Jumpmasters 1B: Power is Knowledge (Vanilla, GOTM mod - Emperor - No research)

Here we come, roster B in the SCOUTX succession game.

First things first: the game

Our start:



-- 4000 BC ---

Settings
Version: CivIII 1.29f / Mac 1.29f - GOTM modded (see here for the necessary downloads)
Level: Emperor
Map: Large, Islands
Barbarians: "regionally intense"
Other: wet and warm, 4 billion years old

Variant Rule: No research - science slider 0% from the beginning to the end of the game, no scientists ever. No studying at home either! I'll be watching you

Roster
- AlanH
- Nikof
- Karasu
- Grunthex
- DJMGator13
- Mistfit

Now, of course, a few points on rules and etiquette etc.

- I would go with the standard 10 turns each (20 turns for the first round), 24 hours to post a 'got it' followed by 48 hours to play, upload the save and the log. By the way, past troubles have taught that it is wise to zip the saves before uploading.

- Rather than staying up all night to stick to the time schedule, let's post updates. I mean: anything can happen, of course, and that's not a problem provided one does his best to warn the teammates.
In other words: not being able to play on a Saturday night will not cause a skip just because the 48 hours limit has passed Disappearing from the thread, on the other hand, will.

- I suggest that we follow the GOTM rules, but we can agree on a different set (RBCiv, blindfolded play or whatever)

- Let's avoid the usual stuff that has to be avoided in succession games: no trading on one's last turn, avoid governors and units on long goto-journeys, automating workers, changing all build orders on the inherited turn etc.
In specific cases in which it may be appropriate to do any such thing, let's just raise the point in the thread.

- In general, let us keep the discussion open. As Scout said, this is not a training game... but we love discussing our moves and strategies, and casually chatting and joking about the weather and life in general.
So, let's freely discuss both the approach to each turnset before we play and our recommendations and notes afterwards.

Well... I think that's more or less it. Now let's get started

Free post in case we need it

First discussion topics: roster and strategy

Based on Scout's approach to defining the game, I think we should mix the 'golden' and 'silver' paratroopers. Anyone feels like throwing the first stone?

Strategy. A bit early, of course. But lets' start throwing ideas around some obvious things:
- The Great Library
- Any desired victory condition that we may want to pursue
- Comments on the starting position, and on the fact that we seem to have -quite appropriately- a "Scout" with us?

Just saying hello.. I noticed that when I tried to mod my game to GTOM I decided on PTW IPO Civ 3 so I need to start over again. I will start ASAP.


Golly thats a lot of initials....

Hi, just checking in.

For those I've not played with before, I'm a warmonger by instinct, and I've only played a dozen or so games, mostly GOTMs or GOTM-related SGs. We've just completed SGOTM2 in the Xteam. My approach tends to be analytical, so you'll sometimes see excessive mathematical dissertations, which you are free to ignore

Re The Great Library - I think we should capture it if we can - the ultimate in pointy stick research

I've loaded up the save as we are the Mongols . So I feel a largely military game coming on, but a spaceship would be a cool end to a 'No Research' game

Start:
- Lots of food, not bad for shields with the hills.
- We're standing on flood plain, so we're already on a river.
- The water is salt (food=1) so we're in a coast.
- We are a little north of the equator on the minimap.

We have a scout and should use him to check out the surroundings, but I suspect settling here is as good as anywhere. I would *very* rarely move more than one tile before starting, and the only single tile moves we can make either destroy a bonus resource, or move away from the coast, or move to another flood plain. Moving to the olives might make sense, as the city center gives the same output as the olives tile. But I'd only move there if there are exciting things to the south, as we would lose most of the flood plains. Lots of people worry about flood plain starts, but my view is the disease losses are more than compensated for by the pop growth rate.

So scout south - only one tile as it's a hill. If we see nothing special, settle where we are and start making little Mongols as fast as possible. Worker to a flood plain and irrigate. We have Pottery, so we should be able to build a granary. With careful forestry and micromanagement we might be able to work out a 4 turn, settler factory. Set research to CB before we do anything. When we settle we'll pop the hut, and if we get a tech we want an expensive one. As you don't get what you're researching (or not, in our case), this will avoid popping cheap CB.

My €0.02

"Scoutsouth"... Given our game-master, how could we avoid that...

I haven't had a chance to look at the game yet, nor will I until later tonight. But I cannot resist the temptation to throw a few more lines here, to continue in Alan's wake...

Those I have never played with should be aware that I am a peaceful builder by nature, only occasionally forced to wield weapon by the twisted and cruel mechanics of the game (and life in general).

Regarding the Great Library, I agree. Since we are the Mongols, we should also burn it, but we may want to wait until it obsoletes before we do so...

I also agree that launching our zero-research space ship would be very cool; as an alternative, a conquest victory would seem in line with our unorthodox R&D approach, as well as with a part of Mongol history. Yes, it would be against my natural playstyle, but I can force myself into playing an aggressive game for once.
That's assuming we win of course. If we suffer a Conquest defeat, well... that will be too in line with the spirit of the variant

Regarding the initial move and our tech path as the Mongols... ehm... I have forgotten everything.
When I come back from lunch I'll search for that information for those of us who missed GOTM25

Karasu said:

"Scoutsouth"... Given our game-master, how could we avoid that...

Click to expand...

Regarding the Great Library, I agree. Since we are the Mongols, we should also burn it, but we may want to wait until it obsoletes before we do so...

Click to expand...

I see we have a literary giant in our midst

I also agree that launching our zero-research space ship would be very cool; as an alternative, a conquest victory would seem in line with our unorthodox R&D approach, as well as with a part of Mongol history. Yes, it would be against my natural playstyle, but I can force myself into playing an aggressive game for once.

Click to expand...

I agree a miltary win has to be our target. Note that this is 'islands'. If we find we have too many one tile islands to acquire by negotiation, it may be better to go for domination. Amphibious war is rather high on the tech tree for a gang of hooligans without a test tube between us.

I really can't see how we could launch a spaceship, but it was interesting to speculate about it for a few nanoseconds

Does anyone feel strongly about making peace for techs and declaring war immediately? Ie do we want to play by RBCiv honourable rules, or shall we follow the Mongol destiny of all-out, no holds barred, rape and pillage?

That's assuming we win of course. If we suffer a Conquest defeat, well... that will be too in line with the spirit of the variant

Click to expand...

It may be in the spirit of the variant, but it's not even an option as far as I'm concerned

Regarding the initial move and our tech path as the Mongols... ehm... I have forgotten everything.
When I come back from lunch I'll search for that information for those of us who missed GOTM25

Click to expand...

I played and enjoyed GOTM 25 enormously. The Mongol hordes were really at home on the plains of that pangeia, with their fast movement. I'm not sure they are so well suited to an island world ... we'll see

Here's a quick rundown of our special units. Using these unit names you can get more details of A/D/M and so on from the Civilopedia:

We can already build Mangudai Bowmen and Nomad Warriors. Bowmen upgrade to Khorchin, one of our UUs, with horses and Invention. Warriors upgrade to Anda Swordsmen with Iron, and to Turghaut Cavalry, another UU, with Feudalism and Horses. Bowmen will be important if we share our starting island with anyone, including barbs. We'll be able to milk neighbours for techs by trade and force, and barbs for 25 gold per camp.

Our early horseman is the Gospodar, an upgrade from Chariot wth HBR, and he upgrades to the Ordu Archer, our third UU, at Invention. The fourth and final UU is the Bagatur Horde, which is basically unstoppable. It needs Chivalry, Horses and Iron, and if we can build these before there are too many muskets around we should be able to finish the game.

Some of these units have bombard capability, the Khorchin's bombard can even be lethal IIRC. These units lend themselves to combined arms operations, with some units providing effective defensive cover and others used as artillery, while the Hordes are the primary attackers.

Ordu Archers upgrade to Cavalry, the other three can retire as Steppe Settlers to settle conquered lands. Useful if you are looking for fast domination, and an incredibly cool unit animation as they dismount, unpack, and set up home.

GOTM 25 was pangeia. Islands changes things a bit. We'll need Alphabet/Writing/MapMaking as high priorities to be able to meet other civs and reduce the trade cost of techs. We'll need Bronze/Iron and Wheel/HBR in order to build our second teir attackers - Swords and Gospodar. We also need Monarchy, I suggest, as this will allow us to operate in the almost perpetual state of war that will be needed to conquer lots of islands. Then we need Chivalry, then Invention. If we can reach these two middle age techs without being too far behind we can win.

There was a special pre-game Halloween treat exercise created by Cracker before GOTM 25 started, giving a taste of how these units work together. The thread is in the GOTM Quick Gmes sub-forum here. It may be a good idea for each of us to at least download the start file for this game and load it to check that our mod installations are good to go. If you also play this file you'll get a really good ideal of what the units can do. The link I've given is the Open/Monarch-level one, and I've checked that it still works. There are also Regent and Deity files in Cracker's first post.

The spaceship launch with no research variant has been done (at least at monarch).
The inability of the AI to pre-build actually makes it quite straightforward.

The most difficult victory condition for this variant is 20K IMO.

Well, if it's doable I have no objection to trying. We could target the domination limit asap, then we can decide from there whether it looks as if we can build a spaceship. We probably need to keep more civs alive on small islands as research pets than we would if w were going for conquest. Unfortunately it's vanilla, so we are unlikely to get a lot of free techs from Scientific civs.

Here's the list of our rivals from the F10 screen. Ottomans and Russia are usually scientific, but heaven knows which of the others are.

Cultured Mongols is, I feel, an oxyoron

Do you want me to supply a list?

Apple computers! now there's an oxymoron.

Checking in. I'm looking forward to this - many thinks to scoutsout and mad-bax for setting the game up! And to our Jumpmasters. Hey - aren't they the guys who push you out of airplanes???

Re: wonders, although the GL would be nice, is it realistic to expect that we'll have early enough contact with the civ who builds it, given that we have islands on a large map?
- and a question: is "islands" essentially archipelago, or does it mean mad-bax has set us up with many, many tiny, tiny dots of land?
- should we try for the Lighthouse, for the +1 movement and galleys don't sink at sea? It would help with setting up an earlier trading network, I think. However I'm not familiar with GOTM variant naval units or rules that might change that calculation.

Re: Mongols, that's a lot of new units for little old Vanilla me! Thanks AlanH for the intro and the GOTM 25 tip, I'll definitely check that out.

Re: rules and etiquette, sounds good. GOTM rules work for me.

Re: victory, I have a mild preference for going conquest/domination, since I'm a bit of a builder by nature (becoming less so...) and would learn more there, I think. But I'm happy to go with the group's preference.

Re: turn order, I'd like to play in the first half of the roster, if that's okay. I'm out of town without Civ on July 12-28, so I'd like to play a turn before I leave! I'll check out the start position this evening, and learn all about those funny-looking resources...

Cheers,
nikof

Yes please. I could scratch it out of the save with a hex editor, I s'pose, but I'd rather not.

Hah! Don't get me started on Windoze

Gator checking in.

I'm a competent CivIII Emporer level sometime Diety level player,I play mostly Emporer on C3C. Started playing GOTM at number 28 (I played 29 but forgot to submit it), so this is my first Mongol experience. I will definately look over the "Treat" save before playing.

As far as AlanH and his numbers, I'm a CPA so hopefully I'll be able to keep up .

As far as a Space win on a no research that sounds very difficult. More with having to wait for the other civs to get and trade the tech. If we were able to research in the Modern Age I would say go for it, but since we can't research the AI seems to be very stingy with trading those Modern Age techs.

As for other variants, maybe we can be the first to use the "Rape & Pillage Non-Oscillating War (NOW)" variant, maybe even throw in a xCC variant. This would allow us to sign alliances and continue to trade with other civs, until their turn comes up. We would be allowed to sue for peace gaining cities & techs but must immediately redeclare war, allowing the enemy civ their counterattacks on the IBT. This would definately be a Conquest/Domination goal.

As for our opening moves, I think we should stay off the olive hill. Mined that hill will give 2/2/2 in Despot, as a center square we would loss the second shield. We easily have 15 food at size 5 but only 6 shields, although with enough preparations we can still get a 4 turn settler factory, using a mOlive hill (2/2/2), a mSheep hill (2/3/2), 3 iFP (9/0/3) and our center square (2/1/1). The growth turns to size 6 & 7 would need to go to a 2spt tile then moved to a 2f/1s tile to give us a 6/8/7/9 shield yield.

Is it better to settle in spot or to move the settler W to the forest as far as the disease issue goes. IIRC disease is possible when a citizen is working a FP tile, so even founding the city in the forest we would still be subject to disease. Plus I would hate to give up the forest chop which could help rush a granary or a settler and the possiblility of that tile being a BG. We need all the shields we can get.

As far as the roster order, I like the alternating suggestion of "Masters" and "Jumpers" order. I do not mind playing first, but if someone else wants that is fine. Since Karasu and AlanH both have more playing experience than myself I defer to them on the roster order.

BTW, its a little late now since Karasu hs already established the thread but I was think of our thread title along the lines of "Jumpmaster 1B: We Don't Need No Education" or better yet "Jumpmaster 1B: Science? We don't need no stinking Science".

Re. Roster, I should have said I'll play anywhere, and don't mind going first as long as we've all agreed on the general plan before we start.

It's a good plan to alternate the gold and silver players. I'm just not sure which category I'm in

I like "power is knowledge" too. A nice irony. I like a play on words that I know will travel about a foot above most peoples heads.

DJMGator13 said:

I was think of our thread title along the lines of "Jumpmaster 1B: We Don't Need No Education" or better yet "Jumpmaster 1B: Science? We don't need no stinking Science".

Click to expand...

Definitely better than mine... had I known I wouldn't have stayed up all night thinking of a title

BTW, I am starting to believe that Nikof is sort of volunteering for the starting turns, or just after Alan... hopefully, you'll get to play three or even four rounds before you leave.

Oh, and -any news of Grunthex? Has he overcome his installation troubles?

EDIT: Thanks, Mad. I haven't spent the night in vain then

Checking in. Got my chute, left my nerves on the ground. I think.

Since I'm new to everyone, I should introduce myself.

I've been playing Civ since the beginning, way back to the original. Never really got past Regent until this year, since I'm a complete turtle builder at heart. I've recently won my first and second Monarch games, and one of them was on Archipelago no less which is normally my big weak point. I'm learning to let my urge to bash things out - now I just need to PLAN before I declare the wars.

In terms of roster, I like the idea of alternating stronger and weaker players (and I'm definitely the second on this difficulty level). I'd also like to be around 4-5-6 in the roster. I'll be tied up for most of the weekend (time to comment in the evenings, little time to play) this weekend, and the next two.

In terms of the start, I'm a definite believer that you settle in place unless you can see some pressing need to move, and I can't. I agree we start with a flood plain, then we probably move south to start forestry to help a granary build?

And lastly I'd be interested in going for a violent-style victory on an 'islands' map. Still curious how big these islands are.

Ok, I lied about lastly. City-settling. I assume that at this level, we'd have to go to a 3 or 4 spacing, I'll have to smack down my OCP habits immediately. Realize this is a bit early for the discussion. I just like to talk!

Karasu said:

EDIT: Thanks, Mad. I haven't spent the night in vain then

Click to expand...

I'm not sure it was worth an entire night Karasu. I can think of better things to do with an entire night. Could probably play 100 turns or more.

DJMGator13 said:

As for our opening moves, I think we should stay off the olive hill. Mined that hill will give 2/2/2 in Despot, as a center square we would loss the second shield. We easily have 15 food at size 5 but only 6 shields, although with enough preparations we can still get a 4 turn settler factory, using a mOlive hill (2/2/2), a mSheep hill (2/3/2), 3 iFP (9/0/3) and our center square (2/1/1). The growth turns to size 6 & 7 would need to go to a 2spt tile then moved to a 2f/1s tile to give us a 6/8/7/9 shield yield.

Is it better to settle in spot or to move the settler W to the forest as far as the disease issue goes. IIRC disease is possible when a citizen is working a FP tile, so even founding the city in the forest we would still be subject to disease. Plus I would hate to give up the forest chop which could help rush a granary or a settler and the possiblility of that tile being a BG. We need all the shields we can get.

Click to expand...

As you say, the probability of flood plain disease inceases as you work more flood tiles. Building on the flood plain means we'll always be working one flood tile, even though we'll not be getting the food benefit from it.

The sheep won't give us three shields in despot as it's at 1 + 1 currently and hasn't absorbed the despot penalty. No point mining it until we get to Monarchy or Republic.

I initially didn't like the idea of moving west away from the coast, but it may not be a bad idea and I'm warming to it. There are definitely more forests W and SW, so we don't lose all forestry options. It does mean we only get disease probability from tiles we are getting a food benefit from. It would usually be a bad idea to build one tile from the coast, but in this case we are on an island, space will be tight, and settling there will allow us to build two more towns close by on the coast at RCP distances 3-3.5. It also has river defensive bonus on three sides on the landward direction. We lose access to the rocks (1/1/2 - not a big deal) and a flood plain over the water that we may not be able to develop anyway. It looks like we pick up some plains and more river to the W/NW. Yes, I like it

So perhaps the first turn is scout->goody hut then west to the hill. Worker starts irrigating. Settler moves west if the western terrain looks good.