Fix the 5th trash game

[cabert]

This is not a traditional succession game in that the full roster will play the same game and at intervals alternate between the least successful attempt and the most successful attempt as determined by a vote.

All players on the roster will be giving it their legitimate best shot. End of round discussions will ideally provide some educational value.

The idea of fixing a succession game where the situation was regularly 'less than great' was Paul666's idea, and was floated in the Strategies and Tips forum. This format stemmed from that initial proposal. 3 successful 'trash games' have already been played that led to :
- a Bismark-led Domination win on Prince (vanilla) ,
- a Space Race victory for Montezuma on Monarch (vanilla) ,
- a conquest win for wang kong on Prince (warlords 2.08)

trash game n°3 was a "normal SG", with a whacky variant, but not using the trash format.

The Settings

Leader: Gandhi (India)
Landmass Type: Standard continents
Size: Standard
Barbarians: Normal
Difficulty: Monarch
Speed: Normal
Victory: All types enabled however human player confined to variant (launching the spaceship)
Version: 2.08 Warlords

The Start
the Save




The Players

Roster:
Cabert
Cam_H
Fbelintani
Giaur
KMadCandy
Mice
Öjevind Lång
Pigswill
Shyuhe

Roster full for now

the rounds :

From 4000 BC to 2400 BC, expansion time and religion founding. Ojevind's city placement and lack of worker was seen as weak and thus his game selected for trash.

2400 BC to 875BC, Mice's fast expansion, grabbing gold and copper sites, made him the trash fixer. Defenses were light, though.

875BC to 125 AD, Pigswill's backwards growth (back to 3 cities) earned him the trash trophy. However, having philosophy as monopoly tech (and a few axes to get more cities) made this a not too bad situation.

125 AD to 1000 AD, Pigswill made a glorious comeback, at the expenses of Brennus. 7 cities, a good army and more cities to take... He just fixed his own trash.

1000 to 1400 AD, shyhue had the bad luck to see cyrus declare war on him. He had to abandon a city for peace, seeing cyrus had rifles already.
Down to 6 cities.

1400 AD to 1650, Giaur built wealth and beakers to get us into near tech parity.

1650 to 1820AD , Mice got hit by Bismarck but managed to conquer a few more cities. Cabert's total trash game was judged unwinnable (at least by space race) and flushed.

1820 to 1900 AD, cam_h brought us back into the tech race. In fact he brought us into a tech lead, just on the verge of fiber optics. His game was so good that we (better said I) decided that we'd all go for the win from there.

1900 to the end, we all played until the end. Cam again showed how good he is in the space race, with a 1959AD launch. The results were honorable with 4 reported launches and 1 reported space loss.

 

[shyuhe]

Sounds like fun. I'd like to be part of the trash collectors

 

[cabert]

Sounds like fun. I'd like to be part of the trash collectors

you're in Shyuhe.
If I remember well, you're one of those not afraid of deity, right?

 

[mice]

Confirm. Thanks Cabert.

Key question, do we have the rule as in trash 4 that any player cannot be chosen twice in a row for trash, or twice in a row for best ?


Good looking roster

 

[cabert]

Confirm. Thanks Cabert.

Key question, do we have the rule as in trash 4 that any player cannot be chosen twice in a row for trash, or twice in a row for best ?


Good looking roster

this rule is good and should be maintained if everyone agrees

 

[Cam_H]

Super - jungle and desert!

Great to see we're back in business, and I'm a confirmation.

I support "mice's rule" (if it's even a discussion point).

2400 BC for the Trash Round?

 

[pigswill]

The way I've been playing recently its a good job I can't be selected twice in a row for the trash round. I'm in to provide some balance to the proper players.

 

[cabert]

welcome guys!
Yes, 2400 BC for the trash round.

I wanted to wait for our roster to be officially full before launching the game, if nobody is too anxious to start.

And about the start, I had a better one, so I regenerated .

 

[shyuhe]

I don't know about being fearless of deity cabert. I rarely play deity (unless it's one of the challenges). So can we just go ahead and play the save up to 2400 BC?

 

[Öjevind Lång]

I'm in. Is the idea that each round, we post our results within two weeks?

 

[mice]

Is the idea that each round, we post our results within two weeks?

It seems to me that 2 weeks is far too long. We will forget what is going on in this time.

Trash 1 ,2, 3, it was something like, get your save in by 'Friday night'
wherever you are. Then we have the weekend to look at them.

 

[pigswill]

First couple of trash games we played one set in five days; couple of days to select and vote best or worst which led to a one week cycle. This caused a few problems for some people who weren't able to play in a given week due to other commitments so we tried a fortnight cycle in third game.

In my opinion this reduced the momentum of the game so I'd rather play a weekly cycle even if it meant that occassionally a couple of people weren't able to submit a set.

I guess its down to other people to voice an opinion and Capn Cabert to make an executive decision re length of sets.

Edit: Looking at the starting screenshot we've got a nice clearing in a jungle of jungle. Interesting.

 

[Cam_H]

I agree that 5 to play, 2 to bicker is a good way to go ... Piggy used the magic word "momentum".

 

[cabert]

we're still waiting for roland ...

 

[FeedBack]

we're still waiting for roland ...

Have you forgotten about me?
FB Checking in.
As the initial supporter of the two-week turnsets, I think I was wrong. The end of the previous trash game was too slow and people lost interest. I think we may stick to one-week turnsets. We play until friday night and vote until sunday night.
About the "Mice's rule", it's good for me!

Let's give our wives something to complain about!

 

[KMadCandy]

lurker's comment: *giggle*

Let's give our wives something to complain about!

once i get over my fear of deity i'll have to sign up so that at least one complainer would be a hubby have fun, i'll be watching.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Sorry for the late reaction. I've been sick for a few days and haven't checked my email that well in that period, but I'm in.

I actually like the starting position. Ivory in the fat cross means an extra happiness from one of the five early happiness resources (ivory, gems, silver, gold, fur). I've had lots of starts where I never had one of the early happiness resources until after I acquired calendar and got happiness resources with plantations. I'm always happy when I see an early happiness resource in the fat cross.

How do you guys and girls log the (more important) turn events? There are some non-gameplay changing mods out there that do that for you, but they of course don't work with locked modified assets. Or aren't you supposed to have some form of turn log. How can you learn from someone elses moves when you can't see what they've done? Sorry, I'm new with succession games, so I'm just asking how you usually do these things.

By the way, what a name: Trashy gandhi. I will be tempted to declare war each time another leader addresses me by that name. That name should have been combined with an always war type of game, would have worked perfectly for me.

 

[mice]

How do you guys and girls log the (more important) turn events? There are some non-gameplay changing mods out there that do that for you, but they of course don't work with locked modified assets. Or aren't you supposed to have some form of turn log. How can you learn from someone elses moves when you can't see what they've done? Sorry, I'm new with succession games, so I'm just asking how you usually do these things.

I'll jump in and first say HI,

Next, about the turnlogs. It's different to other succession games in that you have to judge the position as it is , against the other saves.

Which is the weakest position at .....AD. and which is the strongest on the next turnset?

We have no fixed criteria for this. The criteria is one of the things that gets discussed as the game progresses. So .. I dont know that turn logs come into it so much.

For me the in-game thing, Ctrl+Tab is enough. Its about what the player acheived in the 40 turns.

That's my take on it .

Most important is that any key info is put in a spoiler . Most saves are submitted with a 'write up' in a spoiler.

 

[Cam_H]

Welcome all.

KMadCandy - don't be shy ... push your way onto the roster!

I've played my set. My Warrior went 2/2 XP!

Spoiler :

You shouldn't be reading spoilers until you've played your round! Shame on you!

Saves in at latest by Saturday morning 'American' time?

 

[cabert]

lurker's comment: *giggle*


once i get over my fear of deity i'll have to sign up so that at least one complainer would be a hubby have fun, i'll be watching.

lurker?
who's a lurker?
You're drafted KMad. Don't try to resist , there is no escape.
I can tell you that after that game, monarch will feel easy enough.

Roland (and others, by I know Roland has some mods or simply modified assets), note that I have saved the game with locked assets, and the reason why I wanted you all to check in before actually playing is to tell me if this game is playable for you or not.
So download the save, open it and tell me .

About turnlogs
An automatic turnlog is great for not forgetting things.
But it's not so great for educational purposes.
Nothing beats a "manual" turnlog, with the whys and hows.
Or if that is too much of a pain, just the overall whys and hows without turnlog.

I'd like to see for every submitted games a little report making clear :
- what you intended to do, and why
- what happened
- what you were planning for the next turns or the overall plan, if some actions need the large overview to be understood.

It may be a little work, but I paid the price (by being selected as worst game ) for being too vague in my report (noone saw why I started a wonder in my sole city when going for conquest).

If you feel that some MM tricks have a definitive value at some point, explaining them in the report is certainly worth it. Usually the first 2 rounds need more explanations on those things because there are big differences between games, coming from them.

I suspect that the final rush for space will require some fine reporting too, but we're not there yet.

About criteria
Everyone knows that score isn't always relevant. So we select the games (worst, best) by a secret vote. If you think something is particularly important for winning the space race, mention it in your report and assess your own game from this point of view.
For example, I believe that it's very important to grab land and resources for this kind of victories. So I value a second, well placed, city a lot.
I also value exploration a lot, since it will help placing the next cities.
And of course, we need to be alive to fly away, so I value a good military plan (what units, with which techs and which resources) a lot too.
My short list of criteria for the first turnset :
- number of cities, overall population
- number of workers, improved tiles
- exploration
- techs (adequation to empire safety and to a feasable plan)
- units (adequation to empire safety and to a feasable plan)