COTM 100 Russia First Spoiler - All Contacts

[mad-bax]

COTM100 - Russia - First Spoiler

Welcome to the first spoiler for COTM 100.

The prerequisite for viewing and posting in this thread is that you have played the game until such point that you have made contact with all opposing tribes.

In this thread we will allow the posting of world maps, but please use the spoiler tags appropriately.

Clearly, this start has proven to be controversial, and you are invited to continue that discussion here. Selecting the tile on which you found your one and only settler built city is an important decision. Scout to mountain is an obvious first play, but which one, and what then?

 

[Memento]

your one and only settler

settled in the south, huts gives settler

play only to see what happens till 800bc

worst c/gotm ever. lucky moving, lucky huts and 20 AI

i think it´s time for me to say goodbye to this new kind of c/gotms.
let me know if starts a normal game again.

Edit: the 100th gotm, what a sad event

 

[milr]

Hail! hail! The gangs all here! Given the helpful hints in the game description, our leader assumed (correctly) that multiple good starting positions were provided, so it wouldn't matter which direction the settler went. Our scout went to the NW mountain and our settler to the SE mountain, in time reaching a lovely SE paradise. Meanwhile our scout toured the island boundaries (and it didn't take very long to realize we were relatively safe from imminent attack!). Our scout periodically found little abandoned huts along the way, filled with knowledge garnered by some long ago civilization. To the great surprise of all our citizens an unexpected (and perhaps unforeseen by the developer) gift to our land was discovered in the last hut on the island, way up NE. Seems that a beautiful maiden had been put to sleep by a magic spell, only to be awakened by the kiss of our beloved scout. Of course, he led the way to the northern shore, while a warrior from our capital escorted her to that northern paradise. Needless to say, the couple married, settled, and prospered. (Post-game, I ran a different start and no extra settler anywhere, so just my lucky day! Shouldn't matter to most of the folks playing this game, since I don't try to conquer or dominate the world.) Naturally, our leader kept all our islanders happy and prosperous, allowing our visitors to prosper in their new settlements before sending archers over to invite them to join with us in developing a strong, independent nation. And so they did ...

On Moscow's shore, we built the Colossus (1525BC), both as a warning to all who saw it that we were a strong nation, and as a 'crows nest' from which our feathered friends could announce the daily arrival of the sun. And a Great Library (850BC) to provide early opportunities to spread the knowledge we gained from around the world to our fast growing population. We will in time build harbors to provide luxury items to our citizens, although we have little interest in ever leaving our island paradise.

 

[Everkane]

Moscow was not founded at the coast, which ruined the game since I couldn't build settlers and there was no AI at my island/continent (although I couldn't know that at that time).

I quit since I realized it was impossible to keep playing without building ships.

 

[Quintillus]

Isn't the first spoiler usually at the end of the Ancient Age? Not that it really matters to me since I've played farther than that and have met all civs - I'm just not sure quite where to end the storyline.

Unlike Memento and milr, I did not receive an extra Settler, and unlike Everkane I didn't build a tundra paradise city. I found the area to the SW with my scout first, and was about to turn my Settler back there, when I realized each direction was very similar. Thus, my Settler kept going, and settled in the pleasant northeastern area of the Continent.

The huts were friendly, giving 3 techs by 3700 BC, and in 3000 BC I was the most advanced civilization in the world. 2030 BC saw the construction of the Colossus, and in 670 BC I built the Great Lighthouse.

However, my tech strategy was less than ideal. I went for Philosophy, and took Map Making as a free tech, with a goal of invading nearby lands that were less tundra-like. However, few goods targets presented themselves. The Hittites were the nearest, but they were among the most powerful civilizations, with few weakly-defended coastal cities. Zululand was close, but got the Statue of Zeus, ruling them out. So in the end I didn't launch any early invasions. I went for The Republic instead, going for the commerce bonus, but that took forever. Looking back, I think I should have taken Literature as the free tech, built a library, then went for Republic, and only after that gone for Map Making. Getting Construction earlier would've helped as well, for the Aqueduct. I did trigger a Golden Age in 190 BC with the Masoleum of Mausollos - built right after switching to The Republic.

By the end of the Ancient Age, in 210 AD, Moscow had 1103 culture. Four foreign colonies were present on the continent, and plans were in place for converting those colonies. Engineering was my free tech, and the plan was to go for Invention to get Longbows and then "encourage" the colonies to join us. Only after most of them had joined us would we look abroad.

At the end of the Ancient Age, I hadn't discovered all civs, only 16. But one of my ships had almost sailed off the edge of the world. It would take another few centuries to discover the remaining civilizations.

I'd actually played through to this point before even the pre-game discussion thread was up - found the COTM on the gotm.civfanatics.net site earlier on the 5th. So I'm glad to see this thread!

---------

I am enjoying this COTM, as it's a different challenge. I rather like that it's Regent, but still very much an uphill battle. Though it does help that, at least so far, it doesn't feel as hopeless as COTM 72, which despite being on Warlord I remember as being a very small island with little hope for upwards mobility. Here, there's hope of swiping some colonies from foreign powers with a chance of not being obliterated.

Everkane, I'd be curious if you could recover by swiping AI colonies when they do eventually come (and grow to size 2). IIRC you're a fairly high-level player, at least Emperor. I wouldn't expect a recovery to the top of the score list or domination necessarily, but I think it'd be impressive if you were able to recover and establish at least a local base of power.

 

[ignas]

4000 BC - 10 AD

Aiming for 20K culture

From a pre-game discussion thread it was almost clear that a starting position was a balanced one - a mistake of moving in wrong direction wouldn't be very costly. Moved bravely and founded Moscow 6 turns into the game, SW from starting spot in a nice coastal position.

Research was set to Republic and scout was sent to map the world. Soon found out about the map creator's evil intent to place us alone on an island. After popping CB decided to achieve a cultural victory in this game.

Delayed to pop couple huts until Writing was researched - wanted to get free CoL or Literature, but got instead two settlers. Didn't think settlers were allowed to pop, but thanks.

St. Petersburg was settled in 2470 BC and Novgorod in 1500 BC.

Capital built a granary, curragh and workers for joining to grow population fast.
Other towns helped in producing occasional warriors, workers and curraghs.

Republic was researched around 1300 BC and Middle Ages reached around 900 BC.

In 10 AD I have:
4 cities,
7 archers ready to take some land from Mongols,
10 workers,
2 galleys,
few buildings and all contacts.

Moscow has 1781 culture points, producing 43 cpt. It built:

Palace 3700 BC
Temple 2670 BC
Colossus 1750 BC
Mausoleum 1175 BC (Golden Age entered)
Library 1150 BC
Great Library 825 BC
Cathedral 800 BC
Colosseum 775 BC
Hanging Gardens 490 BC
The Great Lighthouse 190 BC

A big setback is that a valuable Statue of Zeus was lost to Babylonians by 3 turns.
Plan is to build Shake's Theater, then research ASAP to Industrial Age while slowly conquering the planet.

Interesting COTM.

 

[Memento]

a mistake of moving in wrong direction wouldn't be very costly.

in NO u lost one grassland. in a normal game it doesn´t matter, but in an one settler competition it´s a lot.
in spite of that, settler in huts in this game are stupid and unfair.
u found two, grats, others one and many players found 0.
perfect condition for a competition. guess who wins this game.

 

[MrRandomGuy]

I chose to move my scout to the east mountain and found the shoreline. Knowing that we can't build settlers I decided to move my settler in that direction while continuing to move my scout east. Once I discovered the river at the northeastern part of the island next to furs and the coast I moved my settler over there.

Before Moscow was founded, one of the goody huts my scout popped gave me a warrior. That allowed me to explore a bit more of the barren wasteland that the island mostly was.

Once I created the city of Moscow, the scout in the western part of the island popped a settler out of a goody hut. I was happy about that. Not wanting to move my settler far due to the possible threat of barbarians, I decided to settle by the river on the coast. I made a mistake however and didn't settle on a tile right next to the river, but the river was still in the city radius. It was a minor one though and I wasn't too upset about it.

My first area of research was alphabet and I sent 3 or 4 of the tiny boats out into the void. 2 made it through and I sent each of them onto opposite sides of the world to explore. As soon as I met each civ I would trade them what I had for sufficient deals. I soon discovered that I was ahead of everyone else (though not by much) in the tech race during the Ancient Age.

I made another minor mistake however. I had intended to switch to a Republic because I was going for the diplomatic victory, but when I started my revolution it turned out I had researched Monarchy instead of Republic. As a warmonger I'm used to switching to Monarchy so I accidentally acquired that tech instead of republic. Once again it was a minor mistake but one that ended up helping me as I was able to keep my populace happy as well as have average military compared to other civs with 4 or 5 units in my cities.

I tried for a couple of wonders in my capitol and ended up building the one that has the Philosophy requirement. The Mausoleum (I can't spell the other word right.)

When I hit the medieval era I was the most advanced nation in the world. It was around that time my galleys and tiny boats had found each and every civilization relatively quickly. I set my research to 0% and planned on buying/selling tech for the rest of the game going for a diplomatic victory. Since I was going for a diplomatic victory, I didn't bother capturing any towns the AI built on my island and just let them be there in peace.

I'll let you know how things turned out in the next spoiler.

 

[Quintillus]

Memento does have a point that receiving an extra Settler from a hut is a bit of a bummer in terms of balance (and fantastic if you get one!). I wonder if changing Start Unit 1 (and manually giving each civ a settler in the BIQ) would've fixed this, giving, for example, a Scout as Start Unit 1 instead? I'm surprised that getting a Settler has been so common, though. I know how common it is varies with difficulty, but in my experience it's usually rare on Regent.

Regardless, this has been one of the most fun games I've played in a long time, by and large due to the challenge of only ever having a single settler. I'd be very surprised if I end up being even close to a non-ambulance medal - if I manage to avoid losing, which is still questionable - but for a fun competition, I like this. And thanks to this GOTM, I've stayed up way too late because I was going to play "just one more turn" .

 

[mad-bax]

Yes, you can reverse start unit 1 and 2 to get worker instead of settler. Scout only applies to expansionist civs and so unless you give that unit to all tribes it's difficult to execute. Worker instead is straightforward. Of course you must then redo all of the start units for each difficulty level.

COTM is played using out-of-the box Conquests bix. I inherited this state of affairs. There has been talk about settlers from huts, but it has not been implemented for G/COTM. I can mod it. I haven't because it's not my call. The community has to want it and not just the game maker or one poster.

As it applies to this game it was always a consideration in my mind that settlers from huts would give a disproportionately unfair advantage and I considered having no huts at all. At the same time I am also aware that the difficulty level I have been setting has put a number of people outside of their comfort zones. On balance I left huts in as I was able to give people a leg up. It also makes the first 30 turns a bit more interesting.

There are many pRNG related events including the number of turns of anarchy, unit death and promotion, leader generation, the propensity of a particular tribe to declare war, galleys sinking in the ocean etc. Getting one settler from a hut is an advantage of course, but I would ask that you look at the end result before judging just how significant that is. Getting 2 leaders and one turn of anarchy is analogous to winning the national lottery. It definitely won't happen to you, but it's bound to happen to someone. I really did not imagine that in a playing group of 20 that such a thing would happen. The odds can be calculated in fact, but I can't remember how many huts I put within reach of the first scout.

 

[templar_x]

even though i currently absolutely lack the time for a big game like this one, i really wanted to play the COTM100. of course my goal was to repeat the result of GOTM100.
so i actually played it until the late BC times last night and found the set-up very very interesting. however, i could not imagine another set-up where the settler-from-hut issue makes a competition more pointless. i will not finish this game, therefore.

nothing i could remotely think of, neither 2 leaders, or any difference in the length of anarchy, or good gameplay oder just mediocre one, could equalize even 1 early settler from a hut in this game in my eyes.

this is *not* meant as a reproach to mad-bax, who really set up a very interesting COTM100-map and concept and simply believed that settler-from-hut was the standard. however, even if settler-from-hut would have been possible before, i am sure that they would have had to be removed from this game to make it work as a competition...

t_x

 

[Memento]

Getting one settler from a hut is an advantage of course, but I would ask that you look at the end result before judging just how significant that is. Getting 2 leaders and one turn of anarchy is analogous to winning the national lottery.

To get 2 Leaders, u need some units and galleys. If u have 2 or 3 towns u can earlier building more units and u have a higher chance for leaders as u have only 1 town.
additionally u have more cash and higher research. 1t of anarchy with 1 town? if i have 2 or 3 towns i be happy with 15t oft anarchy.

 

[Ditch]

I don't know why, but I assumed that all civilisations would only have one city, so I set out to multiply attack units before a search and destroy mission. As I was ready to launch however, I found civilisations beginning to expand into my island and on my first foray off-island, I realised I had totally the wrong strategy, so I abandoned the game. NB: I was one of those who didn't find an extra settler. C'est la vie. Keep it up Mad-Bax!

 

[milr]

Have now found the start I want to play, instead of the 1 settler pop I did play. Popped THREE settlers! But oops, where should the last one settle down? Seems like all the good settlement locations have alreay been claimed!

Also, during my experiments, I also noticed that IRON is not in fixed locations as I had expected. Only then did I re-read the starting info and realize that clause had been removed from this game setup.

 

[Kulko]

Well and here I was thinking, getting a free city out of a hut was a boon. But you could even get a settler or even two?? Please madbax, defintiely switch that off, in as soon a GOTM as you can without doing major rework. Settlers from Huts are really a gamebreaker ofr this kind of competition, unless you can make them fixed to give one to everybody.

Apart from that I have enjoyed the game very much so far, and it will definitely be fun. Unfortunately I made two strategic plunders: I didnt go for TGLH, which is now in Hatttusa, and they are quite strong. Also I set up my ship chain against Spain, only to realize that they were absolutely unable to grow culture or citizens. So I had to wait an extra 10 turns or so before I could attack and after taking Madrid, they capital jumped to the end of the world, while the intermidiate city wouldn't grow at all. So I had to destroy one, which allowed me to take one other in the peace deal.

 

[greatbeyond]

I was looking forward to trying this unusual game and finally got the chance.

I looked at the starting picture and figured out that the terrain was apparently a three way mirror image. Of course I wondered why, assuming that there was some reason. I separated my units, Scout moved first to the SE mountain and saw some encouraging land so the Settler started on a south by southeast course instead of directly there, just in case it was an illusion. The Worker was sent to the west mountain and then followed to the SE after verifying that at least these two directions had essentially the same start. It also seemed clear that we were on our own little antarctic continent (thanks for the small slivers of green and game) I still wasn't sure what the map would look like, but it was definitely different.

First mistake was made in settling just 1 tile out of perfect placement as I had forgotten in the time since I originally read the game description that this was a one-build Settler situation. I was leaving room for a second city. I only realized this after I had already settled and was checking the game description for the type of Barbs we would have. I always build a few more Warriors to keep the fog and restless/raging Barbs at bay as they will ruin even a good start, much less this meager land we have been given.

Research path was going to be Alpha, Writing, MM, to spread the Russian civilization to the rest of the world. It looked like it was going to be a long time coming, but the Scout popped Alpha from a hut, and we got a boost. I initially wasn't going to go for the Philo slingshot, assuming that the AI would beat me there, but with this gift I chanced it and took MM as the free tech. I figured it would be a while before I needed The Republic, and the sooner I got off this iceberg the better. The Scout continued his journey popping the Wheel and then a Settler! What a gift from the gods.... Before he went too far, the Scout popped a Village from the next hut (SW). Of course the location wasn't optimal, but I'll take it. The "popped" Settler headed East and settled in the Garden of Eden there.

I finished the Colossus while waiting for MM to start cranking out my "national conversion units". Having sent a Curragh and Galley out, I had located the Spanish, Mongols, Hittites, and Iroquois. The Mongols looked like the best bet and a force of 8 Archers took two of their cities before we settled for peace and two cities in trade. This was followed by a similar war against the Spanish and the "take two get two" city special. By this time we had two important discoveries...

1 - This was a globe type map with us surrounded by all the other civs, a very cool idea!

2 - No Iron that I could find on my adopted landmass. So it was time to look elsewhere. It took a lot of fogbusting to eventually find that the Hittite's had the closest source of Iron that was just between two cities that hadn't expanded yet. My Archers and a few more were loaded up and converted those two cities to Russian and the we took peace.

It is time to consolidate and build a little infrastructure in the newly converted lands. We know most of the civs and where they are. We ended up with the Great Library due to losing the race for the Great Lighthouse by a couple of turns. I wasn't sure if the GL was necessary and the time spent on building it probably could have been better spent building units and taking a few more cities. The Iroquois are the largest civ and we are in 4th place. Time to move up!

 

[greatbeyond]

Having participated in almost every Civ3 variant GOTM since the beginning (yeah, I should be much better ) I know the topic of Settlers and villagers from huts has come up before, so I did a search, finding this:

" Settler:
-- Player must not have a settler (active or in production) or any unit with the Settle AI strategy.
-- Player must have less cities than (TotalCities / NumActivePlayers). "

Which comes from this CivFan page:
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/goodyhuts.php

I had initially thought there was a setting in the worldbuilder to prevent Settlers from huts, but then when I went looking, I couldn't find it. The person who seemed to know the Civ3 code almost intimately was Klarius, who afaik hasn't been seen on this site since the end of Civ3 SOGTM in 2009. If you want an education, read his posts.

Further research found this thread which does give some ideas for how to do it:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=104444

Like many other things we think just came along, it is just a "redesign of the wheel" and quite possibly "nothing new under the sun"

It is important to note that as far as I know Civ3 is all hard coded, unlike Civ4 and up where changes can be made to the way the game plays and rules. In Civ3 this is handled by the Scenario/worldbuilder but it is not nearly so capable or complete.

And finally, it sure brought back memories looking through those posts at all the names I used to see so regularly and now not at all. Wherever you are, Civ in peace.

 

[mad-bax]

The definitive rules can be found here
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=359144&postcount=53

Though it doesn't deal with cities from huts.

Note that for this game it means that (assuming you settle somewhere sensible) that settlers are not available from huts in the first 6 turns, and that the second settler is not available until the 42nd city is founded. (player cities <= (TotalCities / NumActivePlayers), and not just less than as you have it).

I am collecting data from submitted games as to when the 42nd city is founded, as well as how many settlers are popped and by whom. I'll include this information as part of the results thread.