EOC2 - Ruling the Waves

EOC2 - Ruling the Waves

A long, long time ago in a forum... (well this forum in fact) the EOC1 SG took place on vanilla Civ 3 as a simple continents Warlord succession game. To put in simple terms just how long ago that was, one player in that game was a certain lkendter. I think he's progressed up a skill level or two since then
Anyway I've taken a long break from SGs since due to lack of ner access and a rapidly ageing comp, confined to lurking on PCs in various locations, but now with a new comp around the corner (Friday) and net access back I'm looking forward to another go at succession games.

In the times that have passed variants have taken over, and I don't want to stick out like a sore thumb, so I'm looking to pit our naval wits against some formidable opposition. Conquests expanded water based exploits with the Seafaring trait and I want to see how powerful it is from the other end. So it's a standard sized archipelago map with us against the seven seafaring Civs.

I'm willing to try anybody as far as our civ is concerned. I'm currently at regent level, but hoping to step up to Monarch soon and so with a good crew (oh god, I've started already ) around me then I'd be happy with that. The other bit to discuss is whether we make it 20% or 30% land - how far in the their favour do we want to make it.

So, as a summary:

GAME RULES:
Version: Conquests Version 1.15
Difficulty: Monarch
Map: 30% land, Standard sized, Archipelego. Middle ground on terrian conditions
Our Civ: Random
Opponents: English, Dutch, Portugese, Spanish, Cathagians, Vikings, Byzantines
Victory routes: Conquest and Domination. Space Race is also avaliable but is not a target for us and is there purely as something of a time restraint.
Barbarians: Roaming

Variant Rules:
Any transport ships must be escorted after we gain navigation by at least one military vessel (preferably more)
We must make a solid attempt to rule the oceans as soon as this is possible with Magnetisum.

20 turns to start, going down to 15 and then 10 as we feel neccesary.
24 hour for "got it", 48 hours to play.

Roster:
EarlOfChester
Butz
Bede
SensOfWthr
CivGeneral

Now show me what I've been missing with some sign ups

I'm interested. But i have one problem; i only have 1.15 c3c and i have no way, ATM, to get the latest patch to my civIII comp. Plus i am skeptical about 1.22 anyway. I got 1.15 on my civIII comp by using some split and merge program i got from download.com but the stupid demo period expired . I might be able to get it on that comp some time soon tho.

A bit of advice, do to the very substantial portion of players that didn't want to lose saves/games by switching to 1.22, alot more people still use 1.15 over 1.2x.

I don't think we'll see the majority of SGs start to shift over to 1.2x for quite a while(probably until they make them compatable).

A long, long time ago in a forum... well this forum in fact the EOC1 SG took place on Vanilla Civ 3 as a simple continents Warlord succession game. To tell you just how long ago that was, lkendter player in that game. I think he's progressed up a skill level or two since then

Click to expand...

Good god! Welcome back and I wish you luck in getting back into SGs.

I've only just got Conquests and so the saved games issue isn't a problem for me. However if most people are keen on using 1.15 I'll happily change back.

It has been a while since I played but hopefully this game will ease me back in gently. Not the best start though as I saw yesturday that there is already a near identical game to this running I've obviously been keeping my eyes open

Anyway if people are concerned about this game being on version 1.22 then please post your interest anyway so I know there is interest in a switch.

hey i would like to sign up and i have conquest v1.22 consdering i got conquest a couple of days and upgraded to the new patch but if we need to to go back to 1.15 then i wouldnt mine oh and this will be my first SG

-lenny

I'd be interested, but only if playing at 1.15.

It is unlikely that I will patch to the 1.2 or 1.22 patch at all, there are too many concerns with it, plus the RBC Epics and SGs are not going to be running 1.22 at least for another month, probably more.

I could also be interested as my other sg's all seem to be moving vveeerrryyyy slowly. I also have no intention of going to 1.22 or whatever the current one is.

Had some success going the other way. Would like to try this one.

Version 1.15, please, same issues as Kabuki and the Great Khan.

Monarch level, great!

No preference on victory goal or land distribution

Hello all

Welcome Butz, Kabuki, SensOfWthr & Bede. If Arm Pilot is still keen on joining us he welcome to do so (I've sent him a PM), but I'm not activly looking for a 6th player.

This game will be on V1.15 at Monarch difficulty. I won't be able to start the game till Monday, so may I suggest that either Kabuki or Bede ( I suggest those two because of know of their good skills from my lurking, mostly in the Realms Beyond game) start off if your willing to do so. I also say this because my experience of this difficulty level is frankly zilch (I'll try and change that before it's my turn) and I would hate to start us off badly with some mistakes.

I think we'll go 30% land if nobody has any strong feelings either way.

Nobody has expressed any leaning towards a Civ. Maybe we could try random to give this game another twist? Personally I like the industrial trait a lot, with scienftic and agriculatural coming in equal second. So my usual civs are Ottomans (Siphai are superior for far longer than immortals) or Maya (UU is a bit too early for us, and the enslavement ability won't be that useful if we have to start shipping workers back to our homelands.)

Finally qo we want to make it domination/conquest only to really turn the heat up on us?

I'm worried I'm trying to be a bit to democratic here and overly prolonging matters but I want people to be as happy as possible with the settings.

Anyway my suggested playing order is: (with Kabuki and Bede able to swap if they prefer, or I'll start if there are some reservations.)

Kabuki
EarlOfChester
Butz
Bede
SensOfWthr

I'll get it going, first a couple of things I suppose:

I'll use the settings in the first post - Monarch/Archipelago/30/4bill. I'll go random for civ and I think we should leave the space race on, but not go for it (just leave it as a time limit).

Recommendations regarding theme

I do not think that we should do a "naval mandate" i.e. every second or third unit has to be a naval unit. I've seen that in other naval themed games, and I don't think a "hard" cap is a good idea, rather I think we should make a point of contesting the seas and running proper convoys. I.e as soon as we Navigation we must give our transports escorts. That means we can't sail the ships without escorts, end statement, they do not leave harbour without escort. And preferably (if in theme) more than 1:1 ratio of escorts and escorted.

Since it is a theme issue, we should make more than a basic attempt at ruling the seas.

Sorry guys I'm being particularily un-articulate here... so I'll just leave you with this and get on with the game. Please debate the meaning of: Ruling the Waves. It is unlikely to affect my turns, but it definately will come into play.

Here are my thoughts, for what they're worth:

I like the domination/conquest idea, as I feel the wars are the best part of the game.

For the variant, I would say transports should be guarded by at least one or two escorts. Also, I would think that naval wonders would be a mandate, either by build or capture at earliest oppurtunity. As far as "ruling the waves" it's hard to say what the restriction should be on this. Perhaps a minimum of one or two per city after AA? Also what about requiring a beeline for naval techs?

Anyway, just a couple of thoughts to keep with the theme, let me know what you think.

Since it's monarch i think i'll pass. I'm only now moving onto regent. Besides i think one SG is good enough for me as a beginner (playing in SGOTM 1 team Shoe).

Arm Pilot: Thanks for letting us know and best of luck with the SGOTM.

I'm personally leaning towards Kubuki's thinking of escorts and a slightly open ended commitment for a bid for naval domination when we reach Magnetism I've edited those into the main post although we could make it we must build at least four of each type of military ship or something of that ilk.

Anyway thanks for agreeing to lead off Kabuki. The discussions left don't neccesarily have to be finished before you start (although we may want to have our goals clearly set before getting underway) so whenever your ready please take the first 20

It started with whispers, strange sounds in the tops of the trees, the shaman said it was the Gods who spoke in the night. Kabuki, the fearless leader of the people knew better, it wasn't the voices of the gods it was the murmur of her breath passing through the trees whispering visions for him. And he saw them clearly, the strange blue-green land that tasted of salt, the odd contraptions that moved on that land and finally the goddess told him that his people should rule all of that land, called sea. With the visions came a warning, dark ships in the night, other people with other Gods and other dreams.

The lands of the Ottoman people were fertile, rich in minerals, but it lacked water, it lacked the sea. The soft whispers and the tang of salt in the night air continued to haunt Kabuki until it became to much and one evening he decreed that they must find this land called the Ocean and that they must rule it. It was time for the tribe to grow and with their newly dicovered ability to build buildings of stone, to mine the hills for ore and to smelt bronze they might just be able to do so.



Having only vague visions of the coming enemies of the Goddess Kabuki could not fathom the notion of arming his people with crude sticks, he wanted to sail, to live like in the dream - with wood rocking under his feet and dragons spitting fire at the enemy. Therefore Kabuki ordered that they start building a very strange structure - the shaman and the architect could not understand this notion of a grain storage so they started building what they knew - a big house, it could after all be a big house for grain they figured. Kabuki knew this was not hte case, and he had set scientists to figure out some way to explain these visions of a house for their winter foods to the shaman and the architect. It shouldn't be too hard he thought.

4000 BC - Pottery @ Max (18). Start a pre-build for Granary with the Barracks. It'll be very close. Send the worker to the SW BG.

3950 BC - Road the BG, this is followed by a mine - the worker then moves to the wine, roads that and then to the second BG for road and mine there.

3350 BC - The Wine is connected. We get conscript warrior from the hut.



Nine hundred turnings passed before the wise men (who were by know very wise and often dead) found a way to explain this concept of a grain storage to the builders, and just in time too. Afte discovering the secrets of grain storage he set the wise men to look for ways to communicate with symbols and how to build boats, how they were going to figure that out without any sea to try it on was beyond him at the moment.

3300 BC - Pottery completes, scroll ahead so that the barracks aren't built and instead we have granary in six. Start Alphabet at Max.

3100 BC - Granary Completes -> Settler

2950 BC - Kabuki is tired of bossing people around and decides to go off and wander the land for a while, trying to decide what the visions really mean for his people. He decides to leave control in the hands of a man named Earl - another man of vision.



And here is the save

I'm too tired to do any commentary. I think I'll just hand it off.

I'll write some more later.

Good job Kubuki. I'm beginning to see that I delay my granaries for too long.

The terrain isn't fantastic with desert, jungle and a large mountain range but we do have a nice second city spot, at least in the short term. Here's a very early dot map.



Blue is the obvious place for the settler to go with 4 BGs immeditaly and a 5th on expansion and we'll get an extra food from the wines once we get out of Despot. Unfortunatly it looks like no irrigation until electricty though.

Red gives us another port with fresh water, although it won't offer too much in the way of production immediatly, and will need a fair amount of irrigation.

Yellow is just a shot in the semi-dark based on the terrain I can see.

Anyway I probably won't play it immediatly so any thoughts welcome

Roster:
Kabuki - Just Played
EarlOfChester - Up
Butz - On Deck
Bede
SensOfWthr

"Got it"

Well, archipelagos aren't my strongest suit so, but do you think we should use a tighter build given that we're on an island? I would think the tighter build would be more productive now where we don't know if we'll even be able to colonize another island before astronomy/magnetism?

As I said, islands aren't my thing, and I joined this to learn the appropriate tactics, so let me know your thinking.

Ok, here is my commentary:

I started on something of a settler's gambit which works exceptionally on small archipellagos for two reasons:
1. There may be no opponents so why do you need security?
2. You are doing self research at max rather than min, so there is no cash for them to hit.

It won't be a proper settler's gamit however because of the lack of a proper bonus food tile. We cannot make 5/5 so we will have to use military units as spacers between settlers. We may want to go for a wonder, but then again we could just wait until the middle ages. I suggest we go for the lighthouse (theme) if any.

Regarding dotmap:
I think the cities are too widealy spaced, and it will be very awkward to recover the tiles that build is wasting. I'll try to make one for comparison. I think we leave Istanbul alone (I.e. give it at least 15-20 tiles, because it will be fabulous in late game, but everything else needs to be tighter. The argument goes, as I'm sure you all are familiar with: A city never usues more than 12 tiles until medicine is dicovered and the hospital built. So for the largest part of the game it only usese 6-12. Does a city really need more than that? On a slow (possibly) tech pace archipelago it becomes an even more stretched out time period. This means that there is little or no reason to give cities more than their radius and a couple more tiles, unless you are going for lets say space for which you need several late-game high production cities. For us, the critical period is Cavalry and Galleons - not Industry and Tanks (hopefully) and the production from a tight build is more than good enough for this.

I'll post a dotmap in a bit.

Comments, critiques?

This was made rather quickly, and as such may not be as good as it could be.

The white cross-hatched area represnts wasted tiles, I cannot at the moment find a good way to use them, b/c of the lack of food there. If we were agricultural...



Ok, notes on city placement:

Purple - must be on coastline, so will depend on where the coastline is.

Blue has 6 strong tiles seen in its radius, more than enough unless we are willing to sacrifice a settler to to get irrigation over the hill (by placing a settler 1NW, 1W of Istanbul we can irrigate the far side and then abandon the city).

Turquoise is our third city.

After that I think we will be expanding further East, probably to the plains and hill wine as all the other cities require lots of work to be useful. Another settler to the south would be good as well, but we need to know the lay of the land.

After the settler finishes the Tobacco tile, he should head 1E - 2N and road->mine and head towards the Turquise dot. The Blue dot is strong enough that it can ramp up more independently, while getting a solid start out of Turquoise is going to take work.

Well first i have to agree with Kabuki and SesnOfWthr about that we should have a tighter build consdering we are on a island type map and might not be able to expand on another island and also we might not know how big this island is.

Kabuki dot map: From what i can see it looks alirght, its no big deal with the wasted tiles not being use consdering it wont help with the growth of the cities.

Well so far ive already learn something so i think this game will make me better

-lenny

Concur with the exception that I think the 2nd city should take spot 1N1NW (EoC's spot), then build tighter from there. Claims all the BG and will take less time to connect by road (two grass and one hill rather than the converse).

But the dot map stage is my weakest so..tuppence worth at best.