Challenge Game: The Lorax

bioelectricclam

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The Rules:
1. No cutting down trees. Ever. No exceptions!
2. The Exceptions: Roads, Camps, Plantations. Also cities can be founded on forest/jungle tiles.
3. Playing as the Native Americans.
4. No Sawmills whatsoever.
5. Obligated to spam Preserves once they become available.
and NEW rule 6: Forts are okay, putting mines on a jungle gems tile is not. Thanks for pointing this out, Mantis.
...rule 7: Jungle farms (for rice) are also okay. The idea is that while a mine involves habitat destruction, a Plantation or a Farm is more akin to "harvesting the local renewable resources". Sorry that I forgot about those oddball jungle resources at first, it's turning into a bit of a goof.

A simple rule, a difficult challenge: Build a civilization to withstand the tests of time, and DON'T CUT DOWN THE TREES while doing it. To go with the theme I'm playing as the Native Americans, and have turned off Timed and Space Race victories - our goal is to protect this planet, not run away to a new one, and Timed victories are the worst. I also set it on Prince, both because I am not the greatest player in the world and because the rules are going to make this one pretty tough I think. Let's skip the starting screen and get right to the action, shall we?

Chapter 1: He Speaks for the Trees


For many Moons young Lorax, or "He-Speaks-for-the-Trees" has wandered the lands, in search of a new home for his tribe. Coming to a river deep in a woodland valley, he stops for a drink, but finds he is not alone - a nearby clearing in the woods thunders with the hooves of great beasts. Such a herd could surely feed his hungry people - clearly this is an augury from the Great Spirit itself. For finding this land of plenty Lorax is named High Chief of his tribe. The people have gathered - great warriors and craftsmen both. They wait only for Chief Lorax to finish consulting with the Wise Men of the tribe before scouting the lands and building the longhouses.

So, first turn, where should we move the Warrior, should we settle in place, and what techs do we go for first? I'm of the mind to move him North-East, and to just settle in place unless we find something good up that way. So far as starting Tech goes, I think we should consider Mysticism and go for Stonehenge (free UB) and early Masonry to hook up with the Marble ASAP - my civ's economy is leaning towards Great People at this point, and Marble wouldn't hurt. I yield the floor to you.
 

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Can you mine a jungle gems, then?

Also, are forts allowed since they don't chop the trees?

NPM

Hmnmn interesting points. To be honest I forgot about jungle gems when I made the rules :crazyeye:, but to be fair strip mining the jungle to rob it of its treasures seems to me in violation of the spirit of the challenge and therefore I'm saying no mining gems. As a compromise, forts are okay, seeing as how they technically do not cut down the trees.

And so far as "no automated workers" well...can't really be helped. I usually ignore that feature anyways as they tend to tear up my cottages/farms at inconvenient times.
 
Auto workers can be make in Options, Control-O, to leave improvements and not to chop forests, as well as other fancy options.

Once your empire reaches a critical mass, auto workers are much easier.

Exactly, but they are also banned in this variant if we settle or capture even a single jungle tile, since even if they leave forests auto workers will still clear jungle by themselves.

This means that we'd have to assign workers by city to auto...kind of awkward.

Of course it breaks the spirit of the game but we can just avoid any jungle, let the AI clear it for us, then go take it. That's fine according to the rules ;). Same goes for forests but we WANT those intact if captured.
 
Exactly, but they are also banned in this variant if we settle or capture even a single jungle tile, since even if they leave forests auto workers will still clear jungle by themselves.

This means that we'd have to assign workers by city to auto...kind of awkward.

Of course it breaks the spirit of the game but we can just avoid any jungle, let the AI clear it for us, then go take it. That's fine according to the rules ;). Same goes for forests but we WANT those intact if captured.

Sneaky but perfectly fair. I like it!

Seeing as how most of the discussion has been about the rules and not the first turn, can I assume that most people would agree with that first Warrior move and I should just get on with it to move this thing along? Yes? Okay then!

Chapter 2: A River Wild



His Wise men deep in their own thoughts on how to best respect the lands, Chief Lorax, still a young man at heart, slips away from the discussion for a brief walkabout. Wishing to know what lies beyond the nearby hills, he scrambles through the thick forests, and is rewarded with a stunning view of fertile lands that seem to stretch as far as Brother Eagle can soar. Surely this land is a gift of the Great Spirit to his tribe. Thanking the land for such plenty, he returns to the Pow-Wow, his spirit renewed.

Looks like we've got a nice GP Pool in the works just to the North East :goodjob:, but ironically will have to get a Granary sooner than later (at least that's ironic in a game where most cities are going to have fairly high health...at least I HOPE there's more Forest than Jungle out there...). I'm also considering not settling in place - on the one hand, there probably is some sort of additional food tile in the hidden parts of our BFC, on the other hand, its a gamble and if we end up with nothing but forest down there, our Capital won't do so well. I think we should build the Capital one tile north to grab the unforested hills and grasslands. Your thoughts?
 

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It's a shame about the cow glitch, eh? You just don't know if you get more food ;).

I know right! On any other game it wouldn't really matter since we are next to a river, but the rules of this one are already really changing things up, and I think I like it :crazyeye:.
 
I'm going to go ahead and do the opening few moves sometime tonight after I get back from the movies. Provided I don't see any additional comments, my intention is settle one tile North then race for Stonehenge - a free UB in all my cities is just too tempting.
 
Well technically jungle does not necessarily mean trees, more like "densely tangled undergrowth" (thankyou wikipedia for that!) They may look like trees in Civ 4 but it's just artistic licence, they are shrubs and vines. Hack 'em down!
 
There was an immortal SG game with this rule (though they allowed jungle chops), also had some rules about not being aloud to settle 1 tile away from fresh water IIRC.
Come to think of it I never checked if they finished it but I predict a win. :)
 
Well technically jungle does not necessarily mean trees, more like "densely tangled undergrowth" (thankyou wikipedia for that!) They may look like trees in Civ 4 but it's just artistic licence, they are shrubs and vines. Hack 'em down!

No, we must respect our Brother Fern and Sister OHMYGODISTHATATARANTULA!!.

Feel free to treat the rules as more of "guidelines" in your shadow games (seeing as how so many people seem to hate the freakin' rainforest), but I'm going to play this one straight. If its full of living things, Chief Lorax's policy is to leave it alone unless you can live in harmony with it. Will this make our game difficult, possibly even annoying at times? Probably, but that is all part of the Challenge part of a Challenge Game.
 
just to clarify, jungle rice falls under the jungle gems category? useless unless the AI gets a hold of it?
 
just to clarify, jungle rice falls under the jungle gems category? useless unless the AI gets a hold of it?

Farms are okay since Plantations are. The idea is that ripping open the ground to find some shiny rocks is on a whole different level than harvesting the local plants for food. Again I apologize for being forgetful about those oddball jungle resources and making the rules unnecessarily confusing - I'll go ahead and, once again, update the rules to make things a bit more clear.
 
I'm not sure that I agree that banana plantations are good for the environment. :p
 
Odd starting settings for those not saving this as a wb file and changing to your preference.

Spoiler :
appears to be a HUGE map, and raging barbarians are on ?


cas
 
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