Five take on the world revisited (5CCC - deity)

[Aggie]

Our previous 5CC was a great success. We were able to get rid of the other tribes after a very difficult start. But we agreed that the lethal bombers were too powerful. This -believe it or not- made the end a bit too easy. That is why we are going to up the difficulty:

-No bombers
-No armies
-A civ without a relatively normal UU (unlike the Sipahi of the Ottomans)

Map: standard, pangaea, 70% water, random conditions
Civ: to be discussed
Opponents: 7 random, normal aggression, sedentary barbs
Victory conditions: all enabled, our aim is conquest. Respawn and culture-linked starts are off.

Our definition of a 5CC is that AT NO POINT may we ever have more than five cities. We CANNOT have extra cities midway through a turn. If we wish to take an opponent's city, we must abandon one of our own BEFORE taking another.

ROSTER (edit: June 24th, 8.00 AM CET)
gozpel
Aggie
LKendter
Hotrod0823
microbe
CarlosMM


microbe or Greebley will take the last spot.

24hrs to post a "got it" notice, and up to 48hrs after that to finish and post your turns. Gozpel will start with 25 turns. Next up can take 15/20 turns, and the next leader 10/15, then 10 each turn after that.

Please state your opinion on what civ to use. Participants should be deity-competent, as this will be a very challenging game. We will also need plenty of discussion on gameplan, especially regarding early offensive war on deity.

BANNED TACTICS
These are the exploits that I want to avoid in the game:

"Phony Peace Treaty": Making Peace Treaties without having the intention to stay at peace, just to get cheap techs or money.

"Palace Jump"; Jumping the palace by disbanding the capital. Rushing a palace or building it brick by brick is OK.

"RoP Rape": Using Right of Passage to move whole armies into attack position.

"Throwaway Cities": It is possible to go everywhere by settling, moving a setter one tile further in, abandoning the old city, founding a new one, etc...etc... A city shouldn't be abandoned in the same turn as it is settled.

"Resource Piracy": Sitting on resources or deny a civ access to a tile inside the borders of the rival while at peace.

"Seed Corn": It is not allowed to buy the LAST TWO workers from the AI before 1000 BC.

"Negative cash research": The penalty of negative cash is only one unit/improvement. So there are cases where this can be worthwile. Science spending must be lowered when the cash would go below zero.

OTHERS:
Things that I didn't name but are in the spirit of what I mention above I would like to have discussed.

 

[carlosMM]

wow, looking forward to this one.
can't üplay before Wednesday though I fear - I've ben away from the office for almost a month and will need to settle back in first.


as for the civ: I'd prefer to have a non-religious civ, as most of the trait (fast gov change) is rather useless in low-town-count games.

 

[Aggie]

I prefer a scientific civ. It will give us the sling shot we need to advance. The other trait of choice would be commercial. This leads to Greece Korea has a the Hwach'a which is probably as bad as the bomber (regarding being lethal).

 

[carlosMM]

Greece..... hmmmmmmmm, the Hoplite is pretty much useless in deity games - by the time you can have a significant number of them to protect the significant number of attackers you need - even only to deal with an obnoxious enemy stack coming in and pillaging all over - the AIs will throw Med Infs at you. And in my experience, D=3 units are toast against AI A=4 units. the other way round, obviously, knights have a hard time killing Spears, but that is the NRNG after all.

So I am no too enthused by greece - but I fully agree with a Sci civ!

 

[LKendter]

This leads to Greece

Do you want a despotic GA?
Not to mention a defensive unit can make it a real pain to trip your GA.


If you don't get enough of the previous Five players, sign me up. I was close to starting another of these in the LK series.

 

[Aggie]

@Lee, CarlosMM: I understand the cons. But we may not be attacked in the ancient age. We can also trip our GA with wonders. We have had a number of wonders in the previous game as well.

@Lee: I noted your interest

My main focus was on the traits. I think that scientific and commercial are the best for this type of game. Plus we wanted a UU that isn't too powerful.

Looking at the traits:
-Religious is indeed not very great when you are small (as CarlosMM explains)
-Militaristic is greatly reduced in value when you can't build armies
-Seafaring is not great on a pangaea map
-Argicultural gives you an initial boost, but you only need to get 5 cities. The boost won't last long enough imho.
-Expansionist can help us a lot in the early game. We can be level in tech at the start of the MA due to trading etc...
-Commercial gives you extra commerce when next to a river, which is always nice for a small empire
-Scientific is very valuable with the free techs alone
-Industrious with faster workers is a good trait to have throughout the game

I would choose Scientific, Commercial, Expansionist or Industrious. My favourite is Scientific. This would mean Greece, Korea, Russia, Ottomans. The Ottomans are out (we had them already), Russia also has a very strong UU, Korea has a lethal bombardment UU.

But...if the team wants a non-scientific civ, than that's ok with me.

We could also choose an extreme option: random civ, but reload when we get a civ with an uber-UU (Ottomans, Germany, Vikings, Chinese)

 

[Nad]

How nice

Aggie, please do not reserve my place...it's going to be 1-2 weeks before I can begin playing Civ again, and given that 5CCs are pretty quick, you might be approaching the industrial age by that time.

A couple of comments though: I changed the map to 30% water, so we had a bit more room for the cities, and even then we didn't get a 5th city down properly for ages! But the more land you have the harder the game. I also changed barbarians to sedentary rather than random, not for the early game but because of the late game. Since you'll be razing so many cities, half the map might be empty and barb camps will sprout there, which is really annoying when there are rails everywhere cos they can appear from nowhere to kill a stack of 100 slaves that you thought were safe . It also gets annoying having to chase them around and then keep all the map lit to prevent their appearance.

Banning bombers and armies will make the game tough; but if you really want to take it to the extreme, how about restricting artillery as well?

You could also, if you wish, add in unit restrictions; maybe no fast units, or no units that require resources etc...there is plenty of scope for adding variants/restrictions here.

Another thought I had (if you want to make this totally brutal): howe about playing this with the defiant nationalist ruleset? No giving in to demands, no units on your soil, no military agreements etc That would be quite a cookie....

 

[Aggie]

Banning bombers and armies will make the game tough; but if you really want to take it to the extreme, how about restricting artillery as well?

Nad, a couple of your suggestions sound VERY difficult indeed. Maybe something for the next game? It would be nice to have you in that one

You probably are right that sedentary barbs is better. I remember them in MELI1 Tedious. I will also change landmass specs to 30%.

This means that LKendter can join us

 

[carlosMM]

hehe, trading Nad for LK - I do not think this weakenes the team. Maybe, if Lee catches the virus, we can have BOTH of them for an uber-tough follow-on?????

 

[LKendter]

I also changed barbarians to sedentary rather than random, not for the early game but because of the late game.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE do this. I played on of the early LK 5CC with barbs. What a pain in the...

 

[LKendter]

I can't find any comments on the patch. Is this game going to be on patch 1.22?

I no longer need 1.15 and need to delete the dual install to recover drive space. I can't commit to a game on 1.15.

 

[Aggie]

This will be 1.22.

 

[microbe]

Just finished one SG so I'm interested. Haven't played a 5CC before. So if any of the reserved players gives up, put me in if ok.

 

[Aggie]

OK microbe, you're now 1st reserve

 

[Foresight]

I am interested. You probably want to see how good I am in your other SG first, though.

Why don't you guys try Sumeria?

 

[Aggie]

@Foresight: you got that right Sumeria is a good civ, but the UU is alo an ancient age one. Same issues as Greece.

 

[gozpel]

Great, you already got the thread up

Hmm..

"I will start with 25 turns."

ROSTER
gozpel
Aggie
CarlosMM
LKendter
open
open

Make up your mind, mate

As for a civ, I agree we need the scientific trait, which leads us to:

Greece - Sci, Com - Hoplite
Germany - Sci, Mil - Panzer
Carthage - Sci, Sea - Numidian Merc
Sumeria - Sci, Agri - Enkidu Warrior
Byzantines - Sci, Sea - Dromon
Babylon - Sci, Rel - Bowmen
Russia - Sci, Exp - Cossack
Persia - Sci, Ind - Immortal
Ottomans - Sci, Ind - Sipahi
Korea - Sci, Com - Hwach'a

Did I miss anyone?

Ottomans is out, since we played them in the last game.

Cartage and Byzantine are out as we play pangea.
Korea is out with the Hwach'a.

I said from the beginning we should use a weaker UU, but with the removal of armies and bombers and perhaps arties as well, why not use the Immortal? It has a descent lifespan and we need at least something to get us going.

If that is considered cheesy, I would say Babylon as second choice. Our great "opponent" in the last game With their cheap culture building, we can certainly match the others and avoid silly flips. The Bowman is useful as defender as well.

Third choice is Greece as Commercial is powerful in the long run and Hoplites last for a while as well.

A thought about army, we should be able to build one, but only as a defensive army who never can leave the homelands? Ah, maybe cheesy.

 

[Aggie]

Gozpel, I copy/pasted from another thread. You are supposed to start it I change the text immediately.

I totally forgot Persia. Same traits as Ottomans, a nice UU.

My choice:
1. Greece
2. Persia
3. Russia

Cathage isn't scientifc, but industrious

 

[gozpel]

Oops, that's how it goes when you don't play certain civs enough. Ok, no Carthage then

Aggie, you are really pushing for Greece. And I see why too. We will probably need every extra gold we can get later on for brokering. And hoplites live forever, well almost anyways.

But as I said, we probably need something to not getting overrun and I love them Immortals.

So my choices:
1 - Persia
2 - Babs
3 - Greece

I'm just trying to be difficult

Btw Aggie, when we have picked a civ, do you want to create the map or should I?
I did a pretty good job not finding a river in the last game

 

[Foresight]

Persia is a hit or miss civ. Iron usually doesn't show up right next to your start. So, with only 5 cities, you may not get it.

Computers usually haven't attacked me early game when I play greece. Not sure if the programming tells it that hoplites are hard to win against.

Yea you are right about the Early GA problem Aggie. I've always liked my GA to come at around the first sight of Pikeman.