SGOTM 08 - Trash Team

[AlanH]

Welcome to your BtS SGOTM 8 Team Thread. Please use it for all internal team communication, turn logs and discussions. Subscribe to it to receive notifications, 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, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest.

The Game
This will be the first Beyond the Sword SGOTM. Thanks, Gyathaar

Following his recent honeymoon in the Far East, Gyathaar, aka Suryavarman II of the Khmer Empire, is just Crazy About Wonders. He has decreed that he will win a glorious victory and that his total Wonder points per turn played will then be the envy of the world.

Suryavarman II is Expansive and Creative, with the Ballista Elephant to assist in acquiring Wonders he can't build himself, and the Baray to allow him to build the Hanging Gardens.

It is a Normal speed, Monarch difficulty game on a Standard map. All victory conditions are enabled.

The Objective
The winners will be the teams who achieve a Victory by any means, and who score the highest Wonder Points per Turn Played.

Five Wonder Points are awarded for each Wonder controlled by the Team, and are displayed as the 'xx' in "yy from Wonders (xx/310)" when you hover your mouse over your score in the game screen. 310 is the maximum Wonder Points score you can achieve if you control all Wonders and National Wonders.

Versions
This game will be played in Civilization IV Beyond the Sword, version 3.17, using HoF Mod 3.17.001.

If a later BtS patch is released during this game you will NOT be able to use it to play. You will need to complete this game in version 3.17 before updating your copy of BtS, or create and update a separate copy.

As there is no Mac version of BtS, Mac players can only join in if they are able to run the Windows version on their system.

Schedule

• The Team threads will open shortly.
• The start files will be published on Friday, September 12.
• Please try to complete the game within three months of the start date.

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

​

Map Parameters

• Playable Leader/Civ - Suryavarman II of the Khmer Empire.
• Characteristics - Expansive and Creative, starts with Hunting and Mining
• Unique Unit - Ballista Elephant (War elephant)
• Unique Building - Baray (Aqueduct)
• Rivals - 7 AI civs
• World size - Standard
• Difficulty - Monarch
• Landform - Big and Small
• Environment - Temperate climate, medium sea level
• Game Speed - Normal
• Everything else - Default

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 highest Wonder Score per Turn Played, and the Wooden Spoons for the finishing team with the lowest final score.
  
• You can capture wonders, or build them yourself. Remember you cannot capture national wonders.
  A victory in turn 100 with 10 wonders controlled gets the same score as winning in turn 200 with 20 wonders..
  In BtS the max number of wonders is 62, including corp headquarters and holy city buildings, national wonders, palace and world wonders.
  
• 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.
  
• Do NOT view any other team threads until you have submitted your last save - win, lose or retire.
  
• Do NOT download any other team's save.

Enjoy your game, and please be nice to each other

 

[pigswill]

First to post. Just downloaded HoF. Let's hope it works. Welcome in advance to team-mates old and new.

 

[cripp7]

checking in, hope it's fun

 

[remconius]

Hi there!

Remconius checking in...

Looking forward to this one, although best strategy to follow is still unknown to me.

 

[ese-aSH]

Hi all,

I'm new to this team, hope we'll make a good game here

guess this game is about domination/conquest victory timed properly to get most of the wonders

 

[jadex]

Looking forward to this one, although best strategy to follow is still unknown to me.

Same here!

guess this game is about domination/conquest victory timed properly to get most of the wonders

Probably. Lets just assume cultural/time/space are not an option? right?

I think some testgames might prove usefull. One initial tought:
building the shrines with GP's looks like an "easy" way of getting wonders, no?

 

[blastoidstalker]

Checking in here and new to the group.


At first look I agree with Jadex that conquest domination is the way to go. One alternative might be to go for an early religious victory, but the map type means you need astronomy to reach all civs so I do not know if it is the best.

On first impression I am thinking of conquest. I think focusing tech path towards rifling, while taking out 1-2 nearby civs early for production and research power. Then just taking the heart (where the wounders are) of all the other civs and vassalizing them). Once we have enough military at the end we build the remianing unbuilt wonders that we can get to. I do not think the modern era is worth getting into if we can avoid it.


Concerning religions and shrines, I think we should focus elsewhere. The AI will usualy build its own shrines and we can make sure to capture enemy religion founding cities.

 

[remconius]

Welcome to Trash Team SGOTM8

Before getting into discussions on how to tackle this wonderous mission, I compiled some guidelines, as always, that apply to all players of Trash Team. Good for new players and for returning players in case they have forgotten

First of all ensure that you have read and understood the rules provided by the administrators and follow any ongoing discussion at the SGOTM 08 Maintenance Thread.

Important is that you should not reload any turns. Also do not play any turns unless you are UP. Reloading or playing forward will get you or the whole team kicked out

Playing procedure:
1. I will maintain a roster to keep track of who is UP and who is ON DECK (up next).
2. When you are UP, open the save of the previous player and have a look around. Saves can be found here after the game has started.
3. Your first task is to make an initial Pre-Play Plan (PPP) with your view of what your turn set will bring and what your planned actions are.
4. In this thread post a ‘Got it’, your initial PPP and something about your availability in the next days. This is to indicate when you could potentially play and manage expectations of the rest.
5. After posting your initial PPP, allow at least 24 hrs for comments and suggestions.
6. Use the comments, suggestions and discussions to create an adjusted PPP.
7. Your adjusted PPP could lead to more discussion depending on where we are in the game. Please allow for this and adjust the plan until there is an agreement. At certain stages in the game this could take several days.
8. When the PPP is clear, go ahead and execute the plan as agreed. Make sure you follow the plan accurately and try not to forget any micromanagement advice.
9. While playing keep track of your moves and any events that happen. Taking screenshots is a great way to record an event and makes the report more interesting.
10. When you are done playing upload the save game here and write your turn report in this thread. As said, you are encouraged to include any 'Kodak' moments.

Ensure that you have the autosave settings to 1. Please contact AlanH if your game does crash, even if you can repeat all your moves.

If at any point during your set you are confronted with an unexpected key-decision or ‘oh shoot’ moment, stop playing and post the situation. We can all join in to decide the best way forward afterwhich you can continue to finish the turn set.

If there is no ‘Got it’ within 1 day or there is no activity for 2 days by the person who is UP, the person will be skipped and the next person will be up. This is only to keep the game going in case people go missing without notice or get overloaded with RL issues.
Skipping and swapping is always possible. Just post so the roster can be modified. If you know in advance you will be away for a period of time let us know.

Don’t be afraid to mention things that may appear silly or evident. Each player has strengths and weaknesses. Stating the obvious can often avoid mistakes or send the discussion in a different direction.
Always be open to other people’s comments and solutions, especially when you are UP. The most surprising and unexpected ideas can lead to the best solutions. It’s good to state your case, but be open to new and different ideas. There are many roads to Rome!

Remember that written text is a poor method to convey feelings. Several of us are not native to the English language. Jokes, humor and sarcasm can and will be misinterpreted. So use smilies and emotes in your posts to be more expressive. And if you do get upset by a post, please wait a few hours before you respond or you can contact me by PM.

All that said, I look forward to a fun game that will teach us a lot about the wonderous ways of Civ IV!

 

[pigswill]

My first thought is we should play at least one practice game and have more discussion about the overall game strategy before we start playing.

In previous trash team games we've done fairly well in implementing our agreed strategy but haven't really excelled in competitive terms because our overall game strategy has been sub optimal.

Two extremes would be:
i)to rapidly build a large empire then build as many wonders as possible before tipping the domination limit
ii) to stay small/medium while focussing on military techs and not building wonders (except national as required) and then conquering the world after the AI have built the wonders for us.

Another option altogether would be to stay medium sized, hog the wonders and go cultural.

Diplomatic victory may or may not be an option.

Space and time are probably not likely to score highly.

 

[ese-aSH]

Lets talk numbers : http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/
both domination win and diplo win are in the BC, so both are possible (but hard !)

Imaginate best scenario : a win around 1AD and control of all the 'pre democraty' wonders.
post democracy there is a 'hole' in wonder until ~mass media.

An important point is : do we want to win very early, controlling most of the early wonders, or win later controlling most of the wonders. I guess the map will tell.

to finish the game early, and unlock all wonders, huge tech trading between all the civs will be needed : the sooner we get a tech, the sooner we can start on the wonder (or the sooner the AI can build it)

 

[stuge]

Wow, I don't think that Trash has ever had this many players. (At least while I've been around.) Welcome to all new players.

My initial thoughts on strategy: Building troops>building wonders. This especially applies if there's a known wonder hog within our reach. Although normal speed does favor builders more than warmongers. Cultural is an interesting possibility but our three chosen cities would have to be excellent in terms of food/prod in order to win quickly. I'm not very familiar with cultural, though, so I'll do some reading before I say something horribly ignorant.

Test games are always good.

Edit: I've been playing lots of big&small lately and it's possible to end up stranded in the archipelago, which makes military victories a huge PITA. In such case cultural would probably be the best bet. Extensive exploration with scouts/workboats is a must. The sooner we can decide on the optimal game plan, the better.

 

[ese-aSH]

@stuge : agree on exploration. note that the most significant factor will be who are the ennemies. we wont play the same game if there are Pacal/HC/Louis/... instead of warmongers.

We should favor the most opened start : we are CRE/EXP, and we got marble (parthenon / GL / HS / Mausol / Oracle / Sistine / TajMal / ToA / Versailles) and gold (Paya) close by. Islands means LOW production, so the 'stone' wonders should not be a priority there.

 

[jadex]

On a big&small maptype, what are the chances of needing astronomy for conquest/domination? I think this will be the determining factor in overall strategy... I very much doubt that finishing on a date later then astronomy would be good...

to finish the game early, and unlock all wonders, huge tech trading between all the civs will be needed : the sooner we get a tech, the sooner we can start on the wonder (or the sooner the AI can build it)

agree completely

If we "need" astronomy, another possibility would be to go religeous victory, spreading religion with caravels and keeping "our side" in a tech lead so that we and close AI build all wonders. With gifting/trading favorably AI will like us and vote for us. This was just improvised the last 30 seconds, so not sure at all... However this strategy is very sensitive, maybe a bit "all or nothing"...

btw: somone is feeling like making a testmap?...

 

[remconius]

I aree with Pigswill that we should all play a test game. A testmap is not so necessary at this stage. We'll need one at a later stage to figure out the best initial moves and city founding spot.

Any big&small, normal speed, normal size with 7 rivals should do to get feel for how many wonders you can build/conquer in an early finish.

I did some basic mathematics to figure out what would be a good score. The final score is determined by Wonder score (# of wonders x 5) divided by # of turns.

In the picture below you see the number of wonders and the number of turns.


Looking on the left we see that getting a very fast finish time (800AD) is only interesting with more than 25 wonders. This would be very difficult IMO, given the limited time for AI to build wonders and us focusing on military.

[edit]Building 62 wonders in 460 turns gives 0.67 points. Getting all 62 wonders will be very difficult, though. We need a complete list....[/edit]


An ~1800AD-ish finish with around 40 wonders seems to be a reasonable area to target... Let's see if we can achieve this in a test game.

 

[ese-aSH]

@remconius : 40 wonder is already a lot ! (remember the 63 includes 7 shrines, 7 HQ & 14 nationnal wonders --> only 35 world wonders)

some wonders come very late in the game :
- 3 gorge dam (plastic - 1750h) too late + too expensive
- UN (mass media - 1000h)
- SoL (democracy - 1500h)
- Pentagon (assembly line - 1250h)
- Space elevator (sat + rob - 2000h) too late + too expensive
- holliwood (mass media - 1000h)
- RnR (radio - 800h)
- broadway (electricity - 800h)
- Cristo (radio - 1000h)
- Eiffel (radio - 1250h)

The more expensive a wonder is, the more it will delay our victory. Those 10 late wonders will be very hard to get (and they wont improve our score much : if we need 10 turns just to finish SoL, it is not worth it). 10 + 7HQ = 17 late wonders that will delay the game for a long time, and we are not sure we can get them all (7HQ is hard, the AI waits so long before fouding corp ^^)

the only point is to optimize the ratio WONDERS / TURNS ; as soon as this ratio falls down we dont need to continue the game, we will only decrease our score.

 

[remconius]

Good points! Let's see what is a realistic wonder amount. I compiled a complete list of all 62 wonders.

UNTIL STEEL
24 Wonders
Angkor Wat
Apostolic Palace
Broadway
Chichen Itza
Colossus
Great Library
Great Lighthouse
Great Wall
Hagia Sophia
Hanging Gardens
Mausoleum of Maussollos
Notre Dame
Oracle
Parthenon
Pyramids
Schwedagon Paya
Sistine Chapel
Spiral Minaret
Statue of Zeus
Stonehenge
Taj Mahal
Temple of Artemis
University of Sankor
Versailles
11 National wonders
Forbidden Palace
Globe Theatre
Hermitage
Heroic Epic
Iron Works
Moai Statues
National Epic
Oxford University
Palace
Wall Street
West Point
7 Religious wonders
Masjid al-Haram
Dai Miao
Church of the Nativity
Kashi Vishwanath
Kong Miao
Mahabodhi
Temple of Solomon

AFTER STEEL (20)
3 National wonders
National Park
Mt. Rushmore
Red Cross
10 Wonders after steel
Hollywood
Eiffel Tower
Kremlin
Pentagon
Rock & Roll
Space Elevator
Statue of Liberty
Three Gorges Dam
United Nations
Christo Redentor
7 Corporations
Civilized Jewelers Inc
Standard Ethanol
Aluminum Co
Cereal Mills
Creative Cunstructions
Mining Inc
Sid's Sushi Co

As said the 'after steel' wonders are too late/too expensive.

That leaves a total of 42 wonders:
11 national wonders we have to build ourselves. This means we need at least 5 cities building 2 national wonders each (capital can have palace + two)
24 world wonders these are best built by the AI, while we prepare to take over the world. In the end all wonders are built we just have to capture them....
7 religious wonders this is 1/6 of the total wonders within our reach. If we can set up a great prophet farm we can get some easy extra wonders when we capture religious capitals.

So the the overall plan could be:
While the AI builds most wonders, we build an empire, with a GProphet farm, our national wonders and capability for max warfare. Then around Macemen we switch to war mode and conquer all cities with wonders and raze the rest. Easy as that

 

[blastoidstalker]

I agree with remconius overview. I think the steel- rifling mark is the key one and probably where we target as our research high water mark. Particulaily in BTS the AI realy under prioritizes rifling. We start with maces and convert them over to rifles at some point in our conquering. Then we try to mop up ASAP.



We want to watch a couple of the post steal wonder in the end game as we may be able to grab them. Specificially the Sid sushi, the mining corp we may eek a tecdh out and build it late with a GP. Also the AI often goes for facishm that would enable us to build Mt. Rushmore. I think the rest are out of reach.

 

[remconius]

Roster (in order of appearance):
-Pigswill
-cripp7
-Remconius
-ese-aSH
-jadex
-Blastoidstalker
-Stuge
-KingMorgan
-chopster

 

[KingMorgan]

Hello, i'm in.

Skimmed the thread, will in depth tomorrow. Agree there is is a sweet spot where we should try to finish.

 

[chopster]

Checking in - briefly.
I'm away at a course at the moment with only very limited internet access.

Will read this thread (offline) and report in when I can.

Things will be back to normal in around 3 days.

chopster