[BTS] News: BOTM 217 - Elizabeth, Deity - Starts July 15

[DynamicSpirit]

BOTM 217: Elizabeth of England.

It's deity time again. In order to help you a bit with your settling decision, I decided to reveal the local resources. So - if I've got it right - besides the tiles that your units can see anyway, you can also see every tile within 4 tiles of the settler that has a resource on it.

Then I figured that it wasn't really fair to help you if I wasn't going to help the AI as well. So I added a few extra resources in a location that I think an AI will probably get to before you do.

Game settings:
Playing as: Elizabeth of England
Rivals: 6 AIs
Difficulty: Deity
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
Options: No goody huts, no random events
Victory Conditions: All enabled

Map settings:
Map: Fractal
World Wrap: Cylindrical
Mapsize: Standard
Climate: Tropical
Sea level: Medium
Map latitudes: -90°S to 90°N


Elizabeth is Philosophical and Financial, and you start with Fishing and Mining.

The Philosophical trait gives +100% great people birth rate and double production speed of University

The Financial trait gives +1 commerce on any plot that already has at least 2 commerce

Unique unit: Redcoat (replaces Rifleman)
The Redcoat benefits from: 25% combat bonus against mounted units, 25% combat bonus against gun units. This compares with the Rifleman which has: 25% combat bonus against mounted units.

Unique Building: Stock Exchange (replaces Bank)
The stock exchange gives +65% gold in the city - pretty good huh! Shame you probably won't live long enough to build any!

Starting screenshot

This is the start of the game (click for a bigger image):




Adventurer Class bonuses:
You play on monarch level But the AI still starts with deity starting units - so it'll be quite a hard monarch!

To Enter the Competition:

This competition will open at 00:01 am on 15 Jul 2021, server local time (UTC-6:00). From that date and time, you'll be able to get your chosen starting save >>>here<<<.

Submit the save after your victory (or defeat) here, by 16 Aug 2021.

Here is a link to a list of the differences between Vanilla, Warlords and BtS.

Software Versions

Windows: This game MUST be played in Beyond the Sword (NOT Civ4 Vanilla or Warlords), patched to version 3.19, and with the BUFFY mod version 3.19.005 installed. You can download the BUFFY mod here. Players using Windows Vista or Windows 7 are encouraged to read the notes on Vista fixes here.


Macintosh: This game MUST be played in Beyond the Sword (NOT Civ4 Vanilla or Warlords), patched to version 3.19, and with the Mac BUFFY mod version 3.19.003 installed. You can download the Mac BUFFY mod here.

While playing...

Remember - for your entry to be accepted, it MUST be your first attempt to play this game, and you MUST NOT replay any turns. If you make a mistake while playing, you have to live with it, learn from it, and carry on the game without replaying.

We will open 'spoiler' threads during the month for players to discuss what happens in their games. Do not discuss any details of your game outside those threads.

 

[LowtherCastle]

A lot of information here. There seem to be two exposed tiles with resources we don’t know about yet. Of course that could be anything, including uranium.

Evidently there is at least one AI on our land mass. AIs have been given useful resources within four tiles that will be worth stealing by capturing their secondary cities.

The northwest gold has no fogged food resources between it and us. In fact none of the fogged tiles within four tiles of our seller is necessarily vital to defog. Perhaps to defog River tiles for commercial access.

giving an AI some extra resources might make this deity game even more difficult.

Basic settling question: settle in place or spend one turn to settle one N or wet corn-E and gamble that that mystery tile is copper or horse?

 

[krikav]

This looks like a lovely game! Elizabeth is a very strong leader.
It's a shame to spoil such a sweet burocracy capital, but I think that settlement 1E of the corn is the way to go here. Not only does the PH settlement give us a faster worker, gaining us 2 turns, but the corn will also be reached by the worker one turn faster. All in all resulting in that wet corn being improved 3 turns earlier than SiP.
Getting the sheep and a mystery resource is just icing on the cake I think.

 

[Fippy]

Yup if just concerned about winning, a faster start should usually be picked.
Most importantly helps against barbs. London would still be a huge Bur. Cap, but no good if messing up early

 

[WastinTime]

settlement 1E of the corn is the way to go here

no fresh water. Fractal is not good at providing a variety of resources.

 

[Powerfaker]

The picture doesn't show all there will be visible when we start playing => we will have more info on the 4th tiles east then.
So the PH 2E of corn might be an option too if it captures something nice. (say, a grassland pig to lure us even further from the nice bureau area )

 

[LowtherCastle]

no fresh water. Fractal is not good at providing a variety of resources.

A non-trivial point. With granary, corn, sheep and 4 forests, unhealthy at pop 7. Chop three forests, unhealthy at pop 5.

SIP appears to have the most forests, most 2f river tiles and is particularly useful in covering the SW corn for settling SW-corn-2S later.

Settling 1N has more hammer hills but less food.

N-corn-1E seemingly has far fewer Forest but the benefits krikav mentioned.

 

[krikav]

I'm as much a freshwater-riverside-longterm junkie as the next guy, getting a queazy feeling whenever I do something that I know I will regret in 150 turns.
However, doing my best to kick this habit by trying to focus on whats good short term.

@Powerfaker hmm, yea 2 E of corn does open up a nice spot for a second city NE of the dry corn too.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

A lot of information here. There seem to be two exposed tiles with resources we don’t know about yet. Of course that could be anything, including uranium.

Evidently there is at least one AI on our land mass. AIs have been given useful resources within four tiles that will be worth stealing by capturing their secondary cities.

Some good reasoning there. But note that I didn't say I'd put extra resources within 4 tiles of an AI - merely that I thought an AI would probably get to the extra resources before you could.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Some good reasoning there. But note that I didn't say I'd put extra resources within 4 tiles of an AI - merely that I thought an AI would probably get to the extra resources before you could.

My bad. Thanks.

another interesting takeaway from this 9X9 Square. Any Hill that isn’t currently exposed could pop a strategic resource with a mine.

 

[WastinTime]

A non-trivial point. With granary, corn, sheep and 4 forests, unhealthy at pop 7. Chop three forests, unhealthy at pop 5.

With floodplains it's unhealthy at 6 and pop 4, rt?

 

[krikav]

Sounds good. I look forward to enjoying the stinking cesspool of London!

 

[LowtherCastle]

With floodplains it's unhealthy at 6 and pop 4, rt?

Yes. Not sure how I got to 8. So it’s pretty weak. Mainly a temporary, early-game capital.

Assuming four forests, pop1
Start: 4 2
Corn: 4 2 (cap needs 1 road to river)
1chop sett: 3 2
sheep: 3 2 (needs 2 roads)

Pop3 — corn rd: 4 4 (2 wkr-t)
Pop4 — sheep rd: 5 5 (5-6 wkr-t)
Pop5 — granary: 6 6 (60)
Max chops: 2?

How much is early REX slowed by these costs?

 

[krikav]

Fractal, 6 AIs, NH/NE, all settings are as vanilla as I could possibly ask for. Thanks alot for this.

 

[krikav]

Tropical climate, how does this really change things...? The jungle band is broader? Smaller poles? Does it affect resource distribution much?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Tropical climate, how does this really change things...? The jungle band is broader? Smaller poles? Does it affect resource distribution much?

Speaking about tropical maps in general and without any reference to this particular map: Yes, tropical will mean a much broader equatorial band of grass/jungle, and correspondingly smaller bands of plains, tundra and ice. I'm not sure about resource distribution. Theoretically it would seem to imply more of the resources that you tend to find under jungle and fewer of the ones that you tend to find on ice and tundra, but I haven't really looked at enough maps in enough detail to know whether or not that does happen.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Tropical climate, how does this really change things...? The jungle band is broader? Smaller poles? Does it affect resource distribution much?

Like DS, I'm no expert on maps but looking at a number of fractals it appears that gems and bananas tend to be in jungle, along with a Calendar happy sometimes. More important maybe, the fractal landmasses are relatively small, around 900 total land tiles on a 52x84 map ( I think...), and typically divided into a couple larger continents. Because the continents are relatively small, they can fit north or south of the jungle belt so you need to find out if your landmass has any jungle. If it does have a lot, this can slow down one or more AI's REX. That's helpful. We appear to have some room for growth.

After opening the save you can check the number of land tiles on the map. If it's significantly more than 900 than we know the mapmaker has been busy.

After settling you can check our coordinates to figure out how close we are to the equator for an early glimpse of the situation. Fn 1 > City Info.

 

[Tobiyogi]

Thanks for uploading the Mac Saves. I am still hesitant which level to choose. I would almost dare deity because of the 2 gold mines. Normally, I do not finish deity games succesfully, even if I had a good start.

 

[krikav]

After settling you can check our coordinates to figure out how close we are to the equator for an early glimpse of the situation. Fn 1 > City Info.

Had no idea about that, have to check it out.
The only guidelines I have had to see where I was, have been to check the terrain. Is there crabs or clams? Snow on the trees or not? Such things.

 

[krikav]

Had to check in to understand. It's with the domestic advisor, if you choose "City Info"

But what does this "X 79, Y29" really tell me? The X coord is largely irrelevant on a map that has cyllindrical wrap, no?
The Y coord, tells me that if the map is 52 tiles tall I'm very close to the equator (29/52= 56%)