Revenge of the Babylon Settlers - Roster B

The Scores on the Doors



Rules of the Game.

This game will be played under GOTM rules. Any contravention of these rules will be considered cheating.
Note: This includes the "Remote Palace" exploit rule introduced recently.
The one exception is that war Mobilization is ALLOWED. However, the infinite shields exploit is NOT ALLOWED.

The following tactics/exploits will result in a one time 10% deduction in final Jason score for the team and are taken from the Exploitative Tactics section from RBCiv.

1. Breaking a peace treaty within its' 20 turn duration - other than a straight peace for peace deal.

2. Intentionally breaking a trade route by pillaging or selling harbours/airports.

3. Free palace jumping.

4. RoP Rape.

5. MPP RoP abuse. Using an RoP with a Civ that has an MPP with your target Civ in order to place troops.

6. Using lots of settlers to "tunnel" into an opponents territory. With enough settlers you can get anywhere within the opponents territory you want in one turn.

7. Whipping in cities that do not have at least one content citizen.

8. Building cities right on the opponents border with the sole intention of peacefully stealing land. It's OK to use a single settler to get your arty in range of a city since this is not "peaceful". It is not OK to build a city 2 tiles from another in order to steal a resource. (This is not exactly the same as RBCiv, too bad).

9. Using workers or undefended cities for manipulating the AI's army and dragging them out of position.

10. Ship Chaining.

11. Using non-combat units to prevent the AI landing on your territory.

12. Drafting units in otherwise worthless cities and disbanding them in others to hurry production.

13. Through trading - leaving an AI opponent with fewer than two workers before 1000BC. If you buy workers, you must be able to demonstrate that the AI have at least two left before 1000BC.

14. The use of the "Big Picture" screen on the discovery of a new tech in order to change build queues or alter the number of turns of anarchy you get in government switch.

15. No palace moves at all after 10BC. This is not an RBCiv rule, but I'm making it anyway. NO EXCEPTIONS. If the AI sack your capital after 10BC you'll lose 10% of your score. Serves you right.

Everything else is allowed. So suicide galleys, ICS, RCP, pre-building, remote wars with no prospect of any warfare, using RoP to irrigate the tiles around an opponents wonder building city etc. are all OK, though not necessarily nice.

Once you have violated one of the rules listed above, there will be no further penalty for further violations.


The infamous start



>>THE GAME<<

Roster B
akots
barbslinger
space
Sir Bugsy
mad-bax
?????

I thought it might be handy to copy Akots' issue list:

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1. There is little doubt that the starting settler has to be moved SE. However, if there are some considerations of moving the settler in another direction of settling on the spot please share these.
2. Pottery is obvious research goal. What is next? This is extremely important!
3. Is it better to build a settler before the granary and claim with him more fertile areas?
4. How many starting warriors to build? 1 or 2 or 3? If more than 1, would it be honorable and rationale to try to find a warrior-guarded Persian settler and attack them early in neutral territory trying to cripple Xerxes or is it too risky and should be postponed?
5. How dense should be the starting build? Map is rather large which might dictate building some remote towns early on to try to stop Persian expansion. Also, the capitol is not in the center.
6. Is it worth the risk to try to pop the huts? Or leave it all to Xerxes?

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For now my only comment is on issue 4: a super early attack is dangerous on Deity with all the free units running around. We could risk it if we attack pretty far away, so that we can make peace before he can reach our cities.
This will give the X-man an extra incentive to attack later though.

It would be nice to have some input on the opening moves. The main questions were posted here.
Everyone is wellcome but some input from team members (barbslinger, space, Sir Bugsy, and mad-bax) would be very much wellcome. If I disagree with some suggestions, I will post it clearly BEFORE starting the game which will happen Sunday night around 10pm US Central time.

Here is what seems reasonable to me:

1. Moving starting settler is a must for early settler factory because of whales.

2. After Pottery it should be traded to Persia at least for gold. May be even for some other tech like Warrior Code with gpt from Babylon. However, 40-turn gambit on Mysticism will not work probably. Thus, Mysticism has to be researched at maximal rate. Then, if we are lucky, it can be traded for WC or IW with gpt from Babylon. Then, there is little choice but 40-turn gambit on Poly and then on Monarchy. Poly we can get but it would be better not to trade to X-man unless there is no WC or IW yet. Then, get Monarchy and revolt. It might take up to 800BC or even 600BC. other techs are optional and we don't need them to survive. MapMaking would be nice to get some contacts but there is Alphabet and Writing on the way and also in this case Persian research path would be duplicated limiting trade possiblities for other techs.

3. The early settler should be built and try to claim FPlains to the north. After granary, settling priorities should include claiming dye, gems, incense, and iron before the Persians. Therefore, main expansion goes to NE.

4. Common sense suggests building 2 early warriors. One may scout N to look for Perisan settler and/or huts (have no idea where they might be). Another warrior stays as MP and he then will escort the first settler to FPlains. Then, warrior-granary is buit in Babylon. In the meantime, worker will try to improve terrain near Babylon for a decent 4-turn factory. Buying a worker from Persia is an option but I don't think it is possible.

5. Claiming gems and dye calls for 2 cities at distance 4 or even 5. Claiming FPlains, incense and iron required 4 remote cities (2 for FPlains and 2 for other luxuries resources)

6. If we get a slave from Persia, then popping huts is an option. With warriors, it would just give barbarians or maps at most. It is possible to pop the huts nearby Persia even at expense of warrior thus denying them a potential tech and unleashing barbarians to divert them from exploration and infrastructure.

Also, I'm not very inventive in naming units with Babylonian names, so please if you have a list, share it.
Edited: got one here.

akots: much of what you say might be accurate. Unfortunately, I have absolutley zero map knowledge except for what we can see in the first post. I don't know where the flood plains are or the luxes.

If you can get a settler on turn 20 then I thik that I would go for it, but I think it would be best to opt for a dense build for defensive and production reasons. I wouldn't want our second town 5 tiles from the capital.

Personally I would only pop huts near another civ. We can't afford raxes and granaries under construction to be destroyed.

So I would build warior, warrior, settler, granary, settler, settler ...

I am also in favour of a research run to monarchy, but we have to find some way of getting map making on the turn Persia discovers it IMO.

Are we going to try to avoid a despotic GA?

Originally posted by mad-bax
1. ... I have absolutley zero map knowledge except for what we can see in the first post. I don't know where the flood plains are or the luxes. ...
2. If you can get a settler on turn 20 then I thik that I would go for it
3. But I think it would be best to opt for a dense build for defensive and production reasons. I wouldn't want our second town 5 tiles from the capital.
4. Personally I would only pop huts near another civ. ...
5. I am also in favour of a research run to monarchy, but we have to find some way of getting map making on the turn Persia discovers it IMO.
6. Are we going to try to avoid a despotic GA?

Click to expand...

1. It is supposed to be a general knowledge and may be discussed? Or not? Please keep in mind that the game is extremely difficult.
2. Settler will be produced earlier than that.
3. Dense build is very risky. It would be impossible to defend normally without iron. Bowmen is no match for immortals. I played Persia in recent medal play series on demigod. Immortals grounded fortified spearmen on hills across the river in size 7 cities easily in 4 to 2 or 3 ratio (4 immortals to 2-3 spearmen). And area to be settled is large. If Persia beats us to productive regions, we are toast. Later on, it would be possible to settle relatively infertile inner ring at RCP 3-4 depending on situation. However, this is an open point.
4. Agreed because same suggested by space.
5. Probably, getting MapMaking is not possible. At least I don't see how this can be done. Writing and Alphabet are too expensive to trade from Xerxes with our starting techs.
6. Very unlikely to avoid if early war would happen. Iron cannot be hooked early and spearmen are too weak and useless. It would be great luck if it happens in Monarchy.

Edited
I would try to warn fellow gamers again. It might be that a year ago people expected pangea and etc. But only the best players were able to win. And very few survived to lose by other means than conquest. This means that standard approaches and tactics including ICS-like pattern in the beginning and normal build order are not enough. It is good because opens creative possibilities and forces to invent non-standard tactics.

On using pre-knowledge:
One of the attractions of the game is to see how do the new players (and strategies) compare to those who played it then. Of course we have the advantage already, but I would like to keep it at a minimum. Knowing it is not a pangeae and that Persia is the only resident AI is spoiler enough as it is IMO.

On settlement:
Knowing that there is plenty of room, should allow for a nice RCP pattern. If we start with a few 'stokes' in Persian direction we could keep you both happy. When we've explored a bit we can decide on the best distance regarding the landscape.

My $0.02 worth.

1. I think I would try for a granary before a settler.

2. I would try and build towards Persia and fill in the locations closest to us later.

3. I would try to avoid Despotic GA.

4. I would try to select our city locations based on geographic resources, i.e. rivers, food, BGs rather than a RNG or ICS pattern.

5. Since we are religious, I would go for Monarchy as a research path, and hope to pick up Republic later.

6. I wouldn't bother with huts. At diety, we'll probably only get yokeld anyway.

This should be a fun game, and I hope I won't let down the team.

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
... 1. I think I would try for a granary before a settler.
2. I would try and build towards Persia and fill in the locations closest to us later. 3. I would try to avoid Despotic GA. 4. I would try to select our city locations based on geographic resources... 5. ... I would go for Monarchy as a research path... 6. I wouldn't bother with huts. ...

Click to expand...

Great! 1. The problem is that there is no way to improve the land for settler factory to work normally that early. settler-granary-settler or granary-settler-settler will take approximately the same time and lots of commerce would be lost from research to luxuries trying to keep Babylonians content. It would be also resonable to skip mining/roading BG and going directly to irrigate wheat to speed growth. I'm also considering an option of not roading the cattle producing another worker instead of first settler and going for granary-settler-settler. 2 to 6. Seems very reasonable.

@space. Thanks for making the things clear.

Here is SAVE.

Turn 0 4000BC Worker S to cow, settler SE to forest. Score 0.
Turn 1 3950BC Babylon founded. Worker to irrigate cow. Babylon -> warrior. There is no way to rename units! It only works with PTW! Research Pottery 100% in 20 turns. Score 0.
Turn 2 3900BC. Score 30.
Turn 3 3850BC. Score 40.
Turn 4 3800BC. Score 45.
Turn 5 3750BC. Score 48. Cow irrigated, starting to road it.
Turn 6 3700BC. Warrior1 goes N. Slider to 0.9.1 Score 50. Babylon -> warrior.
Turn 7 3650BC. Warrior1 continues N. Slider to 0.9.2 Citizen from forest to BG. Score 51. Pottery 14 turns.
Turn 8 3600BC. Worker moving to BG. Warrior1 continues N. Slider 0.9.1 Pottery 11 turns. Score 53.
Turn 9 3550BC. Warrior2 fortified in Babylon for MP. Slider 0.10.0 Pottery in 8 turns. Worker goes to wheat. Warrior1 continues N. Score 55. Babylon -> settler.
Turn 10 3500BC. Worker to irrigate wheat. Warrior1 continues N, hut spotted. Borders expand and citizen moved from forest to whales.
Turn 11 3450BC. Hut ignored, moving Warrior1 NE.
Turn 12 3400BC. Babylon grows to size 3 working cow, whales, and wheat. Slider 0.9.1. Score 69. Warrior1 goes NE.
Turn 13 3350BC. Warrior1 goes E.
Turn 14 3300BC. Wheat irrigated, building road. There is +5 food in Babylon. Warrior goes NE.
Turn 15 3250BC. Warrior goes E. Pottery next turn. Score 83.
Turn 16 3200BC. Pottery discovered, research to Mysticism in 23 turns. Warrior1 goes E. Another hut. Will pop it, it is far away.
Turn 17 3150BC. Settler/Warrior2 go N. Slider 0.10.0 Babylon is size 2 working cow and wheat and building granary. Worker returns to BG on the river. Hut popped and 3 barb warrior appear.
Turn 18 3100BC. Our warrior survives and is promoted twice becoming an elite with 2hp left! May be, pyramids... Fortified to heal the great guy. Warrior2/settler continue N. Worker to road BG. Score 92, Mysticism in 25 turns.
Turn 19 3050BC Warrior2/Settler continue N.
Turn 20 3000BC Warrior2/Settler continue N. Score 96. Settler will go build town in spot 1 and warrior will pop a hut NW? It is safe if a town in spot1 is built because we have no gold to plunder and production there would be low anyhow.

General comment about our elite. He is a great guy (Marduk), he's worth a shot with Persians against warrior when he recovers after battles with barbarians. Pyramids would be nice. Even Colossus would be great. Even bowmen army would be fine. There is nothing dishonorable to let him fight a couple of battles with real enemies. He is a warrior after all and these men were wild in ancient time with hot blood and difficult to control when they are on their own.



Micromanagement rules! For size 3, working whales, wheat and cow would be OK. Growth is a priority and we need another worker if Babylon grows too large for a settler after granary. At size 4, BG will be mined or it is possible to work the forest for a turn to get things right. However, luxury slider will kill the science eventually. In this case warrior2 can return home to Babylon.
Global future plan: Pink numbers 1 and 2 - must be built ASAP, 1 with current settler, 2 with next. In 1, there will be lots of whipping probably. We need warrior-worker(for roads)-temple-warrior- worker(for FPlain irrigation and mining of other tiles)-barracks- warriors there. 2 is a ballast city which cannot be allowed to work wheat. Gems may be connected ASAP and 2 will build MP/occasional workers. Building road in black spot may be a high priority because expansion should go to Fplain and E through the gem road. Dyes can be connected later after 3 or even 4 settlers. Other good spots are marked with red and possible alternative with white. If we get the FPlains, chances are much better.

Good luck barbslinger!

Will play tomorrow. Maybe Marduk will find a Persian settler pair to knock off and stunt his growth. Since I see no mention of Persia in post I'm assuming we have no contact and Persia won't know where to look for us. He will see our Floodplain city soon enough though. Probably too risky and scouting will be the plan. Will look it over tonight.

BTW - This is CIV 3 disk right?

The disk is from Civ3 but may be PTW disk will work also.

It may be risky with FPlain city so it is better to attack Persians to wait before it is almost size 2 (2-3 turns away) so that it is possible to wipe a spearman. And bring Warrior2 around then just in case. It should be across the river from approaching Persians. Unless they will have 2 archers or bigger SOD, it should survive. Xerxes is probably busy with barbs or may be scouting north. And AI does not attack with spearmen which is the main scouting force. So, it might take a while before he comes to us and by then, peace may be agreed. This may let Marduk 2-3 elite wins.

Keep it on vanilla please.

Good grief! Just look at all that wheat.

I think Marduk should try to take out a settler pair. I think it's a bit too much to expect a leader from though, however much he deserves it.

Well played akots, and good luck barbslinger.

TJ03B – 3000BC

Pre turn - 3000BC – All looks well. Settler heading to all that luscious wheat. Marduk fortifying. Pop increase next turn.

[1] 2950BC – Worker finishes road. Starts mine. Marduk feels better and goes to have a look on mountain. It takes 30% to keep Babylon happy. Granary in 10 with pop growth working 2s forest.

[2] 2900BC – We get to floodplain site.

[3] 2850BC – Food-o-rama is settled. Set to worker in 10. Growth in 5. I’d like to pop a worker and then whip a temple.

[4] 2800BC – Persia settled some city near Marduk. He’s going to take a surreptitious look from the mountains.

[5] 2750BC – Our favorite guy shows up in the form of a warrior and spear running towards Marduk. Was going to send Food-o-rama warrior home to save on lux tax but I would hate for Persia to just walk in.



[6] 2710BC – Both of us are heading for a GH. They will get it.

[7] 2670BC – They busy GH for barbs. I continue scouting. Mine completes and granary in 2 with growth in 4. Can’t decide if I want to chop forest for temple now and nix that idea for growth. We’re going settler after this granary.

[8] 2630BC – Foodtown grows. Worker in 2 now.

[9] 2590BC – Granary comes in. We can’t get more than 7 shields out of Babylon until growth so a 4 turn settler looks to be possible.

[10] 2550BC – Worker completes > warrior for MP. Subject to change to perhaps temple with whips. Warrior finds coast.

THE SAVE

For clarity the roster:
akots
barbslinger (just played)
space
Sir Bugsy
mad-bax
????

I guess that makes me UP, I got it.

Looks great, barbslinger! Just for the note, for settler factory to work, it is not necessary to work the forest after the granary is up, work the whales instead. The shields will come from pop growth which goes to the forest. That is why it is not good to chop it down. For example, next turn can be a worker in Babylon. Otherwise, we get down to pop 3 once in a while and then it will be 5 turns, not 4. Also, whales have 2 trade which helps happiness and science. And there is anothe BG to work also. It can be roaded later on and mined and shared with another town when Babylon has pop 4. Same thing to Food-o-Rama. We get 2 free shields every time pop grows. Sorry, you probably know this better than me but it is 3am and I'm very sleepy. RL sucks sometimes.

It would be good to try to settle FPlains E of Food-o-Rama. And cover all mountains NE at any cost.

Good luck space, we need it!

I just looked at the save and the X-man knows IW already, so you all know what that means... So I won't be attacking Persia with Marduk (unless you all insist to go all-or-nothing).

Originally posted by a space oddity
I just looked at the save and the X-man knows IW already, so you all know what that means... So I won't be attacking Persia with Marduk (unless you all insist to go all-or-nothing).

Click to expand...

Ye, it might be too late. On the other hand, they need to find it, build a city, connect it. Takes some time. On Deity may take about 1000 years or so. However, if some settler/warrior duet comes to him wandering... Just think of the Pyramids. Ugh, for these we need Masonry which we don't have.

Are we playing to win, or merely not to lose too quickly?

I'm not afraid of immortals. They have only 2 defence and when they are advancing on you are never fortified. All we have to do is make sure we are attacking them, preferably on tiles with no defensive bonus. Don't let them attack us. For this reason, spears are useless. We need horses and archers.

If we can grab a settler or two and get to Chivalry we will be absolutely fine. But don't let us turn turtle at this early stage.

If the team agrees, I will attack reluctantly (yesss! ) but the next player is going to bear the brunt. If Persia feels strong they won't offer peace on the short term. Our current focus on growth will mean any attack will cause very tense moments...

The first two city sites should provide enough settlers and workers forever, so the next sites should all be high shield cities.
I would build warrior, rax then archers galore. I am now of the opinion that we need WC ASAP.

Yes, the initial exchanges with Xerses will be tense. But the outcome will shape the rest of the game. Fortunately, his extra units will be warriors I think, so we might have 20-30 turns grace before he gets his iron hooked up. It's clear though that we need to take the game by the scruff of the neck. Allowing Xerses to develop will mean death, or a very messy interlude with modern armour and a space race at best.

I really hope we can win by a military victory. Domination would be great.