SGOTM 05 Maintenance Thread

[AlanH]

Welcome to the C-IV SGOTM 05 Maintenance thread. The purpose of this thread is to give you somewhere to post about non-spoiler issues relating to the game. It is a way of communicating to the rest of the players outside your team, and with the staff about matters that affect your team or everyone. You can post about bugs, rule clarifications, problems with the roster etc. Please subscribe to it so that you are kept up to date with new information as the game proceeds.

The team lists are in the second post in this thread.

The Game
You are Temujin, Leader of the Mongolian Hordes. You have tired of fighting the Barbarians, and so this time you have decided to join them instead. You will win a glorious victory in this Monarch game, of course, but you are teamed with the Barbarians, and you have to adapt to Barbarian assets and liabilities:

• You have no starting techs.
• The barbs are your friends, and are fighting on your team.
• You will benefit from the Barbarian capability to explore the world in animal and human form.
• You can research, but you will also learn techs that the Barbarians learn.
• .... And you start off at war with everyone on the planet except the Barbarians. You can make peace with anyone.

The Objective
This Monarch difficulty game is on a Standard size, Gyathaar-special map, at Epic speed, against 7 rivals. All victory conditions are enabled, and the laurels for this contest will be awarded to the teams who achieve the earliest victory date in the game.

Versions
This game will be played in Civilization IV version 1.74, using special HoF Mod 1.74.SGOTM5.

Mac players are in a separate team, as there is not a Mac version 1.74, and the HoF Mod cannot be made to work cross-platform. If I am able to produce a mod to support this variant, they will play the game in Civ4 version 1.61 with a modified Mac HoF Mod.

Schedule
Start files for each team will be available on the SGOTM Progress and Results Page at midnight, server local time, at the start of July 25.

Note: The Mac start file and HoF Mod are subject to delays for development and testing, and the feasibility of a suitable Mac mod is not yet proven. The Mac team only has five players currently.

I propose that you aim to complete this game in three months, that is by the end of October 2007.

Starting Position
Here's the starting position - click the image below to see a larger version.



Map Parameters
Playable Leader/Civ - Temujin of Mongolia.
Characteristics - Expansive, aggressive.
Unique Unit - Keshik (Horse archer)
Rivals - 7: China, Japan, India, Arabia, Spain, Persia and Greece
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Special, sort of a fractal archipelago.
Environment - Temperate climate, medium sea level
Game Speed - Epic
AI Aggression - Normal
Barbarians - Raging, and teamed with the Mongols
Permanent Alliances - Not Enabled
City Razing - Enabled

Notes

• Please visit the Civ4 SGOTM reference thread to check out the rules and procedures to ensure that you are adequately prepared for this game.
  
• Teams will compete for up to four awards - the Gold, Silver and Bronze Laurels for the fastest finishes, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher. The number of awards will depend on the number of teams.
  
• All teams must play the sponsored variant - awards will be given to teams who achieve victories in the least turns.
  
• 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.
  
• Spoiler information will absolutely NOT be tolerated in this thread.

 

[AlanH]

Here are the team lists for this game. They will be updated to reflect any late changes to team names or personnel:

 

[Sweetacshon]

First post... surely not?!

I just wanted to say thanks for all the hard work you guys do. This sort of thing takes the game experience to a new level. Three cheers for Alan and the staff! Hip Hip....

 

[Thrallia]

...Hooray!!!!

my thanks too, to the staff that does all this for us!

 

[Gyathaar]

Here is a first version of the special HOF mod for SGOTM5

let me know if you find any bugs with it for this setup..

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/HOF-1.74.SGOTM5.zip

 

[BLubmuz]

My thanks to the team, even to the Viking for their work and patience .

A request, to keep you practiced : to better test this special mod, it would be helpful a practice game. I know some people posted some, but if Gyathaar could make a little more effort...

 

[AlanH]

I don't think it's appropriate for Gyathaar to create a practice map. He knows the real one, and cannot distance himself from that knowledge.

 

[Bede]

Here is a first version of the special HOF mod for SGOTM5

let me know if you find any bugs with it for this setup..

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/HOF-1.74.SGOTM5.zip

Loads and runs the game just fine - no hangups I could find in an admittedly cursory test.

However, I have one small quibble: the package was not bundled into a handy-dandy installer, although the graphics for the installer are included. Some may encounter difficulty navigating the Windoze directory maze without a guided setup.

 

[AgedOne]

Here is a first version of the special HOF mod for SGOTM5

let me know if you find any bugs with it for this setup..

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/HOF-1.74.SGOTM5.zip

I've played through the trial game that was posted in the pre-game thread (well, up to about 500BC anyhow). No noticeable bugs.
Temujin and barbarians both show up in score list. Game survives discovery of Alphabet.

One strange thing I noticed was that techs were being discovered that were not the one listed alongside Barbarians name in the score list. (e.g. it said they were researching Mining, but suddenly we were given Archery, presumably because they had just learned it)
I wouldn't say this is something wrong with the mod, necessarily. Just something strange about barbarians in the game, perhaps.

I assume we are not supposed to be able to click on the barbarians name in the score list to make contact with them. It simply clicks and does nothing.

Certainly, it all looks ready to roll.

 

[da_Vinci]

For anyone who is:

Patching up to play SGOTM 05 (or the next XOTM for that matter) or installing BtS,

Still has old games to finish under the old patches (SGOTM 04, current XOTMs, multiplayer games, etc.)

And is not aware of the need or method of a dual install (if you are saying "huh?" then follow the link),

Here is a link to a discussion of the dual install issues:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=232115

dV

 

[Gyathaar]

I've played through the trial game that was posted in the pre-game thread (well, up to about 500BC anyhow). No noticeable bugs.
Temujin and barbarians both show up in score list. Game survives discovery of Alphabet.

One strange thing I noticed was that techs were being discovered that were not the one listed alongside Barbarians name in the score list. (e.g. it said they were researching Mining, but suddenly we were given Archery, presumably because they had just learned it)
I wouldn't say this is something wrong with the mod, necessarily. Just something strange about barbarians in the game, perhaps.

I assume we are not supposed to be able to click on the barbarians name in the score list to make contact with them. It simply clicks and does nothing.

Certainly, it all looks ready to roll.

Barbarians get free beakers per turn in techs that is known by other teams.. and can this way learn techs even without having techs selected as the active tech to research.

Yes.. you are not supposed to be able to talk to the barbs

 

[LowtherCastle]

I assume our leader characteristics are still aggressive, expansionist? (Listed in the sign-up thread but omitted from AlanH's post in our Thread.)

 

[AlanH]

Must have been a slip of the copy/paste tool. Nothing's changed as far as I know.

I've added those items to the first post in this thread, but I don't plan to edit the fifteen team threads.

 

[rrau]

Loads and runs the game just fine - no hangups I could find in an admittedly cursory test.

However, I have one small quibble: the package was not bundled into a handy-dandy installer, although the graphics for the installer are included. Some may encounter difficulty navigating the Windoze directory maze without a guided setup.

That would be me

Where do I stick the files?

 

[AlanH]

You should drop the expanded folder into a Mods folder. The one to use is the one in a folder with a path name like Program Files\Sid Meiers Civilization IV\Mods (this assumes Windows XP).

There's another Mods folder in your user documents path, but it appears that people have problems with this one.

 

[rrau]

Thanks, Alan

 

[Bede]

You can drop the expanded folder into a Mods folder. The one to use is the one in a folder with a path name like \My Documents\My Games\Civilization IV\ (this assumes Windows XP).

There's another Mods folder in Program Files\Sid Meiers Civilization IV\, and it can go in there instead if you want it to be shared by multiple user accounts on your computer.

I have had issues with using the Documents\MyGames\...... path under both W2K and Vista for the other HoF mods.

I recommend strongly using the the C:\Program Files\Firaxis\Sid Meiers Civizilation4\Mods\HoF-1.74.SGOTM5 path instead. You need to copy and paste the entire extracted folder to the \Mods directory. Then all should work normally.

 

[Methos]

I have had issues with using the Documents\MyGames\...... path under both W2K and Vista for the other HoF mods.

I'll second this. Placing it in the C:\Program Files\..... path is your best option.

 

[remconius]

Last night I made a test game with the settings provided and it seems to work, although I didnt have time to test it very far.

What I noticed is that all AI start at a score of 19 in the test game, whereas the screenshot of the starting position shows all AI with a score of 45.

Have they been provided with additional units or is there another explanation for the difference?
Maybe the exact map settings? I used archipelago/archipelago as I didnt have access to the fractal/archipelago Gyathaar style

 

[Gyathaar]

Last night I made a test game with the settings provided and it seems to work, although I didnt have time to test it very far.

What I noticed is that all AI start at a score of 19 in the test game, whereas the screenshot of the starting position shows all AI with a score of 45.

Have they been provided with additional units or is there another explanation for the difference?
Maybe the exact map settings? I used archipelago/archipelago as I didnt have access to the fractal/archipelago Gyathaar style

I am guessing AlanH took the screenshot on the 2nd turn of the game to make the blue rings for settler show up (a bug makes it not show up in turn 0 when loading a worldbuildersave.. it is fixed in the HOF mod.. but that dont help for Alan, who use Mac)

So the higher score is because the AIs has already settled their cities