Sengir02 - The long view on cottage cheese

[Meiz]

Since the outcome of Sengir01 is pretty much clear, concidering that the biggest threat for our army is Gandhi , we might as well start to discuss on the next game of the series.

We all know that Sengir himself is busy with IRL business (no clue what that is anyway... ), so I'll go ahead and propose a variant inspired by RB9 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=152787) and RB15 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=159392&highlight=RB15) - succession games (Yes, I don't have much to do at work for now, so I have time to read these ).

Variant rules (to be discussed)
- We must beeline to Pottery and then set research directly to Future Tech!
- We may build the necessary improvements to connect resources, but every other tile must get a cottage. This includes hills and forests as well.
- We may only run specialists once all city tiles are being worked. Plain cititzens are allowed.
- Exception to above: We can have one GP farm city, which doesn't have any restriction for specialists.

Game settings (to be discussed)
- Difficulty: Monarch
- Leader: Willem van Oranje (Fin/Cre), starts with Fisching and Agriculture
- No tech trading
- No espionage
- Map: 3 continents, standard size, low sea level, tropical climate
- Speed: Epic
- Patch: 3.19

Roster
Meiz
nocho
Norvin Green
sturick
Whosit
Sengir

 

[Norvin_Green]

How can I resist? I will also take this chance to petition Meiz to re-think his ability to play with us in the SGOTM. Nothing like a little peer pressure

 

[nocho]

nocho (I take your eagerness as a yes )

You're not entirely wrong there...

Regarding beeline to pottery and then straight to future tech, I just tried out and this way you miss out on AH. If however you do future tech straight away, you get to research AH . You go straight to calendar and then start wheel and pottery comes in as 7th tech. 8th is mining. You won't get hunting (so no camps) in either case.
I would suggest starting off "normal" by researching the worker techs and then straight to the future. With the double variant we'll have enough challenges as it is...

 

[Meiz]

I appreciate the offer (again) . It's just that the combination of renaissance start, nukes, free time for civ (might be hard to believe, but I actually do know what IRL is ) etc. make my brains burn. Remind me again in the next game and I might even jump in!

 

[Meiz]

Regarding beeline to pottery and then straight to future tech, I just tried out and this way you miss out on AH. If however you do future tech straight away, you get to research AH . You go straight to calendar and then start mining and pottery comes in as 7th tech. You won't get hunting (so no camps) in either case.
I would suggest starting off "normal" by researching the worker techs and then straight to the future. With the double variant we'll have enough challenges as it is...

I was going to test this myself, but glad you did it for me . Too bad I don't have the guts to install Civ for my work computer (and I work in the IT!)...

I'll edit the variant to allow basic worker techs. I still think we shouldn't research IW and masonry, but what do you think?

 

[Sengir]

I had some further ideas for SG's as well, but a couple of them need some work beforehand so they won't see the light untill I've got more time. The idea of beelining Future Tech has crossed my mind, so I'd like to see that variant for this game. (I'd go for the hard variant as well: set tech to future tech and be done with it).

As for difficulty level: If you are going to use no espionage and no techtrading then you should probably go with emperor as the AI is seriously hampered by it. Other option is to enable espionage en techtrading, but just limit it for us to techs on the beeline. Bulbs should probably be banned as well, though I think we won't have many scientists (maybe from the Glib).

Also, this is a signup, though I won't be playing for a while (hey, if you use my name for the game, I can at least demand a place in, even though I won't be available right from the start )

 

[nocho]

I was going to test this myself, but glad you did it for me . Too bad I don't have the guts to install Civ for my work computer (and I work in the IT!)...

I'll edit the variant to allow basic worker techs. I still think we shouldn't research IW and masonry, but what do you think?

Note I edited what you quoted (although nothing major)

No IW is ok, it seems to come soon enough, masonry comes really late though (after optics even...). This might change if we allow other worker techs first though.

 

[Meiz]

Also, this is a signup, though I won't be playing for a while (hey, if you use my name for the game, I can at least demand a place in, even though I won't be available right from the start )

I was counting on that!

As for difficulty level: If you are going to use no espionage and no techtrading then you should probably go with emperor as the AI is seriously hampered by it. Other option is to enable espionage en techtrading, but just limit it for us to techs on the beeline. Bulbs should probably be banned as well, though I think we won't have many scientists (maybe from the Glib).

I'm still pondering regarding the difficulty. It's true that the AI's get slowed down without tech trading, but at least they can have some sense with the techs they choose to learn. We again will probably tech towards Optics while still missing all the necessary economy techs etc. I'd like to hear more opinions on this matter, but I'd still go towards Monarch difficulty. Btw. Are the AI's confused with No espionage setting as well?

I don't see a reason to ban bulbs completely, but maybe we should add restrictions for specialists? For example, we can run specialists only after all other city tiles are being worked. This variant is all about the cottages anyway.

Despite what I said earlier, I'd also like to try the harder variant of beelining to Pottery and followed directly by Future Tech. For what do we need other improvements when we can work cottages, cottages and cottages!!!

 

[nocho]

Despite what I said earlier, I'd also like to try the harder variant of beelining to Pottery and followed directly by Future Tech. For what do we need other improvements when we can work cottages, cottages and cottages!!!

Because when the barbarians enter our borders (no masonry, no GW...) we're still defending with warriors! And if we get dowed early-ish we'll have to restart.

 

[Meiz]

Fair point and can be easily fixed by allowing hunting + archery

 

[sturick]

Alright fine...I was trying to drop down to only 2 SGs but you all sucked me in.
This sounds like alot of fun.

If we are playing on Monarch then lets not make all these exceptions to the rules.
Monarch barbs aren't that vicious really. We just need to be smarter than them.

Plus, don't discount the possibility of popping techs with huts!

Was there a reason we chose Washington?
Perhaps we can choose a leader that will put a different tech path in front of us.
Or we could choose to play with the Incans and that way we have Quechuas!

Just trying to provide options...

 

[Meiz]

Glad you decided to join, sturick.

Well, first I just thought to go with Washington, because both of the RB SG's had him aswell. But cha/exp also allow us to grow our cities bigger, even while we might not be able to improve our happy resources for a while. HR will also be way off. Thats my reasoning anyway, but the decision isn't locked by any means

 

[nocho]

Well, I'd like the fewest exceptions possible as well, but, but, but, I'd like to make an exception. My "worry" is that if we go future tech after pottery we miss out on both hunting and AH, which will make a whole bunch of resources useless. Even settling on them doesn't work to connect them if you don't have the tech, if I'm not mistaken.
I mean, we have severe enough restrictions already, to add "use only half of the resources" is a bit too much imo. So I'd say tech wheel-pottery-hunting-ah and from there on what the game has in store for us. With some luck we'll get horses for barb defence .

 

[Meiz]

Maybe we should just vote on that?

1) Beeline to Pottery -> Beeline to Future Tech
2) Beeline to Pottery -> Tech Hunting + AH -> Beeline to Future Tech

We also have to other settings to be decided and locked, so please comment especially on leader and map type.

I also added the restriction for specialists in the main post, but disagree when you still can! . My votes on these matters can also be found from the starting post

 

[nocho]

2)2)2)2)2)

I also don't fancy the specialist rule too much... We won't have slavery for quite some time so if we can hire scientists (we get writing very soon) we have another way of avoiding growing over the happy cap. Besides, we'll get rather expensive techs to research rather soon (calendar) so scientists really would help to speed it all up a bit.

Washington is fine with me, map, anything but archipelago sounds good.

 

[Sengir]

My vote: 1) Beeline Pottery -> Future Tech
as for missing Hunting and AH, we can always use a civ that starts with hunting and perhaps there is a starting tech combination that gives us AH even with the beelines.


EDIT:
Yeah, the specialist rule is going to cause trouble if we don't have access to the whip I think. On the other hand, we can stagnate with hill/plains cottages with a bit of luck, so it should be doable, especially if we leave it on Monarch (at least, I'd like a challenging game more then a run-over).

 

[Meiz]

Needless to say that I don't count plain cititzen as a specialist. Main goal is to make this challencing, instead of free run. As mentioned many times before, AI gets drastically slowed down by No tect trading, and we seem to be set on monarch difficulty.

 

[Whosit]

I'm . . . not sure about this game yet. On the one hand, going straight for Future Tech seems interesting (I've wanted to try it myself) but on the other, well . . . . Actually, what do we do when we get a Future Tech? Are we restricted from learning anything else at that point? We'd essentially have to get a Diplo win somehow, it seems, though I have no idea how many military techs we'll end up with.

I'll weigh in again tomorrow when I've had more sleep.

 

[Meiz]

I'm . . . not sure about this game yet. On the one hand, going straight for Future Tech seems interesting (I've wanted to try it myself) but on the other, well . . . . Actually, what do we do when we get a Future Tech? Are we restricted from learning anything else at that point? We'd essentially have to get a Diplo win somehow, it seems, though I have no idea how many military techs we'll end up with.

I'll weigh in again tomorrow when I've had more sleep.

We don't actually need to research until Future Tech, but even if we did, that tech continues to Future Tech 1, 2 etc. . But in any case, all victory conditions are enabled, allthough some might be a bit easier than others . I'm guessing that we might have a decent chance to fight against some backward AI's with more modern troops.

 

[Meiz]

So we have three votes for harder beeline variant, but nocho has a fair point on losing some essential improvements permanently. Does someone have time to investigate if there's a leader who also gets AH when beelining to Pottery -> Future tech?

About the specialist rule, my worst wear is that this game turns to hybrid economy, when the idea is to go fully with cottage power. I mean, there will be a delay before we might get additional happiness from resources or HR, so we would probably end up running two scientists in every city. If you add Pyramids to the mix (not sure if it's possible, but... ), we will probably overpower each of these poor monarch AI's who can't even trade techs with each others.

Map type: I think two or three continents prevent us to get an easy domination victory / choke down the AI's, and lets us actually research the end of the tech tree.

No espionage: I have played couple of offline games with this setting in 3.19, and haven't noticed any bugs or odd AI behavior. Basically this rule would keep our variant much more simplier (no additional rules for Gspy / spy usage etc.), but hopefully it also lets AI's to completely focus on research, instead of diverting some of their commerce to EP's.

I'd also like to add some kind of guideline, that strongly suggests us to actually work those cottages. So we don't end up avoiding to chop forests on hills for added production etc. Huge commerce advantage should be balanced by lower production, and would also force us to rely on rush buying at the end game.

I kind of feel like I'm not the right person to lock any of these decisions, but that Sengir should have the final word on the variant and settings. This is his game after all