Insane Variants #1 - ICS Domination (Warlords)

[Xerol]

Time for an insane variant, especially for Civ4: Domination, ICS-style.

Due to the changes in mechanics for Civ4, ICS is not a good thing anymore. Not only that, you can't settle as close as you could before. We'll be following four rules for this variant:

1) Cities must be placed ICS-style. This means placing them as close as possible to other cities. This doesn't mean we have to give up good city sites though. The only rule here is that every new city must be placed 3 tiles from an existing city. Just keep in mind our next rule:
2) Cities may not work tiles outside of their "size 1" radius. This limits us to 8 population actually working tiles, although we can go to a higher size with excess food. The extra citizens just have to be specialists.
3) If an AI city encroaches on a valid ICS site that we want, we must raze that city as soon as possible. We can either do this via flipping the city, or conquering it and razing it.
4) We must win by domination.

Since this is an extremely insane variant to attempt, we'll be playing it on Noble. If successful, we can try again on Prince.

Possible problems:
1) Maintenance. This is going to be the biggest issue. In my test game, founding a religion (or at least owning a shrine) is almost crucial to have any decent research rate. Organised is also nice for cheap courthouses and lower civic costs.
2) War. We're going to have to declare on everyone eventually, but we may need to do it sooner than normally necessary here, to keep up our expansion plans.

State property is going to be essential to get as soon as possible.

We'll also be playing this in Warlords.

I want 6 regulars and 2 alternates available to play this game. As an alternate you should still "stay in" the game and be ready to take over if someone is unavailable. A skip means you don't get to play again until the next round; 3 consecutive skips means you give up your spot to an alternate.

Roster:
1. Xerol
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Alternates:
1.
2.

Settings:
Civ: Undecided
Map: Pangaea
Size: Undecided
Difficulty: Noble
AIs: Undecided

Let the discussion...begin!

 

[Qwack]

Hehe, Ill be lurking this game. My next variant idea was actually somewhat similiar to this after RB22. I was thinking about doing "must win by domination" and "Must raze all cities you capture".

 

[FoolontheHill]

Sounds like fun! I'm in if you'll have me.

I agree with the importance of the shrine(s). I've had a couple of games lately where I've been able to get two religions in one city. That city alone has been able to fund my empire toward the late middle ages and let me go 100% research. Converted to ICS, that would pay for quite a few cities.

On Noble, it shouldn't be too hard to grab an early religion, but to start the leader discussion, I thought I'd look at the civilizations starting with Mysticism. They are:

Arabia - [Saladin Spi/Pro]
Aztec - [Monte Agg/Spi]
Celtic - [Brenus Spi/Char]
Incan - [Huayna Ind/Fin]
Indian - [Asoka Spi/Org] [Gandhi Phi/Spi]
Korean - [Wang Fin/Prot]
Spanish - [Isabella Spi/Exp]

To me, Huayna and Asoka stand out. Cottage spamming and some early wonders look very usefull. However, cheap courthouses and the ability to switch civics on a whim look good too.

I'm not saying that starting with Mysticism is the only way to go, and some other trait combinations are pretty attractive such as Char/Exp(Washington) or Char/Fin(Hannibal) or Char/Org(Napoleon) or Exp/Org(Mehmed).

 

[Xerol]

Asoka sounds pretty good if we're going for one of the first 2 religions. In my test games I usually went for Judaism. We could also go for Confucianism from the start - if we started with Fishing/Wheel or Agriculture/Wheel we could immediately go to Pottery, then use early cottages to boost research to Priesthood.

IMO organised is a REQUIREMENT, not an option. I doubt even with 2 shrines maxed out we'd be able to support ICS domination on even a Standard sized map without it. State Property and low-impact civics are going to be extremely important; in the mid-late game, we might even be able to run Pacifism for cheaper than another religious civic, even with a massive domination-geared army (simply because of the savings on civic costs).

 

[FoolontheHill]

Then it boils down to whether another trait is more valuable than a fairly certain chance at one of the early religions. Since we are talking Noble, I'm not sure that Charismatic or Expansionist as as good as I originally thought. The happy and health pressures aren't too extreme on that level.

I like the COL path you have since we will need courthouses asap, founding the religion would be a nice bonus.

Early pottery is good too. I tend to put it off too long in a lot of my games and hit an early cash crunch.

One thing that argues for Asoka is the spiritual trait. I have to admit, the flexibility it gives you in changing civics and religions is very useful.

 

[Xerol]

So it comes down to Napoleon or Asoka. Napoleon is Organised, the Charismatic trait will certainly help with war (barracks + 1 animal combat = 2 promotions), and we can research Pottery immediately.

Our two initial plans then come down to this:
Asoka - Research an early religion, get Priesthood, build oracle while going to Writing.
Napoleon - Research pottery, use cottages to directly get CoL, use Oracle for CS or another expensive tech.

Actually, under Napoleon, especially on Noble, we could possibly get 4 early religions with this path:
Pottery -> Mysticism -> Polytheism* -> Monotheism* -> Priesthood -> Writing -> CoL* -> Theology**

Theology would come from the Oracle. Poly, Mono, and CoL would be hand-resesarched. We could dedicate the Oracle city to building GPs, and get 4 quickly. The only one that would be hard to get and not guaranteed is Polytheism, but we won't really NEED it since we'll also be getting 3 other religions. Builds in the capital should probably be worker, settler, and then a couple warriors to explore. We'll also need to catch up on worker techs, but I think once we get Bronze Working the workers will mostly just be chopping/cottaging.

 

[FoolontheHill]

Napoleon - Research pottery, use cottages to directly get CoL, use Oracle for CS or another expensive tech.

Actually, under Napoleon, especially on Noble, we could possibly get 4 early religions with this path:
Pottery -> Mysticism -> Polytheism* -> Monotheism* -> Priesthood -> Writing -> CoL* -> Theology**

You're beginning to convince me. When I first saw the Charismatic trait, I thought that it would be very helpful with quick growth as happy is a limiting factor for me in a lot of games. Probably not that much of an issue on Noble, but it certainly wouldn't hurt. The military benefits are nice too. And of course, organized goes without saying (but I said it anyway ).

Polytheism would be unlikely I think even on Noble, but Monotheism and the rest should fall into place fairly easily.

 

[Xerol]

Now all we need is 4 more players.

 

[FoolontheHill]

Now all we need is 4 more players.

True. Have you posted a notice in the registration thread?

 

[picardathon]

Can I join? I think Asoka would work best, though I am rather fond of Mehmed II (His UB is fantastic for ICS) but Asoka works good too.

 

[FoolontheHill]

Hey Xerol and picardathon,

We are getting some views but no takers... Want to try a three person rotation and start and see if we generate any interest?

 

[Xerol]

Yeah, that sounds like a good start. We can add people in later if interest rises. We'll go with longer turnsets since there's less people, though. (How does 40-30-20-20... sound?)

I still prefer Napoleon, but if someone wants to try to convince me on Asoka, give it a shot. We still need to decide other things like map size and number (choice?) of opponents.

 

[Atlas]

Lurker Comment

I like your variant alot. You all have apparently decided on traits already, but might I throw in my 2 cents...

I think your variant screams Organized. You know this, but I would argue for Philosophical too. Only working 8 tiles, is going to result in lots of early specialists and GP are good. Thus Fredrick would be my intial reaction, but it hardly helps your religious pursuit (a good idea BTW). Anyway probably the most important thing is to have a plan, optimal or not, and go with it.

-Atlas

 

[Rem]

I'd be up for this if you guys will have me. I've been browsing SGs for a couple years now, but have only taken part in one or two, so I don't have much experience with em. I can easily take on prince and am starting to get comftorble on monarch though, so if you guys will take me that would be awesome

 

[Meatbuster]

Lurker comment
40-30-20-20 sounds like a lot of turns. Marathon speed?

 

[Xerol]

Lurker comment
40-30-20-20 sounds like a lot of turns. Marathon speed?

We haven't actually decided a speed yet; I was thinking Epic, probably though. The reason for the long turnsets is because we only (at that time) had 3 people, and so a "cycle" would be just about as long as a typical SG (60 turns). But now that interest has ramped up a bit we'll go with a more normal turn cycle.

 

[Xtream_Rockstar]

hey ill join i just got off of an sg that ended and im ready for another one

 

[Bede]

Just what I need to get the feet wet on Warlords and if I count right you are looking for the caboose player. Sign me up.

i don't have much to add to the discussion above as you seem to have explored the topic thoroughly.

 

[douglas_21]

Sign me up! I've got lots of ICS experience from the early civ games. I usually play on prince level, so that should give you an idea of my skills. I think we should go organized/charismatic. Organized is a must with so many cities. I think we'll need lots of towns to pay for our many cities though. Mines too.

 

[FoolontheHill]

The earlier discussion seemed to revolve mainly around Napoleon or Asoka as the leader. What is everyone thinking there. I started on the Asoka side, but I've drifted over to Napoleon now.

Also, the other things that are left to decide are speed, map size and whether we want to pick our opponents?

I tend toward randon AI opponents, standard map and normal speed (I know, very vanilla ). What does everyone else think?