JOE-07 - Surfer Dudes!

Game : BtS 3.17 official (I also use BUG).
Size : Standard
Map : Pangea
Speed : Epic
Sea Level : Low
Difficulty : Monarch
Victory Conditions : All
Leader : Elizabeth

We need to surf and sail! The oceans and seas are our playground and we have exclusive rights to use it. We can't bear to be any further than a stones throw away from somewhere to catch a wave, so...

Variants :
We can only settle coastal cities (inland sea included).
We can only keep coastal enemy cities, inland must be razed (unless coastal to inland sea).
By games end, all coastal tiles must be ours (not including the poles)
By games end, all water based resources must be ours (again, not poles)

A result of the above is that any remaining civilizations will be land-locked.

Alterations and suggestions are welcome but will be ignored (except those pertaining to difficulty, leader and map type).

ROOSTER IS CLOSED! (Oh yes, the rooster is back)
Quotey
frankcor
JesusOnEez
The Sansman
fuRRie

Meiz - Alternate.

MY OWN PEDANTIC RULES!
Strict(ish) 24/48 hour "got it/report".
If you need a skip or swap please don't leave it until hour 47!
Please post an updated rooster at the end of your report.
Finally, no auto log reports, they're boring to read and make for a boring report.

I'll be rolling a start up within the next few days (once the settings are decided) for pre-game discussion...I won't enter WorldBuilder, but I will re-roll until we get a settler on a coastal tile.

Lurker: Great to see you back on the SG arena ... unfortunately as I would be away for a long time this august, I am refraining myself from joining new SGs. Your variant might be very difficult with a Fractal map. I suspect you will trigger conquest or domination first before you can fulfil the "all" part in your variant.

--

@GreyFox - Yes, I thought there was a possibility of that. Originally it was going to go with continents, but they tend to be boring. Earth-like or Terra maps may work and the new world aspect would be fun and would work with the naval theme (not belly-buttons).

Suggestions welcome as I play Arch Islands or Fractal on my SP games, so I'm not familiar with most of the other types.

I would like to sign up for this SG.

I'd like to sign up for this one.

Sounds like a fun, but not to hard variant, so I suggest going Monarch.
I don't mind what leader to play.

lurker's comment: This will be harder than it seems . Check out this game where we play the variant on an inland sea.

Looks like the 2 non reserved slots are taken. Reserve a reserve for me in the event it ends up non reserved? I'd say Joao for our coastal leader.

@sooooo - Damn! I thought I'd come up with something original. Never mind. My thoughts are that the bigger the landmasses are the more difficult it wil be. Firstly, more coastal tiles to capture, second more distance between cities, and third (as a result of the second point) our cultural borders will run a big ring around everyone else.

It's going to make warfare difficult, especially with my own variant of armies only arriving by boat (I've having second thoughts about this particular rule tbh.

@The Sansman & fuRRie - I'll add you to the roster.

@Quotey - I'll add you after a couple of days if the likes of frankor, and a few others I've played with don't want in.

EDIT: In fact I did get rid of that variant before posting the final rules!

lurker's comment:
Nice to see you back, JOE!

I would have liked to join, but I'm trying to cut back on my civ time for a period. Maybe your next one

Plus, this one sounds a little out of my league.

berserks01 said:

lurker's comment:
Plus, this one sounds a little out of my league.

Click to expand...

Out of your league?

I consider you a better player then myself so that makes me screwed.

I've just read through sooooo's (actually blid's) game with similar variants on an inland sea map. Great game to read but it illustrates some problems we may have.

First is that their game was a Monarch game and they were out-teched big style. I'd be tempted to try this on Prince, especially given that BtS 3.17 is more difficult than vanilla (IMHO...I had to drop to Warlord from Noble when I got BtS when it came out.).

Despite getting around 80% of the way to closing the ring of coastal cities, their empire was small in comparison to Hatty and Mansa near the end game (and was bound to be). What might give us a better chance is if we use custom continents with three continents. Each continent will likely be fairly small, and give us the chance of a big enough empire to at least keep up the tech pace.

Ragnar looks a good bet for Berserkers, and attacking directly from boats, especially if we can bee-line Astronomy fairly quickly.

As stated at the end of their SG, they didn't expand quick enough, so REXing may be a must (and may dictate our leader choice to someone Expansive).

The longer you wait, the harder it is to kill coastal cities and keep them, and if you do, combating cultural pressure will be a pain. I can see us needing to flatten a lot of inland capitals (and likely holy cities) to keep cultural pressure off our coastal cities, and similarly, cultural builds/slider/settled artists may important as will religion. I think I'd be tempted (if the situation allows) to concentrate our Great People production on GA almost constantly and settle them in cities that need it.

Any thoughts? Anyone think using Custom Continents will make it harder than Inland Sea? Any suggestions welcome, and also to those team members who are signed up or waiting in the wings, it may be worth having a scan over blid's game to see what we can expect!

GreyFox said:

Lurker: Great to see you back on the SG arena ... unfortunately as I would be away for a long time this august, I am refraining myself from joining new SGs. Your variant might be very difficult with a Fractal map. I suspect you will trigger conquest or domination first before you can fulfil the "all" part in your variant.

Click to expand...

After reading blid's game I'm certain this won't be a problem. I think we'll be fighting cultural pressure to keep coastal tiles for most of the latter half of the game. I don't think we'll aim to wipe anyone out either as that game showed the doing that gave Hatty & Mansa the opportunity to expand into huge empires (although they may have done this by wiping out Civs themselves, I only scanned their report). I'm sure we'll try to keep everyone alive and limit Civ sizes as much as possible by a) not killing anyone unless absolutely necessary, b) pillaging wars to peg them back, c) diplomacy to end wars AI vs AI.

It'll be interesting anyway!

I'd like to play this even though I've been having a break from civ. Sounds like a fun variant (and hopefully I'm right ). I used to win regularly on Monarch and by struggling with Emperor (with good luck involved). Of cource that doesn't really tell much from my current state, but...

Keeping AI's contained will be key.
We can exploit our own variant to our liking, by using some wars to destroy some inland cities of the AI, we keep them small and managable.
Ragnar sounds good, always liked the lad.
Prince is fine, if you aren't too sure, but I still believe Monarch is do-able.

Costum continents will be more fun then Fractal, Fractal can give us some stupid (hard to manage) maps, while costum continents will always be what we expect it to be.

EDIT: Inland sea is much harder then continents with this variant, as the AI expands inward to the sea.
With a continents map, we can wipe the continent clean and make sure none of the other AI's can settle inland, if we do this continent by continent we should be good.

lurker's comment:
Just a thought, do you count vassal's coastal tiles or must the coastal tile be yours?

berserks01 said:

lurker's comment:
Just a thought, do you count vassal's coastal tiles or must the coastal tile be yours?

Click to expand...

@berserks01 - Pfffff. No ownerships of coastal tiles by proxy. They be must ours, OURS I tell you!

@All - Also, regarding the poles thing (with custom continents it may not be a problem), that should be clarified a little. When I say we don't need coastal pole tiles to win the variant (if there are any), I basically mean coastal ice tiles. Of course, if a resource appears on ice that we haven't got (Iron for example) there's nothing stopping us settling on an ice coastal tile.

Btw. Just to let you know if there's space for me in the rooster (eh... ). I'll be out until monday.

Hey JoE! How can I resist when I see my name in the invitation post? If it's not too late, I'd like to join in on this one. I'm in two other SGs right now but they're in mop-up mode.

@ Quotey - Now a few days have passed, I'll add you to the rooster.

@ frankcor - Glad to see you've grabbed one of the reserved space. Nice to have you on board!

@ Meiz - Sorry you missed out on a spot, but I'll put you down as an alternate unless you tell me otherwise.

I've been experimenting with map types over the weekend, and can't seem to find a script that seems quite right. I was looking for something like looked a little like GOTM 1 (if anyone can remember that far back)!

I'll keep experimenting tonight and should have a start for us today.