Ultimate 2 Player C3C PBEM

I am challenging anyone to a two player game, but not just any two player game. This game will have locked alliances, with each player controlling 4 civs. That's right, no need to read it again, each of us will control 4 civs in a locked alliance. This will be a real strategy tester, some of the most crucial decisions will have to be made before even taking the first turn.

In my eagerness to try this type of game, I will also let my challenger pick all of the settings. That's right, no need to read that again either, you pick all the settings. And furthermore, you can even pick all four of your civs first, and I will even allow you to make changes to your picks after I make my selections should you decide to do so, on the condition that I be allowed to then make changes, but then you'd want to make changes again, then I'd make ... this could get out of hand, but with a game like this, civ selection just might be the most important decision you'll make. One note, should you decide to go random civs you will be handicapping yourself, and I will not go random civs.

Some options to consider if you've never had an alliance PBEM:

turn order, 3 basic choices:

AAAABBBB - fastest
AABBAABB - more balanced
ABABABAB - balanced but slow

location, again 3 basic choices:

(using culturally linked starts and modifying the culture group of our civs we can predetermine how our civs are spaced out)

we can have all four near each other
two pairs each nearby each other
just throw them out there anywhere (culture linked starts off)

i am willing to even prepare more than one map / game to be debated between us to decide which one we would like to go with, can't let you have sole decision over that matter

furthermore, I am willing to consider any other requests for this game as long as it remains 2 player, 4 civs each w/ locked alliance.

I'll take the first player who posts here to accept the challenge and includes their email, my only requests are you try to post all your set up requests within 24 hours of accepting the challenge and you try to take your turns within 24 - 48 hours, i always take my turns w/in 24 hours, usually within 6-8 hours, w/ some minor exceptions when my availability was limited due to circumstances not completely under my control.

any settings not chosen by you will basically be default settings unless otherwise specified before start of game, and furthermore, once the game is set up and before the second turn is taken, if you overlooked something and would like the settings adjusted I would be willing to comply. if you have any questions that's fine, i will refrain from starting the game until it is done the way you would like.

You know I want to play!

okay dogboy, i already have your email, you got a thing for these alliance PBEMs? Go ahead and post settings and civ choices when ready. i'm 90% sure my technical difficulties are over and wont have any delays.

Ok, here is what I want:

World size Large
No barbarians
Continents with 60% water
Climate is normal
Temperature is temperate
Age is 4billion
All victory conditions are enabled except wonder victory
Emperor difficulty (debatable if you want)
Turn cultural linked start off
Enable cultural conversions.

My civs:
Iroquois
Maya
French
Ottoman

Turn order is:
AAAABBBB

Somebody needs to make the map for us. If you make the map, send me the file so I can take a look at it, would only be fair I think. But I think the best way is to have someone make the map. I have someone who might be able to make the map tonight if you can't find anybody.

Let me know what you think.

okay, dogboy, before proceeding i wanna check som eof yur settings, in particular one of your choices will affect my civ selection.

No barbarians

Click to expand...

no barbarians means no goody huts, is this the setting you want, this effectively eliminates the expansionist trait, and seeing you dont have any expansionist civs possibly that is what you intended, need clarification before choosing my civs, obviously im not going to pick an expansionist civ with this setting. i kind of like removing this aspect from the game though, it eliminates a certain element of luck.

emporer means one content citizen, which is fine by me, no AI, no barbs this is the only aspect it would affect.

accelerated production, for this type of game i think it's best to keep it off, you did not specify unless i missed it.

Iroquois
Maya
French
Ottoman

Click to expand...

you stole one of my civs !!!
is this the turn order you want the civs to go, i.e. iroquois would be your first turn, then the Mayan, etc, probably doesn't matter

Turn cultural linked start off
Somebody needs to make the map for us.

Click to expand...

fine by me if someone makes a map if this is the way you want to go, but it's not really necessary, if you want all of your civs together all i need is to modify the culture group so that they are all the same (put Iroquois, Mayans, Ottomans, French in same culture group) then turn cuturally linked starts on, my civs would also have the same culture group, but one that is different from yours. The original, default culture group of each civ would be completely irrelevant. We would use a map that is generated just like in a normal game and i wold never get to look at it. Can make several games and after first turn we rank them to decide which map we are going to use, or whatever. A variation is to pair our civs off, two of them in the same culture group starting close together. the culture group is the only change i would make & would be simple to do to set up this game, i suggest we go with this method as opposed to having a map maker, alternatively we could find a third party to set up the game for us with the culture groups method instead of a map, but however you want to go is fine, just wanted to let you know there are other options. The advantage is without a third party the game is a go whenever we are ready without having to wait for someone else to start it for us, of course the disadvantage is there is no guarantee i dont cheat, so another method is for you to set it up w/ the culture groups and go ahead and be the first player, my point of view has always been i dont cheat because it steals from the victory and if my opponents feel they must cheat to beat me, deep down inside they know their victory is tarnished. The point is i dont mind letting you start it.

I will choose my civs a little later and allow you to review your choices to see if they are satisfactory. BTW, like the combination of traits you went for.

No goody huts, yes that takes away the luck factor. And since there are no AIs to meet, don't need the expansionist trait except to scout the land.

Yes, my civs are in order, that's fine.

You can go ahead and make the map. I trust you not to cheat, hope you don't think I implied you did.

I don't want us to be 4 civs in the east and 4 civs in the west. That's why cultural linked needs to be off. True, one of our civs could potentionally get surrounded by 3 or 4 enemy civs, but that's part of the game.

No accelerated production.

I was thinking emperor for the military police issue. If you want to lessen the difficulty, no problem here. If you even want to move it down a notch or two, I don't mind.

Sorry for taking your civ choice

I may want to change my civs after I see your choices, but I probably won't. I thought long and hard about what civs to pick.

i think you made some good choices & i might have severely handicapped myself by letting you choose all foru of your civs first, but thats all part of the challenge. i must compliment you overall on the settings you chose, w/ large world 60% water should encourage a peaceful game during the ancient era & even maybe part of middle ages, which gives you an advantage w/ your uu (sipahi, musketeers) i started to choose some civs strictly for their uu, but with expansionist trait all but eliminated it was too hard to get the right combination i thought would do well if for example i took Russia, or another civ which i thought would be handicapped but could benefit from being paired with an expansionist. I'm not complaining about settings, it does limit some options, takes 'luck' element out of game and should make for more importance on strategies. Also, with the settings, it works fine to just throw our civs out there and not use the culture groups because early wars will probably not occur simply do to spacing / lack of early contacts, and then the issue of actually transporting troops to the other civ. Therefore, once we consider war (and who knows, we might even end up w/ strictly a peaceful game or not, but hope it never really just evolves into all out war, which in time it probably will) all our civs should be of considerable size and have capabilities of not being overly vulnerable to isolation.

I never really thought you implied any cheating, just concerns about unfair advantage. I wont be making / checking any maps, it will be generated just like a normal PBEM map, will be interesting to see how we end up spaced out, big world it will remain a mystery for several centuries.

Well, without further delay, here's my civ choices:

Persia
Sumeria
India
Celts

definitely not my first choices, but the best combination with the settings and remaining choices i can think of. I'm just curious, given what was already chosen, if you were me what would have been your selections? I'll post my original first choices after game starts. Unless you have any other questions / changes, I'll start the game as soon as you post an I'm ready. Sorry it took so long aout choices, but you made it really hard, not the sort of line up I wanted.

One final question, do you want any customization of your tribes? And especially how do you want your name on each of the four civs, if no answer i'll go with French Dogboy, Mayan Dogboy, Iroquois Dogboy, Ottoman Dogboy.

Ok, let's get this party started! I don't want to change any of my civs. The names of my civs can be French DogBoy, etc...Don't need to customize them anymore than that. As for your question on which civ should you pick, well, that's a tough one. Before I asked for no barbs, America and Russia were going to be two of my civs. I was actually thinking of going with Persia as one of my civs, but I just started the Heihojin game #12 with them so didn't want to pick them again. Plus, my Ottomans have their traits (but with a later UU). The Celts were going to be another choice of mine before I scrapped them because I figure with the tech race, some of the low end UUs won't be as important. True, I have two UUs that come very early, but the Mayan with agri and indus is just so powerful, that there are many ways I plan on playing them depending on how the game stacks up. I was also thinking of being India, due to their awesome UU in case I don't get iron, that and the additional hp they get. But I figured the French musketeer with it's 5 defense and bombard of two is just the uber-pillager like nothing else that early in the game (if it comes to that). So you actually have three civs that I was thinking about picking but decided against for whatever reason. Ya, that's 5 civs I just mentioned (America, Russia, Celts, India, Persia). It was a hard decision and guess we will just see what the best combination is. I will have to look at all the civs before telling you what I think would be a good counter (after the game starts Anyway, I think it's funny that neither one of us picked a militaristic civ. Either that means neither one of us plans on doing any fighting, or we thought the other attributes were more important. I think w/o a MGL being able to rush GWs, militaristic trait went down a notch or two. I also like two of your civs being religious. That's always a good trait. Now I wonder if you are going for either a 100k cultural win or possible a OCC 20k! I just thought of that, wouldn't that be something if one of us tried to pull that off and it won? As for this being a peacful or warring game, guess we just going to have to see in game

yeah, i went w/ two religious & two scientific because outside of industrial / agricultural / expansionist i like those two triats best, then commercial, plus when trying to balance my civs to not pick any expansionist it just turned out that way, will discuss more logic about choices later, you made good decision about persia / ottomans, i have to quit or i'll go on and on about these choices, imprtant to just set up game now give me about 30-45 minutes if you're stil going to be up, takes me awhile to set up a game because of double-double checking to make sure everything is right & my first turn decisions are usually long (do i settle or do i move, which direction do i move, maybe i should just go ahead and settle,no i should mopve close to that river ....)

no problem, i will be up until 1:00am eastern time (midnight yours). Then I gotta get some sleep. Really looking forward to this

it's in the mail

good luck ... er ... i mean extremely bad luck, hope you land in middle of desert, swamps, jungle, volcanoes

if starts are bad let me know will restart

also willing to do a couple setups to allow us to choose, but this one is fine w/ me.

Hey, will you guys post some pics?

I really want to see how this one pans out

Ya, I can post some pics. Let me upload my starting position pics and post the link here. Ok, here are my start positions at least. I trust Predesad won't go and look at them. Since we haven't discussed anything about posting picks or anything like that, I don't want to post them here. If you want to make a comment about my starts like "wonderful" or "you idiot, you settled in wrong place", then PM me. Please don't post them here. I did notice that both Predesad and I settled two cities on the first turn and two cities on the second turn. I only wish he had settled all four cities on something like the 3rd or 4th turn Anyway, click here to see my starts.

Alliance

posting picks in a link is a good idea, we can turst each other not to view the links i believe and anyone who wants to comment please keep those comments privately directed towards the other player via email or pm, i won't be posting any pics right now, but probably in the future.

Right now a few interesting coincidences:

no militaristic or seafaring civs (expansionists removed due to settings)

both have a civ which is scientific & industrial
both have exactly two agricultural
both settled two civs first turn
both settled other two civs second turn
both have uu's genarally focused for late ancient / middle ages
both agree predesad will win this game

for interested observers, like captaincommando, i am now beginning discussion of game strategy, it will not be anything which will allow dogboy to really see what my exact plans are, but since this makes the 5th game we are currently playing together, he's probably going to get a good idea about my tactics anyway.

before discussing any in game matters or posting pics, most of which will be in links to another site, i am going to start with my decisions regarding civ choices.

initially, though undecided, i was contemplating the following civs:
russia, maya, france, ottoman, america, portuguese, inca, germany, japan

what i was going to attempt to do was take 4 civs all with different traits, but in a combination that would be most beneficial, but thought about sacrificing seafaring trait, if i sacrificed the seafaring trait, i would have taken one extra of expansionist / industrial / agricultural, again undecided

then dogboy made an unexpected move and removed the expansionist trait from the game via his desired settings (no barbarians) this is not to be viewed as a complaint because i think it might purify the game, no 'lucky' techs / settlers / cities / gold and no barbarians to build up unit experience or get golden age without going to war. while some view barbarians as a challenge to the game, i think it makes the game easier and always play with raging barbarians, yes it costs me a few units, but i get elite units and if i want it, GA without a war.

Without the expansionist trait i would have liked to have abandoned the sefaring trait and doubled up on agricultural and industrial, naturally the Mayans come to mind and they would have been my first choice, then I would have chosen the french for industrial / comercial and their good defensive middle ages UU. that would have left me needing scientific, religious, militaristic, and another agricultural. I had already scoped out Japan for militaristic / religious plus their strong middle ages uu and they start with The Wheel instead of warrior code, the wheel has a higher research cost over warrior code plus gives you the horses resource. This would leave me lacking the scientific trait plus my second agricultural, naturally the sumerians come to mind and they come packaged with a uu that is basically a spearman at warrior build cost. But then, i also contemplated the germans which have the strongest UU coming in the industrial age and are militaristic / scientific leaving me lacking the religious trait and an additional agricultural, naturally the Celts come to mind.

I am not currently sure which combo i would have taken the Japanese / Sumerian or German / Celtic, but that is irrelevant, however, because with the removal of barbarians, the militaristic trait is also not as attractive, plus with a two player game it immediately sends out the signal that you plan on going to war using that civ and makes it a possible target for early elimination.

Therefore, having eliminated three traits now I think I would have done what Dogboy did with a slight twist, I would have tripled up on the industrial, two agricultural, and one each of scientific, religious, commercial. Naturally, I would again go with Maya and France, then I would add the Ottomans because of their very late middle ages UU and gives me industrial / scientific. Now, I am lacking another agricultural and religious, again that would be the Celts.

First Four choices:
Maya
France
Ottoman
Celts

So you see, Dogboy did not just take one of my choices, as stated earlier, he took three of them, this left me devestated as I had to start from scratch in picking my civs.

Next post: How I chose my civs based upon Dogboy's choices.

When Dogboy kidnapped three industrial civs he left me trying to remake my entire game strategy. Not only did he choose three industrials, but two of the remaining (America & China) were undesirable to me because of game settings. All along I anticipated he would choose the Mayans, but did not think he would take the French because my experience is not many PBEMers ever take France or even want to play with them.

First off, the Ottomans were easily replaced by the Persians at the sacrifice of the better UU. When I was staring at civ choices, this was the only one i was sure of. Given my preferences I only had 7 left to choose from anyway. I wanted to avoid early ancient era UU because they would be useless. India was the lone civ left with a middle ages UU which also had desirable traits, commercial / religious, with the exception of Korea. I pondered Korea for awhile, the lethal land / sea bombardment was appealing, but I decided against going with a UU that I had to provide defense for at all times, even a 1 HP warrior would kill it. To me having your UU as a bombardment unit seems to weaken the effect, but maybe some game i'll try them and see for myself. I really think India's UU is powerful plus you dont need the typical 'knight' resources.

I knew I needed to double up on either agriculture or industrial, or both, would have preferred both originally. Egypt was out because even though they have the industrial trait i needed, their uu is early ancient age and i consider it very weak anyway because of the limits of it being wheeled. This meant there were no industrial civs left with a matching desirable trait. So, naturally instead of taking a civ with a trait i did not want , I just chose to go with double agricultural. I had all the other traits I wanted in my first two choices, which meant I was going to double up on some of those as well.

Let me say here part of my strategy was to get at least one of every trait (except expansionist, seafaring, militaristic which i had ruled out) I am not going to fully disclose why I chose that strategy, but part of it was to get as many of the starting techs as I could. With my choices I managed to start with one more tech than Dogboy, but that tech, ceremonial burial, has the lowest research cost of any tech, except pottery which costs the same. I would have chosen a militaristic civ if Dogboy had also chosen a militaristic civ. I also would have chosen a seafaring civ if Dogboy had chosen one. Again, the no barbarians made militaristic less apealing to me. I kind of like the seafaring trait, but did not want to give up another trait to get it unless my opponent had as well, i agree it is a weak trait, but does have some nice benefits at times in the game. If we ever have a huge naval campaign I will wish I had chosen Carthage because of being industrial or even the Dutch, good UU plus agriculture.

By doubling up on agriculture my remaining choices were simply the Celts and Sumeria because of the before mentioned trait limits, although in a way I still wish I had considered the Dutch more heavily w/ their UU. This was not really what I wanted, but I had put myself in this position by letting my opponent have all the first choices, I set it up that way because I still think my strategy will win out by sticking to my overall plan and I am not going to cry about it. I plan on starting another game as soon as I finish a couple other 'regular' PBEMs and I will again allow my opponent to make all the settings and choose civs first, my only requirement will be not the exact same four Dogboy chose otherwise the second game would lose some of its meaning.

In summary my four choices: Persia, India, Sumeria, Celtic

I have weaker uu in general, but think I can overcome that, would have been much worse if all of Dogboy's choices had been middle age uu. but then that would have left maya for me.

In the end, I am happy to have 2 agricultural, 2 religious, and 2 scientific as well as 1 industrial and 1 commercial. I think my 'plan' will still work, although it has been slightly altered. Cannot give much away here, but given the worthiness of my opponent he is probably thinking along the same lines.

Shortly, if others are genrally interested, I will post some strategies / pics and welcome any advice in this new game. However, I request others refrain from specifically advising either of us based on sensitive information of our opponent. Don't look at his pic then tell me I need to build more units because you can tell he is bulking up in military at a nearby civ. Don't tell me I need to build some galleys because he privately indicates he is about to start trying to island jump, or he posts pics of new island cities. You get the idea.

So, i can understand if you guys don't want to reveal too much of your long term strategy.... but do you think there will be a lot of war in this game, or it be fairly peaceful, i'm just wondering if it's going to be more of a desperate struggle for survival, or a space victory, or perhaps, since you have control of multiple civs, some could brawl while others build.

Damn, this game is so multi-dimensional

I noticed the same six things you noticed, except you got one thing wrong. Predesad will NOT win this game. To explain my civ choices, I would first have to start with the game paramaters. Since it was left up to the challenger, me, to pick the game setup and first choice of civs, I figured I had a good opportunity to swing things in my favor. I know Predesad likes to snatch up goody huts. In the other games I'm playing with him he's Inca, Portugal, American. So I first had to eliminate the goody huts, which means, no expansionist trait. That eliminated 8 civs from the pool. I also figured the tech rate would go fast in this game with 4 civs dedicated to researching different paths and swapping techs. That led me to believe lower end UUs wouldn't be very beneficial for very long. However, the middle age UUs would be very beneficial. That helped to either eliminate or at least nullify a few of the civs. For map choice, I picked continents instead of pangaea or archipelago. That would probably eliminate the seafaring trait, but not definately. I didn't want to pick any of the seafaring traits, but I wanted the option to remain open for Predesad in hopes that he would "waste" a choice by picking one of them. I also didn't want to pick any militiristic civs since I don't think that trait is as powerful now since MGLs can't rush wonders. I haven't had too much experience with the new armies so I hope I didn't make a mistake here. And the religious trait just isn't as powerful as others. I don't usually change governements that often, and I "might" not be going for a cultural win, so I didn't want to pick that trait. So now that I had the field at least narrowed down some, it was time to pick my civs. First choice was Iroquois. Even though they have an early UU, it can do well into the early part of the middle ages. A stack of mounted warriors against pikeman or even mustekman can be devasting with that withdraw ability. Plus their trait of agricultural is just phenomenal. Next choice was Mayan. Ya, very early UU, but the combined traits of agricultural and industrious is just too much to ignore. And if war does come early, enslaved workers are just so awesome. The next choice was the French. Once again, an industrious trait is just so good at rapidly expanding. Plus that middle age UU that can pillage like crazy is powerful. A two movement UU can pillage much better, but can be killed easier. Last pick was the Ottomans. Love that industrious trait, plus needed a scientific trait to try and snatch those SGLs. And the late middle age UU just owns until tanks come along for offense, and infantry come along for defense.

Other civs I thought about picking but didn't:
Russia and America before getting rid of the goody huts. I figured I could snatch up a bunch of goody huts and jump ahead, but figured Predesad would do the same.
Persia was another choice but since I just started another PBEM with them, decided against it. Was also the chance they may not get iron that early in the game and didn't want to risk that.
Greece for the early pillage strategy, but didn't think that would work in this huge map.
Germany for that awesome UU late game, but Predesad might focus on them and wipe them out.
China for their "possibly the best" early middle age UU, but I liked the Ottomans better.
Japan for same reason as China.
Mongols for their Keshiks, but no goody huts.


So I narrowed my choices down to what I picked. Hope I picked good ones.

Captain commando to answer your question, I have no idea how this game is going to go. It might be warlike and it might be peaceful. Might go for a space launch with the fast tech, but who knows. The possiblities are endless. It really is going to depend on where each civs are and if they are cut off. For instance, if I have four civs surrounding one of his civs, might kill that civ early. I'm sure Predesad would return the favor for me, and I don't think I'm discussing anything here that he's not thinking. Just going to have to see how this game plays out before making any decisions that lead towards a victory.

Dogboy, that was a very good catch looking at my other games and picking up the expansionist thing, of course remember Portugal I got by random (oddly enough i have portugal in two games and both were random choices out of only three times i have used random) I must confess expansionist is my favorite, then industrial, but now agricultural looks real good and it is simply too hard to decide among them sometimes.

Damn, this game is so multi-dimensional

Click to expand...

Why do you think I named it Ultimate 2 player? I believe it is original also because I have never seen anyone else set up a game like this. And of course to keep beating a dead horse (or is it a dog?) dogboy further added to the originality w/ the settings.

do you think there will be a lot of war in this game, or it be fairly peaceful

Click to expand...

who knows how it will play out, but i expect a mixture of both. i forsee circumstances where maybe i need one of my civs to remain peaceful, say the Celts, so I sign a peace treaty between all of Dogboy's civs and the Celts, then even though other civs may go to war and technically because of locked alliance Celts would be at war, they would not join the war or risk being attacked, of course that's assuming we remain honorable. But, in a game like this, it is probably going to really make it difficult if you dont honor your treaties, besides the overlap factor in other games, if i'm not honorable in this game then why would i be honorable in another game.
i suspect we will probably both not become set in our chosen victory path until the game is far along, maybe even in the industrial age, and even then may not limit ourselves, but go for 2-3 options. there really are only 3 choices (unless i'm overlooking something) conquest / domination nearly the same thing; culture; space race, obviously diplomatic is out, unless dogboy would be foolish enough to vote for my civ, the vote would be a tie. Which makes me think, what does happen in the event of a tie in the UN vote? Is the winner chosen by other means related to conditions of being a candidate or what?

Oh well, now back to my other post about civ selection.

Note: seven turns in first 24 hours

The Ottoman DogBoy has met the Sumerian Predesad. I have sent this e-mail to him. Now I shall wait to see his reply. The funny thing is, I was going to send him an e-mail this turn joking that I didn't think he was really in this game. It's turn 22 and this is the first we have met. Of course, I don't know if his civs have met each other, just like he doesn't know if mine have met each other.

Hail Sumerian Predesad,
My name is Ottoman DogBoy. It is nice to meet another civilization on this seemingly uninhabited land. I bring good tidings to you and your nation. I also bring a document that when signed shall bring peace and prosperity to our two fine nations. I propose a treaty of non-aggression between our people to last 20 turns. During that time neither of us shall attack one another, violate another one's borders, or impede their progress in any way. Since I have not seen the extent of your lands, and you may not have seen the extent of my lands, it would be hard for us to settle upon boundaries at this time. We will have to meet again in the future to discuss options. My scribe notes that I sent this non-aggression treaty to you on turn 22, which if signed by you on turn 23, shall last until turn 43. I eagerly await your response.

Ottoman DogBoy

I also updated my page to show you where we met.

alliance