NEWS: BOTM 41 -- Starts 15 April

BOTM 41: Gilgamesh (Sumeria)

Game Details:

The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the world's oldest works of literature preserved to this day. Gilgamesh, the King of Uruk, was 1/3 mortal, and 2/3 divine (how the math was done there... must be lost in antiquity ) He faced down demons and gods and a various assortment of mythical creatures. As such, this is probably the earliest known work in the genre of epic fantasy literature. BOTM41 will allow you to relive the heroic deeds of Gilgamesh in a setting inspired by this ancient story. As per the original, you may meet Enkidu (a wild man), Shamash (the Bull of Heaven), Humbaba (fire-breathing demon), or Utnaphistan of the deep. These characters will behave like barbarians should you meet them. Note, I had to use a Wall St metaphorical switch to find an appropriate icon for the Bull of Heaven... and some poetic liscense on the rest of the icons. For fun* I even added some Beowolf's.

Beware! While you should not encounter these characters from the Gilgamesh epic earlier than normal barbarian animals would begin to appear, I can't actually guarantee that. You might encounter them a little earlier. But I have tried to ensure you should survive the encounter... unless you happen to lose your starting settler.*

IMPORTANT WARNING CLARIFIED: LEAVING A CITY UNDEFENDED EVEN FOR A SHORT WHILE IS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS BEHAVIOUR AND MAY BE PUNISHED SEVERELY. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

Good luck.

And HAVE FUN!

Game settings:
Civilization: Gilgamesh of Sumeria
Rivals: 6 AIs
Difficulty: Noble
Map: Fantasy (Irrational resources)/Flat wrap
Mapsize: Standard
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Epic
Options: None
Victory Conditions: All enabled

*Never trust a mapmaker

Gilgamesh:
Gilgamesh is Protective and Creative and starts with Agriculture and The Wheel. The Protective trait gives free Drill 1 and City Garrison 1 on archery and gunpowder units and increases +100% production on Walls and Castles. Creative gives +2 to each city, as well as +100% production on theatres, coliseums, and libraries.

Unique unit: Vulture (replaces Axeman)
The Vulture has a strength of 6 instead of 5 for the axeman, but only gets +25% combat bonus against melee units instead of +50%.

Unique building: Ziggurat (replaces Courthouse)
The Ziggurat is 25% cheaper to build than a courthouse, and is available at Priesthood instead of Code of Laws for courthouse.

Starting screenshot

This is the start of the game (click for a bigger image):




Adventurer Class bonuses:
A worker and a scout have joined your cause. They are on the same tile as the settler. They bring with them the additional knowledge of hunting and mining.

Challenger Class Equalizers:
Your warrior has run away with the knowledge of agriculture and the wheel... you start with only the settler, and no technologies. In addition, that wily warrior invented bronze working which he donated to all of your rivals in exchange for the secrets of immortality... which he promptly forgot, (and then died). All AI start with bronzeworking in addition to their normal starting technologies. BE SURE YOU HAVE READ AND UNDERSTOOD THE ABOVE IMPORTANT WARNING BEFORE CHOOSING THIS SAVE.

To Enter the Competition:

This competition will open at 00:01 am on 15 April 2011, server local time (UTC-6:00). From that date and time, you'll be able to get your chosen starting save >>>here<<<.

Submit the save after your victory (or defeat) here, by 15 May 2011.

Software Versions

Windows: This game MUST be played in Beyond the Sword (NOT Warlords or Civ4 vanilla), patched to version 3.19, and with the BUFFY mod version 3.19.003 installed. You can download the BUFFY mod here. Players using Windows Vista are encouraged to read the notes on Vista fixes here.

Macintosh: This game MUST be played in Beyond the Sword (NOT Warlords or Civ4 vanilla), patched to version 3.19, and with the MacBUFFY mod version 3.19.003 installed. You can download the MacBUFFY mod here.

While playing...

Remember - for your entry to be accepted, it MUST be your first attempt to play this game, and you MUST NOT replay any turns. If you make a mistake while playing, you have to live with it, learn from it, and carry on the game without replaying.

We will open 'spoiler' threads during the month for players to discuss what happens in their games. Do not discuss any details of your game outside those threads.

Now this sounds interesting. I have never played with irrational resources, so it should be odd. I predict copper to appear on the ice FP. The sheep on the desert look useless, the ice tile will be better.

I really like the adventurer and challenger variants. Quite creative, anyone taking adventurer should get off to a lightning start. Even though its only Noble, I won't be taking the challenger save. (I want my Vultures to be fighting Archers, not Axes)

OK, Babe Ruth style, I am going to call my victory now. After my fluke in GOTM 64, I am going for fastest conquest again. I fully expect to fail miserably and be crushed by a legion of better players, but hey, I'm feeling reckless. (Please use this an an invitation to beat my date by 1000 years and show me how its really done)

No doubt we will need Astro or some very well placed city for a culture bridge, so I predict a winning conquest after 1000ad.

that wily warrior invented bronze working which he donated to all of your rivals in exchange for the secrets of immortality... which he promptly forgot, (and then died)

Click to expand...

Love it!

The map looks crazy, should be yet another fun/different type of game Thanks for the work put into it. Any chance that the screenshot could have resource bubbles showing?

I have no idea where to settle. In place maybe? 1E might be nice as it makes the tundra useful - so perhaps I move the settler SE first turn before going 1N and settling. Warrior SE though to view the surrounding area.

Does "flat wrap" mean it's earth-style?

WelshGandalf said:

Love it!

Any chance that the screenshot could have resource bubbles showing?
Does "flat wrap" mean it's earth-style?

Click to expand...

I simply forgot to turn resource bubbles on before taking the screenshot. And I'm too lazy to fix it. But I will tell you that the only resource bubbles visible in the start screenshot would be two for sheep and one for whale. It is evident where those bubbles should be.

Flat wrap means "no world wrap". Its a flat rectangle and you can't go past the edge in the east to get to the west or vice versa.

Fun setup!

neilmeister said:

No doubt we will need Astro or some very well placed city for a culture bridge, so I predict a winning conquest after 1000ad.

Click to expand...

Unless our mapmaker is really evil, I doubt we'll need galleons in a land-based map.

Not sure about what is that 3f/2h/2c tile NNE of warrior (oasis on plains hill?), but surely I want it in my capitol's BFC...Probably will settle where warrior is standing before those mythological beasts appear and eat my poor settler... 1NW of warrior could also be appealing if it is not only 1 row below the northern end of the world (and it does look like it is).

Conquistador 63 said:

Unless our mapmaker is really evil, I doubt we'll need galleons in a land-based map.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm just thinking that with Noble, epic speed, and a powerful early UU, something has to stop us rolling over everyone.

kcd_swede said:

These characters will behave like barbarians should you meet them.

Click to expand...

I'm going to guess that these are pre-placed units that are assigned to the Barbarian State, right? It would actually be really need to see some super-powerful ones, like an 8-strength Barb unit.

Unique building: Ziggurat (replaces Courthouse)
The Ziggurat is 25% cheaper to build than a courthouse.

Click to expand...

You might want to add that the Ziggurat is available with Priesthood (as opposed to Code of Laws).

Of course, this fact means that we'll probably see even more people building The Oracle than normal.

In addition, that wily warrior invented bronze working which he donated to all of your rivals in exchange for the secrets of immortality... which he promptly forgot, (and then died).

Click to expand...

What? What?! That jerk! That incompetent fool! Oh well, at least he'll be dead in the Challenger game. Contender players will have to face a game with an idiot leading their Military. You might just want to disband him before he causes even more trouble!



As for the Settler, I'm tempted to move him E Tundra River + SE Grassland Hills Sheep. If there doesn't appear to be anywhere nice to the south-east to settle, then the Settler can move N Desert Sheep + NE Plains Hills River, for a +2 Hammer City Centre.

neilmeister said:

something has to stop us rolling over everyone.

Click to expand...

Of course, anyone that moves away from settling in-place will miss the island-based Grassland Hills Copper.

Perhaps, since you said that it doesn't appear to be a challenge, plus the fact that we're probably going to go after relatively-early Animal Husbandry (for the Sheep), in addition to the Fantasy map theme, that Grassland Hills island really contains a Horse Resource. Whatever it is, it's probably the only Strategic Resource for miles, hahaha!

Go Protective Archers, go!

kcd_swede said:

These characters will behave like barbarians should you meet them.

Click to expand...

According to the legend, after Gilgamesh and Enkidu had their epic knock-down drag-out fight, they became great friends. To put that into game terms, perhaps Enkidu will be guarding a goody hut that's set up to give us an equally tough military unit. Can our mapmaker arrange something like that?

Good, a BOTM at my level. I'll definitely play this one.

You might want to add that the Ziggurat is available with Priesthood (as opposed to Code of Laws).

Click to expand...

Fixed! Thanks for the correction!

If that is an oasis on the plains hill N,NE of warrior - would mining it remove the oasis?
EDIT: quick worldbuilder test and as I feared: you can't develop the tile because it has an oasis.

MarleysGh0st said:

According to the legend, after Gilgamesh and Enkidu had their epic knock-down drag-out fight, they became great friends. To put that into game terms, perhaps Enkidu will be guarding a goody hut that's set up to give us an equally tough military unit. Can our mapmaker arrange something like that?

Click to expand...

Nice idea, but unfortunately he can't. In Worldbuilder, you can place goody huts on the map, but you can't set what's in them, that's still controlled by the random number generator in each person's game.

MarleysGh0st said:

According to the legend, after Gilgamesh and Enkidu had their epic knock-down drag-out fight, they became great friends. To put that into game terms, perhaps Enkidu will be guarding a goody hut that's set up to give us an equally tough military unit. Can our mapmaker arrange something like that?

Click to expand...

Yes, something exactly like that can be arranged, if I understand Huts correctly.

Whenever I have found a Barb unit guarding a Hut and have built a City nearby such that my City's Culture popped the Hut, the Hut gave me the Barb unit that was defending the Hut.

So, if it's a Barb Mech Infantry, as long as the behaviour that I observed holds true (it shouldn't be too hard to test, if needed), then you'd be able to get an "equally tough" military unit... in that you'd get the EXACT SAME military unit.


Of course, then you'd be using cunning and guile instead of fighting in order to defeat Enkidu.

Hmmm, if Enkidu can wander around (which I assume to be the case, since we got an implied warning about possibly meeting these characters pre-Barb-Animals showing up if we go exploring too far with our Settler), then perhaps he can wander onto a Hut, and then perhaps you can recruit him using the method that I just suggested: build a City next to his Hut.

Deckhand said:

If that is an oasis on the plains hill N,NE of warrior - would mining it remove the oasis?
EDIT: quick worldbuilder test and as I feared: you can't develop the tile because it has an oasis.

Spoiler :

A fantasyrealm start had a plains hill oasis in starting bfc, only had to worldbuilder the worker

Click to expand...

Wow. Then the Icy FP can't be farmed? A lot of settling mistakes are going to happen because of wrong assumptions.

We had icy flood-plains in a recent game and we could farm them.

Oasis is a unique "resource" afaik in that it has no associated improvement, so I would assume there will be no other oddities like this.

An Oasis is not a Resource, but a Feature like Forest and Jungle, except it cannot be removed. Like Forest/Jungle it cannot be improved and several other similarities.

Doesn't irrational mean that no resource will appear on a tile that it can normally appear on? Also, does irrational do the whole "delete 4 random resources from the entire map" thing?

Here you have test game...I only forgot to set flat wrap

April Fool's!



The game saves that were released today had some fatal errors. I will try to sort out the problem and release it anew very shortly. The opening screenshot will be updated to reflect any alterations.

joke has been snipped by GOTM staff request

man, I wish I could play that fast...I would put TMIT to shame