Gotm 102

Magic_gorter

Magic_gorter

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Game of the Month 102: September 2009


Game Settings:
Civilization: Vikings
Map: Normal map (50x80); 6 civs, round
Difficulty: King
Barbarians: Roving Bands
Restarts: On
Victory by conquest or spaceship


Starting Techs:
~ Alphabet


This month we will start on a small island. And it is not easy to leave it.


Games will be due on Oct. 18th, 2009.


Please be sure to follow the submission guidelines when submitting your game (please do not send your files in a .zip file. Attach them directly to your e-mail with your name in the save file).


Please sent the savegames only to civ2gotm@gmail.com.

Have fun.

Starting save is here

 
Last edited:
Wow! This looks like a great Civ2 puzzle. I hope I have time to play this one. In my opinion, the key to this game will be getting a settler or two off the island ASAP. The hut could be a huge wildcard, allowing even a noobie to take the lead here. I see several tantalizing ideas, but it is not clear what the best plan might be. Guess I'll have to at least open the save to see what's in the city...
 
So we're the Zulu's and that's a viking city? I think I get it now. What is everyone going for landing or conquest?
 
I get it now, I thought there was another civ with us on the central island for a bit, but it was a typo.

I'll go for landing as well.

Just looking at the map, triremes aren't guaranteed to cross the water. This is going to be fun, but planning will be crucial.
 
That's true about the triremes! Seafaring gives them pretty good odds (75% I think) of staying afloat. So, I may go for seafaring before monarchy, which isn't really needed until you have several cities. Even then, there are various ferry methods to choose from (eg a 2-ship chain removes all risk to the passenger(s) but it takes more time...).

The picture [with the first city on a bad location] presents a tougher challenge than our actual starting save does. It should be pretty easy to build a few good cities on grass, and then build the lousy port(s), for example. But as always, there are choices.... which could be pretty important for this game.
 
The problem I find when not getting monarchy early on is it's much harder to get later when the science count goes up. Also, the earlier you get monarchy the more benefit the wine and silk gives.

The ship chain is one method, I remember it from an earlier GOTM, Lighthouse is the other obvious one, the final one is just gambling and goign for it - it may be cheaper than the lighthouse, it may not...

Something in the screenshot above looks very interesting to me, but it wouldn't be fair to say what it is.
 
I have Test Of Time on an XP SP3. It will not load the saved game. I swapped the files from Cedric's downloads. Now the game will play for a couple of turns, and then crash. I will try the save to another folder trick. Any other ideas? Thanks!
 
Good luck to any new players ! This one looks difficult to me - asuming you want to get off the island ASAP. I haven't figured out what Charlie saw ... maybe the location of the ocean specials ? But they probably don't tell us anything about unseen land nearby, because Magic probably moved the land around with Map Editor, but not the specials (?) ... well, we can always black-click to find land, if we want.

Anyway, here are my decisions before starting play, in case anyone wants more discussion of this interesting start. That's what GOTMs are for, I guess.


1) Regardless of other decisions, the size one trick looks good here. The first city could be on the Silk, or on the starting spot, but is probably best on one of the two grassy corners.

2) The tech sequence will be very important, but I don't think our civ will need seafaring until approx tech number 6. So, monarchy first, with the off-path tech either pottery or map making, planning for Seafaring ASAP after Monarchy [then probably aim for Trade]. Arrows may be scarce for a while, and I'll set Science to 60, but I plan to obey all ICS commandents, and not overuse the Silk/etc if it slows growth.

A side benefit of Seafaring is the possibility of building an explorer to pop lots of huts overseas. This old trick has led to some really big wins in other GOTMs. It works best if there is at least one huge land mass with lots of huts.

3) I did a little Bayesian thinking and decided to be conservative with the first passengers. I plan to build two boats and two spare settlers, to go overseas on a short ship-chain.


I am not so sure about these last two decisions and may change my mind:

4) The first settler should pop the nearby hut ASAP, hoping for either a nomad, an advanced tribe (not sure this is even possible so early), gold, or some unit (for disbanding, to speed up growth). A tech might be pretty bad news. This choice costs 2 turns, but the average hut benefit [about 10-15 turns earlier than otherwise] seems worth it.

I am undecided about when to pop the other 2 huts on our island, which I didn't even notice at first. My habit is to let such huts wait until I have a spare warrior to send out.

5) Number and location of the central cities. I think 3 inner cities on grass [plus 2 ports later] should be enough for the plan in part 3). It is tempting to build a 4th, perhaps on the Silk, but that city would be very slow in reaching size 2. That's very un-ICS, but maybe OK.

I don't think early roads make much sense. Maybe OK to road 1 or 2 grass-with-shield tiles after the 2nd or 3rd city.
------------------------------------

I'd like to hear other ideas and opinions. We can discuss how well our decisions turn out in the Spoiler thread.
 
Peaster said:
Good luck to any new players ! This one looks difficult to me - asuming you want to get off the island ASAP. I haven't figured out what Charlie saw ... maybe the location of the ocean specials ? But they probably don't tell us anything about unseen land nearby, because Magic probably moved the land around with Map Editor, but not the specials (?) ... well, we can always black-click to find land, if we want.
Click to expand...

I have also no idea what Charlie saw.....we have to wait till he post it in the spoilerthread. Yes I did only used Map Editor but only to remove some land tiles to create this nice little island:).

Peaster said:
Anyway, here are my decisions before starting play, in case anyone wants more discussion of this interesting start. That's what GOTMs are for, I guess.


1) Regardless of other decisions, the size one trick looks good here. The first city could be on the Silk, or on the starting spot, but is probably best on one of the two grassy corners.

2) The tech sequence will be very important, but I don't think our civ will need seafaring until approx tech number 6. So, monarchy first, with the off-path tech either pottery or map making, planning for Seafaring ASAP after Monarchy [then probably aim for Trade]. Arrows may be scarce for a while, and I'll set Science to 60, but I plan to obey all ICS commandents, and not overuse the Silk/etc if it slows growth.

A side benefit of Seafaring is the possibility of building an explorer to pop lots of huts overseas. This old trick has led to some really big wins in other GOTMs. It works best if there is at least one huge land mass with lots of huts.

3) I did a little Bayesian thinking and decided to be conservative with the first passengers. I plan to build two boats and two spare settlers, to go overseas on a short ship-chain.


I am not so sure about these last two decisions and may change my mind:

4) The first settler should pop the nearby hut ASAP, hoping for either a nomad, an advanced tribe (not sure this is even possible so early), gold, or some unit (for disbanding, to speed up growth). A tech might be pretty bad news. This choice costs 2 turns, but the average hut benefit [about 10-15 turns earlier than otherwise] seems worth it.

I am undecided about when to pop the other 2 huts on our island, which I didn't even notice at first. My habit is to let such huts wait until I have a spare warrior to send out.

5) Number and location of the central cities. I think 3 inner cities on grass [plus 2 ports later] should be enough for the plan in part 3). It is tempting to build a 4th, perhaps on the Silk, but that city would be very slow in reaching size 2. That's very un-ICS, but maybe OK.

I don't think early roads make much sense. Maybe OK to road 1 or 2 grass-with-shield tiles after the 2nd or 3rd city.
------------------------------------

I'd like to hear other ideas and opinions. We can discuss how well our decisions turn out in the Spoiler thread.
Click to expand...

Because I started a while back I don't remember well what strategy I should play but I give a try.

I remember that I was thinking about the size one trick and using the grass tiles for cities. Also popping the hut and hoping for something good. To get off the island I was thinking to get Map Making and build the Lighthouse. I probably go for space and looking at this island it's not easy to build a SSC there. So where this city comes depends on what I find when I'm off the island.

I was thinking about two inner cities on the island and when looking at the map two harbour cities (near the specials). I won't do ICS. I guess it takes longer then normal to discover techs because the lack of good citysites.....

When finished this game I will post in the spoiler thread if I played like a mentioned above.....
 
Thanks for the comments, nice to have a Civ2 discussion again!

When I wrote "ICS", I really meant "fast growth methods" up to about 4 or 5 cities, just enough to get off the island. The terrrain here just doesn't support true "ICS".

I didn't really consider building the Lighthouse (though Charlie mentioned it) because that usually takes me such a long time. Meaning 1000BC or so, and that's with good terrain, supporting at least 10 cities. I expect that Seafaring will be faster and "cheaper" than the Lighthouse. Seafaring = 2 techs past map making = approx 150 arrows (just a wild guess), while the WoW costs 200 shields. Maybe the WoW could be started before map making ? But I don't see a good way to do it.

I haven't planned past getting off the island. Then there will be new options, like moving the capital, which I almost never do in normal games. If you want a decent SSC, you may
have to do that to reduce corruption. I will play for conquest, so I don't really need a SSC, but sometimes I mix in trade anyway... but this decision can wait, I guess.

I have started play, and will move to the spoiler thread once I've gotten a bit further along.

I hope someone will answer TimToFly above. I don't think the "Test of Time" software accepts other Civ2 saves, but I don't own it and don't really know the answer.
 
This is the kind of map I would have loved to play. I am so disappointed at having missed this one. I will have to play it on my own once I get a chance.
 
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