DG02 - A Fascist Variant Game

[Gufnork]

OCC on monarch is surprisingly easy actually. OCC on monarch while keeping the largest army (the support costs would be astronomical!) is a whole other matter.

If we start this game with the Greek, I highly recommend doing everything we can do get the Pyramids. Since we're philosophical and need a high production rate, farms+specialists seems like the best route to take. Pyramids are essential for such a strategy.

If we are to conquer our way to an empire a civ with a better UU might be useful. Hoplites are nice (I know cIV calls them Phalanx for some reason), but not great.

If we go OCC I suggest the rule is that we're not allowed to train settlers. Even if the cities are in subpar locations it would fit roleplaywise to raze then rebuild.

 

[Dimy]

Variant Rules:

- Be number 1 in Soldiers Ranking, if not at least half of our cities must build military units until we are (in case of uneven number of cities, the better half must build units).

- Civics: We must adopt Police State, Nationhood, Slavery (allowed to upgrade to Emancipation when unhappiness about not having Emancipation hurt to much), State Property and Free Religion as soon as these come around.

- War and conquest is what we stand for. We might make a friend though and lock ourselves in a permanent alliance with one other Civ.

- The use of whipping is encouraged, especially in conquered cities.

- We’re not allowed to adopt a State Religion, nor spread a religion. But we are allowed to find a new religion if we happen to be the first to discover a tech that gives a religion.

- We are allowed to build only 1 settler of the duration of the game, the rest of our empire will have to be conquered.

 

[Dimy]

Ok guys, see the post above for the Variant Rules we're gonna use. I also updated my first post in this thread with these rules and the game settings. We're playing as the Greek (renamed Sparta) on a large terra map with 12 AI on Monarch difficulty. This game is gonna be very challenging I think with these rules and it's my first game on Monarch level... I hope we can win this, but if not... I hope we learn a lot from it to beat this level in DG03 - Revenge of the Fascists

Here's the Game Settings:

And our starting position:

I added the rule that we're allowed to build 1 settler... because we might need an Iron/Copper colony, with only archers I think it's gonna be too tough.

 

[Till]

Nice an clear rules. I like! A large terra map is going to put my computer to its limits, but i hope it'll cope. Our capital is great, but the rest of the terrain makes me long for keshiks

 

[ThERat]

ok, the rules are clear enough for sure. I will be a tough game. With the rule about military I wonder at what stage we are allowed to build anything but military units...it might take a while for a worker to be built

 

[Gufnork]

Dang! Two gems and two coastal food resources? This is gonna me one heck of a science start. I suggest Fishing first, then straight for Iron Working.

Free religion? Are you serious, you're suggesting our people can believe in whatever they want? Screw that! We're fascists, they'll believe what we tell them to believe. I think we should be stuck with the starting civic for religion if we don't want a state religion.

I've also run into a little snag. I forgot to bring the game with me, so I'll have to ask my parents to mail it to me or something.

 

[Dimy]

Gufnork:
Fishing? Greece starts with fishing and hunting! So I'll be building some fishing boats as soon as possible. Oh...and once the borders grow, we have ivory within working range of the city as well... so this city is gonna be excellent! Unfortunately there seems to be jungle surrounding us.
I think the starting civic for religion is quite poor to keep for the entire game, but as Free Religion comes around in late-game we can always see where we stand then and decide.

 

[Gufnork]

So I don't play Greece that much. Well, then we'd better do Mining -> Bronze Working -> The Wheel -> Iron Working. We'll be working the fish, the gems, the ivory and the hills so we son't need other worker techs for quite a while. Two extra happy resources means that our one city start will work well.

I managed to find a no-DVD patch so I can play the game, so I'm back in. When do we start?

 

[Dimy]

You can expect my first turnset later today . Will play soon.

 

[Dimy]

Turn 1 4000 BC:
Sparta is founded on the spot, we’ll have 2 Gems, Ivory, Fish and Clams within working range of the city! Excellent starting position… We are surrounded by jungle however, indicating we’re likely to be near the equator on the map. I’m starting research on Mining so we can mine those gems.

Turn 2 3960 BC:
Our scouts “pop a hut” and get 57 Gold from the friendly villagers.

Turn 10 3640 BC:
IBT our Scout was attacked by Lions, but we won. Warrior is finished in Sparta, started on a Workboat.

Turn 13 3520 BC:
We discover Mining, going for Archery.

Turn 15 3440:
Buddhism has been founded in a distant land.

Turn 16 3400 BC:
We meet Cyrus of the Persians and my PC crashes…. I didn’t have any of such problems before the patch, but this is the 2nd time it happened now since the last upgrade. I don’t know what happens…my PC just shuts down completely without warning.

Turn 18 3320 BC:
We meet Hatshepsut of the Egyptians.

Turn 19 3280 BC:
Busy times…we meet Ghandi!

Turn 25 3040 BC:
We discover Archery, The Wheel due in 15 turns. A Work Boat is finished in Sparta, building Archer. Building Fishing Boats on the Fish and work the tile for faster growth.

Turn 30 2840 BC:
Our Scout was killed by Panthers!

Turn 31 2800 BC:
Hinduism is FIDL.

Turn 32 2760 BC:
Hatshepsut converts to Hinduism, so she was the one who founded it.

Turn 37 2560 BC:
We discover The Wheel, Bronze Working is next so we can adopt Slavery. Archer is finished in Sparta. We’re currently 9th in the Soldiers Ranking, this rule will probably hurt us too much, but I’m building another Archer for now.

Turn 40 2440 BC:
This is where I end my turns, Bronze Working is due in 16 turns and another Archer coming up in 7 turns. We dropped to 10th spot in Soldiers ranking.

 

[Dimy]

And here's the save game.

Roster:
Dimy - Just Played
Till - up
ThERat - on deck
Gufnork
BeefontheBone
Eozenig

We might want to reconsider the number 1 ranking on Soldiers, I think it's going to hurt us too much in the early game. Together with us, there's a total of 13 Civilizations in this game, I suggest to change this to be in the top 6 instead of #1 and from Modern Age onwards try to be #1.

I played 40 turns this first round, Till can play 40 turns as well, then ThERat, Gufnork, BeefontheBone and Eozenig take 30 turns each and in round two we take 20 turns each (probably going for 10 turns each from 3rd round onwards). This is Epic speed, so things go a little slower.

 

[Till]

I got it, but can't promise i get to play tonight. The heating system has broken down.

 

[Till]

Inherited Turn:
As Dimy suggested, i'll shoot for top 6 instead of the first place in military ranking. We are only pushing 3 shields and don't have a worker. Sparte is producing the archer Dimy started.
*enter*

zzz


(6) 2200 BC:
We reach hapiness maximum at size 5. I switch tiles and now we are making 5 shields/turn. Woo boy.

(7) 2160 BC:
Archer finishes and now we are... #12 in military! I think we are running into a problem here. Without a worker there is no hope getting a decent amount of shields. If we go on like this we'll never catch up.

I am stopping here both because it has 16°Celsius(61Fahrenheit) in my room and because i don't see us catching up on production.
We are making 5 shields, more is impossible due to happiness restrictions.
A warrior is 18 shields.
An archer is 31.
So we can pump out an warrior every 3-4 turns. Does military ranking count the number of units or the combined strength?
It is hard to guess how fast the AIs can produce, but in the 7 turns i have been playing we've lost two positions in the military ranking.
What to do?

 

[Gufnork]

The soldier ranking is weird. Training units does not appear to be the #1 way of increasing it. I think we need to research it a little before we can continue. There are a few ways to go about this. One is to ignore that requirement for a while. The second is to atleast allow us to train a worker.

My suggestion is that we restart and ignore the rule for a few turns to get us up and running. Still no settlers except one to connect Iron or Bronze. Someone other than Dimy starts playing since Dimy knows too much about the start, I suggest we ThERat and we continue according to the list from there. I will keep an eye on the soldier rating in future games and see if I can make sense of it.

 

[Dimy]

Agreed.... let's forget the military ranking for now, that doesn't seem to work out the way I had intended. We really need to build infastructure now. There's no reason to restart the game, I don't think we wasted that much time. Don't forget the game is running on Epic, so is slower and I already had one worker boat done.

 

[ThERat]

I think we should modify this to let's say: rule kicks in at 1AD or so. Until then we should be given a chance to actually expand our empire. With so many enemies and such a large map, to restrict us to 2 towns is basically suicide. How about a 5CC.

TI played in a LK game where we had this 5CC cap and then were able to found a new town for intially 1 razed town, then 2 razed towns etc. That way we restrict ourselves, but are able to actually play the game.

 

[Till]

(7) 2160 BC:
Start a worker and ignore the ranking requirement for now.

(8) 2120 BC:
We meet Caesar. He's the only one bellow us in overall score thus far.

(9) 2014 BC:
We run into Mansa Musa. Seesh it's a small world!

(12) 1975 BC:
The first Babarian warrior comes into sight.

(13) 1925 BC
Our scouting archer takes care of him.

(15) 1900 BC:
We finally have our worker I start another one, as we cannot grow further and i don't want to go back to producing units already.

(16) 2018 AD:
Ghengis drops by. He'll hopefully make a worthy enemy! We also learn how to make bronze. Now what to research? Building wonders would distract too much from our military score goal, i think. I go for pottery. As required by the rules, i revolt to slavery.


(17) 1850 BC:
Victory knocks on our door.

(20) 1775 BC:
And Montazuma is playing as well. He's at the bottom of the score list.

(22) 1725 BC:
The English are just a bit south of us.

(25) 1650 BC:
We meet Frederick of Germany. A worker completes and i start a work boat. Then it is back to military.
Egypt is just next to England. Sod's law that our closest neighbours are the most powerful civs. All the more glory in chrushing them!

(28) 1575 BC:
Pottery comes in. I start research on animal husbandry to see where the horses are. Oh btw, we don't have any copper in direct vincinity. I'll delay the war machine yet again to build a settler.
We also meet the Incas.

(31) 1500 BC:
Workboat finishes and i start the settler. Hoplites will come in nicely against Egyptain chariots.

(35) 1400 BC:
We learn how to tame animals. The scientists ask the Emperor what do research next: "The art of painting symbols on papyrus or the art of casting iron?" They get beheaded for raising stupid questions and the next scientists redouble their efforts to invent blacksmithing. We have horses within city radius.

(39) 1300 BC:
Our settler completes and i start construction of barracks. Time to get ready for war!

(40) 1275 BC:
The barracks probably should be chopped/whipped. We have a happiness buffer and i don't think we'll have any time for building wonders.
This is the copper spot:

---------->The Save<----------​

 

[ThERat]

before we play on we should have a general consensus.

Mil dominance: being #1 or 6? from which date onwards? I suggested 1AD but no response yet.

Cities: how many cities can we get ourselves up? 2 or 4? I vote for 4 but again we need a consensus here.

 

[Dimy]

yeah i think its even getting too hard with only 2 cities... 4 cities is alright, but no need to rush-build them
As for military, let's change it to, keep 3 military units in each city at least, if there's not 3 units in a city, at least one city must be building new units untill they do.

 

[Till]

I would depend it on how fast we can produce Hoplites once we have copper. If it is fast enough to wage war against Egypt, i'd vote against more self-founded cities. I feel a hoplite war is definitly neccessary to keep the spirit of the game, and we should adjust our priorities accorndantly. Once we are at war, the question of military ranking becomes moot for a while.
But that's just my two cent, of course.