Gotm21-Melee - Pregame Discussion

This month's game should be a great deal of fun for players at all levels and I can guarantee you that there are challenges, opportunities and plenty of things to keep the game fresh and exciting.

It is not possible for you to begin play at this time but you can strategize together about what you think you would do in the main strategic challenges of game.

This process should allow all the players to look over the setup instructions for the game and discuss what they think these instructions mean without the risk of any real spoiler information. Since none of the players will be able to start the game, essentially all you will have available to support your discussion will be past GOTM results and strategy articles.

The rules for participation in this discussion thread are simple:

1) read the game announcement and get yourself set up to play the game when the save game is released to you.

2) resources and Class Bonus features in this game have been announced in two separate threads so your main focus here should be on the central themes of big picture strategy, start position assessment, and map interpretation.

3) Once you download the starting save game file and open it to begin play you may no longer participate in this discussion thread.

I plan to leave this thread open to support pregame discussion for any players who have not yet opened the starting save game file but if we have any players who violate this rule the discussion will be closed.

Again there is a great deal going on inside and around this month's game, but at the core of the process the game is simple and fun. Read the instructions and you will have a good time.

Be warned also that the first spoiler discussion will not open until July 5th.

The first spoiler discussion will require you to have full visibility of the world map entire world map plus CONTACT WITH ALL 15 OF YOUR RIVAL CIVILIZATIONS.

Here is your link to the

Game Announcement Page for the Gotm21-Mediteranean Melee

Good luck as you move to discover and harvest all th new goodies that you now have in your game.

Very nice starting postion I must say! I'll build right where he stands. The good starting postion and the fact that it's monarch leads to me think that the game is going to be MUCH tougher than it looks.

Quote from GOTM announcement
Gotm21-Mediterranean Melee is a mediterranean style map game on Monarch base difficulty. The first spoiler discussion thread will not open until July 5th, 2003 and this initial discussion will require that you have revealed full world map visibility and gain contact with all the other civilizations in the world via exploration, diplomacy, and/or trading.

Click to expand...

Hmm.... that means single land mass I guess.

Maybe that means no x/y wrapping. But I think the idea is that sea is king, and most land is of narrow peninsulas and the like.

I think cracker gave us a coastal start for a reason. I will send my worker NW, to see what is there. the other direction that is coastal doesn't look promising as you will lose the resource (olives?) on the hill.

What do people think those 2 bonus resources we can see are? The one directly to the left of the settler, is that wool? Cotton? I am presuming the one on the hills SW of that is olives....
If we assume that it is cotton, the start position is okay, but not excellent in my view.
The luxury would help for happiness and potentially production, but not much for food.
On initial viewing there are only 2 decent food producing squares in view, the fish and olives. The Fish would need a harbour to get much better.
My biggest worry initially would be the lack of river or any fresh water. I don't see this city being a settler factory... No way... This city might have to become a production/science powerhouse (only producing 1 or 2 settlers)? Leaving the settler production to another close city with decent food/production balance.
Good place to start exploration of the sea from though....
Just my pennys worth!
Kello

My observations.

2 food - must be Lambs.
Only three 2 food tile in visible area, no visible access to water. May have trouble even growing.
SE, SE looks suspicious. Looks like a Wool when I compare it to the resources.pcx file. If it is, it means a (2, 2, 1) bonus tile where mining wouldn't help.
NE, NE, NE is a coast meaning there is probably more land to the NE area.
E, E looks like grassland so there might be more food there.
W, SW, SW looks like desert or floodplain.
Plains to the S Area

@kello: I don't think it's cotton. I assume it's a lamb (or sheep). If the snapshot of the startposition has the same terrain mod as the snapshots of the new resources, then there is no luxury in the visible area of the start position, because their is no happy face.

I do agree with kello that this is not gonna be an ideal place for a settler factory. Without irrigation (no immediate river or lake in sight), there are only 3 tiles (maybe a fourth at WNW) that produce 2 food in Despotism (without a harbor). Getting to Republic or Monarchy seems even more paramount with this start location. This will be a reasonably productive city for a coastal one. This will make building the harbor less problematic and it's probably an ideal location for The Lighthouse! If no river is close, it seems logical to road/mine the 2 bonus tiles immediately. This will make churning out hoplites real easy before our first settler.

I think going for a really early war could pay off bigtime on this map with this start position.

mudfoot
Edit: a spellingchecker would be so nice

As I expected, no river/lake for the 1st city... but a bunch of these new resources. Very interesting for how to manage them, I hope I will make the best of it immediately... 3 billion years, so a lot of hills and mountains of course. Crazy thing : this is a north coast ; I would have thought that this would be a south coast. 15 rivals... yeah, this is Melee...

I think, at 1st glance, that I will settle right on the starting tile (to change from my past 2 GOTMs ). I don't see any point in moving onto another tile, but let's check with cracker's advice :
- there is no food bonus on the starting tile ;
- we're not in hostile terrain nor isolated ;
- we already are on the coast ;
- there is no substantial military advantage in moving 1 square.
So let's settle in 4000bc !!!

EDIT : And according to other people, we should mine the sheep/lamb/cotton tile, so I think I'll move my worker there, then settle if nothing REALLY interesting appears.

Wow, that sounds quite interesting: greek civ, 10 new resources, mediterranean environment, 15 rival civs ...

This will be the first GotM game I play. I've been playing Civ3 most often in Regent level so far, so I think Monarch should'nt be that much of a hurdle for me, so I'll play Open class.

I'll build my capital in 4000 Bc just on the starting position. Move with the worker on the lamb square, building road & mine. Build a warrior in my city, who will then move to the east, looking for a source of fresh water ...!

I agree with Gingerbread - makes sense to check out the woods before deciding on city start.

It's not bad for settlers - just not as good as it could be. Hopefully the first exploring warriors will find a better site - but I've had worse settler factories...

15 civs? Could be a crowded map.

About the size of the map vs the number of civs. In GOTM20 we had 10 civs and 5000 tiles (55% H20 -> 2250 land tiles) . That's approx 225 tiles each if all else was equal. In this we'll have 15 civs and 8450 tiles (46% H20 -> 4563 land tiles). Approx 304 tiles each!
So that leads me to think that there'll definately be some juicy settlement opportunities, but we're likely to be bunched up close to a number of civs early on, so early war may be inevitable to develop a decent "liebensraum".
Cheers

Kello

Originally posted by KELLO
..."liebensraum"...

Click to expand...

FYI I think you mean lebensraum (= room to live). Liebensraum translates to 'room to love' .

Fibonacci, this Monarch game may be tougher than your average Regent games. There is a reason that Cracker dropped us down to Monarch level after last month's Diety and gave us all those extra resources. Most people were concerned about the diety game, but then after playing, found out that it wasn't as bad as thought. Some of us, including me, got our first wins on that game.

So now, we all start thinking, Monarch? That's a piece of cake, I'll knock out a victory in the first couple of days. But I'll bet this game will be much tougher than we are thinking. Good luck to all.

Great presentation, reall builds up the atmosphere for the next GOTM!

I also love the photo of Leonidas' statue at the Thermopylae, even if it is a modern thing...

The starting position might indeed yield low food if there is no river nearby for some irrigation. Indeed, the first thing I'll be looking for is just a river.

I will most probably move the worker on the sheep/wool, to build a road and give a small look around.
I suspect we won't find better starting locations within a couple of tiles, so I may indeed settle right where I am.

Hello all,

This will be my first shot at GOTM. I will go for Open class because Monarch is the level I usually play. If it is a 'hard' Monarch that would probably be fine with me as a challenge. How hard can Cracker really make it, I wonder though.

I think I will move the worker to the lamb/sheep tile to look around a bit and if no surprise shows I will settle on the spot.
No river in sight, bummer that. I wonder if the is ny river nearby. Hopefully there is.

No I meant room to love... You know pro-create, sow my seed, develop and prosper....

Ooops

This will be my first crack at a GOTM so I'm glad its monarch & not deity (I normally play regent) & I'll see what happens. Start position looks good, with 15 rivals looks like early expansion is crucial, and early wars could be good, esp. as hoplites are near inpenetrable defence in the early game.

That's about all I can think of, I just hope I can manage to get the graphics mods to work!

this will be my first GOTM i normally play on regent. I will be playing conquest class.
I think that i will go hunt for water. With the extra workers i will try to get water back to the capital. Then i will go looking for a place for a settler factory.

I'm hardly and expert at reading maps, but shouldn't the N/N/NE tile be ocean? It's sea, so there must be coast somewhere on the other side of it. I think (though I can't really tell) that the N/N/N tile may be sea as well. That might be a large lake, as long as it doesn't take up more than 25 (?) tiles. That may just be hopeful thinking, though.

After having studied the larger view of the start, there could be a bonus resort of some sort to the south. I'm blowed if I can tell what it is though... and it's outside the start radius.

If this turns out to be totally bogus, don't come crying to me... I still think the closest irrigation source is NW, and if I'm wrong, well, using that worker to find some water might be more important than hooking up a luxury.