BOTM 41 -- First Spoiler to 1AD

[kcd_swede]

BOTM 41 First Spoiler - 1AD

Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in BOTM 41 (Gilgamesh), then you MUST NOT read this thread unless EITHER

• You have reached at least 1 AD in your game, OR
• You have submitted your entry

Did you disregard the stern warnings?
How did your encounters with Humbaba and others go?
Where did you decide to settle? Were you pleased with that choice and why?
Did you find your UU (Vulture) useful?
Do you have a victory stretegy in mind?
What do you think about irrational resources on a fantasy map?
How many cities at 1AD? Pop? Beaker rate? Gpt? Other stats?


Posting Restrictions

• Please do not discuss anything that happened after 1 AD.
• Please do not discuss modern era resource locations (iron is OK).
• Please do not divulge your final result if that happened after 1 AD.
• Do not post any savegame file from the game. Discussions and screenshots are fine but not actual games.

 

[kcd_swede]

This spoiler thread is up a little earlier than usual, because I feel I owe you all an explanation.

The intentions

Spoiler :

I added some advanced (barbarian) units in order to provide the game a bit of flavor of the Gilgamesh epic. These units were supposed to scare the wits out of you, teach you something about the mechanics of battles with barbarians on Noble level, learn the finesses of seige units in BtS, and make you develop a plan for reacting to and overcoming the obstacles they present. But mostly just scare the wits out of you. You should encounter them early, but they should not be able to defeat you by themselves, nor be game-determining.

My mistake(s)

Spoiler :

In developing the game, I had tested very many permutations of the units, types and scripts. I started out far more ambitious than what you got, actually. In the end, I erroneously made the game saves from one which gave Humbaba a "city attack" script instead of the intended "pillage" script. This means that Humbaba can cause conquest defeat by attacking your empty capitol, which was NOT at all intended.
Even so... I should have detected the problem with Humbaba during final testing. But I did not... in each test of each save (Adventurer/Contender/Challenger) Humbaba would just cruise right past a city if it were empty. After the game opened and serious problems were encoutered, I went back and tried to figure out what I missed.
Basically, I did not try enough different and varied opening moves.

What's going on with Humbaba?

Spoiler :

Humbaba apparently locks on to the first city that is settled. That means if you settle on turn zero, he will charge straight at your capitol, and get there about 3700BC. If you don't have a unit in the city, you will suffer conquest defeat. This renders the Challenger save unwinnable if you settle on turn 0, as far as I can tell. That's a BIG Ooooops! But if you have a unit in the city, he will harass you as intended.

Settling after turn 0 will almost always mean he will harass your neighbor instead of you... However, if his path to the city he is locked onto is blocked by your units or your city, he will select the next closest city... which is probably your capitol. Getting to size 2 seems to have a similar effect, I think. Again, having a unit in the city makes the game work pretty much as intended. He'll harass you until you figure out how to deal with him. Protect with a unit any tiles you don't want him to pillage. If you block his path to your city but not to the next city, he will wander off to the next target.

Note, you get two or three free battles with barbarians on Noble level, so in all likelihood if you follow the warnings, you will kill Humbaba early gaining 10xp for your unit. It was judged that providing the warning was a better solution than making new saves which could cause a real mess if different people were playing two different games.

The other demigods

Spoiler :

These appear to be working as intended. They should not enter your borders, and will patrol a given area. You may lose units to them if you aren't careful, but should be able to deal with them at your own pace. If anyone experiences something different with Enkidu, I would like to know about it.

Apologies

Spoiler :

Sorry that my ambition level was too great for my level of competence. Random factors probably ensure that different people face a vastly different obstacle in the form of Humbaba. (I hope not, if you all head the warnings the games should play comparably, I think... but that's why I open the spoiler early; I'm eager to find out.)

I hope at least that everyone got (is getting) some fun and/or laughs out of the game. I for one have learned a lot from this experience. And I especially offer my thanks to all those who have been exceptional good sports about the whole thing.

 

[nocho]

Founded the capital 3E1N on the plains hill, which proved to be a good spot. Took the warnings to heart and initially didn't wander off too far. Luckily all Beowulfs suicided themselves on the warrior without ever even inflicting a scratch (?!). Had the capital guarded when a mech inf barbarian unit just raced towards my capital and just when I though, okay, that was it, it just happened to race lightning fast past my capital. Phew. After that just expanded, quickly found the spectacular site in the far north east at the lake with all the sea food and the barb missile cruiser.

The barb missile cruiser never even moved. However, each turn got the obvious message that an enemy was threatening my city. Ignored that obviously, unfortunately to a point where I didn't read the messages anymore and completely missed a regular barb spearman approaching my capital defended by a lone warrior. Suddenly my capital was gone... On noble... Must admit I reloaded there, so won't upload (which I never have, usually only get to half way the BOTMs). Otherwise the barbs were actually hardly a problem. After the reload the game will be finished on cruise control.

Anyway, got a little scare and laugh out of it, so thanks for that, kcd!

 

[kcd_swede]

Founded the capital 3E1N on the plains hill, which proved to be a good spot. Took the warnings to heart and initially didn't wander off too far. Luckily all Beowulfs suicided themselves on the warrior without ever even inflicting a scratch (?!). Had the capital guarded when a mech inf barbarian unit just raced towards my capital and just when I though, okay, that was it, it just happened to race lightning fast past my capital. Phew. After that just expanded, quickly found the spectacular site in the far north east at the lake with all the sea food and the barb missile cruiser.

The barb missile cruiser never even moved. However, each turn got the obvious message that an enemy was threatening my city. Ignored that obviously, unfortunately to a point where I didn't read the messages anymore and completely missed a regular barb spearman approaching my capital defended by a lone warrior. Suddenly my capital was gone... On noble... Must admit I reloaded there, so won't upload (which I never have, usually only get to half way the BOTMs). Otherwise the barbs were actually hardly a problem. After the reload the game will be finished on cruise control.

Anyway, got a little scare and laugh out of it, so thanks for that, kcd!

I would be very suprised if you saw a mech inf!!! No way that should happen. I think you are mistaking Humbaba (mobile artillery) for a mech inf. Seige can't kill so you were safe. But really, not settling on turn 0 should have been enough to ensure it had its sights set on your neighbor. Unless you blocked to path leading to the neighbor.

Sorry to hear that the incessant in-game warnings caused you to get careless, though. The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.

 

[nocho]

I would be very suprised if you saw a mech inf!!! No way that should happen. I think you are mistaking Humbaba (mobile artillery) for a mech inf. Seige can't kill so you were safe. But really, not settling on turn 0 should have been enough to ensure it had its sights set on your neighbor. Unless you blocked to path leading to the neighbor.

My poor awe-struck loin-clothed citizens just saw this enormous metal object on gigantic wheels race through their territory, without even knowing what "metal" was and barely having the knowledge of wheels. They decided to call it mech inf, though surely technically it was a mobile artillery.

It went from east to west so given the layout of the map indeed likely it was set for another AI capital. I'm sure Monty was happy with the surprise (whom I met before 1AD so I guess that is not spoiler information)!

 

[kcd_swede]

My poor awe-struck loin-clothed citizens just saw this enormous metal object on gigantic wheels race through their territory, without even knowing what "metal" was and barely having the knowledge of wheels. They decided to call it mech inf, though surely technically it was a mobile artillery.

It went from east to west so given the layout of the map indeed likely it was set for another AI capital. I'm sure Monty was happy with the surprise (whom I met before 1AD so I guess that is not spoiler information)!

Yes, I suppose to a primative, it should simply appear to be godlike. Nobody deserves such a visit more than Monte.

BTW: All civs can be met before 1AD without Optics. Fantasy is a land-based map. So no spoiler info to name the civs. Or rather, it is PERMITTED spoiler info, in this thread.

The way I figure... either you get the 10xp for killing Humbaba, or your nearest neighbor is going to be slowed down. A fair trade-off, perhaps, if you take advantage of it.

I'm curious, did the irrational resource allocation require more thoughtful settling decisions? Or was it just annoying? Perhaps both.

 

[Joe Banana]

I settled on the first turn, so HUmbaba came gunning for me. Certainly scary, but all he's done so far is given my capital defenders lots of colateral damage and pillaged the sheep. Having read the above posts I now have the courage to try and kill him. I certainly don't want him aound when MOnty comes calling, which is bound to happen eventually.[/I]

I haven't found the barbarian missile cruiser yet, but am intrigued. I shall have to go looking. I have encountered MOnty, Hammurabi and some others. ENkidu is much more annoying than Humbaba and has already raised one city I founded.

 

[kcd_swede]

ENkidu is much more annoying than Humbaba and has already raised one city I founded.

Did you build a city in his face or something foolhardy like that? I think he is patrolling a specific region. Hope you can overcome!

 

[kcd_swede]

Certainly scary, but all he's done so far is given my capital defenders lots of colateral damage and pillaged the sheep.

Ja... given that... why would you have defenders in the same tile? He can only hit one tile per turn, right?

 

[-Asterix-]

Did you disregard the stern warnings?
Those warnings made me go with warrior first. Though, I would have probably went that route anyway because of the nice PH oasis on BFC.

How did your encounters with Humbaba and others go?
I sent my initial warrior SE to scout for some huts. I stayed within few tiles from the cultural borders just in case, though that wouldn't have been enough if that monstrous Humbaba had appeared just few turns earlier. But now, I had enough time to build another warrior to protect Uruk and kill Humbaba as it attacked the city. Totally forgot those free wins against barbs which made me panic a bit and research Masonry for one turn (thought to get GW to get rid of that killer machine but it wasn't necessary as I found out the next turn).

My initial warrior continued scouting to east and found Enkidu near the goodies. Noticed him running around in circles and later killed him with a bunch of vultures. That nasty missile cruiser just looks funny in his little pond.

Where did you decide to settle? Were you pleased with that choice and why?
I settled 2NE on tundra to get that nice PH oasis. Also, considered to get the gems but ended up leaving them for second city.

Did you find your UU (Vulture) useful?
Yup, I'm in love with those beasts! I hate myself for not utilizing them properly early enough because I wasn't sure about Enkidu and wanted to take him out first. That actually turned out to be not that bad decision after all.

Later, I went offensive on Monty and he is no more due to my army of vultures.

Do you have a victory stretegy in mind?
Probably something dealing with further use of vultures... Not sure yet.

What do you think about irrational resources on a fantasy map?
I like irrational resources. Maybe too much tundra, ice and desert but nothing I can't live with. Have to be more careful when checking city sites, though.

How many cities at 1AD? Pop? Beaker rate? Gpt? Other stats?
9 cities, could be more but proper sites seem to be hiding somewhere. Oracled CS and thought to build some more marble-goodies in the near future. Getting close to 200 bpt at 100% science but that's nowhere near sustainable.

Interesting scenario with the barbs, kcd_swede! I really like these unorthodox games.

 

[ub40]

A long day’s works done
Family asleep
Mobile in silent mode
An ice cool soft drink ready
Time to open BOTM41
Have been waiting eagerly the last week
Have been browsing the pre-discussions every day
Looks like a promising setup
Do not reread the game description before downloading the save (Big mistake #1)
Download and open the 4000 BC save
Warrior SE on mountain (see gems)
Think a couple of minutes before settling Uruk NE. On turn zero! (Big mistake #2 - as I learn later when I read the first spoiler thread). Why didn’t I move around a bit? It’s Noble.
Continues to scout eastwards with warrior the following turns to “search” for the mythical creatures.
The Humbaba turns up at about 3800 and scared the wits of me (and probably of the warrior too)!
The seemingly doomed warrior makes a futile attempt to escape back home within the “safe” borders of Uruk.
The Humbaba ignores the warrior though and heads straight for Uruk!
I don't believe my eyes when it enters my borders!
3650 BC - Defeated. After five minutes!
I get so surprised so I don't even save the game!
Huge disappointment!
Now I reread the game description and realize there is a new warning attached that I not have seen!
Huge disappointment!
I don't even think that I took a zip of the soft drink until it was all over.

Well, I have learned that:
A) It probably cannot hurt to take a last minute look at the game description page before playing.
B) You get two or three free battles with barbarians on Noble level.

Anyway thank you for an interesting setup kcd_swede!
Mistakes can happen.
I think that you and the other map creators make a tremendous job!
Keep up the good work!

 

[neilmeister]

Did you disregard the stern warnings?
Unfortunately, yes.

How did your encounters with Humbaba and others go?
Not well. He rolled into my undefended cap on turn 13 IIRC.

Where did you decide to settle? Were you pleased with that choice and why?
I settled on the ice FP tile. There wasn't much food around, so this wasn't an easy decision, but I wanted both the gems & the mega Oasis PH tile in my BFC. As I was going for conquest, I wanted to get going as fast as possible. So yes, I was quite happy with the location.

Did you find your UU (Vulture) useful?
Nope.

Do you have a victory stretegy in mind?
Yes, I was going for a bloodthirsty conquest, tech BW and spam Vultures while teching towards Cats.

What do you think about irrational resources on a fantasy map?
It made the settling decision quite hard, and it made for a nice change.

How many cities at 1AD? Pop? Beaker rate? Gpt? Other stats?
Ummm, 0, 0, 0bpt, 0gpt at 1ad

I have to admit my first reaction to a BOTM only lasting 6 minutes was not good. I felt that standard good play (ie exploring with your starting unit), was being unfairly punished. But, after seeing the new warnings, I realised it was not intentional.

One thing I think I have (finally) learned, is read the release page and the announcement thread fine print.

 

[beestar]

The fearsome Humbaba approaches the city of Uruk.

His laser-ranging eyes shine infrared fire!
His mighty treads crush trees beneath them!
His powerful rocket launchers glow with hypergolic ferocity!

But one plucky Sumerian warrior, the seventh son of a seventh son, dared to stand between Humbaba and the conquest of Uruk.

He jammed wooden clubs between those clashing tread gears, causing Humbaba to spin in circles.
He blinded Humbaba's night-seeing eyes with simple Tigris mud, so that Humbaba's deadly missiles fired harmlessly into trees and mountains.
He plugged Humbaba's rocket tubes with heavy rocks, causing them to misfire and explode, causing Humbaba himself to explode into a shower of sparks.

The monster was defeated! And our heroic warrior had, by the grace of the gods, not a single scratch on his Noble body.

---

After that terrifying battle I was expecting a lot more monsters, so I built the Great Wall to push them into my enemies' borders. It turned out that there was only Enkidu (dangerous, but handled with archers and Vultures), and dread Utnapishtim.

I settled a city on the wonderful lake, hoping that its expanding borders plus the Great Wall would push the Immortal One away and teleport him elsewhere. But the Great Wall doesn't help water tiles, and instead Utnapishtim stayed in his rich lake. Oddly, he didn't pillage the fishing boats I placed on the nearby tiles. At least, not until I moved one next to him, upon which he went nuts and pillaged all the fishing boats he had been watching passively for dozens of turns. Very odd.

The Great Wall turned out to be a bit of a waste with no further monsters, and I decided to just go for a military domination win as it seemed a little more fun than space or culture. There are a heck of a lot of land tiles to settle though ...

P.S. I hate irrational resources - ice and desert tiles take forever to build improvements on! There are some juicy tiles like Oasis-on-plains-hills, but it's barely worth the tedium. You know it's bad when you consider going Serfdom

 

[donsig]

I settled right away though I did move NW first. I also took the warnings very seriously - after all, I lost my capital to a barb in that Aztec XOTM recently. I did get the bejesus scared out of me when that mobile artillery (which I also thought was a mech infantry) suddenly appeared and attacked my poor warned warrior. I was really surprised when the warrior won then recalled someone had said we get a couple free wins versus barbs on this level. When I finally had a second warrior out exploring I tried avoiding the Beowolves in an effort to save a free win for what ever other scary barb units were out there.

Exploration showed me I could take my time in the east so I decided to expand to the west. I managed four more cities, two to the east and two to the west. I was scared into building the Great Wall. Researching construction but already have monarchy and metal casting. Have three granaries and two ziggaruts built. Working on a forge for the capital and a library in another city.

As usual, not sure what kind of victory to go for.

 

[dima42]

I got a conquest loss in 3675 BC my first shot at the game, before the warnings were up (I suspect I was a large cause for these warnings). Pretty standard Humbaba conquest. So what follows is my second play at the game, which I've been told will still appear for results page but not count towards awards. Thanks kcd! As much as I wanted that red ambulance... .

Settled on the icy flood plains. Second city was by the lake. I still haven't tried building fishing boats; it's a very juicy spot even without that.

I waited a very long time to research bronze working (I actually traded for it from Monty). Little did I know that we would get a copper right next to my capitol .

Third city was by the gold/gems/silver on the southeastern edge of our "peninsula" to get some money, and thus I proceeded on a Vulture Conquest. I popped CS from Oracle, and as of 1ad just finished Machinery so that my later armies are macemen rather than vultures. I kept a couple of the Aztec cities, but don't plan on keeping any other cities in this game.

So I killed monty around 500bc, and am about to finish off Pacal. My next plan is a dual-pronged attack on Ramesses and Alex (with troops ferried onto Alex). I expect to be outnumbered against Alex but hopefully the Macemen will be enough. Then my armies will keep marching onto Sitting Bull and Hammurabi...

 

[kcd_swede]

As much as I wanted that red ambulance... .

I think you would find a lot of competition for that honor this game.

Once again, I messed up bigtime. I am glad the conquest defeats were so early that no important spoiler info (that wasn't taken care of by warnings) was gained, and those of you who had this injustice inflicted upon you without benefit of a fair warning were able to play on even footing. I'll still feel bad if one of you guys puts up a medal performance without being eligible. So don't take it personal if I'm hoping your victory gets beaten.

Thanks to the other posters for the write-ups on strange demigod behaviors. Glad Beestar found a good use for those pointy sticks.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I really liked the map. The fantasy realm element of it made it very challenging to identify good city locations, thereby rewarding careful planning to a greater degree than conventional maps do, and I enjoyed trying to figure out that problem, but at the same time the map wasn't monotonous in the way fantasy realm scripts usually are: It had identifiable regions to make the world look interesting - the ice to the South, the lush greenland that Enkidu was patrolling, etc. I'm guessing that must've been the result of considerable editing by kcd_swede. (Though I really wish that mountain the blocked North-South passage at the east end of our sea hadn't been there!)

I settled NE-NE-E to pick up both the gems and that oasis hill. Not a great long term spot for a capital, but good for starting us off quickly. Seeing Humbaba rolling into view and straight into my borders was definitely a big shock, but following the warnings I had kept the warrior in the capital, and Humbaba died on his first attack. I used the 10xp to give the warrior woodsman III - an incredibly useful promotion which I sadly very rarely get to because the intermediate promotions aren't so good in most situations, and it's not often I have 10xp to play with in one go!

After meeting Enkidu I rather quickly ran away, and then put a scout on a hill to watch for any sign of him heading westwards. And made a mental note to beeline machinery! But he seems to have stayed put in his area so for now I'm not settling anywhere near there.

Second city went West to pick up the plains deer and hills (intending to use it to build the great lighthouse), and the third one on the desert 3S of the capital, because that was the only sensible way I could figure out to get irrigation (after civil service) through to the corn there. I've written off basically the whole rest of the starting block of land because either there's no food or it's too close to Enkidu, but I have a close eye on the silver-gems-gold spot in the far east as my likely future capital.

Had a stroke of luck with Montezuma: My exploring warrior managed to steal a worker very soon after meeting him. I decided to hold the war going until I had alphabet so I could get some techs for peace, but without committing many resources to it, since I wanted to build quite a few wonders. So I sent a lone vulture westwards intending to use him to intercept any attacking forces that Monty might send my way. The vulture found another worker so promptly stole him too. That put my vulture right next to Tenochtitlan. Hmmm. 65% chance of winning against lone archer there. Is it worth it? Yep, I won. That left a 90% chance against the one warrior now left. I couldn't pass that up. So thanks to my one vulture, Montezuma (aka the future headache) is no more, AND I've just secured what turns out to be an excellent looking GP farm, and horses, stone and marble into the bargain!

So at 1AD I'm up to about 6 cities. I'm happily wonder-spamming, and things are looking good. The only downside is that I've had to go a long way away to get good locations, so maintenance costs could be a problem.

 

[leif erikson]

I should have heeded the warning...

Turn 13 - Conquest defeat.
Never thought he'd get there so quickly.
And he did scare the heck out of me!

 

[kcd_swede]

Never thought he'd get there so quickly.

Well... he was supposed to get there so quickly. He just wasn't supposed to do what he did.

If its any consolation, I probably feel worse about it than you do. *

*never trust a mapmaker.

 

[kcd_swede]

Thanks for the kind words DS... I'm glad at least one of my fellow GOTM staffers respected my warnings --and the fabled characters.