Gotm 149

[Ali Ardavan]

Ice Hopper

Comrade Lenin,

Your mission, should you want to accept it, is to reach fertile unsettled lands before your rivals get too far ahead of you. Your initial position is fit for just one city and there are no fertile lands anywhere near you. However, there are a series of one-tile glaciers that will allow your trireme to travel the high seas without getting lost.

Game of the Month 149: November 2013

Civilization: 1 Russian settler
Starting techs: Bronze Working, Warrior Code, Horseback riding
Difficulty: Emperor
Total players: 7
Restarts: on
Barbarians: Roving bands (-25)

Map: Custom designed known 90x90 flat. The 3 larger islands you see near the north pole each house 2 rivals. The smaller one, at the north east corner, is uninhabitted and accessible by a trireme via a series of one-tile glaciers from Russian homeland which is at the south east corner of the world. The 3 rival homelands are not real islands; they are connected via a narrow strip of land to two large land masses around the equator. These two in turn are connected to an even bigger land mass near the south pole. There are a few small islands scattered around the world.

Note: known map means you can open the starting save in the map editor at any point in the game.

Deadline: Jan 6, 2014

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). No extra save is needed.

You can download the game here.

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

Have fun.

The download page can be found here.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

Like most known maps, a lot more thinking is needed right at the start. I can see three viable strategies

1. OCC

The starting location itself is great for OCC. However, trade is going to be a problem. The big rival cities are going to be literally at the other end of this large world. A good OCC player can still pull this off though. I recommend against OCC simply because this map is much too fun for OCC.

2. Hop the Ice for expansion

This is of course the intended way to play. Get a trireme out as soon as possible and go north!

3. Build the Lighthouse and go west to the large southern land mass

This is definitely a viable strategy. This will put you on a different trajectory for the whole game than the Ice hopping strategy though. The early game is obviously different but so will be the mid game. In the other strategy you get to expand much sooner despite the much longer distance because it takes so long to build the lighthouse from scratch in a single city. But the only island reachable (in the north eastern corner) is not very big and further expansion will stall till Navigation. If you land on the southern land mass though you can expand as far as you wish unhindered. On the other hand, if you expand in the south you will be far away from your rivals which makes for difficult logistics for both battle and trade.

 

[Magic_gorter]

Winning by conquest or spaceship?

 

[Ali Ardavan]

Both are allowed

 

[Peaster]

2. Hop the Ice for expansion

This is of course the intended way to play. Get a trireme out as soon as possible and go north!

I have not opened the map and cannot see much from the thumb. But at a glance, option 2 seems clearly best. Another idea is to go for seafaring and take some risks crossing deep ocean with trireme(s) + settler(s). I used this in some old gotm, and a few boats sank, but I felt the idea was OK, approx as good as waiting for LH on that map. But if the oceans require more than 2 or 3 turns to cross, which looks likely on this map, this plan is too risky.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

On this map, particularly for option 2, you have to open the map and look at it. The little dots you see on the right edge of the thumbnail I posted are the ice you will be hopping on. Sometimes you can get to the next patch in a few different ways but sometimes there is only one way and without the map you may not figure out the right move from the thumbnail.

Peaster, the Seafaring option is too risky an option here as you correctly guessed. We are many turns away from the southern continent and the middle continent at its closest is still more than 2 turns away.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

Deadline is extended to January 27th.

 

[littlejimmy]

i should have it in by the extended deadline

 

[Magic_gorter]

Finally time to post new results.

 

[Magic_gorter]

I've updated The Hall of Fame.