Gotm18-Celts - Pregame Discussion

[Birdjaguar]

In my impatience to begin GOTM 18, I've been playing the celts in a similar random pangea world. I set the barbarians on restless. With the PTW version, I've spent a lot of time fending off barbarians and have far more invested in garrisons than I usual. I expect Cracker's version will penalize thise who ignore his warning. The cool wet 4mm yr old world is very different from my typical game and city growth has been slow.

 

[Ribannah]

Originally posted by cracker
... once we separated the issues it was fairly easy to determine the specific software cause.

That sounds good.
Does it mean that there will not be similar lags in GOTM#18?

 

[Smirk]

I've decided the best plan of action is to move the worker north to start working the shieldland, and settle at the start.

Perhaps someone here could elaborate on the landbridges, but I don't see any strategic value with that on a guess. Short of an AI blocker. I don't think that will happen however, looking at the scoring both conquest and domination are very low, so this map looks like it will be a good sized continent. In addition since domination is lower than conquest, I'm guessing there are some civs isolated, so sea faring might play a part. If thats the case I may just try to get domination instead of a naval conquest.

 

[RufRydyr]

Originally posted by Smirk
Perhaps someone here could elaborate on the landbridges, but I don't see any strategic value with that on a guess. Short of an AI blocker.

Anytime I can block land or water choke points I do. That allows me to sign ROPs with the AIs for gold and still control their movement.

In cases where there are two long rivers with a landbridge in the middle, you can build a city there and allow ships to travel the now double long river. They can also connect oceans.

Two GOTMs ago Cracker designed a map where some strategic cities on landbridges allowed the bottom of the start continent to be connected to the oceans on either side. Kind of like the Panama Canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific.

3 GOTMs ago Cracker put landbridges close to the start position and across the original continent that allowed you to build ships in the cities close to the capital and send them all the way across the continent to the East. This turned out to be huge due to all the forests.

Movement is very important. The faster you can move units the more flexible you are and there are several advantages.

Hope this helps.

~Someone here

 

[Singularity]

@Cracker

Can you comment on wether GOTM18 was designed with a random BS on the grasstiles? It may not sound like much, but it's quite important for ancient age forest clearing. Knowing wether it's 0% chance or ~33% chance of getting a BS on the cleared grasstile will be important when assigning worker tasks in the early game.

@Timbo Nutski

Welcom to the GOTM! Regarding your comment on my rather lofty speculations very early on the hidden tiles, I've allready been proved wrong. A much better analysis can be found here made by Xevious.

 

[cracker]

Originally posted by Singularity
@Cracker - Can you comment on wether GOTM18 was designed with a random BS on the grasstiles?

by "random BS" I think you mean to ask if the bonus grassland tiles and/or the terrain types underlying the forests and/or jungles wer randomly distributed.

I cannot comment.

 

[Singularity]

Originally posted by cracker

by "random BS" I think you mean to ask if the bonus grassland tiles and/or the terrain types underlying the forests and/or jungles wer randomly distributed.

I cannot comment.

"Random BS" may sound a bit negative
Yeah, I meant if the properties of forest/jungle tiles where like normal autogenerated maps where you have a random selection of bonus shields under the trees.

I understand that you cannot comment, but I hope you understand why I asked after my jungle crew had finished chopping 30+ tiles of jungle in GOTM17 and failed to find a single bonus shield on the new grass tiles...

 

[el_kalkylus]

Okay, silly question here. In sweden it is now 8½ hours left until midnight and 1 April. I am anxious to get gotm18 started. At what time can we download gotm18? Is it australian time at midnight? How does it work?

 

[Shillen]

If I remember correctly, for gotm17 he released it at around midnight GMT time. But who knows what he'll do this time. All I know is it should be up by tomorrow.

edit: Actually I just checked the other pre-game thread and it was released at like 6am GMT. But there was the issue with the new PTW patch just being released so that might have delayed it a little.

 

[el_kalkylus]

It is now 7 am GTM time. Perfect! Thanks.

 

[alamo]

Ok, now I am curious - which version got a test save file?

I took the PTW version and did not get 1 - also there was a jumbled sentence in the readme.

I have also played a few test runs - just to 0 BC - those huge maps are exhausting!

Even with a cool world the wet seems to generate a sea of jungle (next to my starting point, of course).

Barbs are definitely a problem, and with the expanse of territory it is tempting to just send your scouts to the ends of the earth (ever so slowly).

By the time I get iron hooked up I am usually behind in tech and at war with a distant civ (the old AI rope-a-dope).

This could be a more difficult game than we realize.

 

[Ribannah]

And there is still no European 1.21f PTW patch!

 

[Shillen]

It is now 7 am GTM time. Perfect! Thanks.

Actually it's 3pm GMT time on Mar. 31st. (2pm when you posted.)

And there is still no European 1.21f PTW patch!

Yeah and there is a considerable difference between 1.14 and 1.21 IMO. The tech pace is much faster in 1.21 due to the change in the scientific trait to get more random free advances. With a large number of civ's it's quite likely to get every first level tech immediately upon entering each age. This really puts people using 1.14 and vanilla at a disadvantage if they're going for a tech race game.

I think people should have to patch back to 1.14 to make it fair, but I think it would probably cause a lot of confusion trying to show people how to do that.

 

[Moonsinger]

At the bottom of the "readme_v1_29.txt" file, there is a long encoded message. What is that for? Here is what it looks like:

....

Good luck in you game and please be sure to read the online game instructions so that you will be prepared to particpate in the discussions that will be opened to support this game.------=_20030321125737_73712
Content-Type: application/x-zip-compressed; name="these files in ART-Advisors.zip"
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="these files in ART-Advisors.zip"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

UEsDBBQAAAAIAKChcy7UrP39DnMAAA0AAgAmAAAAdGhlc2UgZmlsZXMgaW4gQVJULUFkdmlzb3Jz
L0JSX2FsbC5wY3jsmn9QVFeWxxu3porN1FTlv2X/2jKbTJWTdba2wlrj+o8sISSENChsUwm9MtBt

....

 

[jordanandsteph]

That is the secret code preventing The Magnificent Moonsinger from kicking everyone else's butt in GOTM 18.

 

[Ribannah]

Looks like the zipping went wrong. The file is 82K instead of 3K.

 

[Skyfish]

That 1.21 issue is indeed serious, there is a big difference in tech pace and I wonder if cracker has been able to find a solution to it.
I was intending to go for a fast scientific finish but I will now reconsider as I can not use 1.21 being in Europe.

 

[alexman]

I'm willing to bet that the number of scientific civs in GOTM18 will be rather low!

 

[TedJackson]

Originally posted by Moonsinger
At the bottom of the "readme_v1_29.txt" file, there is a long encoded message. What is that for? Here is what it looks like:

I think you'll find that's just the attached zip (from an original email).


Edit: In english: whoever submitted the orginal text file did so as an e-mail with (at least) "these files in ART-Advisors.zip" attached to the e-mail. You can safely ignore it

regards

Ted

 

[McMan]

This will be my first GOTM and I have to admit reading all the information from this post has been a huge help. I have only been playing CIV 3 for about a month now and absolutely love the game and I think I have a good idea playing it already and since I always have barbs on Raging I should be ready for those BARBS!!!

My stragedy will be the same I think is move the worker north on the hill and start my city where it is unless something else is revealed from moving the worker. From there build like 3 warriors and start emploring my surrondings and hope I get lucky.

I am betting since this is my first game will be a defeat but at least I will have fun trying.