SGOTM 10 - Murky Waters

BtS SGOTM 10 - Armageddon

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In this, the third BtS SGOTM, Gyathaar wants nuclear devastation. Stalin of Russia starts in the Renaissance era in 1285 AD, in a world with five Aggressive AI civs. He is hell bent on world conquest, BUT he can only capture a city if he nukes it first.

It's a fight to the nuclear death in an Epic speed, Emperor difficulty game on a Small sized Big and Small map. There are no goody huts, no events, no city razing, no city flipping, no Vassals. Only Conquest is enabled.

It's a standard Renaissance start, so you get a lot of techs at the beginning. Cities are created with pop 2 and a few buildings. You start with two settlers, two longbows, one explorer and a worker. The AI start with two settlers, four longbows, two explorers and a worker.

Versions
This game will be played in Civilization IV Beyond the Sword, version 3.19, using the new all-singing, all-dancing HoF Mod BUFFY-3.19.001. This HoF Mod version is available now. You can download it here.

If a later BtS patch is released during this game you will NOT be able to use it to play. You will need to complete this game in version 3.19 before updating your copy of BtS, or create and update a separate copy.

Mac players can only join in if they are able to run the Windows game on their system.

Timetable
The game will start on Friday, August 7 .

Your start file, and then each submitted Save for your team, will be linked on the Progress and Results Page throughout the game. Please ensure that you only download your own team file.

The finish deadline is December 7 2009. If any team has not finished by this date they will be deemed to have retired, and will not be eligible for any awards.

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



Map Parameters

• Playable Leader/Civ - Stalin of the Russian Empire.
• Traits - Aggressive, Industrious.
• Unique Unit - Cossack (replaces Cavalry)
• Unique Building - Research Institute (replaces Laboratory)
• Renaissance Era start - turn 277, 1285 AD.
• Difficulty - Emperor
• Game Speed - Epic (473 turns)
• World size - Small
• Rivals - Five
• Landform - Big and Small
• Other settings - No city razing, No Culture Flips, No goodie huts, No events, Aggressive AI, No Vassals
• Victory Conditions - Conquest Only

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 Conquest victory, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher. You will drop down the final ranking table* for each city that you capture without nuking it with a direct hit first. A "Capture" is defined as any method of obtaining a city other than by building it yourself using a settler. A "Capture" also includes retrieving a city you originally built but lost.
  
  *The final ranking will sort teams in the following order:
  1. Win, lose or retire. Wins go first. Retirements go last.
  2. For wins, the number of un-nuked cities captured. Zero missed cities go first.
  3. For wins, the finish date.
  4. For losses and retirements, final score will determine their rankings within those categories.
     
• 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.

Have fun.

Reserved..

Roster (in order of appearance)

klarius
Fiveaces
DMOC
LowtherCastle
ZPV
Gnejs
Erkon

Mandatory techs & final beakers Optional techs & final beakers

Wow! I generated a random map similar to this game, and the BUFFY stuff gives plenty of information. We will all become MM-masters! Have a look for your self. It will take a while to adjust and perhaps even longer to fully utilize all features

Regarding the map: I guess it will be crowded with one extra opponent. My gut feeling is this:

1) REX to grab land
2) Research like madmen
3) Build nukes. Lots of nukes
4) Optional: tech to "Scrub fallout"?

Well, I'm here.
Test map

That doesn't help much as things can look quite a bit different after the first few turns.

It's not even clear when we will settle our capital . The capital should have the 2 golds and enough food. In my map there is a nice location to settle on the second turn, but it might be different in the real game.
We have a lot of useful civics we can revolt to, so delaying settling isn't that bad. But it's still the question which civics and how many immediately. The only no brainer is that we want bureaucracy immediately. HR and religious civics are not immediately beneficial.
Mercantilism does give an immediate benefit, but w/o caste we cannot use scientists immediately. Labor civic is really the big question. Slavery to immediately pop-rush both cities for a worker and work boat? Serfdom and chop a second worker?
When we get a religion on the 5th turn, will we convert? If yes, go caste and pacifism?

What to research? The first tech will take forever to finish.

Well you can forget the test map and any other tests so far.
Gyathaar has given a new information here.
No automatic religions for anybody. That changes the diplomacy quite a bit.

Edit:
No religion test map

Change again . Now my first test map is valid again (one barb religion).

Checking in here. Firstly, a big welcome to DMOC

And now a couple initial thoughts before any test games:

1) agree the capital goes S with the gold
2) agree to REX to the cities for oxford and ironworks, not sure yet about afterwards
3) in addition to researching like madmen we need a ton of hammers - leaning towards caste and workshops, thinking SP eventually, however mining inc may be very powerful if we can get a GE.
4) I think we should first build army of the captures and position them, then build "army" of nukes. Strike quickly and wipe out a civ, then move to the next. Also planning for 2 fronts.
5) We need HE asap - I forget can barbs get us to a high enough level or will we need to start an early war w/out capturing any cities?

Off to now play with klarius's test, will report on learnings a bit later.

FiveAces said:

Checking in here. Firstly, a big welcome to DMOC

And now a couple initial thoughts before any test games:

1) agree the capital goes S with the gold
2) agree to REX to the cities for oxford and ironworks, not sure yet about afterwards
3) in addition to researching like madmen we need a ton of hammers - leaning towards caste and workshops, thinking SP eventually, however mining inc may be very powerful if we can get a GE.
4) I think we should first build army of the captures and position them, then build "army" of nukes. Strike quickly and wipe out a civ, then move to the next. Also planning for 2 fronts.
5) We need HE asap - I forget can barbs get us to a high enough level or will we need to start an early war w/out capturing any cities?

Off to now play with klarius's test, will report on learnings a bit later.

Click to expand...

2) Well, getting five cities is already quite some task, 5 libs and unis even more. This is a freakin' builders game . At the same time we should look if we can already harass the AI to not build too many cities.
3) Getting a GE shouldn't be a problem. If we can and should afford the science off the nuke
beeline (fission and rocketry) is another question. On the other side SP may also not be that beneficial. Workshops can be built also w/o it and the maintenance benefit will kick in only when we are already capturing cities.
4) I don't think we should worry too much about an army before nukes. We can think about drafting, pop-rushing and chopping in captured cities while we move on.
5) Why we need HE very fast? In principle we can have a sufficiently promoted unit by barbs only - we did it that way last game . It's just the question to find enough barbs and also to survive as the barbs have the same techs we have (cities will be defended by lbs - spawned units could be maces).

Well, a few observations from test games.
It takes >50 turns until the AI comes up with their first techs. I'm faster than them regularly even though I don't even start research before I have an academy in the capital.
If there isn't Mansa in the game it's not very likely that there is a tech trade available then. I see the AI research edu, GP or nationalism and some lagging behind. They frequently don't know all others, so overcoming monopoly is already a problem. Also if one has converted to a religion nobody likes us particularly .
It's easy to do liberalism first, but the benefit isn't that great as the most expensive tech to get is astronomy.
With the test map, I wasn't able to steal a worker, because Mansa always had a longbow with his worker. With some random starts I sometimes easily got 2-3 workers with the initial longbows. Never had any problems with these civs, but there might be barb problems when leaving the core undefended (built just warriors for garrison). Also had problems with barb galleys sometimes.

Time for SGOTM 10 to begin!

Erkon said:

Wow! I generated a random map similar to this game, and the BUFFY stuff gives plenty of information. We will all become MM-masters! Have a look for your self. It will take a while to adjust and perhaps even longer to fully utilize all features

Regarding the map: I guess it will be crowded with one extra opponent. My gut feeling is this:

1) REX to grab land
2) Research like madmen
3) Build nuke
4) Optional: tech to "Scrub fallout"?

Click to expand...

I agree with this. including the part of researching Ecology. There are definitely going to be a few AI cities that we capture that are worthy of producing more nukes once they get some of the buildings they lost back (via whip?). However, don't forget that we should be building nukes, not a nuke. Say, do we build ICBM's or Tacticals? I never really use either of them in my games since they end before that era. Looks like I have some civilopedia searching to do.

I will download BUFFY as soon as possible. I already use BUG in my games so adjusting shouldn't be a problem for me.

klarius said:

Well, I'm here.
Test map

That doesn't help much as things can look quite a bit different after the first few turns.

It's not even clear when we will settle our capital . The capital should have the 2 golds and enough food. In my map there is a nice location to settle on the second turn, but it might be different in the real game.
We have a lot of useful civics we can revolt to, so delaying settling isn't that bad. But it's still the question which civics and how many immediately. The only no brainer is that we want bureaucracy immediately. HR and religious civics are not immediately beneficial.
Mercantilism does give an immediate benefit, but w/o caste we cannot use scientists immediately. Labor civic is really the big question. Slavery to immediately pop-rush both cities for a worker and work boat? Serfdom and chop a second worker?
When we get a religion on the 5th turn, will we convert? If yes, go caste and pacifism?

What to research? The first tech will take forever to finish.

Click to expand...

We should aim to do enough civic changes that match the total number of turns that we are delaying the capital to be settled. My proposals are, in order of priority:

• Bureaucracy
• Slavery
• Hereditary Rule

I think we should definitely switch to Bureaucracy since this already gives our capital a huge early advantage in research and production, of which the former is desperately needed to finish our first technology. My next choice is slavery, because this allows us to grow our cities to size 2 and immediately whip waway workers and work boats. I'm not a big fan of Serfdom because, in my mind, we can always grow our cities back in a hurry (and the fact that we've got plenty of food in our starting screenshot already confirms this) and then slave another worker. Last but not least, random events are off, so there is no chance of us suffering from a slave revolt.

The third civic choice, in my opinion, should be Hereditary Rule. We'll need to grow our cities quickly in order to gain a high research rate, and HR is like an instant +1 happiness if we have a longbowmen acting as military police. Also, HR is the favorite civic of many AI's.

• Catherine
• Gilgamesh
• Joao II
• Huayna Capac
• Louis XIV
• Pacal II
• Ragnar
• Suleiman

AI's that have Bureaucracy as their favorite civics:

• Hammurabi
• Kublai Khan
• Qin Shi Huang
• Peter

FiveAces said:

Checking in here. Firstly, a big welcome to DMOC

And now a couple initial thoughts before any test games:

1) agree the capital goes S with the gold
2) agree to REX to the cities for oxford and ironworks, not sure yet about afterwards
3) in addition to researching like madmen we need a ton of hammers - leaning towards caste and workshops, thinking SP eventually, however mining inc may be very powerful if we can get a GE.
4) I think we should first build army of the captures and position them, then build "army" of nukes. Strike quickly and wipe out a civ, then move to the next. Also planning for 2 fronts.
5) We need HE asap - I forget can barbs get us to a high enough level or will we need to start an early war w/out capturing any cities?

Off to now play with klarius's test, will report on learnings a bit later.

Click to expand...

Good good good, all's looking good.

What do you think of going into Slavery first, and then switching to Caste after we've whipped enough? Workshops will take a while to put up and we'll need to whip some workers to do the job.

Barbarians can help us do the job. I doubt that will happen becuase of the extra AI which reduces the likelihood of us facing barbarians.

klarius said:

2) Well, getting five cities is already quite some task, 5 libs and unis even more. This is a freakin' builders game . At the same time we should look if we can already harass the AI to not build too many cities.
3) Getting a GE shouldn't be a problem. If we can and should afford the science off the nuke
beeline (fission and rocketry) is another question. On the other side SP may also not be that beneficial. Workshops can be built also w/o it and the maintenance benefit will kick in only when we are already capturing cities.
4) I don't think we should worry too much about an army before nukes. We can think about drafting, pop-rushing and chopping in captured cities while we move on.
5) Why we need HE very fast? In principle we can have a sufficiently promoted unit by barbs only - we did it that way last game . It's just the question to find enough barbs and also to survive as the barbs have the same techs we have (cities will be defended by lbs - spawned units could be maces).

Click to expand...

World map size is small so 5 it is, I guess (I was initially confused).

We need to beeline to stone for Oxford University and marble for National Epic and Heroic Epic. Sadly, we can't build the Great Libary.

A faster heroic epic gives us faster troops. Also, there's no guarantee that we will have many barbs to fight considering the map size and the number of civilizations. I do agree that we'll probably need to draft.

klarius said:

Well, a few observations from test games.
It takes >50 turns until the AI comes up with their first techs. I'm faster than them regularly even though I don't even start research before I have an academy in the capital.
If there isn't Mansa in the game it's not very likely that there is a tech trade available then. I see the AI research edu, GP or nationalism and some lagging behind. They frequently don't know all others, so overcoming monopoly is already a problem. Also if one has converted to a religion nobody likes us particularly .
It's easy to do liberalism first, but the benefit isn't that great as the most expensive tech to get is astronomy.
With the test map, I wasn't able to steal a worker, because Mansa always had a longbow with his worker. With some random starts I sometimes easily got 2-3 workers with the initial longbows. Never had any problems with these civs, but there might be barb problems when leaving the core undefended (built just warriors for garrison). Also had problems with barb galleys sometimes.

Click to expand...

So do you support going to 0% research and then going to 100% once we get an academy? I never thought of that, but then again, I never play these kind of starts so I guess this could work.



One final question: What units and techs do we start with (and do the AI's start with the same exact units)? That's pretty crucial information.

My observations from tests so far

1) Don't think my build army then nukes will work. We can't expand enough in the beginning before being blocked in, so need early conquest which means early nukes. klarius suggestion above about building while moving on is probably better.
2) need fogbusters asap to prevent barb cities from spawning in "our" land - I saw as early as t24, and it may be very tight to even build the 5 cities
3) using HR-beauro-caste-merc-pac and only popping GS, you can build an academy and then bulb so that you can take sci meth with lib even if mansa goes for edu first. I did this in 1690 on klarius's test for comparison.
4) klarius suggestion of 0% research until academy is very good idea

@klarius - biggest benefit of SP isn't the maintenance savings, it's the food - beelining comm through bulbs and lib then trading for nat and researching constitution for rep should give us lots of hammers and beakers very early. Otherwise we are trading between the two - either dropping food and ability to run sci's working non-SP workshops or not getting enough hammers building farms.

EDIT: I read DMOC's post above. @DMOC - Alan's opening post tells what the AI's have and klarius's test will show what techs we have.

Problem with slavery first is you have to build a library to run sci's and i don't think we can afford that. Our research will either fall far behind those who leverage the merc-caste-pac initial civics or we will not build the fogbusters and risk being boxed in to <5 cities by a bad RNG. Besides, all the AI's are doing it

Oh yes, the Caste-Mer combo would do wonders for us, and we could use that combo along with CS in the beginning of the game.

I like the idea of using State Property.

--------------

Speaking of the capital, where do we settle? It looks like there's coast from the gold, so how about using one scout to check the coast to the east and another to explore south?

I would settle 1N of the corn, but that's just my gut feeling. I hope there's seafood.

About civics:
It's 1 turn for every 2 civic changes. So 3 turns for 5 or 6 civic changes.
We don't need all civics in the beginning and we can change one category twice for the same 3 turns.
What I did in my save is do only bureau and 1 change in the beginning (slavery or serfdom). This is to get a second worker as fast as possible by either pop-rushing or chopping in the capital (bureau capital needs only one chop or 1-pop for a worker). Then wait for religion and 5 turns passed to convert and revolt to HR-caste-merc-pac.

One small problem with rex I saw not mentioned up to now.
A settler costs 342 hammers .
So getting extra settlers after our free 2 will take quite some time.

Really? That doesn't seem right unless costs scale with the starting era.

DMOC said:

Really? That doesn't seem right unless costs scale with the starting era.

Click to expand...

The cost of a settler is a very complicated calculation. It includes 40% of the cost of the free buildings you get (including the free lighthouse you only get if settling on coast) and a certain amount for the free population. Then you have to factor in the 90% for a renaissance start for every build (units are generally cheaper than ancient start e.g. worker is 81h). Anyway one can just start a renaissance game and look .

I'm now not sure anymore that the capital should go to the gold. Rex would work best with a high food capital (e.g. where the settlers are now) and slavery. Changing the capital location later to a better commerce location is relatively cheap (216h for a new palace).

klarius said:

I'm now not sure anymore that the capital should go to the gold. Rex would work best with a high food capital (e.g. where the settlers are now) and slavery. Changing the capital location later to a better commerce location is relatively cheap (216h for a new palace).

Click to expand...

I dunno, that would kill our chance to slingshot sci meth or better. My test I had 5 cities and IIRC was <10t from 5 uni's in 1690. Is that too slow? Or do we definitely want to try for more than 5 cities? I don't have a real good feel for what's a good point to be in at a particular time on a Ren start yet.

Another try, slingshot physics in 1708. Have free GS and another in 7 turns to double bulb elec opening up fission, which IIRC will be next bulbable tech as well.

Have 5 cities + lib, but ~20t from oxford. that will need to be improved - faster settlers needed. 342h is a lot, but chopping into beauro helps immensely.

See problem with SP or long-term SE - emancipation. Perhaps capital as klarius suggested for food so that can run full oxford sci's after need to switch out of caste? Or do we think emancipation will not be problem?

When will we shut off research? Tanks I think is overkill? Will cossacks be enough given that we will be attacking nuked cities? Maybe can run caste until then without problem?