GOTM 186

[Ali Ardavan]

Game of the Month 186 (January 2017)

We start 2017 in a 20x17 20x70 size world. The world consists of one thick strip of land near each pole and 5 islands in between (all within trireme reach). 4 rational civs are on the south strip (Celt, Babylonian, Spanish, and American). 2 Aggressive expansionist ones (French and Mongols) are north. Human player plays Carthaginians in the middle.

Civilization: 2 Carthaginian settlers
Starting tech: Bronze Working, Ceremonial Burial
Difficulty: Emperor
Total players: 7
Restarts: on
Roving Bands (-25)
20x70 Known flat map. As always, known map means you are encouraged to open the starting save in the map editor and refer to it any time you need to.

Deadline: March 7, 2017

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.

Please send the saved games only to civ2gotm@gmail.com.

Have fun.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

There is a known bug in Civ2 that if you end a trireme's turn inside of a 1-tile island it thinks it is out at sea and could sink. Since the capital in this game is such an island, this could happen to many players. To prevent this from happening, please save before you end a trireme's turn in your capital. If it sunk, reload. If you forget to save and it sunk, go back to your last save and recreate everything up to that point. Make sure Auto-save is on so you never have to go back further than the beginning of the current turn.

 

[Jokemaster]

Random Question: Trade bonuses are usually affected by the size of the map that we play on. Small map have 125% payouts, medium maps have normal payouts and large maps have 75% payouts. Does anyone know how this would be affected by custom-sized maps?

EDIT: Regarding the one-tile trireme bug. You can also fortify the trireme whilst still having movement points remaining, to guarantee a no-sink situation. Would assume sleeping would have the same result, but I do not know.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

Regarding trade bonuses my guess is that since this map is smaller than the game's small (40x50), the same bonus for small applies but this is just a guess. I am not aware of anyone gathering data on that.

Regarding triremes, you are right. If you have movement points left you can fortify. I am pretty sure I have tried sleep as well and it works.

 

[grigor]

My recollection is that the map size label assigned by the game to a custom map is: the most recent conventional map size that the maker of the custom map in question created. But I think Jokester is asking a more interesting question: How can we find out?

 

[Ali Ardavan]

Interesting. I guessed it would go by surface area 20x70=1400 < 40x50=2000; hence small.
If what you are saying is the case, then it could be anything. The good thing is that since we are all playing from the same save it would be the same for everyone.

To find out for sure, you have to run a controlled experiment. Here is one design:
Open the starting save in the map editor and save the map.
Start a new game on a small game-generated map. Quit and start a new game on a known map using the map of this game.
Go into cheat mode. Create some cities and a van; make a delivery. Write down the payoff and save the game.
Start a new game on a medium game-generated map. Quit and start a new game on a known map using the map of this game.
Go into cheat more. Recreate the same cities and van; make a delivery. Compare the payouts.
For good measure, repeat with a large game-generated map.
This should take an hour or two of real time.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

For some reason the initial save is missing two common settings most of us are used to. One is the initial science being at 60 and tax at 40. The other is the game waiting at the end of turn till you hit return. If your game gets screwed up because of these, needless to say, go back to the initial save and start over.