Où sont mes vins?

Or, where are my wines?

Enter Louis XIV, the monarch whose opinion is that the only good wine is a french wine. He sets out to create a wine-hegemony, for he who controls the intoxicants, controls the people. Especially the Russians.

Settings:

Vanilla 1.61
Monarch difficulty
Epic speed
A standard-sized fractal map, with low sea level and 7 opponents
All victory conditions enabled but the variant goals must be achieved before the game can be won.

Variant rules:

1. Wine monopoly. Must control every supply of wine on earth, i.e have them within our borders and hooked up. Trading aquired supplies away is allowed, even encouraged. Let the world taste our glory.

2. Versailles. Louis needs a fashionable sipping place, so we must have Versailles under our control. Building it will be the primary method, but if someone else snags it, washing the blood stains off the walls shouldn't be too difficult.

3. Hereditary rule. France is a monarchy, savvy? If you don't like it, vote with your feet. Must revolt to HR ASAP and stay there.

4. The monarch himself. "We have wigs that are smarter than you." This is more of a guideline, but try to think arrogant when dealing with foreign affairs.

5. Must have Notre Dame and Eiffel Tower in Paris for a nice historical twist. Not a game-ender, though, if this isn't met. Flexibility is allowed, and ensuing violence encouraged.

Crew:

Looking for 4-5 players. And someone to make sure that there is enough wine in the world to make this game interesting. All those who feel like a little roleplaying and telling (bad) jokes about the French, welcome.

1) stuge - le loup
2) Big Pig - le cochon grande
3)patagonia - le sommelier
4)eshnunna - le savant fou
5)
6)

The honorable wine-taster: Jet - thanks for the save. We'll go with that.

Bonjour and ca va?
Sounds a fun game - I'd like to sign up if you'll have me. Together we will set the world awash with a sea of top quality Bordeaux, Macon-Villages and Chablis
Adieu
Le Cochon Grand

PS. Notre Dame might be useful to serve as a setting for the occasional Regal Coronation to impress and inspire the masses.

I'll offer this start save, which may or may not have been enhanced with grapey treats, if his majesty is not too busy having his bottom pampered by maidservants to actually play it.

Encore du vin! Vive la France! Ce sera formidable!

I'll sign up if you'll have me.

Is it worth adding to the variant that Notre Dame and Le Tour Eiffel have to be built in Paris? That'd add a certain historical bent to things. I'd say Versailles too, but unfortunately that'd mean relocating the "ordinary" palace - Versailles will just have to be Louis' summer house.

A Bientot.

Patagonia, your additional variant is doable. I had a look at the save provided by Jet and there are grassland cows and three grass hills in Paris' fat cross, plus a couple plains tiles for production. Also a strong possibility of a strategic resource, i.e horses, copper, iron, so Paris won't suck at production.

And you'll have to come up with a suitable nickname to be in the team.

stuge said:

And you'll have to come up with a suitable nickname to be in the team.

Click to expand...

Le sommelier

patagonia said:

Is it worth adding to the variant that Notre Dame and Le Tour Eiffel have to be built in Paris?

Click to expand...

Maybe that we should beeeline for them - and if they are built IAFL, then zut alors, our glorious legion etrangere will damn well liberate them in the name of La Belle France? (otherwise we may well have lost already by the time Notre Dame gets built by Roosevelt or Asoka or......)

Mes deux centimes

Bien, cochon. That shall be the spirit of that variant.

Sacre Bleu!!!

Tres bon. Malheuresement, je suis <insert french for too many SGs at once>. Mais je lurkerai.

I really should have paid more attention in French lessons heh!

Ah, piti&#233; (that's pity)

Cochon, sommelier, how long, do you think, should we wait for more players before getting started. A sg is doable with three people. Heck, Sullla and Sirian did it by themselves.

You could always have people discuss the startup logistics as a sneaky way to bump the thread.

Oh, did I say bump?

stuge said:

Cochon, sommelier, how long, do you think, should we wait for more players before getting started. A sg is doable with three people. Heck, Sullla and Sirian did it by themselves.

Click to expand...

Why don't we give it until Thursday? But Jet's suggestion is a good one. Why don't you post the opening screen (pure laziness on my part - I know I could do it myself....) and we could debate which tile to bless with being the site of Gay Paree, mother of the eternal and glorious Belle France

Okay, so this is where Louis' sedan chair carriers couldn't keep walking anymore.



This is after moving the warrior up that hill. I say we settle in place without wasting time wandering around. The sun is setting and Louis' wig needs a wash.
Besides, that's not a bad location. Cows, three hills, fresh water, six forests, lots of grassland and a coupla plains. And I believe there's a very high chance of a strategic resource appearing.

Now, on to some long-term strategy pondering.

Regarding teching, this variant will require a fair bit of beelining. After the basic tech have been researched, head towards monarchy, allowing us to pick up the Oracle on the way. After all, soneone needs to tell Louis how handsome he is and he won't believe just anyone.
Then bl to music and then to divine right etc.

And then the primary objective: To grab the grapes.

Our tactic will probably be a mixture of cultural assimilation and use of l'armée glorieuse, but would it be worthwhile, for example, build the Globe theatre and
the national epic in one, food-rich city. A combo, that could be downright frightening.

Your thoughts on these?

Bonsoir Loupy

I think that out of pity for those poor sedan chair carriers (Louis does like to pig out on the Brie) that settling in place is indeed the best choice. There is a lake to wash his wig in, a source of cow to provide milk for cheese production and, most importantly a mysterious cercle bleu.

As for tech how does AH>mining>myst>>priesthood grab you? (with an option to slip in BW +/- pottery as we see fit). Intial build worker (almost certain to go on strike and start blockading our resources)>warrior?

One suspects there will be a lot more use of L'Armee Glorieuse than cultural assimilation, but que sera, sera.......

Bonsoir indeed.

I think settling in place and aiming for a Theology slingshot via The Oracle sound like good ideas. Theology would bag us Christianity (appropriate for Louis) and gets us a head start on the slog to DR. Then it's worth checking (rather than relying on my patchy memory), but if we get the free artist by reaching Music first, he might well bulb most of DR for us (assuming we've picked up Monarchy to make Louis a true king), which would neatly finish all of our early beelining ASAP and allow us to focus more on the wine trade.

Bon. I'll play 30 turns tomorrow to get started. Though I think I'll go warrior -> worker. Suggested tech path sounds good. Louis must have his royal prerogative.

There are still slots open to anyone interested...

stuge: good to see you running a game (your second SG?). I'll carry on lurking; probably won't join coz its slightly similar to P666-3 that I'm in atm, but bon chance (also my knowledge of french is micoscopic).

stuge said:

Bon. I'll play 30 turns tomorrow to get started. Though I think I'll go warrior -> worker. Suggested tech path sounds good. Louis must have his royal prerogative.

Click to expand...

Never really seen the benefit of warrior first - won't he just sit around all day smoking Gitanes while at least a worker could be getting to work pasturing the cows for our Brie farm and putting down a few farms for baguette production?
Anyway, bon chance!

First, the greatest moment in history: The founding of Paris.



Ah, la grande ville! Although Louis is a bit unhappy with his residence...

Now, we were going to go warrior first, but then we thought how fretful le cochon would be without fine baguettes, so a worker was ordered. You owe us one though. You'd better dig up some trueffels, or something.

Of interest:

Extracted valuables from primitives in 3820.
Learned how to extract milk from cows in 3430. It shall be known as the drink of kings for the time being.
Our warriors bested some panthers in 3320. Impressed by their prowress, we decided to train another group of them. Our new workers were sent to herd the cows.
We learn how to extract minerals from hills in 3100. Our workers finish the pasture and begin roading towards Paris.
In 2880 we trained another group of men with big, big clubs.

Notes:

Paris is now building a barracks. Nothing invested yet, so feel free to veto.

Mysticism is seven turns away. Should we go BW after that? If no copper turns up we may have to go hunting -> archery for protection.

On expansion:



We may have a blocker city chance. We've only met Mansa so far and his scout came from the direction marked by the red arrow. Thus I think we should expand towards that isthmus. I've marked a possible location for our next city with a blue dot. Also note that there's a tribal village in the east that our warrior should go to pick up. Grapes haven't showed up yet.

Roster:

I think that the next two sets should be twenty turns each. We can then settle at 15.

Le cochon is up.
Le sommelier is on deck.

Tres bien. Je l'ai (I think this means I've got it - but school French lessons were a while ago now)
I plan to build another settler to spread word of Louis' greatness far and wide.
I'll aim to play later tonight - unless you think we should be taking this slow and having lots of discussion between turns

CG