SGOTM 03 - The Real Ms. Beyond

[AlanH]

Welcome to your C_IV SGOTM 3 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.

The Game
As Peter The Great, Leader of All the Russias, you are charged with achieving a Diplomatic or Space Victory.

This Monarch difficulty game is on a Standard size, Gyathaar-special, crowded map, at Epic speed, against 17 rivals. All victory conditions are enabled, but the laurels for this contest will be awarded to the teams who achieve the fastest Diplomatic or Space victory.

Version
Your team will play this map in Civilization IV version 1.61, using the standard HoF Mod for Windows version 1.61. This is currently HOF_Mod-1.61.008, but we shall use the latest version of the mod as at the start date for the game.

Your start file will be available on the SGOTM Progress and Results Page at midnight, server local time, at the start of December 1st.

Here's the starting position - click the image below to see a larger version.



Map Parameters
Playable Leader/Civ - Peter of Russia
Rivals - all the other 17 civs in version 1.61
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Archipelago, low sea level, tropical
Game Speed - Epic
AI Aggression - Aggressive
Barbarians - Standard
Permanent Alliances Enabled
No City Razing

Notes

1. Please visit the Civ4 SGOTM reference thread to check out the rules and procedures to ensure that you are adequately prepared for this game.
   
2. BOTH Civilization IV v1.61 and Warlords v.2.08 are supported for this SGOTM. No other versions can be used, and you will have to stick with your chosen version throughout the game.
   
3. Teams will compete for four awards for each version of the game - the Gold, Silver and Bronze Laurels for the fastest finishes, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher.
   
4. All teams must play the sponsored variant - awards will be given to teams who achieve Diplomatic or Space victories in the least turns.
   
5. 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.

Remember, Rule Number 11: Have Fun.

[LKendter]

Reporting for duty.

[Kodii]

Me too. Thanks for joining us Lee

SUMMARY POST INDEX

Iainuki's Super Post
Condensed Version

#8 (T202)
#7 (T184)
#6 (T138)
#5 (T100)
#4 (T77)
#3 (T69)
#2 (T45)
#1.5 (T31)
#1 (T31)

[Kodii]

Well, since the thread is open, we might as well begin discussion.

Awards will go out to the fastest diplomatic/space victory. I think it is obvious we should go for diplomatic, since less techs are required. Furthermore, backdoor domination is probably the easiest way to go. A combination of militaristic power with good diplomatic relationships would probably give us a successful diplomatic win on the first try.

I think that No City Razing was a way to prevent teams from taking too advantage of backdoor domination, but I think we can overcome that. After all, some of us just played Epic Nine...

I have more thoughts, but I'll save them for later. I need to finish SGOTM2 before seriously committing to SGOTM3.

[Compromise]

Checking in. Haven't yet thought about this one much. (But I'm looking forward to doing so!) No city razing will certainly be less painful for the Warlords teams....

I think we've got a cool mix of newbies and vets on the team. It should be a fun ride.

Is it just me, or do you just want to move that scout E->NE/NW, then found a city and start whipping?

[greggo]

Hey all, checking in here.

I hope everyone will be patient with me, I don't get too much time to play, so I'm still relatively newb-ish

I'm looking forward to great discussion and learning lots.

--greggo

[grangerm]

Checking in too...

My thoughts are the same as Kodii's: diplomacy via backdoor domination seems to be the quickest route to victory.

What does everyone think about settling/exploring in our first couple moves? If we settle in place, we have almost no production.

[LKendter]

Well my first question is who sets the play order? Who is considered the team captain?

I would settler in place. This city after some fishing boats will be great for settlers, workers, and cracking the whip.


I agree with "diplomacy via backdoor domination seems to be the quickest route to victory". With the shear number of civs, I fully expect religions to break into seven factions. We need to be careful with taking religion align at first.

If we could get our own religion, then we have a lot more power in choosing the blocks. The question is would that plan be worth the shields?

[Sir Bugsy]

Bugsy reporting for duty.

I am essentially a Civ IV newbie. I will not take offense to any that any of you feel I deserve.

I think alternating vet and rookie in the lineup has alway been a good team strategy. Perhaps one of the vets would like to set that one up.

Lee - did you move? I thought you lived near NYC.

one last question - do I need to have this HOF mod or is just having 1.61 good enough?

[Compromise]

@Bugsy: Welcome! Yep, looks like we'll need the HoF mod to play this one.

I like the vet/newbie turnset alternation idea. And I do think backdoor diplomatic will be the fastest win here.

I nominate Kodii for team captain, given his dedication to getting the team off the ground (just in the nick of time too).

For religion, I vote for conquering the holy city of a nearby spiritual civ. It seems to me that going for a quick victory, it will be more useful to have no religion and let any religion a city happens to have expand our new cities' cultural borders for us.

Note that Peter's traits and that food-rich start just scream "early great people" to me. (Though I wouldn't be surprised if on this crowded map, that second food resource is in an AI capital's fat cross)

I'd like to propose the following general strategy for discussion:

1) Maximize early production (including the whip). We want metal-based troops fast. (See Kylearan's Epic 9 work!) EDIT: Note that I usually consider founding on a flood plain to be a hangable offense. Though this start may warrant doing just that.

Suggested rough tech path: Bronze (and Iron if no nearby copper), Code of Laws (for courthouses) and Currency (for markets). We'll want the courthouses and markets to make keep the cost of all those cities reasonable.

Subgoal: as we approach writing and so can sign open borders with other civs, send two workboats or galleys in opposite directions to grab the circumnavigation bonus as quickly as possible. We'll want good intelligence to know where/who to attack first.

2) Concentrate on taking nearby AI capitals. They will be the best city sites. Other, secondary cities will be far less productive since the best 17 spots on the map will be capitals. The happiness resources of AI capitals should help keep war weariness costs under control.

Unless the other cities are well-developed with cottages, mines, resources all set up, we'll only want them if we're a) suffering from too much war weariness and need to completely eliminate a civ or b) the site is nice and we can get a decent amount of nice tiles either without a border expansion or with a few quick artists or a missionary.

Not taking every city of a civ will also allow us to do some pointy-stick research!

3) When we get close to the domination limit, take the necessary remaining cities for pop, [Edit: Remove this dumb idea since we don't need land for a diplo victory: switch from slavery to caste system (or whip up a bunch of theaters), assign artists, and expand culture quickly.]

I expect this game to end in the middle ages.

As if it will be that easy!

[Compromise]

Also, a quick thank-you to AlanH for letting us pull the Real Ms. Beyond team together at the last second. I hope we don't cause too much more grief for our fine organizers.

[Kodii]

I wouldn't mind being the captain, but my experience is nothing compared to Lee or Compromise. Unless one of you two want to be captain, I'll take the responsibility. I'd like to bring back the summary post, and have it last throughout this game. As for the alternating vet-newb team order, that looks good. I will not jump to conclude whether someone is a newb or a vet, but judging from posts and what I know, this is my current standing:

Vet: LKendter, Compromise, Kodii
Newb: greggo, Sir Bugsy
Not Sure: grangerm, Iainuki

I think that it would probably be a good idea to start off with a vet, running 15-30 turns.

[greggo]

Just to get some discussion going:

If we move the scout 1 east initially, and there is some seafood off the east coast, how would settling 1E1NE of the current settler position work? We'd (hopefully) still have some seafood resources, and may be able to grab the clams from the island to the west of us. We'd also gain 2 hill sites, which would increase our production.

I haven't played very many archipelago maps - how big is our initial island likely to be? Will it support 2 cities? more? If it only supports a couple, then settling in place would be the best option, since we'd want our second city to have those hills..?

Just some thoughts,
--greggo

[LKendter]

Originally Posted by Compromise

3) When we get close to the domination limit, take the necessary remaining cities, switch from slavery to caste system (or whip up a bunch of theaters), assign artists, and expand culture quickly.

Please read the game goal below!

Originally Posted by AlanH

All victory conditions are enabled, but the laurels for this contest will be awarded to the teams who achieve the fastest Diplomatic or Space victory.

[Compromise]

@LK: My mistake, I meant close to the backdoor domination condition. But you bring up a good point: we don't want to be so militarily successful that we win by domination instead of diplomatic. I suppose we can always gift cities away after wiping out an AI if we're too close before we can get the UN built.

But, you're right: there's no land condition on the backdoor domination victory, is there? So the last thing we'd want to do is limit population by running artists.... Not a diplomatic expert, me.

Also, do you want to be captain, LK?

@greggo: With this map type, our start island won't be too big. I suspect it will either be quite small (with only a few land squares not yet revealed to us) or we'll have one or two AIs on it with us. We won't know until the first few turns are up.

Re: capital site:

I think moving the scout east first is the best first move of the game. A lot depends on what's over there off the eastern shore. If there are no food bonuses or AI units in sight even after he climbs a mountain, then I think there are two decent choices: 1) settle in place and 2) settle on the southeastern spices. Spices aren't that great of a tile to improve, the floodplain we're starting on would be better.

If there is food over there in the ocean, then (depending on exactly where the food is) our choices expand. I think that settling NE-NE of the starting location (east of where the scout starts) would be nice. That would bring the two hills into play and would leave the southern spice location available for a second city. This might also help us encroach on any AI that shares our island. A potential downside to that location is that it might have a resource under it. If we're willing to spend two early turns, we could go for the jungle north of that, but that requires even better (as-of-yet unknown) food placement

I'd volunteer to take the first couple moves of the game; I love that part.

[Atlas]

Looks like an interesting game you have here, are there any rules in the SGOTM about lurkers and lurkers posting in a thread?

[Compromise]

Hi Atlas, My understanding is that lurkers are free to post, but are not allowed to post any kind of spoiler whatsoever. I suspect the easiest way to be safe is: you're free to say anything if you follow the same proscription against reading other teams' threads as the actual game participants. If you read other teams' threads, you'd probably be pretty limited in what you could post. (Though you could read to your heart's content.)

[Compromise]

Here's a quick link to Sirian's map info post over at apolyton where there's an example of an archipelago/archipelago map.

As you can see, there's no guarantee about how big our island will be. Also, with open borders, fishing boats should be able to circumnavigate.

[Kodii]

Atlas, I also believe you can actually sign-up to be a lurker for us. I'm not sure how that works, as I would assume you cannot share information from other threads. I believe there may be something on the rules page, and I'll look it up.

[LKendter]

Don't forget the description below. We may only get two cities on our initial land. If we move, then we could get just one on the map. I vote to settle in place due to the map type.

Landform - Archipelago, low sea level, tropical