[BTS] SGOTM 24 Unusual Suspects

[AlanH]

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Good luck with the game, and - Enjoy!

 

[kcd_swede]

Hi everyone, and welcome back for another Unusual Suspects succession game. I'll reserve the first few posts spots in this thread for reference material. I don't have the patience or time to do a real orderly captain's role here, so would be very happy if everyone pitches in with the team management duties.

So... should we just cut all the trees and do 100 turns of Enviro? (J/K)


The rules

• After you change to Enviromentalism you are not allowed to change back.
• At your first turn of enviromentalism, you can reduce the number of turns required by 2 for each forest preserve you have on your starting land as defined by the start screenshot.
• At your first turn of enviromentalism, you can further reduce the number of turns required by 1 for every five forest preserves you have on other lands within your borders.
• On the turn when you win the game you must still have at least the same number of forest preserves (not neceesary on the same locations) on both starting land and total. If you fail to achieve this your team will be graded behind teams who succeeded in keeping all their forests. If you expect to lose some preserves during this time you must state this in a pm to the mapmaker.
• To claim the number of turns you need to force the world to run enviromentalist you must upload your save at the turn when you switch to Environmentalism, and post screenshots in your team thread of the preserves that will be counted.
• If you are not using the UN to convince the AI to run enviromentalist we might ask you to post proof (screenshots, saves etc) that everyone is forced to do so for all turns and does not change back to another civic.

 

[kcd_swede]

Roster:

nocho (played to t??) (On-deck)
Ronnie1 (played to t34)
Chris Shaffer (played to t51)
kcd_swede (played to t61)
Neilmeister (UP!)
deckhand (MIA)

 

[kcd_swede]

reserved - wow... had to wait 15 seconds between posts!

 

[nocho]

Checking in!

Cutting all trees will at least simplify the game.

 

[Ronnie1]

Hi everyone, checking in. I need to catch up on the game conditions, shouldn't take long I hope.

 

[nocho]

Hey Ron, good to see you around too in the end!

Pretty tough settling decision. Can't see a very obvious spot around the deer, certainly not for a long term capital (environmentalism requires medicine). Maybe we should go towards the corns and cut trees only around there for a very good bureau cap (2 corns, riverside cottages, mines if we want to cut the forests from the hills)? Obviously takes 3 turns or so to get there.

 

[kcd_swede]

Hey Ron, good to see you around too in the end!

Pretty tough settling decision. Can't see a very obvious spot around the deer, certainly not for a long term capital (environmentalism requires medicine). Maybe we should go towards the corns and cut trees only around there for a very good bureau cap (2 corns, riverside cottages, mines if we want to cut the forests from the hills)? Obviously takes 3 turns or so to get there.

Forest can only regrow onto unimproved tiles without a hidden resource (unless that resource naturally can occur with forest), So my gut feeling is we will be commerce-limited on the mainland. Collossus and Great Lighthouse could be useful. Forest regrowth is fairly quick once you get up the preserves, but honestly, we should be looking to end the game somewhere around the same time period as we can start building them, so only nominal regrowth. The question is whether we ultimately get there faster by cutting out a good city or two and playing some extra turns at Enviro, or if the turn penalty is the biggest factor. Probably, we'd want to make our empire strong and fast teching on someone else's land, and keep this place pristine. So I like the idea of moving somewhere we don't need to cut 20 tiles. We will definitely benefit from some test games to help judge.

And if we think 3 turns moving the settler is an acceptable delay which we make up in other ways, the corn vicinity seems reasonable. 3 seafood site up north costs one forest. But SIP gets us the happy from the gems before Iron-working, and is the only place to get two strong early commerce camps. 1 cottage and one mine without any clearing... and two more cottages if we want to cut a little, and speed up settling other places. Could be worse. Chopping is so strong that we shouldn't be afraid to do a little in the early game.

Interesting coastal accessible land to the left, and most of the non-forest tiles that look like city sites have no forest.

But this is all just gut-feel atm. Can someone make a test-map and we can check how some of the options stack up after about 50turns? We at least don't have to guess the landscape and do a lot of test-map updating in the first part of the game.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Sadly, I can't get BUFFY to run on my Windows image. I'll have to keep playing with permissions.

Is there something wrong with SIP, worker first, hunting, and camp the resources?

I'd like to see some dotmaps of our island. That's something I can do this evening even if I can't get BUFFY running.

 

[Ronnie1]

We are Philosophical, coastal cities high in food for running specialists could be beneficial. If we are saving the forests, I don't really see being able to set up a true bureau/cottage capital. Maybe try to get an early Mids and run Rep + specialists.

 

[kcd_swede]

Sadly, I can't get BUFFY to run on my Windows image. I'll have to keep playing with permissions.

Is there something wrong with SIP, worker first, hunting, and camp the resources?

I'd like to see some dotmaps of our island. That's something I can do this evening even if I can't get BUFFY running.

I think that's an obvious strong choice... would get us through the early tech tree quickly, and provide a pretty darn good settler/worker pump. Are we allowed to SIP and then move the capitol? Perhaps that's a plan to keep in mind when we get to Civil Service.

 

[nocho]

Let me just post the starting screen shot here, as part of shared captain duties (by all). Basically so that I can stare at it without having to switch threads all the time.



The gem tile we're on is a plains hill, isn't it? Truth is that if we settle there with the 3f1h deer around a first worker will come very fast and with hunting it'll have some work to do. Is certainly the quickest start. Not awesome long term, so I wouldn't discard moving the capital.

As mentioned, with philosophical indeed specialisits might be the way to go. Pyramids would be great, but quite possibly a very long shot without stone nearby and limited chopping.

 

[nocho]

I'd like to see some dotmaps of our island.

Is this something? A silly first attempt.



Red would be SIP.
White a longer term bureau cap. Could also go 1E.
Yellow NW prod city, home to GLH and Colossus.
Blue, triple fish, probable NE site.
Purple, double food all purpose spot, though low on prod.
Green, low prio catch a fish.
Light blue, double sea-food cottage helper (if we go that way).
Orange, frontier cottage helper.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I got BUFFY working, so that's good at least. Looks like saves will be released on Wednesday.

 

[Ronnie1]

What does the city center yield with gems? I know the PH adds 1 hammer, but does the gem yield any benefit? I would almost never consider settling on a gem resource. It just feels like I am giving up a fully formed town when I would want it the most, early in the game.

Also, the land to the east, (sorry west) is clearly visible, meaning we don't have to fill our island with cities.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

A city founded on gems yields +1c if it is riverside. In the current setting, all we would get is +1 happy (and +1h from the plains hill).

We have no idea what's on the other side of the desert/mountain pass to the east, I wouldn't count on there being any city sites there. I also notice there's land visible in the west (just a bit SW of the clams).

 

[ChrisShaffer]

A test game and the worldbuilder file for it. Have fun! Hopefully everyone can play 50 turns or so of several approaches to test initial city placement.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

The southern fur is grass, not tundra. New files uploaded in the previous post to fix that mistake.

 

[nocho]

Nice job Chris.

Will try some runs in the coming days.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

First attempt at SIP. Research hunting -> mining -> bronze working -> mysticism -> wheel -> pottery. 3 cities, 2 settlers will be whipped in 2-3 turns, 1 worker, 6 improved resources + road started. Capital can 2 pop whip settlers till the cows come home (or should that be till the deer come home?).

Spoiler :