SGOTM 9 - Bede

AlanH

AlanH

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Welcome to your game thread. Please use it and subscribe to it, and do not visit the other team threads for this game until you have finished. Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread for this game here, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest. I hope you enjoy the game.

The starting saves will become available on the SGOTM Progress and Results page on November 11th, at midnight, server local time.

Thanks again to Gyathaar for coming up with the variant and developing the map.

You are the Viking leader, Ragnar Lodbrok*. You have met the Indian leader, Gandhi, and you have signed a pact in blood. The Vikings agree to teach india the art of war, and make them strong through conflict. In return India will take the Vikings to the stars.

* Vanilla players play as Einar Ragnarson, but he had the same craving for space travel as his father.

You start the game as a near neighbour of India. Following the pact you are at permanent war with Gandhi, and must remain so for the rest of the game. You are allowed no peace treaties with India. And India must win by space victory. All victory conditions are switched on except diplomatic, but the winning team will be the one that gets India to Alpha Centauri, and does it fastest.

PTW and Vanilla teams are not permitted to leader rush Great Wonders before 1000 BC in this game

Here's the start.

SGOTM9-start.jpg

Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Scandinavia / Vikings
Opponents - Seven, preselected, including India
World size - 100 wide by 100 high. (Standard)
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Continents
Barbarians - Roaming

The map is handbuilt, and therefore may not have a standard configuration.

Game mods:
The AI races have Deity level unit support.
Otherwise, this game uses the default rules as defined in the SGOTM Reference Thread.

The SGOTM Mediterranean resources are included in this game. If you have played SGOTM 7 then you will be ready. If not you may need to download and unzip a small graphics mod pack. Vanilla/Mac players need to install the GOTM mods. The best way to achieve this is to use the relevant All-in-one GOTM Installer for your OS, linked in my signature.

Please visit the following links to ensure that you are adequately prepared for this game.

The GOTM Reference Thread.
SGOTM Reference Thread.

Notes:

A. The Classic (Play the World and vanilla 1.29) versions of Civ3 AND Conquests version 1.22 (C3C) are all supported in this game. Because of the different game play, Classic and C3C teams will play for separate awards.
B. All teams must play the sponsored variant.
C. You MUST play from the start file assigned to your team. All saved game files uploaded to the server are parsed through software that extracts and archives data about your save, including reload count for each turn set.

Gyathaar's SGOTM 8 created some new challenges for everyone. I hope you will enjoy this one as much. Good luck in your efforts to lose with style and honour. :D
 
Hi everbody,

here I am, curious and willing to start this game, after I had a really hard fight in COTM 18! Please don't call me Marc, since this only reflects my respect for the greatest philosopher emperor in history. My friends (and fellow team members who were brave enough to let me play a couple of turns) call me Mason;)
 
madviking said:
Qs before we start:
What shall we research?

Where should we build our city?

What is the gameplan?

What are we going to do to help India?
Click to expand...

to 1) I think monarchy slingshot is without alternative, since we are always at war and would have a lot of war weariness if we switch to republic (That's only a first fast shot, we have to think it over!)
@AlanH: War weariness rules are not affected by the mod and game setup - are they?

to 2) E - N, I would propose to not disturb India on its Island, doing a little reconnaissance and get 2 BG's, the cow and the incense

to 3) Now it becomes more difficult - first I think we go to 4)

to 4) to transfer ressources during war we can send workers to let the Indians capture them. But most important is to let them get of their island, since they cannot build the spaceship with one city! - The question is when will we let them get a foothoild on our continent/island? How much do we need of the land to keep control of the situation? On Monarch level the AI is able to keep up in the science race - but without enough land the Indians would fall behind. Transferring technology especially to the Indians would need a third party (lets call them the technology link TL) This TL is ideally always at war with all the others and has india as its special friend. We have to make sure we can wipe out TL (or at least cripple them) the day they would come dangerously close to launch the spceship themselves. Another way would be constantly moving away from India, handing them over more and more land, that we first have used for our own ascent - so a couple of palace jumps would be needed for this approach. That makes it reasonable to play warmongering with all other near neighbors harvesting Great Leaders.:ninja: Or we could beeline for communism - to be able to control a vast outstreched empire around the Indians.A special plan could be to build the Great Library in a city close to the Indian borderline and after gaining its benefit for ourselves we could retreat and let the Indians take over the city to catch up in tech race, if they fall behind. I once played this in an emperor game on a continent map, where I was on the small continent and the other continents civs were technologically far ahead. I avoided education until I met two far ahead civs and got all techs until the IA in one single turn. We would need to time the moment India tries to invent education on its own and then sell communication with the Indians to a technological far ahead civ, after we isolated the Indians before with our superior fleet. Also for this we would need to fight with everybody all along to be able to intercept every galley coming along to meet India. Thus would mean to set naval technolgies to second place in the technolgy priority list.
O.K so far - this should cover also poiunt 3).
These were only some first considerations of a very unexperienced beginner. I have to think it over a couple of times and make some test games with the known setup to see what will be the problem. I am sure you know something more sophisticated - so lets hear.:coffee:
 
All the the SGOTM mod changes to game rules are as stated in the SGOM Reference Thread, and there are also game-specific changes defined in your starting post above. That is your bible. War weariness is not modded.
 
Greetings. You can call me either Ray or CB.
First the good news; I love CIII, and I was a beta-tester for C3C. Even though I have CIV, I will probably continue to play C3C.
Now the bad news; I suck at it. In standard games, I have only had 1 victory on Warlord difficulty. Generally, I play at Chieftain.

I will offer opinions on the game, but I know my limitations, and will defer to the better players among us. I know I'm going to need a quick tutorial on micro-managing. I tend to leave my cities to the Governors and automate my Workers. Obviously, all errors made in the growth stages are compounded, so I should probably be set well back in the rotation.

I have no opinion as to which tech we should research first, but I agree with Mason, Republic and Democracy are not options as governments. Despotism>Monarchy>Communism seems the way to go.

This is a real stickler of a goal - we have to help another civ win, but we can't gift or trade anything to them. We can probably rely on Diety resources to get the tech for India. What I see as a problem is the war - India being an AI civ will constantly try to form alliances with the other 6 civs against us.Having India win by sapce-race presupposes three other goals:
1. Don't get eliminated.
2. Don't allow India to be eliminated
3. Prevent the other civs from achieving any kind of victory.

One strategy might be to expand eastward, while allowing India to expand (slowly) into our starting postion, knocking out the other civs while allowing India to grow.

Speaking of the starting position, 1E look good to me. It's a chokepoint, it has food resources, shield potential, and allows us to expand into the incense. The only drawback I see is that it takes us away from the seafood.

Earlier, I had posted that I was certain that the Indian starting position is not an island, but when blowing the pic up, I see that what I took to be coast is the tail of a fish resource. I still *think* it's not an island, but I'm no longer certain.
Worst case scenario: India starting position is an island, and there another civ nearby to the west.

Gonna shut up and listen now.
 
Our Traits are Militaristic and Seafaring.
Our UU is the Beserker.
We start with Alphabet and Warrior Code.

To MadV's Q's.

1. Depends on if we are going AW or not.

2. E - E to get both Incense, the 2 BG's that we see, the cow, 1 forest that we can see the edge of, plus whatever else we happen to see.

3. Protect ourselves and make sure India gets to launch our ride to Alpha Centaur. How we go about it is up to us.

4. Cripple/Distract anyone who threatens the survival of India.

Now for some Q's of my own.

1. I saw no mention in the initial thread of this being an AW game. Therefore my question is are we going to be AW with the other nations or are we going to go for an OW?

2. Since the Map is Continents, shouldn't we beeline for Mapmaking to get those (suicide) galleys out asap, so we can make contact with the other continent/s? or beeline for Monarchy as Mason suggests?
 
Hi again,

I see the discussion is running - wonderful!
I have only a few comments this time :
@Ray : great to have a beta tester on our team :goodjob:
to your second goal:
2. Don't allow India to be eliminated
I think, India is save against elimination until marines arrive in the game - since nobody can land on their island to attack them. When marines can be build I want to have solved all military problems with other civs in general and be only heading for the target. So at the moment I do not care for protecting India. To your opinion :
I still *think* it's not an island, but I'm no longer certain.
I think we can be certain that India is on a one tile island, since the tiles W/SW/S all are coast tiles. A land bridge would need at least one adjacent land tile. So India in fact is in a very bad position from the start! They have so far we can see now 3 coastal stone tiles - 3 shields and one under their city summing up to 4. For later we can road-mine the mountain on which we are currently standing for them - but that's all we can do in the first stage. I think the AI is clever enough to beeline for mapmaking and get off their island asap. I 'm not sure, please correct me if you know better, I know there have been threads on what the AI will research. At least that will take time due to their limited ressources. Finally they will come up with one galley carrying :

1) a settler and a military unit?
2) Maybe only military units since we are at war?

So far as I can see at the moment we can't do anything to speed up the process until this point arrives. I don't know enough on AI behaviour especially when they are at war. And that's what is required for this special game - knowing what AI will do and be prepared for it. So if they send military units we have to decide whether we want to give them at that point the town where they landed by backing out of it or not. At least this race will be optimising the balance between our and Indias growth - the more risky we support India, the more dangerous it would become, since we have to invest ressources in the war with them. The trivial way to find a secure place for survival and hand over everything to India is not possible, I suspect. If I had been Gyathaar to set up this map, I would have placed a strong AI in the position (land, ressources,...) to win, if we only let India grow and don't do anything else. And we always should keep in mind, that any ressouce invested in the Viking-India war counts double, since we and the Indians lose it. -If we destroy Indian units they do not concentrate on science and build units. If they destroy ours, we are the ones who have to produce new units. Backing out of border cities should not be a problem, so I think the thumb rule should be: First keeping India small and save and put everything in our own growth - at least until the MA arrives and we can make more detailed plans knowing the world map - Later on: rushing Indias development - According to this rule, the plan to hand them the Great Library was meant. We do not need to support their science and growth until then, since they will keep up in one single turn. We do not lose any ressources in our internal war and can hand over a well developed empire to the Indians. The only problem is to avoid letting India take a pure defensive position without any offensive efforts. Sometimes AI does this when I am far superior invading their lands. You see, again the problem is to know the AI behaviour!!! So I think we should give them at least one city on the continent to be at least able to send them workers for capture. Since we can't land on their island, we can't do this from the start.

@Bahz :
concerning the technology goals, I think we agree that mapmaking and monarchy are on top of the priority list. Question is, what is of higher importance. I agree that sending suicide galleys has always high priority (our seafaring trait only underlines that). However for the slingshot we need to discover philo as the first civ. Nevertheless I am sure we can postpone this decision because :
1)The granary first approach to empire development has proven correct in my opinion, so we need to research pottery at first in any case (correct me, if there is a better way)
2) we need to research writing next for both goals.
3) until then we probably have made first other contacts and see what we can trade to define the fastest way to reach both goals;)
So far, now it's your turn!
 
madviking said:
Qs before we start:
What shall we research?

Where should we build our city?

What is the gameplan?

What are we going to do to help India?
Click to expand...
1. Our first goal that we should have to get us a government that will allow to fight wars, so that would mean that we eventually go to for Monarchy as our Government choice. I would also say that we should try and get the two Techs that give out strategic resource so Iron working and the wheel would be very important so we can see where get these important resources ASAP. I beleve that we should get these techs first and then go for the Monarchy path. One thing I am thinking of is using the Philosophy Slingshot to get Monarchy as the free tech, so that would mean that we would first need to research up to Poly and then get Philosophy and use it to get Monarchy as the free tech. Does that sound like a good Idea?

2. I would move the settler two spaces to the northeast that way we can get go to some plains and still be in reach of the the incense and thus making happiness less of an issue at the start, even though happisness is not too much of an issue at Monarch level.

3&4. I would try and engage some AI's in war so that it will slow down the tech research and that will be good for India since they are on an island. The slower the tech race the better because it means that India are not too far behind in the tech race and hopefully they will be albe to get off that Island and build on a more productive area, but not too close to us. Because we cannot allow them to get too much of a threat to us because if we are defeated, then we have lost. Getting the AI into and early war is what is best for this variant. Well that are some of my thoughts, so lets discuss some more.
 
Hi classical_hero,

Nice to have have somebody from Australia on board!:wavey:

I really appreciate, that some experienced player like you, supports the ideas to :

- move our settler north - east
- play warmongering with the other AI civs as we have to do with India
- the selection of monarchy as preferred government

:thanx:
However, there is one point where I would contradict your strategy : (please ignore this, if that point is too stupid, I am really lacking experience, but please give it a thought before). I want to doubt whether it is in any case a special need to build swordsman and/or horsemen early. That depends on, who is our neighbor and what is the distance to their civs core region. If we have a close and dangerous neighboring civ (Persia or so), I admit you are right (see GOTM 48), but if not, I think iron working and the wheel is waste of money, since one can trade them later and general expansion normally gives access to both ressources later on. In our special situation, I think, it is more easy to avoid both technologies, since our strategy shall make use of our UU, the formidable berserk to its maximum extends. That would mean attacking with them from the sea the coastal cities, since they have an attack value of 6!!! and are very fast when used on galleys (4 tiles/turn, since we are seafaring and one further, if we can manage to build the Great Lighthouse!) They do not rely on any strategic ressource, what is a great advantage and are as defenders as good as a spearman. The only shortcoming is the very high cost of 70 shields, but generally this is one of the best UU’s in the game - a first tier in my opinion – only comparable with the Sipahi of the Ottomans and the Mounted Warrior of the Iroqois. The fact, that they are most effective when transported over sea, reduces their power only on pangea maps – but we have continents here. So if we can define the beginning of the war ourselves, I would say : peaceful development until invention – than take over our continent with the berserks, besides a few naval battles around the Indian island before.
Thinking this over – the best use of our UU, I made a funny detection. O.K. do not comment this please – I know, I am too slow in thinking sometimes – but what a funny coincidence, that we are the only ones that can invade the Indian island before the advent of the Marines – hmmm? The berserk has amphibious abilities – Ahhh yes, it is vital to invade Indias island to make them move their palace! BTW, does anybody know, whether the AI ever plans to build their palace somewhere else. I couldn’t have noticed that because I am too lazy in my private games spying on the AI cities, but that knowledge would be useful. I believe …. that the AI never does palace jumps – so, we would have to do this for India to speed up their scientists. We would ideally do this, I think, at the end of the MA shortly before we give them the Great Library, if we choose to do so. At least we must be prepared to do this before they get Nationalism to build the strong defending riflemen. That way, we should be able to position Indias new palace, applying all the rules known for DaveMcW’s free palace jump strategy, by cutting down all Indian cities, that would have priority in getting the palace before our favoured Indian future core city. That would really mean to “make India strong through (offensive) conflict" as AlanH has stated, what was to be our part of the Viking-Indian pact of blood – and not to wait defensively for Indias ascent, as I thought all the time until now. Clever guy, Gyathaar!:worship:
 
I'm not sure that a global AW strategy would be a good idea, but we are going to need a very aggressive, expansive policy, possibly knocking out our nearest neighbor(s) very quickly. India excepted, of course.
I like the idea of knowing where the resources are. IIRC, the AI knows it from turn 1, and knowing where to find what they need is important for our strategizing.
Another thing to think about - even though this is a "continents" map, it was handbuilt, which means we might be on a large island ourself.
 
Hi guys, Crakie checking in :)

Since most of you have done the same, I will reveal my experience level: I feel comfortable on demigod level, good-start-deity games I usually win as well. This shouldn't mean my 2 cents count a priori for a euro... If I cannot make a convincing argument, your guesses are as good as mine :D I should also say I have never played any succession games or variants such as always war, let alone something as crazy as this! I do know our captain a bit... we both are in Team KISS in the Multi-team Demogame.

Research I agree Monarchy is the government of choice and getting it as a free tech with philosophy would be ideal. Trouble is we need poly before finishing philo, and poly is not all that popular with the AI.

A minimal run on writing is the first that comes to mind of course. But things do depend a bit on our opponents. Remember to check F10 when the game starts - you can check your opponents that way. (Yes, that is legal in xOTM). A religious neighbour would be ideal, since that would yield CB while we research writing. We might want to keep writing to ourselves for a bit while researching the bottom part of the tech tree, or gambling the AI will do some of that. Once the AI gets writing, they will almost certainly research MM... this knowlegde will come in handy.

Early moves Expansion is key as usual. We want that cow in our capital's radius. Settling on the plains NE - NE seems alright on first sight (let's hope that water is fresh!) but our move to the mountain may reveal other options.

Game Strategy I suppose India is on an island, probably 1-tile. I see 3 phases:

Phase 1: There's little we can do to have India reach MM, we cannot exchange contacts in the AA. After India reached MM we should have a couple of cities on nice land ready to 'give' to them (i.e. let them undefended). Meanwhile we go about our usual gameplay with military conquest in mind... we will need to get more land for India later.

Phase 2: The configuration of the map will be crucial. If possible we conquer India's neighbour (or two ;)) and allow India to take over (some of) those cities. Using our beserkers we can take India's capital, which will jump India's palace to the main land. This will be very important in the later stages of the game, since India's cities will be less corrupt/more productive that way, allowing for a faster spaceship victory. We might even be able to 'choose' the location of the palace, either by a) deliberately allowing a city in a good location to grow while keeping the rest of the ones that we will sacrifice small or b) pillaging/starving cities (after sacrificing them to India) we don't want the palace to jump to.

Alternatively, we might need to palace jump ourselves as well, then allow some core cities + old capital to be taken (see also phase 3).

Phase 3: We continue our conquest of the world. The less opponents, the better. Depending on the ratio of the size of the two landmasses, we ideally get off our starting landmass all together, leaving it entirely for India. The AI sucks at overseas invasions and we will not have to fear much anymore. Until that time we will need to keep an eye on our relative strength, we don't want to loose the war! Also of course, the domination limit needs attention.
 
Hi Crakie,

I concur to your statement, that the AI sucks at oversea invasions. So you persuaded me , that it is best to reach the other continent early and not to invest in a war on our own continent in the beginning.:goodjob:
@Bahz: Maybe this decides to give MM the first priority.;)
Alas, I don’t think we shall kill all other nations, since we cannot help India researching and every core region with a palace will contributre to Indias research as long as they are on friendly terms with India. That should not be too difficult to be arranged, since India is always looking for partners for alliances against us.

@ AlanH: I know we are doomed to be always at war with India, but are we able to reach the diplomacy screen with them under the "Peace treaty" button to check which technologies India already has?

However I got a new idea concerning the distribution of our empire when thinking about the city improvement buildings, that would be useful in this game. Since we are seafaring we will need at least two harbours. Since we have to conquer large parts of the world not only for our use we will need barracks en masse and AoW will be very helpful.
I am not sure how many and which buildings are lost when capturing a city. But there must be information available somewhere about this. In any case a couple of buildings will be lost when Indian forces enter our cities. So it is a loss to build too many buildings there that have no effective benefit in the early stage. Better is to build Great Wonders for them, since they are not destroyed during city capture. Small wonders are always destroyed, when a city changes hands, I think. With respect to this, it is better to first destroy the oversea civs to hinder them building Great Wonders on their continent, that would have no benefit for India afterwards.
It is especially useful to get some wonders on the Indian continent that give happiness, commercial and scientific benefit like the pyramids, Smith’s, Bach’s cath, … For this we might need to maintain a core on the Indian continent to increase the number of productive cities there, possibly with our palace and the FP on the other continent. Best would be, we protect these cities geographically at a choke point to reduce defensive military cost. Maybe it needs to be only a single city, pumping out wonder after wonder. This would be easiest, if that city has our palace, since we cannot build the FP a second time ... or can we? I have never lost a small wonder to the AI, so I don't know.
But maybe it is best if we beeline to communism to support a two continent setup without any other risk.
So long, any comments?
 
One thing we should not do is kill off everyone because we need the pace of research to be fast enough so that we can be the first team to win by this variant, but we do not want the speed to be too fast otherwise India will be left behind by the fact that they are on an island. Once India have grown large enough to be able to be able to research fast enough and they will need some AI partners to be able to trade quicker and get to the goal much faster. This variant is a delicate balance between warmongering and and fast tech pace. The team that does this the best will be the team that wins.

For One week from this Saturday, I will be on holidays so i will not be able to play the save.
 
@ CH Good point, I shouldn't have said "the more the better" (in reference to eliminating opponents). Actually, this will work in our favour because we can suffice in picking off the weaker AI civs.

@ MA. I didn't mean to say we should move to the other continent no matter what. A lot depends on the map configuration (our landmass, the other continents' landmass). It is an option to consider for sure!

Our first priority should be to get India and it's palace on the main land and work from there.

I generally don't build any wonders, but getting the GL ready for India seems a good idea. The only wonder that could prove useful for us may be Leo's... anyone know if something upgrades to Beserker, and with what cost?
 
Berserk replaces longbow, as I recall, so Archer should upgrade to it (which is an odd combination, now that I think about it).
 
Marc said:
@ AlanH: I know we are doomed to be always at war with India, but are we able to reach the diplomacy screen with them under the "Peace treaty" button to check which technologies India already has?
Click to expand...
No problem with that. Just never actually make peace with them.
 
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