SGOTM 07 - The Real Ms. Beyond

Welcome to your C_IV SGOTM 7 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 team lists are at the end of this post.

The Game
You are Qin Shi Huang, the great Chinese leader. You find yourself on a tiny world, surrounded by all the other vanilla civs. You can only build or own a single city, and the difficulty level is .... Deity!

The Objective
This Deity OCC game is on a Tiny map, at Normal speed, against 17 rivals. All victory conditions are enabled, and the laurels for this contest will be awarded to the teams who achieve the earliest victory date in the game.

Versions
This game will be played in Civilization IV version 1.74, and using the latest vanilla HOF Mod.

Windows players need the HOF Mod at: HOF-1.74.002.
Windows players who have not installed BtS 3.13 will need to swap their vanilla CvGameCoreDLL.dll file so that their Civ4 installation is compatible with copies that have the BtS installation. Download the new DLL zip file here. The enclosed Readme file gives details for the installation.

Mac players are in a separate team as the HoF Mod cannot be made to work cross-platform. They will use Civ4 for Mac version 1.74, and HOF-Mac-1.74.002.

Schedule
Start files for each team will be available on the SGOTM Progress and Results Page at midnight, server local time, at the start of April 24.

Please try to complete this game within three months of the start date.

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


Map Parameters

Notes

• Please visit the Civ4 SGOTM reference thread to check out the rules and procedures to ensure that you are adequately prepared for this game.
  
• 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. The laurels will be presented to the three teams who achieve victories in the fewest turns.
  
• 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.
  
• Do NOT view any other team threads until you have submitted your last save - win, lose or retire.
  
• Do NOT download any other team's save.

Enjoy your game, and please be nice to each other

Playing Roster:
ruff_hi
sooooo
Swiss Pauli
chmoosi
Compromise
Jabah [Up]
Kodii [on deck]

LKendter (lurking)
TheArchduke (lurking)

Game Progress:
Settled
: warrior moved; first tech will be Fishing; first build not decided
Turnset 1: (Ruff_hi) Met 5 AIs. Researched Fishing. Started with a Barracks build.
Turnset 2: (sooooo) A tragic development as New York is settled near us and then Hinduism is founded in it.
Turnset 3: (Swiss Pauli)
Turnset 4: (Compromise) Built a worker. Discovered Writing. Quickly losing control of our eastern tiles to Hindu Holy City cultural pressure.
Turnset 5: (Jabah) Culture expansion brings silver within our borders
Turnset 6: (Kodii) We are the first civ we know to discover Alphabet, but no obvious trade opportunities.
Turnset 7: (Ruff_hi), Tech trades, Discover Literature.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6839628&postcount=401 (chmoosi) Popped GA. Got declared on by Washington.

References:
Ramblings about SGOTM play with The Real Ms. Beyond

HOF games let you choose things like gems and gold to start with. No such luck here. WastinTime's HOF OCC victories maybe useful to study for tech order though? (per ruff_hi)

Early thread dealing with this type of setup (per sooooo)

Comments from sooooo about the above thread:

Zipped (.rar) file with AI's "NoWarAttitude" percentages (from Swiss Pauli in post #50)

Practice Games:
SGOTM7 Practice Game 1
SGOTM7 Practice Game 2
SGOTM7 Practice Game 3
Practice Game 4 *Corrected by Swiss Pauli*
Practice Game 5*Corrected by Swiss Pauli*

Compromise checking in.

Instead of doing a lengthy "here's what we're all about" post at the beginning, I'll just make a short and simple one here:

"We're here to be competitive with the other teams and to have fun. Play fair, think hard, critique so as to be helpful."

(If you're just dying for something longer, read through the blurb at the beginning of the SGOTM6 thread. )

To that end, for those of you who don't already know, we have generated a few test game starts that can be used to examine opening moves and maybe general game-long strategy. These can be found secretly attached to this post. Please play one or two of them, at least for a bit, if you get a chance. If people have played through those, let me know and I'll make a couple more.

I'll post my own discoveries in a few days.

I'm pressed for time at the moment so that's all I have to type right now. Welcome all.

Edit: "Secret saves" moved to post #2

???

Why the heck are the test threads attached to the DMI game? I don't have a problem with it, but it sure seems weird.

Checking in.

And I would like to express a bit of confusion here...

Firstly, who the heck is chmoosi and why is he on our team?

Secondly, sunrise089, will you be lurking or playing, because you aren't officially signed-up... or are you?

@sunrise089: You shouldn't post in team threads unless you are a member of the team.

@Kodii: chmoosi was assigned to your team as a new player wishing to get involved. Several players were allocated to teams in similar fashion. I hope you will give him/her a warm welcome.

In that case, welcome aboard the SS Real Ms Beyond! Don't mind the large hole in the hull.

@chmoosi: The reason for the confusion is that the rest of us e-know us from our activity in previous SGOTMs and reports over at realmsbeyond.net. Fun stuff (See the humor in the team name The RealMsBeyond ) Welcome aboard. And you'll probably enjoy RB events too.

Off again.

I played test game #3 up until 1AD. Just got paper and started to trade it around. Tech research order will be critical and we should have lots of discussion about it. In #3, we found ourselves right next to Japan. If this happens in the real game, you may as well quit because you will be dead inside of 50 turns. Japan declared on me on turn 30 or 40 and I survived by WB'd myself 3 archers. That was enough to hold our city.

Monarch is a god send tech as I built about 8 archers and there were all +1 happy - allowing me to a) survive the Japan war and b) grow to a nice size.

Tech order was masonry (for a run at the mids - big joke that!) and then alphabet. Catch up trading, then CoL, Maths and CS. Some AIs beat me to CS, but not many.

I gave into all demands unless someone asked me to stop trading with a neighbour. My warrior scouted about 5-8 tiles from our capital and then came home. Not much else to add.

Checking in. I played a few quick test games last week and will report on the salient points later today.

Checking in.

I will try a few of the test game.
Both to have an idea of what to expect and also 'rediscover' Civ4 basic (ie not BTS).

For those who played a bit, how many cities can fit in a tiny map (ie with 17 AIs satrting with settlers, when are they out of room and looking for a target - us)

Should we start thinking of a 'possible' victory or just surviving will be enough.
(As I am afraid one of the more likely victory coud be cultural, if we get a PA with the proper AI - or do you thing conquest is faster)
Being industious with both stone and marble while the AI get no discount on wonder seems a waste if we are not trying

More comments when I had tested some games (but unlikely before this WE).

Jabah

I played 4 test games.

The Opening

The first games were conservative, but the best results came from this opening:

Barracks – WB – finish Barracks – Archer – Archer – Archer - WB
Fishing – Hunting – Archery – BW - Wheel

In my third test, I tried to go for two WBs before the barracks and got fatally DoWd. No attacks in the other games.

I think an opening of Barracks – WB – finish Barracks – Archer – Archer – WB - Archer is worth testing.

First worker whipped at size 4 and sent to camp and connect the furs.

Alpha Gambit

Going Pottery – Writing – Alpha meant I was first to be able to trade techs. Here, it’s a simple question of how much WFYABTA we want to pick up. Maths, IW, and Sailing are all good value as far as I’m concerned. Masonry is a bit more questionable, but with Marble & Stone to quarry I’d happily take it from a backward civ.

Wonders & GL Gambit

Forget about the ancient Wonders: Mids in 2800BC not unusual. In my second game, I actually managed to land Great Library This required a bit of chopping (the forests on the Iron & river and maybe 1 more). I think I researched Medi, begged or traded Poly, and researched Lit, using build research and assigned two Scientists. Marble was pre-connected, of course.

I felt this gave me a big push forward: not because of the beakers, but more because of the improved GPP pool. My first game saw numerous Artists (NE, Globe) but this game generated many more Scientists who – because of the small map size – still gave huge benefits when bulbing techs like Biology that I could then trade around to AIs who were otherwise disappearing over the research horizon.

AI Progress

Some AIs won’t be able to get beyond one city themselves! This will often make them very backward, but some can keep up (for a while): an OCC effort from Ghandi was quite impressive, but it probably helped that he had a cluster of dyes to trade around (tradeable resources are very scarce).

Diplo & Religion

This is pretty tricky: I didn’t get religion until late in any game. With Continents, it wasn’t Buddhism versus Hinduism either. In one game, Buddhism dominated the other continent, whilst mine was riven with different religions, we were backward and it seemed impossible to catch up via war.

Picking the right civ for a PA is not easy: I fancied Cy in game 1 for shared religion possibilities and the fact he had three cities. Sadly, Genghis and Saladin dogpiled and eliminated him. The FIN civs seem to research well, but that could be down to geography. I managed a PA with Mansa in the GL game: I researched the Mass Media path and built UN and other Wonders before teaming research for Space. We took out the small civs on our island who wouldn’t vote for us, but we still need to get ~3 more Civs onside for the win. If I’d have played it out, I might have got GW and Fred from fave civics and trade happiness, but we could have lost the Space race as GW had Alu.

Wars

It’ll be quite a challenge to wage war on the other island, and is something I didn’t even try. Maybe we can do it if there’s some diplomatically isolated civs. The AI tends to build quite a lot of ships, so we’re likely to get the nets pillaged if we DoW our neighbour(s).

General Notes

Alex, Toku, and Boney will never sign a PA.

In Vanilla, nearly all fave civics are Government ones.

HOF Mod enables lots of handy info about techs and trades.

Toku must die if he’s on our island.

Do we need the wheel to connect marble and stone (end of river, some people here know that the answer is not trivial...)

(I am at work and obviously won't be able to test it myself until much later tonight).

Wonders, if we have nothing else to build, I don't understand why we are not taking any chance, we should beat anyone if we start early enough.
We should consider G Lighthouse (that will be like +4 to +8 commerce early) since we will want to have a normal Lighthouse.
maybe whipping the archers (or whatever we are building) toward Wonders with stone/marble multiplier is a very decent use of our extra population.

Also, in basic Civ4 OCC, what is the limit (if ever) for number of national Wonders ?

Jabah

One nice thing about the OCC is there is plenty of time to try test games.

Has anyone on the team played deity before? Having some idea how insane the military pace is will impact everything else. Swiss Pauli test game sounds like military above all is the way to go.

IIRC vanilla has no limit to small wonders. That eliminates one set of debates. Can anyone confirm this? This could affect play.

I think a common vision of what wonders to build is important. It sounds like the early wonders are out despite marble and stone. A few merged quality GP (engineer and priest) would really help your production.

Jabah said:

Do we need the wheel to connect marble and stone (end of river, some people here know that the answer is not trivial...)

Click to expand...

IIRC yes, we need roads to connect them.

Wonders, if we have nothing else to build, I don't understand why we are not taking any chance, we should beat anyone if we start early enough.
We should consider G Lighthouse (that will be like +4 to +8 commerce early) since we will want to have a normal Lighthouse.
maybe whipping the archers (or whatever we are building) toward Wonders with stone/marble multiplier is a very decent use of our extra population.

Click to expand...

Wonders go so early that you hardly get the chance to try: I think I managed some cashback from HG, but I could be wrong. The AI will have Sailing before we learn Fishing, so GLight isn't a realistic target. Looking in WB is an eye opener as to how fast the Deity AI can build things! I came close to G Lib in game 4 as well, only because the AI doesn't prioritize Literature.

Also, in basic Civ4 OCC, what is the limit (if ever) for number of national Wonders ?

Click to expand...

As Lee mentioned, there's no limit.

Hello all and thanks for the welcome! Chmoosi checking in. I'm new here (although some lurking in the shadows has been going on for a little while) so don't get too frustrated if I'm asking stupid questions . I have read all the relevant documents of course and been also browsing some previous SGOTM games so I should be on track...

Gonna play some of those test games during the next days, and post observations.. Deity OCC seems a bit daunting, but also very fun. No experience on this difficulty level though..

Welcome, chmoosi!

Here's a useful link for strategy: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=158675

As an aside, here's a fun RB SP event: http://www.realmsbeyond.net/civ/c4tourney/adv29.html

Interesting link.
(didn't finish reading it, but the start is depressing, saying you will be at war non stop in BC ? I had the impression you could try to avoid that from the first posts here)

Everyone but sooooo and TheArchduke has checked in already...welcome.

I plan to use this thread's post #2 as a continually updated summary post. It will have the current roster so that you'll always know where you are in the rotation, and also an ongoing game summary with links to the turnset reports.

I've also put in a little reference section at the bottom. So that everyone is on the same page, there were a few PMs sent between the first group of people to sign up for the team. The relevant references are from comments made during those PM exchanges. Since we didn't have a private place to post thoughts or savegames, and since my free webhosting site wouldn't allow direct downloading of .Civ4SavedGame files, I hid the three test games I created in an old post that I figured no one who wasn't on the PM exchange would ever find.

Now that we have this forum, I've brought the relevant info from that discussion onto our reference page.

So, welcome all.

Edit: I see I have crossposted with Swiss Pauli. Thanks SP for the thread link. It's on page 2 of this thread too.

Checking in as a lurker. Also a hearty welcome to chmoosi welcome to the Real Ms. Beyond.

I will hopefully post more or less productive advice this time around. A shame I can't play.

In any case, a barracks sound like a good idea, but I think the safest bet would be to establish an archer first for defensive purposes. I agree that a WB first might be too much of a gamble.