OB02 - Giving is Better than Receiving

We've all been there.

It Christmas morning and after you've spent hundreds of dollars buying the latest and greatest presents for your family, you finally get to open yours. "Some undies, great! Oh look a pair of socks, fantastic!"

Your mother, sensing your sarcasm give syou one of those looks and says "Giving is better than receiving."!

Was she espousing some hitherto unknown ancient wisdom or just talking rubbish?

As it is Christmas time (well in 2 1/2 hours anyway), let's find out shall we!

Game: Vanilla or Warlords
Leader: Random
Opponents: Random
Difficulty: Monarch on Vanilla or Prince on Warlords
Map: Random
Size: Standard
Speed: Normal
Victory: All Enabled

Variant rules:

If the AI asks, he shall receive. Yep that's right, we have to give in to every AI demand. They ask for Alphabet the turn you research it, hand it over. They ask you to declare on the other AI that has a DP with 4 others, we declare. Our worst enemy asks us to cancel deals with our best buddy, we cancel.

SG rules:

• 24 hours got it, 48 hours to report!
• SGs are meant to be fun, so have fun. Make your reports entertaining. We've all had a few moves (me more than most), so make them entertaining. I'd much rather lose while laughing that win to an autolog dump.
• Discussion (on and off topic) is highly encouraged.

No idea if this is possible or not but we'll die trying.

Ozbenno - if you can live with my difficult timeframe (can play only Friday - Sunday) I would be pleased to join, but if you don't need the hassle of skips then I'll make way for another player.

Should there be another Christmas variant - like founding Christianity / beelining the Church of the Nativity or otherwise suffering some appropriate penalty?

[Edit] In the spirit of this thread, I'll gift my spot on the roster to a less fortunate soul! [/Edit]

Can always fit those willing in .

I'm liking the extra Christmassy elements, so yes to founding Christianity and Church of the Nativity .

Ho Ho HO ... so we are playing Santa Claus?

Sign me up!

--

Hi Ozbenno,

I'd like to join on a Vanilla game, maybe Warlords, depending on the presents tonight.

Better to be in too many SGs than too few. Vanilla monarch or warlords prince both sound fine.

Hi all, (almost) Merry Christmas

Sign me up!

To make it interesting throw in some aggressive AI. Tokugawa and GK are bound to get us into some wars....

Finally a SG with vanilla. I would like to play if you forgo Warlords for this game.

I.

I'd also like to join, though I'm not well-known or anything. Also, I don't have warlords.

I'll join =)

Well an excellent response , possibly too excellent . We'll play a roster of 7, as Cam is available only weekends.

Roster:

Ozbenno
Cam H
GreyFox
McArine
pigswill
remconius
Immaculate

Alternates

princecharles
vra379971

Vanilla looks like the preferred option so that's what we'll go with! Random everything else. I'll post a start later tonight. I'm using this an excuse to finally get Ruff's SG mod working so there may be a slight delay .

Hope Santa was nice to everyone (pigswill, he was good enough to get me a Reading shirt).

OK new roster, as Cam has fallen on his sword .

Roster:

Ozbenno
GreyFox
McArine
pigswill
remconius
Immaculate
princecharles

Alternates:

vra379971

Anyone else care to commit seppuku - in the season of the spirit of course...

vra379971 said:

Anyone else care to commit seppuku - in the season of the spirit of course...

Click to expand...

After that Christmas seppuku sounds like an attractive proposition, but I'm not on the roster so it wouldn't help you.

If you're that desperate for another game vra37... pick a leader in the 'many leaders game' and romp through to 1400 AD. The game (in my sig) is in rest mode for a few days.You can join with any leader and catch up to us.

This one looks really good though.

To ensure our future generations have enough christmas trees, we could have a rule about no forest chopping, or would that be too limiting?

Time for a start.

Here are the co-ordinated as placed in the machine. Can't go random map, never really played with lakes so here goes.



And here's what is spat out...



Excellent, I was hoping for Germans (actually Bismark) for the Santa Claus angle .

A starting position



Just to refresh, the variant is simply giving in to all AI requests. All trades, stop trades, wars, absolutely everything.

The optional variant is to discover Christmas (found Christianity and build Church of the Nativity). If we miss this we have to voluntarily give each AI one tech for free at the earliest opportunity .

Now for some strategy.

See no reason not to found in place.

Start with a warrior build, then worker at size 2 (if AH or BW is on our research path).

Research path can go a couple of ways, we either chase an early religion (Mysticism - Polytheism would be my choice) or go Animal Husbandry/Bronze Working. The reason to possibly chase an early religion is to get a temple up early, and employ a priest for a GP to pop Theology. Is an Oracle pop out of the question?

As for strategy regarding the variant, the best would be to have a strong military and economic base to be able to deal with anything that happens (ie like a normal SP game.

Any thoughts?

McArine said:

To ensure our future generations have enough christmas trees, we could have a rule about no forest chopping, or would that be too limiting?

Click to expand...

What a great rule, might be too difficult on Monarch though.

Hmm, what do people think,

• stay as we are now
• add the no-chop rule with the current start
• drop to Prince with a new start and no-chop rule

No chopping on monarch sounds fun and challenging. What about bargaining?
Just ask what AI is prepared to offer and accept?

Strategy-wise what about going for stonehenge, head towards mono and writing, burn 1st GP on theology?

Probably a way to win is domination. Lots of wars, lots of cities. If we don't have a tech-lead we won't be giving away techs. Keeping up in power will probably reduce the number of demands anyway.

pigswill said:

No chopping on monarch sounds fun and challenging. What about bargaining?
Just ask what AI is prepared to offer and accept?

Click to expand...

If we initiate the trade, we can bargain but if they come to us....

The no chopping does seem like a good challenge doesn't it .