A Spiritual Odyssy

grandad1982

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Dec 4, 2007
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Hello and welcome to A Spiritual Odyssy!

After the succesfull conclusion of Expansive Dreams its time to get this SG up and running.

So with out more delay, at all, what so ever, in any way, cutting straight to the point....

Our GLORIOUS LEADER!
Spoiler :


Justinian is SPI/IMP so he gets anarchy free civic and religion swaps, double production speed when building Temples and the Cristo Redentor, a 50% production boost when building Settlers and finally a 100% boost to GG birth rate.

The Byzanine UU and UB.
Spoiler :


A pimped knight minus the 1st strike resitance.



More horse based shinanigans. A higher culture slider to happyness conversion than standard Theaters and a futher :) bonus with access to horses.


Our starting techs are Mysticism and The Wheel.

The game settings
Spoiler :


I opted for Monarch over Emporer for a couple of reasons. First this is the first varient game I've hosted so I'm not sure how that will affect the difficulty and secondly I still don't feel massively happy on Emporer. Maybe the next game will step up a level....



And finally.... our start Location
Spoiler :


***I apologise for the crazy screens but Photobucket won't let me display at my resolution with out paying for it! In future I will only use the 17" setting so screens will be less clear but fit on the page properly***

For this game we are going to try a variation based on a suggestion by Sirloin.
Spoiler :

I've had an idea for a SG variant that I'd always wanted to try that maybe you'd consider for this game. Its a war variant that jives well with the Spiritual trait, but it has significant diplomatic challenges:

Denomination Domination. Its in the style of a religious war, but instead of destroying the unbelievers (non-state religion), its about purifying the various factions of your own state religion to make sure they follow the path exactly how you think is right. In other words:

Win by domination, but we're only allowed to declare war or capture cities of a civ that shares our state religion. We can change religions as often as we like, BUT we can't switch to a religion unless we control its holy city.

So this game would be about controlling religions, probably founding as many as we can, spreading them heavily, and balancing the diplomatic shockwaves we'd be dealing with by continuously attacking our allies and their friends. We would have to be very careful about religions that we didn't control, because if someone else founds one and spreads it heavily within their empire, it could be extremely difficult to get them to convert, especially since we'd never be able to share their religion for diplomatic bonuses, which would ultimately make them immune to our attacks.


Now some aspects of this suggestion I consider to be to restricive such as needing to control the Holy City to switch to a religion. So based on this idea these are my suggestions for the varient rules.

1. If a rival civilisation is in the same state religion as us we can DoW and all their cities are fair game.

2. If our potential victim is a different state religion to us and we can't convince them to swap to our state relgion (using diplomacy or espionage) then we can only annex cities containing our state religion.


These rules are not set in stone yet. They are up for disscussion and can be amended if the team is in agreement (majority rules). Once the game starts the rules will be fixed in place and we will be sticking to them. Unless we really don't want too....

We will be playing 48/72 got it and play. Please feel free to skip and swap as needed but try to do so sooner rather than later. If you can play but its just outside of the 72 hours (with in reason) then thats fine as long as you let us know and the team are happy with it.

The play structure will be 20 turns in the BCs and 10 turns in the ADs. If there is a more logical stopping point, such as a tech coming in or a settler being ready etc, then please feel free to play to that point but don't take the piss!

The Roster
Sirlion - up now
Grandad1982 - on deck
cripp7
Pindrus
narri
?

Finally the save
 
I've had an idea for a SG variant that I'd always wanted to try that maybe you'd consider for this game. Its a war variant that jives well with the Spiritual trait, but it has significant diplomatic challenges:

Denomination Domination. Its in the style of a religious war, but instead of destroying the unbelievers (non-state religion), its about purifying the various factions of your own state religion to make sure they follow the path exactly how you think is right. In other words:

Win by domination, but we're only allowed to declare war or capture cities of a civ that shares our state religion. We can change religions as often as we like, BUT we can't switch to a religion unless we control its holy city.

So this game would be about controlling religions, probably founding as many as we can, spreading them heavily, and balancing the diplomatic shockwaves we'd be dealing with by continuously attacking our allies and their friends. We would have to be very careful about religions that we didn't control, because if someone else founds one and spreads it heavily within their empire, it could be extremely difficult to get them to convert, especially since we'd never be able to share their religion for diplomatic bonuses, which would ultimately make them immune to our attacks.

Justinian would work well for the spirit of the game, but we'd probably have to do a Pangea instead of Big/Small to facilitate the necessary worldwide missionary crusade. I'd like to try it on Emperor, but considering how hefty of a challenge this variant adds, it might be better to do Monarch. We'd need to decide how to handle Free Religion: Either it makes them fair game to attack, or it makes them immune. I'd lean towards the latter. Anyways, I realize that this is a very significant change from the type of game you're looking to host, so its really up to you if you are interested. If not, I'll probably just start a separate game myself sometime.

Alternatively, a less-severe variant with Spiritual would be The Spice of Life: Each player must change civics at the start of his set: You can't use any civic that the previous player used, and you can't use any civic that you used on your previous set (contingent on having enough discovered civics to satisfy this condition). People would have to make an effort to align their play with the civics they selected (military buildup, specialists/GP, etc). It would give some variety and use some less-often picked civics instead of the ole standards. This would obviously be compatible with any map or other settings. As an additional challenge, we could require building the Mids and the Shwedagon Paya, and maybe also must research any tech thats immediately available if it contains a new civic.

Let me know if either of these two variants are interesting.
 
So the Roster stands thus...

Roster
grandad1982
Sirloin
cripp7
narri
Sturick - ?

I like the sound of the first varient but I would like to get away from the pangea map type for a different feel to the game.

The varient could be that you can only attack cities with our state religion in empires that we don't share a state religion but can just pound them if they do share our state religion. This means that we can convert a city and the liberate it. Also it means that not having a single landmass does't make the game impossible. Does that make sense?

This type of game should be powered by the RE wonders.
 
Ok so it looks like Expansive Dreams is going to be over in the next 48 hours, so its time to get this thread going.

I'll start with the roster so far.

Roster
Grandad1982
Sirlion
cripp7
narri
?
?

So places for up to two more members.

Next on to the leader.
I assume everyone is ok with Justinian?

Map type.
I've been experinenting with maps and looking at then in WB. So far the best I have seen are Big/Small, Islands mixed in, normal continents. They offer a large irregular landmass with penty of large Islands and 9 times out of 10 there is no isolation requiring Optics to beat.

Varient.
To be finalised before we play. The suggestion is that we can only attak civs in the same state religion as us and maybe also cities that contain our state religion. Try for a religious economy (wonders such as UoS and SM etc).

Difficulty.
Monarch or Emporer. What do you guys reckon? With the harder diplo from the varient maybe monarch for me.
 
Ohmygosh, spiritual? That's my most favoritest trait ever! If you are looking for another I'd love to jump in. Justinian is a good call in my book. I feel like the Hippodrome is an underutilized UB with a lot of potential, especially in a SE economy that is independent of the research slider. The Cataphract is also a great unit, though I tend to de-prioritize the guilds line and end up with cuirassiers coming in about the same time.

No real preference on map scripts, B&S is a fun one but can be a bit annoying tracking down enemy civ's on all the different islands if we are leaning to go the domination route. But it's probably the best if we want to have lots of contact between civ's.

I'd prefer something simple for varient rules, because they're pretty easy to forget otherwise! :lol: I like only attacking cities with our state religion and perhaps requiring at least one civics change per turn set if possible. It might be touchy to found an early religion ourselves unless we hand-pick opponents and likewise I'm not a huge fan of deciding on what kind of economy to run before seeing our situation. I'm more of a fan of playing the map you're given, though especially if we have stone the religious-economy wonders are quite appealing.

I usually play emperor or immortal, but I'm fine with whatever difficulty the team decides on.

I will also be moving in about 4 weeks, though hopefully I won't be out for too long.
 
Well Pindrus your in!

As for deciding the economy before we see the map I totally agree. Its just that I feel that if we get half a chance of an RE then we should grab it as its something a bit different to the usual economies.
 
I roled a start last night and have edited the OP to contain all the relevant information. If the OP is missing something or you require some clarification then let me know and I'll amend the post accordingly.

So lets get discussiong the start!

To me the capital is screaming settle in place and an early GP farm. Move the warrior NE then settle.

Ealy build and tech path are very tricky due to our poor starting techs and build order considerations. I might WB as start the same and see what works best.
Right now my gut feeling is to go Fishing > Mining > BW > Agg > AH and build Warriors till we can build a Work Boat or 2 till. Hopefully by then we can get a worker out in time to coinside with BW or there abouts so we can chop some settlers.

The alternative might be to go (after reading seeing it in the strat forum recently) settler first while teching up to AH or BW.

What do you guys think?

I think we should ignore founding a religion untill maybe Theo or CoL.

If we went for BW sooner rather than later we could try to chop out Stone Henge for the GProth GPP to help bulb a religion.
 
So I WB and start and tried a couple of openings.

First I tried teching Fishing first and starting the build with a warrior.

By turn 57 I had teched Fishing (T9), Mining (T20), BW (T40), Agg (T51) (should have been Hunting) and 6 turns in to a 15 turn AH (would have been 9 turns in with hunting instead of Agg).

I had built a Warrior (T9), a Work Boat (T24), a Worker (T39) another warrior (T50) and a Settler (T57). I also had 63 overflow on T57.

The Clams were netted on T24, 1st chop was into a settler at T44, a riverside mine on T51 and a second chop in to the settler on T56 (when I whipped away a pop point from 3 to 2 as well).

This approch involved a lot of micro which I can write if you want me to.


Secondly I tried settler first.

This involved much less micro.

Tech was Mining (T12), BW (T34), Hunting (T43) and 16 turns left on AH T45 when I stopped.

Had built a Settler (T30) which I didn't settle, a warrior (T 45) and started a worker (in 18).

My conclusion is that warrior first is best as the city was at 2 pop (I had whipped in to the settler) there were 2 improvments and we had produced more units. The early second city form settler first would take a long time to generate a greater advantage than the Warrior first.

Heres the WB save (totally new map before I edited it so no spoilers) I think its corect in the BFC (not sure about the hill next top pig/hill (it could be a plains hill but I put grassland hill).
 
I've played a few (partial - to middle ages) test games of the full-blown variant and its definitely tough, but doable. One of the major decisions in this type of game is how to play the start, techwise. Grandad has suggested ignoring religion and doing worker techs, which is pretty much how I play 95% of my games - but where's the fun in that? In my test games I tried the religious-crazy start which of course really screws up your early tech (but adds a fun challenge). This entails joining the race for Hinduism, grabbing a critical worker tech or two, then going masonry -> mono, filling out a few more worker techs, then doing an Oracle for CoL. If it succeeds, we'll have 3 of the 4 first religions. I was able to pull it off in 3 of the 5 games I played.

The advantages are religious control, and early OR which is great for the build bonus and makes early spreading very easy, and you never need to tech Med for Monasteries.
The disadvantage: It really screws up early tech. Its so foreign to have no Bronze Working, and be missing worker techs while you expand. Its also a gamble: You can lose the religious race.

I think SGs are a good place to do things differently than how you play most of your other games, so I'd like to give it a try if people are amenable. If its fails, at least we'll have good evidence for why we shouldn't try it in the future!.

As for our start, I loaded the save, moved the warrior 1 NE and took a screenshot to see if there's any reason we should consider settling 1E.
Spoiler :

He didn't reveal anything, and of course the settler is unmoved, so I'll just be settling in place.

If we try for Poly, unfortunately we can't work the Clams for 2 beakers since we don't have fishing. The spice tile will at least give us 1 beaker, so we'll have Poly in 18 turns - a risk, but not too insane since we're only on Monarch.

So what's the team think? Willing to give my god-crazy tech start a chance or stick to the tried and true? For build order, we won't need workers (they won't have anything to do!), and if we work spice, we don't get hammers so we get no immediate bonus to a settler-first start from Imp, so I would start with growth, and maybe do a Settler at size 2 instead of the standard worker.
 
You want to settle E? We don't gain any resources and we're not sure what the western tiles are that we are losing, plus moving 1E takes both our movement points so we lose a turn (espec important in the race to Poly). I would settle in place.
 
I think all the tiles we'd lose by moving 1E are 4 flat grass forests and 1 coast, which we'd trade for 1 plains hill, 1 grass hill, 1 plains flat forest, 1 open riverside grassland, and 1 open grassland (may be riverside?). Because we're only losing forests it's doubtful we'd lose a yet-to-be-revealed strategic resource (and based on the amount visible, I doubt that we have many that we can't yet see). Especially if we're going to be running off a more standard tech path to grab religions and delay expansion, I think we'll appreciate having more hammers in the capital for the imperialist bonus and for building wonders, though we can always chop out something like the oracle in a 2nd or 3rd city.

I guess I'd vote settling 1E, going Fishing -> Mining -> Masonry -> Poly -> Mono. Founding one of the first 2 religions is risky with only a 1:commerce: tile to work. Going fishing and mining would give us enough to improve and a quicker tech rate while still grabbing an early religion. The religious situation will also depend heavily on our neighbors, so getting an extra warrior out scouting while teching fishing is also appealing. Missing 1 turn on epic isn't that bad if we aren't going for a poly/meditation religion.
 
oh, if we don't have AH we shouldn't hesitate to mine the pigs on the hill too. A 2:food:3:hammers: tile is pretty good and actually beats a 5:food:1:hammers: tile for producing settlers for us.

And if we move we should move 1S then 1 NE to not waste a movement point.
 
I like the looks of 1E as well (the extra riverside tiles was something I hadn't looked at origionally). Also given that we have 5 resources in the BFC and the other tiles look to be forested we won't be losing a metal or horses. Hopefully.

And if we move we should move 1S then 1 NE to not waste a movement point.

Thats some nice thinking. Exactly the kind of thing I'd never think of.

I'd rather go Fishing first even if we're aiming to grab a religion (from mono) as working the food is always nice and 2 commerce tiles will help our religion grab.

Warriors till size 2 then WB or settler (probably depends on what our scouting shows).

An early second city would be very handy to produce workers/settlers so we don't delay our expansion to much.

For the second religion we can chop out the oracle.

Of course all this depends on what the map gives us in terms of nieghbors etc.
 
I usually find that my expansion is limited from the economy, not a lack of hammers for settlers. Unless there are very close AI's who risk picking up a prime spot I'd rather get a WB or two and a worker out first. It's very easy to chop out a settler as an Imperialistic leader.
 
Seems like we're split 2-2 on religious start vs standard start? Narri, want to cast the deciding vote? I can play this evening by the way.
 
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