[BTS] News: BOTM67 - Starts 15 June

[Deckhand]

BOTM 67: Gilgamesh (Sumeria)
A wolf among the sheep.

[img=right]http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/botm67civ.jpg[/img]

Game Details:

It has been over two years since Sumeria was featured in a BOTM (#41). And in that game, some of you lost in the first six turns when Humbaba destroyed your capital. In this game, those “mythical creatures” have been safely imprisoned; further all other barbarians have been banned from the world. As “Gilgamesh, the King of Uruk, was 1/3 mortal, and 2/3 divine”, he starts with the land of 2 civilizations. He also starts separated from the mere mortals. You can play completely ignoring the other civilizations (until sailing).
Anyone wasting time and resources to successfully confront Humbaba in his lair and destroy him will be awarded the Dragon Killer achievement in the results thread.

Good luck. And HAVE FUN!

Game settings:
Civilization: Gilgamesh of Sumeria
Rivals: 13 peaceful AIs
Difficulty: Monarch
Map: Pangaea*
Mapsize: Standard
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
Options: No City Razing, No City Flipping from Culture, No Barbarians, No Tech Brokering, Permanent Alliances, No Vassal States, No Events **
Victory Conditions: All enabled

* slight modifications: Gilgamesh land separated from the other civ's; Humbaba and Utnaphistan banished and imprisoned.
** I expect these options will make some victories easier and some harder. But I may be mistaken about which are which. Huts are enabled (unless you play the Challenger save).

Gilgamesh:
Gilgamesh is Protective and Creative and starts with Agriculture and The Wheel. The Protective trait gives free Drill 1 and City Garrison 1 on archery and gunpowder units and increases +100% production on Walls and Castles. Creative gives +2 to each city, as well as +100% production on theatres, coliseums, and libraries.

Unique unit: Vulture (replaces Axeman)
The Vulture has a strength of 6 instead of 5 for the axeman, but only gets +25% combat bonus against melee units instead of +50%.

Unique building: Ziggurat (replaces Courthouse)
The Ziggurat is 25% cheaper to build than a courthouse, and is available at Priesthood instead of Code of Laws for courthouse.

Starting screenshot

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




Adventurer Class bonuses:
It’s your birthday! You have been gifted with a plethora of goody huts. (100% more)

Challenger Class Equalizers:
Goody huts don’t belong in a competition. Neither you nor the AIs have any. (100% less).

To Enter the Competition:

This competition will open at 00:01 am on 15 June 2013, 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 15 July 2013.

Software Versions

Windows: This game MUST be played in Beyond the Sword (NOT Warlords or Civ4 vanilla), patched to version 3.19, and with the BUFFY mod version 3.19.003 installed. You can download the BUFFY mod here. Players using Windows Vista are encouraged to read the notes on Vista fixes here.

Macintosh: This game MUST be played in Beyond the Sword (NOT Warlords or Civ4 vanilla), patched to version 3.19, and with the MacBUFFY mod version 3.19.003 installed. You can download the MacBUFFY mod 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. [What unbalancing events occurred? What did you get from your huts?] Do not discuss any details of your game outside those threads.

 

[Deckhand]

Designer notes
For my first game, since kcd_swede is mentoring me, he insisted that Gilgamesh, Humbaba, and Utnaphistan be included. *

Spoiler :

* not true at all- that was a complete fabrication.

It is true that I checked the leaders used in previous BOTMs looking for leaders that hadn't been used recently/much and to my chagrin found that Gilgamesh was my guy.

Sorry about the late announcement. I had an internet outage and some learning curve difficulty.

For subsequent games, I&#8217;m sure you have better ideas. Please send me your suggestions by private message. I will need help creating games as interesting and varied that all the GOTM staff have provided in the past.

Note, game runs June 15 to July 15 - thread currently has an incorrect title.

Note, there are 14 sheep in the picture one of them (the little one in the foreground?) has already been gobbled up.

 

[neilmeister]

13 AI !!!

I'm not so sure they are going to be so peaceful.

Settle 1S if you want to go to space (for the levee)
Settle PH for everything else.

 

[Jastrow]

I guess that shows my inclination... I took one look at the picture, I instantly thought... 1S for sure!

 

[neilmeister]

I think I'm going to go for diplomation.
So its the PH for me, at Monarch we wont need the fresh water health bonus.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Hi Deckhand, great to see your first game out! Look forward to playing it.

My immediate reaction to that start is 'NOT - ENOUGH - FOOOOOOOOD'. So my thought is to try settling SE, based on that gives the maximum chance of picking up an extra hidden food while keeping the pigs. With all the trees around I'm reluctant to go exploring - the settler won't be able to move fast enough.

There - just three people commented and we already have three different opinions on where to settle!

(EDIT: Warrior SE first will be useful for showing some of the squares that a 1S or 1SE would pick up. If warrior SE immediately reveals more food then settling 1S is probably a better bet, otherwise 1SE).

 

[lymond]

Barring a warrior revelation, I'm gonna recommend settling in place. I see no real reason to move other than to gain the levee if you want space. However, it looks like potential jungle trouble from the south if you do.

I'm almost certain there is a resource due West, likely horses. Possibly food 2S. Warrior will reveal what is there anyway. I think I may just go for an unusual VC here. It will be interesting with 13 AIs and what I assume is a moat around our little landmass. I suspect we are in the middle.

 

[Folket]

Looks like a pretty easy scenario. It looks we have pretty nice room and if that is true the AIs are very cramped and will not pose a challange.

As for peaceful AIs. I will make a guess.
Gandhi,
Lincoln,
Elizabeth,
Mansa Musa,
Hatshepsut,
Asoka or Hammurabi,
Frederick,
Roosevelt or Augustus,
Darius,
Washington or Zara Yaqob,
Wangkon,
Victoria or Pericles,
and Sitting Bull.

As for settling I could go anywhere. Which means I will settle in place instead of not beeing able to decide.
SW, extra hammer but only one hill for hammers.
SE, loose two hills and one turn for unknown benefit.
NNEE, loose two turns but a more interesting gamble then SE.
NNWW, loose one turn, not settling on forest, away from jungle, a lot of unknown squares for lucky resources. Looks superior to SE.

 

[Sleepless]

Deja vu.. Just been to Berlin and one of the museums there have got a big exhibition on Uruk so totally up to date now about Humbaba (mostly ). For some reason before that I thought it was a Scandanavian myth (KCD Swede).

So regardless of victory type I've decided Humbaba must die.

As for the game warrior 1SE and decide from there whether I think moving is worth it.

Nice game set up deckhand..

P.S Sure KCD explained about the Humbaba-Gilgamesh-Enkidu when he did the first game.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Wow, I'd always assumed Humbaba was a name of kcd_swede's creation. Your post just inspired me to look 'him' up on Wikipedia[1].

I bet whoever wrote the Epic of Gilgamesh and thought up the story of Humbaba never realized the profound affect his creation would have on a computer game competition in a faraway land thousands of years in the future!



[1] That is, look up 'Humbaba', I haven't tried looking up 'kcd_swede' on Wikipedia

 

[Minou]

I love settling on Hill/Plains and getting that first Worker earlier. Speaking of which - Folket, you would still get two hills if you settler SW (not great, but better than one).

Need to read up more on Humbaba..... apparently this was some type of mechanized unit "giant" that wiped out some players in the first few turns of the original game. Sounds frightening!

Never played against 13 AIs. Sounds like it will have a big impact on trade routes and tech dealings. If we start separated by a sea, does this make trade routes to the AIs intercontinental? Those could really be abused with Great Lighthouse.

 

[SilentWatcher]

Mmm.. This all looks a bit "To good to be true" I wonder if you have been studying the Evil Entity that is KCD? Where is the trickyness hidden?

 

[kcd_swede]

Mmm.. This all looks a bit "To good to be true" I wonder if you have been studying the Evil Entity that is KCD? Where is the trickyness hidden?

I encouraged Deckhand to name all 13 of the leaders Ghandi of India, and even edit them to be the same color, and give them each a couple modern armor units just to ensure the peace, and to trick everyone by telling them Humbaba is locked away... and just "forget" to mention that his evil twin is just outside the visible start.

I guess we'll have to wait and see how good a pupil he is.

Spoiler :

 

[High King J.J.]

For a while I was misled by the word "peaceful" Then I reread the long list of options and saw this was NOT another 'always peace' game. This should teach me to the details more carefully.
Thou hast learned the art of crypticism well from KCD, Deckhand.

Permanent alliances. This means that once the required tech is known one may form permanent alliances, right.
But does this indicate possible pre-existing alliances among the AI civs? If so, then even "peaceful" civs could pose a bigger problem. Maybe 6 teams of 2-3 civs or possibly only 4 teams of 3-4 civs. Peaceful would just mean they let us grow a bit while teching away and settling the world, then leave us to either start hopeless wars against superior opponents or suffocate away in mediocrity?
But we are supposed to be 2/3 divine so miracles are almost 67% possible. Right?

I think I'll scout with the warrior east. Forested PH allows visibility to 4 tiles thanks to the seemingly unforested grassland.

 

[Folket]

[1] That is, look up 'Humbaba', I haven't tried looking up 'kcd_swede' on Wikipedia

I have now tried to look up kcd_swede on wikipedia.

I love settling on Hill/Plains and getting that first Worker earlier. Speaking of which - Folket, you would still get two hills if you settler SW (not great, but better than one).

True, I do not know how I missed that.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Mmm.. This all looks a bit "To good to be true" I wonder if you have been studying the Evil Entity that is KCD? Where is the trickyness hidden?

Nobody seems to have mentioned some of the other special attributes of this game: No City Razing, No City Flipping from Culture, No Tech Brokering, No Vassal States.

And nobody is tempted by that lovely plains hill across the little lake? Where's your wanderlust?

 

[Folket]

Nobody seems to have mentioned some of the other special attributes of this game: No City Razing, No City Flipping from Culture, No Tech Brokering, No Vassal States.

And nobody is tempted by that lovely plains hill across the little lake? Where's your wanderlust?

I did meantion the plains hill on the other side of the lake. To me it looks like it is next to coast. I might give seafood or it might be a pretty bad spot.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

No City razing is an evil plot by the AI to stop the player conquering it. It means all any AI has to do is settle a couple of useless cities that no sensible human would ever want, and then that AI is safe from declarations of war by said human.

Although having said that, the no city flipping from culture raises an interesting possibility: You could conquer the cities anyway, gift the useless ones to a 3rd AI, and then allow your culture from the nearby good cities to overwhelm the culture of the useless cities, without any fear of those cities flipping

 

[kcd_swede]

I have now tried to look up kcd_swede on wikipedia.
.

Try again now.

 

[Folket]

Try again now.

I did but still no hit. I tried on both swedish and english.