Buce01: The Slavemaster

Bucephalus

Bucephalus

Shooting from the lip....
Joined
Nov 16, 2003
Messages
3,092
Location
England's green and pleasant land.
I have been inspired to try this variant by the recent anniversary of the ending of the trans-atlantic slave trade.

In it, we will never be allowed to build a worker; furthermore, as soon as we have our first ten slaves, our starting worker will be given early retirement, and will join the nearest city.

I intend to play this at DG, but it would suit Emperor players who would like to step out of their comfort zone.

I don't intend to have a strict 24/48 play regime, after all we all have real lives (and anyone who has played with me before will know that I can't keep to that), but I would like a commitment to finishing the game.

Settings are open to discussion but I expect them to be pretty much standard everything.

I have no preference regarding which civ we play, excepting Industrious ones - that would be too easy.

One slot is already taken by my good friend Phaedo, so I'm looking for 3 or 4 others.

Roster:

Phaedo.
Buce.
Elephantium.
CivA.
Miles Teg.
 
lurker's comment: Actually slaves don't get the industrious trait before replaceable parts, so I'd suggest no industrious civ because it would basically waste a trait.
 
This sounds interesting. I'd be happy to join if you don't mind someone who plays Monarch in solo games and mostly Emp in SGs.

Oh, and I'll need to be near the end of the roster because of my vacation later this month.
 
Elephantium said:
This sounds interesting. I'd be happy to join if you don't mind someone who plays Monarch in solo games and mostly Emp in SGs.

Oh, and I'll need to be near the end of the roster because of my vacation later this month.
Click to expand...

Of course, you are most welcome.

Let's talk settings and civs - do either of you have any preferences?

Edit: My only strong preference is for continents; Archipelago tends to stifle the AI too much, and Pangea tends to lead to an inevitable conquest game whenever I play it.
 
All right, you talked me into it ;) Sounds fun if you'll have me. Since I can beat emporer most of the time in solo games, I've been wanting to move up to demi-god but have been getting walked over on my own.
 
CivActuary said:
All right, you talked me into it ;) Sounds fun if you'll have me. Since I can beat emporer most of the time in solo games, I've been wanting to move up to demi-god but have been getting walked over on my own.
Click to expand...

Welcome, CA. Don't fret over DG, it's not such a big step-up.

Alright, we have a team!

As soon as I hear some preferences, I'll roll a few starts.
 
I'm going to ask Phaedo to get us going, for no other reason that he is +9GMT; I'm guessing CivA and Elephantium are something like -5/6GMT, so I'll put myself in between. Hopefully that should help continuity.

Roster:

Phaedo:
Buce:
Elephantium:
CivA:
Miles Teg:
 
Did you have any specific victory conditions in mind, Buce?

I'm fine with whatever world settings. In solo games I usually just play random, so I haven't developed many favorites.
 
CivActuary said:
Did you have any specific victory conditions in mind, Buce?

I'm fine with whatever world settings. In solo games I usually just play random, so I haven't developed many favorites.
Click to expand...

I must confess to a weakness for the Space Race; I'm not a builder, so I don't do Cultural VC, and Conquest/Domination is too easy at any level - the AI is so bad at warfare that if you're still in it at Replaceable Parts it's a foregone conclusion, and Diplo seems such an anti-climax.

Space Race keeps it interesting right to the end; there is the inevitable struggle for the big-two resources (Aluminium and Uranium), and there is the added pressure of being first to build the UN, to avoid a Diplo defeat.

So unless the team have any issues with it, I'd like to go with that.
 
I'm happy with anything. Space is nice as it will keep it going for a while, although really, once we are in the IA, we ought to have enough slaves for it to be a normal game. We may want to have conquest an option. As for civs, I'm pretty easy. I don't think I've played Spain, Germany, Portugal or India. I like seafaring civs as it gets us accross the water quickly.
 
OK, I'm going to roll some starts later today.

I'm going to make it standard everything and a random civ, though I'm reluctant to accept an Industrious civ - fast working slaves will detract from the challenge. :evil:

If any of you don't run CivassistII, I strongly recommend that you do; there is an 'alert' option that will say when an AI has workers for sale, something that only occurs when they have a worker inside the capital.

Of course, this is only one of our options for acquiring workers; I envisage liberal use of pointy-stick aggression in this game, but that will be a fine balancing act in the early game, since the AI tends to pop-rush in Despotism, and capturing/razing size one cities will be of no use to us.

I would encourage any thoughts that you may have on strategy for this one; it's a variant that is completely outside of my experience.

One immediate thought that I have is to make our nearest neighbour become 'environmentally friendly', ie. cut them back then allow them to grow again; I like to give names to my strategies (I know, I really need to get a life! :lol:), so I will refer to this as 'Sustainable Harvest'.
 
Buce makes a good point about the pop rushing. Probably our best early option is to steal settlers as the 2 slaves will equal our native worker. If we only steal a single slave it will really hurt our development.

Just for starters, what are our options for acquiring slaves? I think we have basically 3:
1 Outright capture (including when we capture a slave in a city we take).
2 Buying them.
3 Razing cities for them.

I like the idea of harvesting slaves from a nearby civ. The templars might be a possibility in this game as well as they can build roads and I doubt we will be fully developed in the MA.

The lack of improved land will hurt our productivity early in the game and our cash. This means it will be difficult to develop a strong early army and we won't have too much cash to buy techs. Luxes could be a huge help here. Luxes would make up for a lack of cash nicely.

I'd like to see lots of city founding in the early game. We can make up for low producing single cities by making lots of little ones. I was also thinking about going for the urban sprawl. CxC would give us smaller cities and less land to work. I'm not sold on the idea but we might want to think about it after a solid core of CxxC is developed.

If we get an Agri Civ it will be huge help and rivers will be key. I have a feeling that we will be making a palace jump if we don't have rivers around us to start. Research will be slow as we won't have the cash we re all used to so trading will be key as well.

Finally, using the workers we have efficiently will be key. Wasted turns will really hurt us and it will be fundamentally important to work the most productive tiles in an efficient manner. The up side is that we will easily be able to decide as a team how the tiles get worked as we will only be able to work a few at most for quite a while.

That's what I've come up with so far. After seeing what we are working with I can plan more. At the end of the day, I think pointy sticks will be our bread and butter. In Cbob's AW game and the current Aabra01 game we got lots of slaves from early war. Conversely, in the Rage game we don't have too many slaves because we have been relatively peaceful.

This should be really interesting and it looks like we have a good team.:D And welcome Miles Teg!
 
We are the Greeks; I usually play standard maps, but as a concession to those who might want to go with a conquest vc, I've gone for a large map to add a bit of difficulty.

Scientific leaders are off, as are barbs; If I'd left them both on I think it would have pushed the level of difficulty up to Deity.



Spoiler :


>>SAVE<<
 
lurker's comment: I'll be watching with interest.

Good luck Buce and the rest. :)
 
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