HNDY04 - AWD - Grumpy Old Men of AW

HNDY04 - AWD - Grumpy Old Men of AW
A continuation of the series of AW tiny map games HNDY03-AWDG|HNDY02-AWE|by the Grumpy Old Men of Always War.

Level: Deity
Variant: Always War
Civilization: Sumeria
Continents: 70% Water
Size: Tiny
Age: 5 Billion [I think ]
Temperature: Temperate
Climate: Normal
Barbarians: Sedentary
Rivals: 3 Randomly Selected
AI Aggression: Normal
Victory Condition: All are enabled.
Culturally linked starts: Off
Respawn: Off
Preserve Random Seed: On
Cultural Conversion: On
Patch: 1.15 C3C

EDIT Can't believe I forgot the secret weapon. The lucky candle.



Opening Plans
Settle on the hill
Research Masonry for walls -> Math for SoZ
Ideas & Opinions welcome from AW lurkers.

>> Sumeria 4000 BC Save <<



Roster:
Handy
Slinger
T_McC
Greebley
Yom

Greebley gave the knock out blow in HNDY03, so we start @ the top of the order in this one.

The Boilerplate
The game Always War. You may only trade when you first meet a civilization, and must declare war on the same turn after trading is complete. If you see a new AI unit, you must make contact & declare war that turn. Absolutely no GPT trades allowed. If you see a new face on F4, you are obligated to declare war that turn (after trading). Players must declare war if they are exploring and see AI units, but are not required to actually attack the units they come in contact with. No peace treaties, ever. You may check F4 as often as you like to spy on the AI's tech, resources, luxuries & city count. We are not allowed to build embassies.

Discuss any move that seems exploitive before doing it with the team. Although there are not too many exploits available in AW, we’ll follow the forbidden blatant exploits banned by GOTM and RBCiv such as no "Free Wealth". Other normal game exploits such as "Baiting the AI" with an empty city to create a kill zone are an AW tradition and are allowed. Also, you ARE allowed to initially keep a city, move a settler to the same spot as the city, and then abandon and immediately resettle. This is considered an exploit in RBCiv rules, but is okay in this AW game. In addition if you need to build a city one square deeper into enemy territory just to move borders to steal a resource, go for it. We may keep or raze cities, and can keep slaves. You may whip captured cities or cities where all citizens are unhappy.

SG Stuff
This is a low pressure SG, so you have 24 hours for an "I got it" and 72 to play. If you need a one day extension, then mention this before the 72 hours are up. Players can work out skips between themselves, just post a message to the thread. If you can't play within 72 total, the team players can switch places, or you can ask for a skip. We will play 10 turns at first, and possibly fewer later (5) if the turns begin to take too long. If you need to go over a turn or two to complete a major campaign, that’s okay too.

Isn't 5 billion more mountainous. It kinda cramps Sumerias agri trait. I would think 3 billion and warm and wet would do us better. This will be a true challenge with MM'ing at a premium. I'm not quite sure not mining the BG's is right though. Wouldn't we want the 3 shield per tile in GA? Is there a despo penalty?

There is a penalty. Mined or unmined they are the same.

Mining all depends on whether we meet someone so we need to be flexible. I think roading the BG first and then going back to mine if we still don't know anyone. If we do meet someone then mining normal grassland is a good idea.

I thought a young world was more mountainous? Is it also more riverous?

Actually I really don't know what the traits do. Wet would be more rivers right? Hopefully normal will be ok and we have some water.

Also it might be worth growing a bit larger rather than making a settler immediately. You get more shields that way early on if you don't make the settler when size 3, but wait for 4-6. Waiting for size 5 might be best. We would want a granary asap of course.

barbslinger said:

Isn't 5 billion more mountainous.

Click to expand...

5 billion is oldest, so it has the least mountains. I guess we should have gone for arid since we can get 2 food from irrigated desert & the AI gets only 1. We'll have to remember that for AWS.

Greebley said:

Wet would be more rivers right?

Click to expand...

Yes.

Testing out the attach small jpeg file to see if it displays. Cool, it works if the pics small enough.

handy900 said:

5 billion is oldest, so it has the least mountains.

Click to expand...

I thought it was the other way around. At work so I can't check. I thought the mountains wear down over time. I know SirPleb loves 3Bill, wet and warm for max food and early expansion since he mm's and the AI does not.

From the manual: 5 billion years - This option produces an old world, one in which the tectonics have settled down somewhat, allowing erosion & other natural forces to soften the terrain features.

So more erosion turns mountains to hills, hills to grassland. I'm pretty sure Moonsinger, Sir Pleb & the map milkers all play wet, 5 billion, warm since it has the most food and can support the highest population.

All righty! Lets get it on. Hoping for a cow over on the plains. Get your lucky candle out Handy!

I am hoping we do not get germany as our closest neighbor.

I realized I forgot something. We don't have alphabet either so we have 2 techs to get before Mathematics

Not sure if this changes our decision on Mathematics.

Good luck fellas.

I tuned into the last game to get an idea of what an AW game entails, and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. Well done.

Needless to say, I'll be watching this one w/ much anticipation.

Thanks for your well wishes

AWD on a tiny map has been successfully done before so there is hope we can pull it off. A lot will depend on our start and number of neighbors. I think. Two neighbors is bad unless they fight in which case it is good.

Turn 0 4000 BC
Settler moves to hill
Worker moves to road BG
We spot 3 tobacco farms to help the economy.
See lots & lots of grasslands. Even without water we have some decent food tiles

Turn 1 3950
Found Ur, which is much easier to type than the Aztec capitol.
Begin a 5 turn E warrior
Research to Masonry in 36 +0gpt
The worker starts a mine, not a road. Forgive me Greebley. I’m an old dog, and building roads before mines is a new trick.

Turn 2 3900


Turn 3 3850


Turn 4 3800


Turn 5 3750


IBT
Ur – Enkidu Warrior (EW) -> EW

Turn 6 3700
Warrior exploring to the NE

Turn 7 3650
Fresh Water Lake
Mine done, road started

Turn 8 3600

Turn 9 3550

Turn 10 3500
Move to road the lux so we can keep research high
Choke? – Discover a 1 tile wide land bridge to our NE. It may just go to a dead end part of out continent. Don’t want contact yet, but may explore out a little further.
Border expansion reveals lots of BG and a good hut to the south. I’ll leave that until we have a spare unit in Ur.

Turn 11 3450
Bump lux tax to 20% so second warrior can explore a little.
Not sure if the continent will expand NE or NW.
Second warrior is moving NW
Masonry in 26
Pulling 4 spt
Ivory road in 3

Turn 12 3400
Wine spotted to the NE past the land bridge. Another lake & plains over here.

Turn 13 3350
There are narrow defensible land bride type areas both the NE and NW.

IBT
EW -> barracks

Turn 14 3300
Road to ivory done.
Palace gets steps.
Lux tax to zero.
Masonry in 17

Turn 15 3250
Exploring – lots of good land down here. If we can determine which side NE or NW the Ai is, we can defend the narrow area.

Turn 16 3200
NW getting more narrow

Turn 17 3150
NW peninsula is a dead end

Turn 18 3100
Get 3 warriors from a hut in the E.

Turn 19 3050
Barbs leave EW alone, so he moves off

Turn 20 3000
EW exploring the east hits a dead end. Perhaps the bridge is N of the wines?

Notes:
Masonry in 11; +0gpt.
We grow in 1 turn, check happiness.
Mine in 1 will give you 5 spt.
I guess you could switch the barracks to granary and we could play the AW farmer gambit.

Possibilities
1. We are on a “U” shape and the SW is the low point of the “U” & then turns north.
2. There is a 1 tile land bridge we cannot yet see N of the wines, or perhaps somewhere else such as NNE of the ivory.
3. We are playing as Australia.

3000 bc

Varuna said:

Good luck fellas.

I tuned into the last game to get an idea of what an AW game entails, and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. Well done.

Needless to say, I'll be watching this one w/ much anticipation.

Click to expand...

Thanks! So far so good. At least we have food & water in this one.

Greebley said:

I realized I forgot something. We don't have alphabet either so we have 2 techs to get before Mathematics

Not sure if this changes our decision on Mathematics.

Click to expand...

I saw that on the tech tree, but decided we should go ahead. We need masonry for walls anyway, so it's not a waste if we decide to go for IW. Alphabet, which we also need for Math, let's us build dink boats if we want to cruise our continent. I think the sure thing of Acav is still the way to go. I played one AWE tiny map where there was no iron on the entire continent! SoZ made the difference.

Should we try for the Glib in this game?

One of these days we need to play the Celts. Fun UU.

Roster:
Handy
Slinger <- UP
T_McC
Greebley
Yom - MIA with laptop issues.

I think I'm liking the granary switch. I made a quick dot map to comment on. I know that the two on the lake are 2 tiles apart but they can get over 7 for unit support with aqueducts. That will help. Hopefully I don't meet an AI until after masonry comes in. We should be able to garner some techs from him/her before declaration. I'm thinking the Ai is NE of the wines. I don't think I'll be getting a settler out because it will be Rax after granary unless an AI pops our bubble and comes out of the fog. I'd like to get the pop up a little too. EW's should hold fine and we will have a lot of them at 10s@. The SE EW will clear the balance of the fog NE and W of his current location and then sneak home. I'm almost tempted to go meet the AI so we can get something out of masonry before he researches it. See how it plays out. The NW warrior will go see what lands we have SW of UR.

My take on a dotmap-

Sheesh, I'm checking in already Handy.



I knew if I threw that term around in enough e-mails, we'd eventually use it! GOMAW! (although to be fair, Yom is only 17 or 18. Without him, I'd be the baby of the group!)

On a side note: Every time I see that picture in the first post, I think it says "Fart Luck".

I wouldn't have picked this start, killing our unique trait like that, but if we're alone this will make for an interesting game. Problem (?) is, even if we are on our own continent, Tiny maps tend to break that a Seafaring civ (or anyone who get the GLighthouse) can reach us by Map Making. So do we run to Zeus, or try to set up to build the Great Library?

I'll wait for all comments and play when I get home in around 2 hours. Zeus vs Glib. I would tend to vote Zeus for the units. We may only have 1 AI on our continent with 2 lux showing. We'll have to see how quick we can get some cities out and get one started on prebuild for either.

I lean towards Zeus as well. If we don't find anyone else by the time we research Math (we want Cats anyhow), we can push towards Lit and try for the G.Lib. If we do find someone, we'll probably want to research military techs before Writing.

On the dotmap: I'd try to build on the gold hill, both for defense and because then we're working the trade bonus tile every turn.

Zeus also. There is a chance we can get both as sometimes the GLib is ignored.

One interesting fact: The faster the AI can research the less likely they are to pick Literature as their tech to research. If they research fast enough, then Literature will be least likely tech for them to pick.

So it might be worth getting zeus and then build the GLib switching to FP or HE if we fail.

[Edit: My main reason for choosing this start is that it is the first one. There is something very satisfying about winning a random start rather than waiting for a town with 20 cows. [Edit2: That was an attempt at a joke. I know you meant wait for a river and not 20 cows].

Is this better?

Why not slide #1 another tile SW? Then we don't get 1st ring overlap. City #1 also gets 3 Tobacco in its first 8, which can produce 2f/2s/2t when mined in a Despotic GA.