GOTM 29 Pre-Game discussion - Saves now available!

A bit late getting this posted.... Something to do with me spending the weekend carting about 8 tonnes of branches and trees off of our section. But enough of the spam:

GOTM 29 - Egypt

This game is an emperor-level game, in which you will assume the role of Cleopatra in your bid to assimilate not only the Upper and Lower kingdoms, but the rest of the world as well.

We have a nice big pic for you to analyse to death before the official game release in 24 hours or so. Biggest talking point may be whether this is the blue nile or the white one....

Link the the Scope Of The Game webpage.

Starting map:



And the world mini-map:



You are free to view and post in this thread until you have downloaded the starting save file. After that, please save your thoughts for the official spoiler threads.





Edit:

Just to let you all know: Saves are now available for download, linked from http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/gotm29_egypt.shtml

Once you have downloaded the starting files, please refrain from posting in this thread (you may still read it to laugh at everyone else!

If you notice any bugs etc, please let me know ASAP. Enjoy.

Scope of the game page is available here

Damn leap year. I wanna download it now.

-E

Oh goody, a flood plain start Now where did I put my wip.

I make that 11 squares in our 21 are flood plains and i can't seen any bonuses. I suspect we can't get a 4 turn settler factory and there won't be enough shields until we mine the hills.

But it looks like it could be an interesting game. Emperor is just right for me at the moment

With my luck, Thebes will die to diseases.

Interesting. Egypt - industrious and religious and with an early, cheap horse as UU. Food and commerce-rich start, with plenty of hills and fast workers.

I suspect we can't get a 4 turn settler factory and there won't be enough shields until we mine the hills.

Mines and roads on the hills will only take as long as they would on flat ground for normal workers. I see an excellent settler farm at pop 5/6/7 as long as you are prepared to MM it, even if there are no other goodies in the fog. I'll probably settle where we stand, as that gives a three-food start to our population growth. Sure, we'll suffer a couple of early disease hits, but the food will more than make up for them.

Which way first for the worker? I think I detect high mountains to the west (Atlas? Tigre?), so I'll probably make a rash assumption and head east "down river" to do my first irrigation. Since we already have Burial, and Pottery for the Granary, the classic research path here would be two 40 turn projects - Writing/Map Making or Mysticism/Polytheism, hoping to trade or fight for the others. But I think I'll research Wheel first for this one, at speed. We need to know where the horses are, and Wheel has turned out to be an early tradeable tech in my previous experience, I guess because it's only a freebie for the Japanese. Of course, it'll be just my luck on this one to find Tokyo in the next valley Wheel is also relatively cheap, and if those barbs stop raging for long enough to build a hut it will increase the chances I'll pop something more expensive.

[Edit - PS] I revisited my thoughts on a settler farm. I'd made my all-too-common error of forgetting the Despot penalty. The flood plains only run at 3 fpt, of course, so below pop 7 you can have shields from the hills OR food from the flood plains, but not enough of both to get to 4 turns per settler. Sorry! Back to the drawing board

I believe we have Masonry not Pottery as our second free tech.

Given the recent scarse resource games, I agree that we want to research Wheel as fast as possible.

BTW, Alan, the 20K calculator is brilliant--I'm using it on the current non-GOTM game I'm playing (I don't think I'll be going for a 20K win on Emperor).

@King Of America:

Damn it! Read the wrong line in my crib sheeet. You're quite right, it'll have to be Pottery first, then Wheel, both fast.

Thanks for your remarks on the 20K calculator, but I just pulled together into a single package the stuff that others had created. A midget, "... standing on the shoulders of giants ..."?

If I were to say that there is a pattern emerging in ainwood's games - a pattern based on one full game and a second start position! - it might be the clear set of challenges that must be faced on the road to victory. In this case, Alan noted that Egypt will probably already need to take the time to develop shield sources much earlier than usual, in order to compete with its neighbors. The second step is almost certainly who neighbors whose UUs make early expansion difficult. And to add a major wrinkle into this already tricky situation, we have a UU that is cheap but weak, and will give us an unwanted early GA if used against those powerful neighbors. What do we do - fight the Persians and Greeks with swords and save the GA for an optimal time, or bite the bullet and try to get an extra wonder or two out of it? This is probably the biggest decision of the Ancient Age.

The screen shot graphics look very non standard. Presumably this means we can use graphics mods, but I wondered if there was an accepted list. I seem to remember Cracker was very picky about this.

Is there incense WSW of the settler?

So many flood plains will make disease a major potential problem and unfortunately could be a bit of a randomizing factor.

Originally posted by Txurce
... What do we do - fight the Persians and Greeks ...

Click to expand...

Oh! NO! Xerxes again??!! May be Carthage, Greece, Ottomans, Arabia, and Rome? With raging barbarians and in the corner of the map, it just cannot be X again!

re: unwanted early GA

Maybe we'll be lucky and the brutes whose UUs aren't too mobile(X-man, Julius Squeeze her), will be somwhat far from us--if we meet them early, with a lone War Chariot, maybe we can cause them an early GA without endangering ourselves too much--if you know what I mean. (No reason to treat our troops any better than our civilians, right?)

Originally posted by Offa
The screen shot graphics look very non standard. Presumably this means we can use graphics mods, but I wondered if there was an accepted list. I seem to remember Cracker was very picky about this.

Click to expand...

The issue was with using non-approved resource graphics that poked further out of the fog, giving those players an unfair advantage. But the GOTM resources are specially defined to level the playing field in that respect, and you can't play with any other resource graphics because they don't match up to the GOTM resources correctly. Terrain packs like Snoopy, which I believe Ainwood used, are OK, as they don't alter resource visibility.

Is there incense WSW of the settler?

Click to expand...

Your eyesight (or imagination) is much better than mine

So many flood plains will make disease a major potential problem and unfortunately could be a bit of a randomizing factor.

Click to expand...

Disease hits often enough that everyone will get a bit, I think, just at different times. You can reduce the impact by working fewer floodplain tiles, but that'll change your growth rate as well.

I know this is blasphemy, but that's never stopped me before. Does anyone have experience playing the past couple of GOTM's with/in C3C? I don't care about submitting scores, so that's not a concern. I only want to play, and only in C3C.

Will the GOTM save game work in C3C, or will it crash and burn, preventing me from playing? I haven't tried it in past GOTM, but I'm sure someone has!

Nope you can't play in C3C. And even if you could, the differences in game rules mean that the score would not be comparable anyway.

Play in PTW that ships with C3C

I'll probably settle where we stand

Click to expand...

I don't see what harm it would do to move the worker east first. At least it will reveal whether the tile E,E is flood plain with wheat. Most other tiles under the fog will come within the 21-tile radius from the starting position anyway, or will still not be visible if the worker moves 1 tile.

It seems to me that most other attempts to find a better starting position will result in a 2- or 3-turn delay in settling Thebes, unless the worker sees wine or lamb on a hill from a distance of 2 tiles (for example if he goes SW).

The discussion of the UU, Golden Age, whipping, horses, makes this starting position look interesting. It's also nice to see the Nile right away!

It looks like we might have some plains to the north, a perfect source of shields that are easier to mine than hills. I may take a look to the north and see what is there with my worker before founding Thebes.

Looks like an interesting start. Research will probably be Pottery at 100 percent and then The Wheel. Hope there are some resources and luxuries around, unlike last month.

@Offa

I have had a look at the starting image under my "microscope" and am lead to believe that there are resourses located at the tile W, SW although I do not know what. (Can just make out something irregular.

I am thinking that I am going to move my worker North because it will reveal the largest number of fogged squares (5) and depending on what I find I might move my settler West. (Or even south west and build another worker straight up.)

Although this will restrict my southward advance I trust that Ainwoods hint of an "Upper Kingdom" will keep me in good stead.

Research will definately be pottery at 100%

Not sure what I will do after that, prolly gonna beeline for Monarchy.

No one seems to have mentioned, that there appear to be forest tiles NW of the hills, which would provide the same shields as the hills without the time investment of mining. Right now my inclination is to let the worker start irrigating immediately, and move the settler W, which should give me a second forest tile potentially, and more importantly free up more FP tiles to the east for my second city to share. I also expect to research Wheel at max, hoping to trade for pottery by the time I will build a granary. I expect to build at least one settler before a granary, with this much FP, a second city can easily get to +5 food, probably as fast as I could get the granary done. Of course, as Clauswitz (IIRC) said, no plan survives contact with the enemy!

Would moving to get the trees in our capital's radius really provide that much of an early benefit? We are using an industriuos civ and with all the early irrigating / roading we're sure to be doing, that's goign to leave some "free" turns for the worker to be mining future tiles / establishing roads towards future city-sites / doing a health dance to keep disease from hitting Thebes. And if you are talking about just despotism benefits, then mining the plains in the north will provide the same beneift.