SGOTM3 Rome - Team Peanut

SGOTM3 Rome - Game Thread.

Hi everyone, and welcome to your game thread.

Here is the start position.


Here are a couple of links you might find useful.

The Original GOTM16 Announcement.
The Draft Constitution

This Months' sponsored variant is Xenophobic NOW
The rules are as follows.
1. Non-Oscillating War variant. You keep a list of opponents and the order in which you meet them.
2. You must declare war on the first Civ you meet before leaving the diplomacy screen for the first time.
3. You must stay at war with that Civ until one of you have been eliminated.
4. You must declare war on the second Civ you met on the same turn that the first Civ was eliminated or 20 turns has elapsed (whichever happens sooner). This is to prevent sandbagging.
5. After each opponent is eliminated or 20 turns elapse you must declare war on the next civ in the list.
6. If you run out of opponents because you haven't met them yet and 20 turns have elapsed, you must declare war on the next opponent you meet before leaving the diplomacy screen for the first time with them

The Xenophobic part of the variant runs as follows.
7. You may never own a foreign worker. You must never buy or sell one, and if you capture them they must be disbanded on the tile on which they were captured.
8. All deals must be at face value. No haggling.
9. You will not establish embassies.
10. You will never retain a town that contains foreign citizens. Such towns must be razed and any workers spawned disbanded.

Also there is a puzzle involving some non-standard Barbarian Units. The puzzle is framed in the same way as it was for the original GOTM16, but the solution is different.

The save will be available from >>HERE<< when the timelock is released. All of your teams save files will eventually be available from this link.

When you finish your turn, you may upload your save to >>THIS<< link

Have fun, and good luck everyone!

Welcome fellow Generals ! We stunned our competitors (and quite frankly ourselves) with our SGOTM 2 variant win ! Well done folks.

However - we must not rest on our gold laurel because this variant is a killer. This Xenophobic variant has a high probability of crushing us into Peanut paste. By the way, we ARE attempting the sponsored variant, aren't we ?

I suggest that we map out our strategy,particularly for the ancient age period, as I believe this period will make or break it for us. Let's just throw our ideas in and see what insights we all have.

I have to go out now but I will post my ideas this afternoon or tonight.

civ_steve checking in. It looks like SGOTM3 is up, and Team Peanut is assembled (minus one, unless planetfall reconsiders)!

PTW 1.27 worked well for us, so I'm assuming we'll stay with that version of civ.

And everyone seems ready to follow our leader into the grinding house and try the variant. Why not? What's the worse that can happen? OK, let's don't think too hard about that!! We had a grand victory in SGOTM2; let's see what 3 brings.

Peglegasus: I'm curious to see what your investigations have uncovered. I've never played any of the AW or similar variants, so this will be somewhat new for me. Playing as Rome, it makes sense to me to beeline up BronzeWorking and IronWorking, locate Iron, get it hooked up and get Legionaires out and GA going as soon as possible. Probably need to get 3 or 4 good production cities going as fast as possible, with barracks, and build up the military; lot's of Veteran Warriors, maybe some Archers although I'm not real fond of them. Unless we get a chance to do a real quick killer thrust, do more harassing attacks on the first civ we contact, kill exposed workers, do in any military that comes out to engage us, until we have a large force concentrated to finish them off. Take advantage of the 20 turns to take out the first civ before declaring on the 2nd. Not sure if we should be actively scouting for civ1, or just hanging close to the core.

Anyway, I'm off to get the save, to check out the start location. Who will be up first?

(edit: oops, saves not available yet)

I have played several AW varients at Regent level and have had no trouble winning. The key is to let them come to you piece meal (the AI is so stupid and predictable) and chew them up in defensive battles until you are strong enough to go on the offence. At the point the game moves very fast as you steam roll across the map. I have only played a half way through first ancient age at high levels, but the initial attack by the AI is tough! They come at you in waves. Therefore I would suggest the following.

Delay contact as long as possible. Make bronze working and iron working our first techs. We also want to get to Math ASP to get cats. The only improvements we need are barracks. We should go for a close build of cities at first and make roads a priority. Believe me we will need the mobility and mutual support at first. In addition, we will only want to mine to get our cities to 5 shield per city level each. This will give us the most bang for our worker buck during our early golden age.

Well I'm no expert at this but I did find a few things that were useful in my games. I didn't get very far... only about halfway into the Middle Ages. So here are my thoughts.

Walls. I never build them normally. But when you have enemies coming in every few turns on your little pop 2 and 3 towns they really help. They aren't needed in every town but definitely border towns and any town that has important resources in its radius. They really help tons with barbs too, and we will have lots of barbs around since we will be torching all the AI cities and leaving lots of empty space. Walls for me meant having elite spearmen all over the place! I used those guys to defend my attack stacks and even got a Great Leader from one on guard duty. Walls are quick and easy to build and don't cost any maintenance.

I was building archers first for the extra punch. They take down the enemies scouting units very easily. Once I located the nearest enemy civ I would have a couple archers roaming around their territory watching for settler pairs to knock out. This was before I had a proper attack force to move in. It seemed to help a bit. Kept the AI from expanding as quickly. Also a good way to get elite units. I suggest waiting until there are a couple barracks in place to build warriors.

As far as tech progression, this is what worked best for me. Go for bronze working first for spearmen defenders. Or pottery if we don't want to wait and hope the first civ we meet has it for trade. After bronze, iron working is 40 turns, so i would go for the wheel instead. After the wheel we should have a couple new towns built so iron working is a little quicker to get to. We need masonry to build city walls. Now, since we will be doing a LOT of self research we need libraries asap. Go for writing and then literature. We need to be researching at the MAX we can afford at this stage. Speed is essential. After that, horseback riding. At this stage it's tricky what to research. Of course we hope to be able to trade for a couple techs but it's hard and unpredictable. We needn't bother with Republic since that government type simply will not work for us. Perhaps a good path at this stage would be Polythesim to Monarchy. Monarchy will be a good tradable tech too, if there is anyone available to trade with. With Monarchy I was able to get all the other essential techs except for construction.

edit: oh, as Keith said... Math for catapults! we need to fit that in early somewhere. they help immensely.

Wonders. Can you guess which wonder I'm going to talk about? Of course. The Great Library. It was essential in the games I played. Some may disagree with me but I strongly suggest building it by hand if possible. Here is what worked for me. Once I had a moderately good settler pump and at least 2 other towns building units and workers, I dedicated my next town to a pre-build. There are lots of things that this can be used for. One of course being a pre-build for the library. If we start building early this should work out for us, even on emperor. If we get a leader around the time that Literature is available we could use the leader to rush the library somewhere else and hold the pre-build for something else like Sun-Tzu's or Leonardo's. If we really luck out with leaders early we can rush the library somewhere else and use our pre-build for heroic epic. I may be crazy, but this worked out for me. And remember, we can't capture wonders so if we want one, we need to build it ourselves.

Neighbors. Let's hope we have some pushover neighbors. One of my unsuccessful experiment games had me start adjacent to Carthage, Greece, and Persia. The crushed me. The hardest part was overcoming those tough defenders of Carthage and Greece. If we find ourselves close to Persia they need to be taken down before they get immortals. Same thing probaly with the Celts. I took down Persia in my game when they only had three towns, using only archers with a couple spearmen to defend the stacks. Carthage and Greece crushed me though, but I wasn't using the 20 turn "grace period" like in the variant. I was just declaring on them as soon as we finished our first encounter.

Golden Age. I suggest delaying it a bit if possible. Build archers, spears and horsemen first. The Golden Age can be very useful in this variant and a Golden Age with 3 towns kind of blows. Exception: if we need to take down a tough neighbor like Greece or Carthage, or even the Minoans (actually I don't think they will be available, never mind) we need Legions.

The Start Scout only the immediate area around the capital to look for good city sites. Remember to take terrain into consideration for city defense when building cities. Once we meet our first civilization, no unprotected settlers! And with workers, make sure there are defensive units close enough to move in to protect. Our workers will be very valuable. After we declare on our first enemy, we need to find their cities. Mustering our first assault force will take a bit of time, but that doesn't mean we can't go and harrass them. 2 archers and a spear grouped together and sitting on a mountain or a hill somewhere between us and them will give us warning of incoming troops and will be able to take some of them out before they get to us.

That's it for now.

Played a test game using the variant rules and this is what I learned. The path of BW, IW, Masonry, Math is a good one because by the time the AI gets writing they will trade contacts and be eager for your Math. The key is not to accept their offers at the beginning of the turn. At this point we will have contact with everyone and the only nation we can’t trade with is the first to contact us (which we are now at war with). Even with straight up trades I was able to trade for everything the AI had. This put me in the position to start researching Lit at which gave me the Great Library. Which is KEY to stay in this game. Here is why, 20 turns goes very quickly in the early game and there were no more trading opportunities after this. Without the GL we will have had to research every tech on our own!

Another lesson I learned is not to explore so aggressively. All we need to know is next city sites and explore for iron. Once iron is found pull back. I think I could have delayed contact for a few more turns if I had only done this. I also feel I built barracks too quickly. Most of the early warriors are need for police work duty anyway. I should have built only one barrack at first and this is the city the will build the vet warrior for upgrading. Besides I ran out of money before for I ran out of warriors in the first upgrade cycle.

Speaking of upgrade cycles with the GL it was possible to hoard gold, connect and reconnect the iron and upgrade vet warrior in waves.

To insure we get the GL I suggest we dedicate our second or third city for the pre-build. The key is to get this city to population 4 before the GA and have four one shield squares so that this city will produce a minimum of 10 shields per turn during the GA. This will give us 200 shields which is halve of what we need for the GL. During the golden age I would make sure this city always has a one shield (doubled to two) to grow into. Once there are enough squares to grow into, then I would turn the worker to mining the bonus grasslands so that at the end of the GA these will remain at two shields.

Sight criteria: By the sea so we can use the Colossus as a pre-build for the Palace. By a fresh water so it can grow past 6 and as many bonus grasslands as possible. The only reason I would build a temple in this city is if expansion gives two or more Bonus Grasslands or a needed resource of luxury. I think temples will be a waste of shields in this game.

After reading Peglegasus post I think we need to work out as a team what our early research path will be. I STRONGLY disagree with researching the Wheel. By the time we finish IW the AI will have the wheel and we will have nothing to trade. There are three techs in PTW the AI is slow in researching Poly, Math and Lit. Math is the easiest for us to get to early. Remember, I will have one and only one trading opportunity. Lets use it well.

Peglegasus' suggestion on walls and raiding archers is a good one.

I would not be too obsessed with delaying the GA. The Legionair is our greatest single advantage. The longer we wait the less of an advantage it will be. I suggest, using the GA for a the goal of building the GL. Grow this city as large as we can before the GA, make sure every square produces a sheild. Here are the numbers: Pop 4 (1 shield corruption) will produce 180 shields during a GA, Pop 5 will produce 220, and a Pop 6 will produce 260. As you can see an early GA is far from a waste if we use it well. The GL will give us much more that a GA every could in gold. Consider the value in gold of all the techs we will gain? If we dely the GA it is just for the purpose of getting our GA city to a high enough population.

Sounds good, Keith. So our desired tech path at the start (unless there are other suggestions) will be Bronze working, Iron Working, Mathematics. We then hope to trade for Writing, the Wheel, Masonry, and whatever else we can get our hands on. Then we need to research Literature right away. If we can get the Great Library we shouldn't need to build any libraries for self research (well... maybe later for the path to military tradition).

We need a spot picked out early to start the pre-build. Maybe by the time we have 3 or 4 towns.

What should our first builds consist of? In my games what worked well were 3 archers (with my worker that means max units with no cost) and then a settler. Then I would build a couple spears for defense. Then barracks in one of my two towns. Town with barracks builds mostly warriors for later upgrades and occasionally a spear or archer. By the way, are we modded for archers having defensive shot? I can't remember. My test games were in the Gotm random scenario so of course mine did. It sure is helpful against those early attacks.

edit: And what about the start position? I'd be tempted to drop the settler right there. Or maybe one move only... to the hill south or southeast to see what else might be near. Otherwise it looks good. All those tiles on the river will be much needed for cash once they are roaded.

Keith Larson said:

Remember, I will have one and only one trading opportunity. Lets use it well.

Click to expand...

Why do you say that?

Masonry is needed to get to Mathematics. I agree about libraries. Culture is not an issue in this game as we have to destroy every city we take anyway.

I think our first builds should be warriors. That way we can get a lay of the land sooner. When our sheild yeild is 3 per turn then we might want to think of an archer or spearmen as you only waste one shield, instead of two with a warrior. Even at this I still lean towards warriors early on. The way combat works in Civ a fortified warrior is a better use of sheilds than a fortified spearmen. Warrior is 1 + .5 FRU = 2, a spearman is 2 + 1 =3. Plus you get 2 units the enemy has to fight threw rather than just one. In saying this I am still for building a FEW spearmen, to place in the most threatened areas, but the bulk of our defensive force can be warrior. As for the archers I don't think they will have the defensive bonus so they will be far less valuable. Hopefully we can delay war until Legionairs are on line.

I am for settling on the spot, link up the wine (don't waste time mining until after the GA), roading the BG by the river, then roading the game in the woods. This will give us a road to our first city sight on the SW bank of the river. Then move the worker across the river to road the two BG on the other side of the river.

What do you guys think about cutting the forest down with the game to get more food?

I am for roading Bg only at first, and roading and mining none BG only to connect cities and resources until we run out of BG to road. This way we can get the most from our early GA.

Mad-bax,

Why do I say we will only have one trading opportunity? The AI sells contacts like hot cakes. By refusing all AI initiated offers as I am suggesting you will experience a string of AI initiated offers the first turn you have a tech they want. In one turn you will meet everyone your continant, be at war with the first contact, and trade at the end of the turn with the others. Early in the game it is unlikely that you can research a tech within the next twenty turns that they will be interested in buying. Even if you could manage another trade it will probably be only one more.

keith: there's no trade of contacts until Writing so I'd think, at least initially, there will be some gap between contacts. Also, the announcement page says the map is not Pangea; we might have a situation where we contact a few civs, then have to find another continent, contact a bunch more, etc. Since the AI doesn't do suicide galleys, if the other continents can't contact us, it will be up to us to do suicide galleys (in which case we're at war before we can do much about it) or do research up the Astronomy-Navigation path (in which case the Great Library only helps us with Techs on our initial continent). Or, we clear off our continent, building the Great Library, research up the lower path and sit there with hordes of Cavalry, waiting for the AI to contact US, give us every Tech that two of them know, and then we go to war! That might work, maybe. (After all, with limited trades available on our continent, we should be well behind any other continents; this should catch us up.)

So, Research wise, do BronzeWorking (trade if available), Ironworking, Masonry (trade if available), Mathematics. After that do we do the Wheel and Horsebackriding, or go up the Religious path to Monarchy?

GA: Early GA may be unavoidable. Monarchy is a long way away from where we are, and our path is not direct. I agree that Monarchy is much more important at this phase then Republic. In an early GA, roaded Rivers spaces will not generate any additional Commerce (3 - 1 = 2), and mined BG's do not produce a 3rd shield, either. Still the Legionaire is so valuable, it is hard to imagine not using them.

Rome placement: in a normal game, I'd move the Settler SW, to the bare Grassland, and have access to the Game space immediately; the Worker would go West and work that river BG right away. If we move the Settler S or SE, the Worker has less desirable moves. A Settler move S, means 2 moves to get the Worker to a river BG to improve; a Settler move SE means no game (very bad) and Worker goes NE to a non-river BG. I think Settler should found in place for hill defense bonus, and Worker go West to Mine, then Road the river BG.

Game Space: we should definitely chop it, and fairly soon. Shield production is a bit awkward to determine the best time; maybe after we have Pottery and are building a Granary. We could build a Barracks first; then some Vet Warriors. If threatened, we could convert to Warrior, or finish Archer. This would incur a 1 gpt cost early on, however. Reduce our research a bit. Just a thought.

Production: assuming Worker mines and roads the BG to W, then the next one South (2 SW from start), Rome will produce 77 Shields at turn 20 (Then 84 on turn 21, and 91 on turn22). Assume we pop a Settler out on turn 22, that give us 60 useable shields. Could be a Barracks, 2 Warriors and an Archer, or 3 Archers. Something along those lines. In general, I like Warriors, to upgrade later to Legionaires, but in this game we might want more initial punch. Maybe even do an archer rush after some development.

Steve,

I was speaking of only trades on our continent and assuming the map and opponents are essential the same as the original GOTM as last month's was.

I guess we will find out soon. Who starts?

and they're off ... saves are available, and two teams have completed round 1!!

I'd recommend we keep the order we were in before. Only question is where to start? Peanut finished off SGOTM2, so Peglegasus might be a good choice to start us off. bigchief hasn't checked in yet. And are we set up for initial moves?

Generals - some suggestions :

Growth : We need to grow as fast as possible. That means a settler factory, and Rome on the start position is ideal. Irrigated game gives loads of food, with mined BG for production. Plus wine for happiness. We should research Pottery fast, chop the forest and start building more Romans.

GA : We should delay the GA until we have a decent ring of productive cities to benefit from it. It will be in Despotism but the more cities we have the better.

Workers : We will need lots of these - fast conquest will depend on our famous Roman Roads for legions to trudge along. We will also need luxuries hooked up to reduce troops needed for MP duty and to save on lux cash.

Defence : Avoid spears for the ancient age. Legions have better defence and can attack. Plus they upgrade from warriors.

Techs : We will run out of trading partners quickly - once they have writing they will build embassies and sign alliances against us. We do not have this option. So we should build the GL to keep us at tech parity into the Middle ages.

Strategy :
1) Settle at start. Pottery at max. 2xWarriors for defence then granary prebuild. Road W BG, chop forest then irrigate & road game then mine BG.

2) Pump settlers and workers from Rome. Settle like crazy in a ring around Rome. Build only warriors (& barracks ?) for legion upgrades. Perhaps a few archers for early offence.

3) Ignore other civs for as long as possible. Perhaps send a warrior out to explore after a while. War when we are ready if possible.

4) Research (or Trade for) :
@max : Pottery(for granary)-
@max : BW-IW(for legions)
@max : Masonary(for prebuilds if needed)
@max : Writing-Lit (for GL)
@min : Maths (for cats)
@min : Wheel-HBR (possibly - horses are very useful and upgrade to Knights)

Then shut off research and save cash.

5) If we get a leader - rush GL if possible, Pyramids if possible( for growth acceleration).

Roster suggestion (on CS's suggestion) -
1) Peglegasus (20 turns to start)
2) Bigchief
3) Civ-steve
4) Keith Larson
5) Peanut

We should get started soon, so lets focus on our tactics for the first 60 turns (one round each). See Strategy point 1) and 2) above for my thoughts.

Peanut said:

...

Strategy :
1) Settle at start. Pottery at max. 2xWarriors for defence then granary prebuild. Road W BG, chop forest then irrigate & road game then mine BG.

...

4) Research (or Trade for) :
@max : Pottery(for granary)-
@max : BW-IW(for legions)
@max : Masonary(for prebuilds if needed)
@max : Writing-Lit (for GL)
@min : Maths (for cats)
@min : Wheel-HBR (possibly - horses are very useful and upgrade to Knights)

...

Click to expand...

I agree with most points. Point 1 is shield poor in my opinion. Not mining the BG means that Rome gains only 2 shields/turn for turns 1-9 (18 total), than 4 spt on turns 10-15 (+24) when the game space is in play. Worker chops on turn 15 adding 10 shields (total of 52 to this point), leaving Rome with either 2 shields/turn production and a cleared game, or 3 shield/turn using an unroaded river BG. You need 80 to build 2 warriors and a Granary, so that is not until turn 27 using the game right away, or turn 25 using the unroaded BG. And Rome is still just a 3 shield/turn city, 2nd city is not built, and there's probably at least 1 civ at war with us sending stacks of units our way (ok, 2 or 3 warriors most likely)

I'd suggest following the steps I spelled out earlier: move Worker West, mine and road BG; move Worker South, mine and road BG, then move to Game space, clear, irrigate and road. The first two spaces take 10 turns each to develop, and give a 5 shield/turn capability even after the game is cleared. And Rome pops out a Settler on turn 22, so a 2nd city is built allowing more research and a capability to build units while Rome is building it's Granary. We also would have an army of 3 Regular Archers, or a Barracks with 2 Vet Warriors and a Vet Archer (or some combination of Vets and Regulars). This also allows us to research BronzeWorking first, giving us an opportunity to trade for Pottery if available; I don't advocate building a lot of spearmen, but it's nice to have the capability if needed, and the sooner the better. (Building Granary right away requires a start on Pottery ASAP.)

I also noted point 4; I'd suggest researching BronzeWorking first if following the scenario I've laid out.

I like settling on the start spot. Probably best not to scout at all until we have established a 2nd city; let the AI come our way first.

I agree with Great Library, if we get a GL and Know Literature. Otherwise, Pyramids are quite nice.

Big Chief checking in. I have been on a mad dash to finish GOTM32. There was never a chance at a good score, but it could have been one of the best comebacks ever, however I had my heart ripped out at the end when I suffered a humiliating defeat. Now that that one is over, I can concentrate on this game, and I am ready to play when my time comes.

I agree with most of the suggestions posted above. I do think The Wheel and HBR are important. Leigons are great, but they take forever to get to the battle. If we meet a couple of expansion scouts early, their home countries could be 20 turns away before we can even get there, putting us at war with 2 civs before we can even attack the first one.

We must keep building settlers, since we can't keep any cities, and we need to build as many workers as we can stand. They will have to go along with the first wave of leigons and build a road to our enemy, so more can follow quickly, and leigon armies are useful up until cavs.

I agree with not exploring too much, and delaying contact as long as possible.

We are militaristic, and barracks are cheap. I think we should build them in as many towns as possible. I don't think we can afford to have only one or 2 towns producing units.

As for the wonders, I agree that the Great Library is a must. If we can get a leader early enough for the Great Library, The Pyramids, or Lighthouse that would be nice. Otherwise I think we should for sure use an early leader to build an army. Militaristic + Hero Epic = many leaders in this game, if we survive. The AI will almost never attack an army in the open, so if our troops, settlers, and workers are escorted by an army, they won't get attacked as they trudge slowly towards their target.

Let's hope we are on continents, and the other is too far for the AI civs to reach. Maybe we can keep our rep intact, if we can wipe out the civs on our landmass before contact is made with the others.

We won't be able to extort techs for peace, and may not have much of trade value to get any techs. We are pretty much going to have to do all of our own research, so we must build libraries and universities.

It is going to be a struggle from the very beginning. Even though we are going to be playing a war type variant, we can't afford to neglect any other part of the game.

It is going to be a challenge to defend our title. I think the winner of the of the gold laurel, may well be the only team that survives.

Or ... Option 3. Move Worker West, Mine, Road, then move to Games and chop. Chop finishes at end of turn 21 (so effectively turn 22.) Rome gets 2 spt for turns 1-7 (14), 3 spt for turn 8-9 (20), then 5 spt for turns 10-19 (70); at size 3 it gains 6 spt, so turn 20 (76), turn 21 (82), turn 22 (98, with chop just finished). 3 Warriors and a Granary would waste 8 shields (might as well not chop at this point); but 2 Warriors, an archer, and a Granary would finish on turn 23 with only 2 shields wasted. Rome is back to 4 spt, so in 8 turns it would spit out a Settler, turn 31 (maybe a turn earlier as it is gets at least 3 food / turn and with the Granary.)

This option would suggest researching Pottery first and gives us an extra unit.

(edit: hi bigchief! I read your post; nice comeback attempt, but the 2nd place civ snuck in a spaceship while you were taking care of the 1st place civ. Ouch!)

So should I go first as suggested? If you all think we are ready I can play it tonight. Last minute suggestions anyone?

civ_steve said:

(edit: hi bigchief! I read your post; nice comeback attempt, but the 2nd place civ snuck in a spaceship while you were taking care of the 1st place civ. Ouch!)

Click to expand...

They were the 2nd place civ in the space race, but actually I was first in score, and had been for quite a long time, I was just so far behind in tech.