWR, only fast military allowed. It was an easy conquest with horses and knights.

I disagree with some of the opinions posted here.

• scouts. We definitely should build them, for hut popping. Unless huts have been disabled (a sometime GOTM rule IIRC, don't know if it is still in place). I would build at least one, but probably two - unless the first 2 scouts report a small continent.
• workers. In a conquest game you usually get enormous amounts of slaves with very little to do. Only the first few towns are productive and need improvements, after that we only need roads for the troops. Irrigation is often useless in despotism - and I would surely not sacrifice pop and shields in a core town to irrigate a corrupt town.
• horses vs swords. Of course a lot will depend on the map - e.g., can we even reach any opponents before Navigation? But assuming we share a large continent with some "friends", I truly don't understand the arguments brought in favor of horses.
  • swords are too slow. True, they are slow. But swords combined with cats have much more staying power than horses. Horses get to the field quicker, but also die quicker, meaning that the quick reinforcement is countered by the heavy losses. The balance between the two depends, again, on the geography, and on the location of the battlefield. But at least in the initial phase, conquering speed is limited more by unit numbers than by travel time. Later this changes (and we might have knights by then). Also, swords can be upgraded from warriors all the time. With horses, upgrading works only once.
  • swords cannot keep up with impi's. But they don't need to! One or two impi's to protect a stack is fine (though a stack without such protection is fine too IMO), and they can use the extra movement point to fortify or so. The impi's fast movement is a bonus, we do not have to use it. (If we were playing, say, France, would anyone argue in favor of swords for the sole reason that horses would outrun our spears?)
    But the real power of the impi is not to protect a stack, but to send it into AI lands without any stack, and let it pillage. With impi's we can cheaply and safely kill an AI's production and commerce, and disconnect its strategic and luxury resources, before we launch an attack, or even without launching an attack at all. Just the disruption would set them back enormously.
  This of course does not mean we should not train horses. They surely have their uses - home defense, flank protection. But I think the mainstay should be swords.

For the early moves, I would suggest to train a scout, followed by another scout or a warrior. After that, maybe a granary or a rax depending on where the neighbours are. Research BW -> IW at max. Scout towards the south, and based on what we see, settle in place or SE. If the water is salty, are we scared of the Vikings' UU?

Ahh, it's good to be back ... on the opposite side of the fence from zyxy.

Swords, not horses
I'm actually OK with training swords initially. zyxy is right that the first push is dominated more by lack of units rather than speed. The thing I dislike about swords (or rather favor about horses) is the ability to retreat. I tend to end up throwing a lot of horses at a big fortress whittling down the defenses relying on the retreat ability. While the swords have a better attack strength, they can also run afoul of the RNG. When they die, their replacement has to come from the main core which takes longer because they're slow. If a horse fails, it still has a chance to stay alive and thus can heal at the frontlines (usually quelling resistors in the process) and be ready to go in a few turns.

With that said, we had a lot of success with the Viking game using swords to conquer the initial continent. I'm all for keeping with that strategy. (Especially since CB will send them ALL into battle this time. )

Workers
I'm sure most of the team is familiar with my obsessive nature on workers, so it's only nature that I demand we make a gazillion of them. If we're stealing pop from core towns just to irrigate corrupt towns, I agree that doesn't make sense. I was only implying that if the extra pop wasn't giving us much benefit in the core town (excessive sheild overuns), why not skim that pop off for workers. The advantage is more than just irrigating towns. I expect to build up an large offensive force and then take on three to four civs at a time. We're going to want the workers to connect all these cities quickly so that we can move units across the first battlefield to get to the second battle field. The laurels go to the fastest domination, and we need to get to the farthest reaches as quickly as possible. Roads help that immensely. Especially if World Wars have kept the AI from properly developing a road system in their own territories.

Huts and Scouts
For expansionist civs, ANY unit can pop huts without triggering barbs, so if you're comment about scouts stems from a desire to get goodys from huts, that doesn't matter as much. (But if you knew that, and your comment about scouts getting there faster than warriors, I agree.) As I stated before, I had forgotten that we need to research bronze before the impis become available. I'm good with making a decent number of scouts (based on map size) until impies are available, but don't see much use for them after impis are available.

I'm not too scared of the Viking's UU. I'm hoping we can crush them before we get anywhere near invention.

Generally, I prefer using swords in early wars. I will usually support swords w/ horses, to prevent wounded enemy units from retreating to their cities to heal. And, there are moments the extra movement comes in handy. But, in C3C I usually find I don't have the necessary resources for both. I doubt seriously we'll be in position to decide upon one or the other. We may find ourselves doing an archer rush, but as several have pointed out - geography will determine much.

Again, I stress the need for scouts early. Much is to be gained by flooding the area with them. Of course, impis are a logical build once they become available, but I've never found them useful as an offensive unit. This is why the Zulu are a weak early era civ, IMHO, in the hands of the AI.

We should consider using cities built around bonus food tiles (e.g. cows) for pop-rushing key builds, after thse tiles are irrigated. Even in despotism we'll gain a bonus from those tiles.

Workers are key, I agree. But, I'm hoping we'll capture the bulk of this work-force.

Do we have a prefered tech queue? As I stated before, we'll likely not have iron and horses nearby - probably neither. Therefore, Ceremonial Burial might be an early option for archers. However, we might be able to make some early tech trades if we come across a rival early.

Back to units for a moment. I never use cats except in extreme situations. They become a handicap in the field IMHO, because they require protection. And logistically, they don't move well w/ horses et al.

Business was slow at the SmurkZ’s Bar & Grill .The large, green, hand-painted sign was nailed to a wooden frame outside. A slightly smaller sign next to it said, ‘Short, cute, blue people are NOT wanted’. Inside were a handful of people discussing life, war and politics, while the staff served up coffee and desserts.

‘Yeah, I can see the gems in the mountains from here, but we’re not going to have time to enjoy them. Take too long to connect them. Which is really a pity, this would be a great place for a dual season resort, snow skiing in the winter months and sun bathing along the beach in the summer, and tours of gem mines all year round.’ said one of them.

‘We need swords and catapults’, said another. ‘Keep the others fighting amongst themselves while we sneak up and clobber ‘em.’

‘What’s an Impi? Is it like an ImpiThree?’

‘I’m not so sure about swords and catapults. They’re slow and we need to cover a lot of ground. Impi’s are nice, but we need Bronze Working to make them. And did I mention that we will need a lot of workers?’

“Judging from what we know our world, we are going to have to cross those mountains one way or another. We are too far south not to.’

‘We need to be ready to fight on Turn 1,’ began another. ‘Even if these folks have Mutual Protection Pacts, early in the game they are not real effective. And we are going to have lots of neighbors.’

And then discussion got spirited as point and counter points flew back and forth.

Until the waiter presented the bill. Then things got very quiet. Quiet indeed.

‘Here, I’ll take care of that,’ said a new voice.

From out of the back came a rather tall, dark man, casually dressed man, who made his way over to the tables of discussion.

‘Allow me to introduce myself to you. I am Shaka, ruler of the Zulus. I’m glad you had a chance to visit together before things got going.

‘As you know and have discussed, we have thirteen unwashed neighbors to deal with in this standard sized world. We can figure that six or seven of them will be on this landmass. One or two maybe on islands. We want to dominate the world as quickly as possible, which means 75% of the population must be Zulu and 75% of the land and coastline must be Zulu also.

‘How you do this is for you to decide. There are six of you playing and two lurking. I am sure you will come up with some plan of action.

‘In SGOTM 9 this team took the gold laurels. In SGOTM 10 you came in fifth place out of ten teams. Not great, but it was the first Conquests game for most of you and you were the best of the four Vanilla/PTW teams. All in all, a good showing.

‘But one thing really plagued the last game and that was a lack of communication. In game nine, you averaged about 2.5 posts per game turn, the second highest of that game. In game ten, the average was 1.9 posts per game turn, which is middle of the pack for that game.

‘If you want to get the gold laurels a second time, your communications will have to improve. If any of you are not clear on something, ask about it, and that includes lurkers, too. Sometimes it is just a matter of definitions. Other times the idea behind what is being said is sound, but the explanation is poor.

‘Along with this, you must stay current with the game. In regular succession games you can play your turns, goof off and do a quick read to catch up on the game when it is time to play again. For playing competitively, even if just for fun, that doesn’t work. You’ll miss something and zig when you should have zagged.

‘Right now it is easy to stay current. It will be a lot harder in month to stay up-to-date on in-game world events. But if you check the thread daily and keep up and offer suggestions, you should be fairly current and have a pretty good grasp of what to do on your turns.

‘You had a bit of warfare in game ten; you will have a lot of it in this one. We Zulus are militaristic, so you should have good luck with leaders. I think that Scientific Great Leaders are turned off, so rushing wonders may be an option with a Military Great Leader.

‘Overall, I think you have a good chance to take the gold laurels. I definitely think you can improve your standings from game ten.

‘Oh, one last thing. For the duration of this game, I will be providing a conference room in back. In addition, you will be my guests and your meals and beverages will be a gift from me to you. And yes, that includes the lurkers, too.

‘Good luck!’

@CB: ImpiThree... Glad to see you're at it already, and Shaka's words are wise.

Oh, and the saves are up!
I had a quick peak at the game, did the only thing I could without moving which is to chart the opponents (F10): America, England, Scandinavia, Germany, France, Russia, Ottoman, Egypt, Arabia, Korea, India, China and Japan. That makes for 4 Mil, 3 Exp, 2 Sea, 5 Ind, 4 Sci, 4 Rel, 4 Com and no Agr. Even spaced, with no chances for tech advantages since Japan is in.

Initial roster is according to sign-in as usual, yell if you want up or down:

• CommandoBob
• ControlFreak
• zyxy
• dojoboy
• Niklas
• McLMan