BOTM 290 - Queen Isabella, Emperor - Starts 18th April

[Noble Zarkon]

BOTM 290: Queen Isabella of Spain.​

The world lies in ashes following a nuclear war / disaster / accident (depending on which news media you consume), food is very scarce, the land desolate, the people despairing. It is up to you Queen Isabella to rebuild your empire and the world and to turn despair and anguish into triumph. Can you make Spain great again?!

Game settings:
Playing as: Isabella of Spain
Rivals: 6 AIs
Difficulty: Emperor
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
Options: No vassal states, no goody huts, no random events
Victory Conditions: All enabled

Map settings:
Map: Continents
World Wrap: Cylindrical
Mapsize: Standard
Climate: Rocky
Sea level: High
Map latitudes: -90°S to 90°N


Isabella is Spiritual and Expansive, and you start with Mysticism and Fishing.

The Spiritual trait gives no anarchy and double production speed of Temple and Cristo Redentor

The Expansive trait gives +2 health/city and +25% hammers for worker production and double production speed of Granary and Harbor

Unique unit: Conquistador (replaces Cuirassier)
The conquistador has +50% strength against melee units - very useful bonus on an already strong unit! And unlike the cuirassier, the conquistador receives defensive bonuses.

Unique Building: Citadel (replaces Castle)
Besides the usual benefits of the castle, the citadel gives +5XP to siege weapons built in the city.

Starting screenshot

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



Adventurer Class bonuses:
Madrid has been founded and is size 2, both seafood resources have been netted and you have the Great Wall so no Barbarians to worry about!

Challenger Class Equalizers:
You play at Deity level although the AI civs still have Emperor level units.

To Enter the Competition:

This competition will open at 00:01 am on 18 Apr 2025, 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 26 May 2025.

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.

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.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Please note I haven't had as much time as usual to test and refine this map, not least with all the issues here over the weekend, but I think it's fairly well balanced and winnable! I learned some new stuff as well which was very interesting

 

[Fippy]

Great Bur. Capital, i don't see what could go wrong

 

[Xcalibrator]

Uhhhh... It's a little late for April Fool's, isn't it? I mean... isn't that a golden radioactive glow I see on all the land tiles? Is there something you're not showing us, like a galley, or already-researched Environmentalism, or....?

 

[LowtherCastle]

Hm… calls for some testing.

 

[KingQotan]

Well, at least it's on a river...

 

[LowtherCastle]

Hm… calls for some testing.

Not much gleaned. Workers can only road or rr, no improvements possible. 6 unhealthies at pop1. Balanced by 6 healthies with exp trait.

On Adventure save:
1. GSpy on t50, period. (Library probably impossible by then.)
2. With GW, only way to move your capital is by building it elsewhere.

Fog gazing, it looks like settling in place means no settlements to the south or south east will be possible.Reading between the lines, the adventure save, says that the first city has been settled, although not where, one would assume in place. If so, presumably the map maker didn’t give the adventure save a disability by settling in a stupid place., So settling in place is probably better than wandering around only to find we’re on an island or something painful like that.

Now, if adventure save settles elsewhere, we could be in a world of hurt.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Adventurer save is SIP.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Right. So I’m assuming there are no seafood resources below the warrior because those bubbles would appear on the screenshot. I’m not interested in going east with the warrior, I’m going Northwest on T0.

 

[High King J.J.]

I would have guessed a Roosevelt who starts with Mercantilism, you know, insane taxes to prevent foreign trade and an adventurer save with a fascist sidekick giving... well obviously Fascism. Overseas a bosom buddy with Communism who is also the vassal master of our leader (he peace vassaled to become the Moscow Agent Governing America. MAGA, right?). Initial -10 or more relations with every other civ, due to insults and faux passes (is that the plural form?) Overseas master named, say Putler, starts off with a war of aggression on his neighbours so our oaf leader, let's call him Dump, is also at war with them. Adventurer save gives a few ICBM's to use against, well whoever he feels like that day. Challenger save gives Putler the nukes because Dump misplaced the nuclear briefcase with the launch codes written on the inside while he was visiting some females of questionable virtue in a hotel in Moscow. (That's fake news! Nothing happened. I couldn't get it up... hey don't print that!)
But that scenario might be too close to reality and thus too depressing.

Now about this start, how many turns does the fallout endure? A thousand years? More? How much unhappiness from each fallout in BFC?
I didn't know cities could even be founded on fallout? I guess this has been tested or it could be a very short game.
An interesting scenario. Very depressing.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Now about this start, how many turns does the fallout endure? A thousand years? More? How much unhappiness from each fallout in BFC?
I didn't know cities could even be founded on fallout? I guess this has been tested or it could be a very short game.
An interesting scenario. Very depressing.

No unhappiness from fallout but .5 unhealthy per tile. Endures until scrubbed (Ecology) in my experience from Erkon’s SGOTM. Settling on fallout is possible, I tested that yesterday.

What I haven’t tested is, can you settle on fallout and then gift and raze that city to remove the fallout?
Edit: Tested.

Edit2: While testing today fallout vanished tile by tile on some random basis. On t39 all but one tile in my BFC was fallout-free.

 

[Mitchum]

Endures until scrubbed (Ecology) in my experience from Erkon’s SGOTM

That was SGOTM-12. I remember you telling me to treat our CRIII maces with kid gloves in that game. I think I essentially used them as escorts because I was afraid to lose one and suffer your wrath! haha

NZ: The world lies in ashes...

Can we read this to mean that the entire world is covered in fallout? Or just our starting location? I would hate to wander with the settler for 50 turns only to find out that the world is crappy everywhere... It will also be good to know if the AI are affected by the fallout or just us.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Can we read this to mean that the entire world is covered in fallout?

I think that's a reasonable inference yes.

 

[High King J.J.]

I think that's a reasonable inference yes.

I haven't started this one yet so I can joke that trusting a mapmaker to be reasonable is often your last mistake...
(Edited a typo.)