JAR02, Always War Emperor

[jarred!]

Roster:
1. jarred
2. CKS
3. tjs
4. judminder
5. suede
6. Elephantium

Turns:
Last game I stated with 20 turns, and then we all played 10 until the game slowed down and we played 5 until the endgame. I think a similar approach should work for this one as well. We also didn't have a strict got it/play schedule. If you're going to be AFK or are too busy to play, just say so and the rest of us are willing to accommodate.

Settings:
World Size: Standard
Barbarians: Roaming
Land Mass/Water Coverage: Random
Climate/Temp/Age: Random
Our Civ: Random
AI Civs: Random
Difficulty: Emperor

Starts:
Start A, Germany:


Start B, Maya:


Start C, Japan:


Start D, Aztecs:


I'll post my thoughts in a few hours, as I'm short on time right now. None of them are as nice as the last one though!

 

[CKS]

I like start D best. If there isn't fresh water, grassland and bonus food looks good. Plus I rarely play the Aztecs, so that would be a change for me.

 

[Judminder]

I thought C or D. I like D because of the early Lux but if we are camped next to a volcano then we could be in for a world of trouble. A and B both have goody-huts which is a bit 'cheaty' if we are going for a harder start, and A could also be a small island which I would be opposed to.

 

[jarred!]

I forgot to mention all VCs are ON, except wonder victory. Preserve Random Seed, SGLs, and Cultural Conversions after ON, everything else OFF.

German start is interesting. Nice BGs and forests for early shields, but I'm worried it might be a tiny island start.
Mayan start would be my pick if there was any fresh water, but there isn't so we'd be food-poor for a while.
I like the Japanese start, maybe we could move the worker to the hill to check for freshwater nearby? Of course if we then choose that start we'd pick up from after the worker move.

I think I agree with CKS about the Aztecs. Wines are worth more than just being luxes. I doubt moving to that mountain will reveal anything worth moving 2-3 turns for, but it could. Maybe settle 1NE if we choose this?

@Judminder, I'm pretty sure that's a mountain, not a volcano, so it shouldn't be a big deal.
I generally agree about the goody huts, but we might need the extra help if we end up trapped on a tiny island (but I'd rather not go that route).

 

[tjs282]

Hmm... Germans, Mayans, Japs, Aztecs... If those are the only 4 starts you rolled, then clearly, the pRNGods want us to play for Conquest/ Domination this time...

I think I agree with CKS about the Aztecs. Wines are worth more than just being luxes. I doubt moving to that mountain will reveal anything worth moving 2-3 turns for, but it could. Maybe settle 1NE if we choose this?

For non-Seafaring civs, Starts A and B both kind of suck — and having no freshwater to found next to/ irrigate the Plains-Wheat sucks double for the Agricultural Mayans: I would move those Settlers at least 1 tile before founding, in both cases (to put Berlin on any coast, and move Chichen Itza further west). Start C is a passable Palace-site (though it will need a Duct), but the land beyond the Hills looks to be mainly Plains, and again no freshwater is visible, so while the Cap will do OK, the 1st-ringers' growth may be stunted by lack of food.

So by process of elimination, I agree with you as well: Start D looks best, not just for the guaranteed Lux (Wines only give +1 FPT, so don't make any difference to FPT/growth under Despotism, unless there's also freshwater accessible/ close by), but also for the relatively equatorial position on the mini-map, and the fertile land. I don't like starting/founding 1 tile from coastline, but I wouldn't move the Settler north and cover a Wine, rather I'd send the Worker NE to road/mine the Wines (IIRC, resources don't usually show up on bonusGrass, can anyone confirm?), and move the Settler inland 1SE to the Grass. The first Settler built could go to the coast 3NE of the starting-tile (if the Worker shows that's possible), so that Town2 would be able to share the Wine-food under Monarchy/ Republic.

Also like the Aztecs marginally better than the Mayans, militarily: IIRC, in C3C the Aztecs can build ordinary Warriors (and Archers) as well as Jags, and hence can avoid getting forced into an accidental UU-triggered Despotic GA (unlike the Mayans, whose Javs replace Archers).

As for variant: I've never (deliberately!) played an AW game before — anyone interested in trying that here?

 

[jarred!]

Truth be told, I got a mediocre Spain start third, but skipped it.
Anecdotally, I generally don't see resources on BG, but I don't know if that's a fact. If the game treats them as different terrain (they ARE separate selections in the editor), and only lists regular grass as possible terrain for the res then it would make sense.

I've never played an AW game as well and I'm afraid to try. But it would be fun (Read: difficult) especially with the nice central location.

 

[CKS]

I'm open to AW.

Always War on Emperor with a start that isn't great could be difficult if we are on pangaea. For AW, I'd definitely vote against start C - I want us to be up against the coast, not in the middle where we can be attacked on all sides. D still gets my vote in a AW game. If we play AW, we might consider building on a wine, because then it can't get pillaged. If we don't play AW, then don't settle on the wines.

How strict AW are we considering? "May trade on first meeting before declaring" is much easier than "never talk except to declare", and "Make peace for techs or towns and then immediately declare" is likewise easier. "Attack or declare upon meeting" is harder than "Declare when they come to us."

The bonus shield is a resource, sort of, I think. I've never seen the game put a resource on a bonus grass, but there was a GOTM with a cow on a bonus grass.

 

[jarred!]

I'd prefer to play where we declare on first contact and never make peace. For a first attempt without a cherry-picked map I think allowing ourselves a hard goods for hard goods trade (no phony per turn deals) should be allowed.
What's the research route in an AW game? And have you (@CKS) played many AW games before? The idea of a bunch of noobs attempting a new variant makes the idea more appealing to me

 

[CKS]

I've played a few AW games, both SG and solo. (All my solo games have been at or below monarch, with no trading at all, but no requirement to declare until they asked to talk to me. All of them were easy enough that self-research kept me up with the AI.) I'm not an expert by any means.

Which techs to research first depends on our initial situation. If we have our own island, we'll research differently than if we are on a single land mass with everyone else. Either way, we'll want catapults sooner rather than later. On our own island, we can research more or less like a regular military game (but investing in the GL), and we can take the AI out one at a time. On a big land mass with several neighbors, we need to learn where iron and horses are ASAP, get math for catapults and maybe SoZ, get to literature for the great library (and start a GL prebuild early on), and get to monarchy (probably from the GL). If we allow ourselves to trade before declaring, we may be able to get some of this in trade.

A great library trick sometimes used in AW is to allow an enemy to capture the city with the great library in it just before we learn education and take it back later. If we are going to play AW, we should agree on whether we feel this is allowable.

 

[tjs282]

If we go the AW route, I would be inclined to minimise more distant exploration — just enough to pop nearby goody-huts and scout our next potential city-sites — and allow tech-trading on first meeting any AI-Civ, to make things a bit easier. Of the first-tier techs, in addition to Pots and WarCode that we start with, I think we would definitely also want Alph (see below), Wheel (for Horse-locations) and Bronze (as prereq for IronWorking) if we can get them in trade.

We'd want Alph both for Writing/Maths, and also for the beeline to Philo/Lit. Prebuilding GLib makes sense to me (preferably in a town on a river/lake, so we wouldn't need a 'Duct as well), because we then wouldn't need to do any more trading/research until Edu comes in — by which time we should also have expanded far enough that our high-commerce/ inner core-towns could safely start building Libs for self-research (if necessary — and one at a time!).

I'd prefer to play where we declare on first contact and never make peace. For a first attempt without a cherry-picked map I think allowing ourselves a hard goods for hard goods trade (no phony per turn deals) should be allowed.

I agree: I don't think it really counts as AW if you ever make peace — and making PTs for concessions, just to immediately break them, also seems exploitative to me.

Offering per-turn goods for one-time goods, knowing you'll be breaking the deal, is likewise exploitative.

A great library trick sometimes used in AW is to allow an enemy to capture the city with the great library in it just before we learn education and take it back later. If we are going to play AW, we should agree on whether we feel this is allowable.

I don't like this idea on the face of it, not least because (at Emp) our GLib-prebuild would likely need to be in one of our better core-towns, to be sure of not losing it to a cascade. So the enemy would end up with a foothold in our core. And to prevent that 'lucky' AI-Civ from getting any benefit from the GLib, it would have to be one of the more advanced/powerful tribes who captured it, making it potentially more difficult to get it back from them afterwards.

 

[jarred!]

It seems like we're enjoying the idea of playing an AW game, but we should probably wait for everyone else to weigh in. I could play the start on Sunday, I'm going out of town tonight.
Someone else is welcome to play the start instead of me, since I played the last one.

 

[CKS]

I agree: I don't think it really counts as AW if you ever make peace — and making PTs for concessions, just to immediately break them, also seems exploitative to me.
Offering per-turn goods for one-time goods, knowing you'll be breaking the deal, is likewise exploitative.

I agree with this.

I don't like this idea on the face of it, not least because (at Emp) our GLib-prebuild would likely need to be in one of our better core-towns, to be sure of not losing it to a cascade. So the enemy would end up with a foothold in our core. And to prevent that 'lucky' AI-Civ from getting any benefit from the GLib, it would have to be one of the more advanced/powerful tribes who captured it, making it potentially more difficult to get it back from them afterwards.

Ideally, when using this strategy, you'd let a weak opponent take the town and then wipe out the rest of their empire, so they had only a single, isolated town, completely surrounded by us. Lack of resources would make them unable to build dangerous units, so one could do some leader farming, and a cavalry army should take them out whenever we wanted.

To me, it seems somewhat cheaty, though I'm not opposed to using the GL elevator if we don't build it ourselves. It just seems like we should get the use of it only once.

 

[jarred!]

If we build it ourselves, we should attempt to never lose the city it's in. If we do lose it honestly, we should attempt to recapture it ASAP. If we don't build it ourselves, I think we should allow ourselves to wait until certain techs are known to cap it.
Speaking of, does CAII allow you to see the techs known by civs that won't speak with us? Entering diplomacy for the sake of seeing what the other civs know seems ok to me, but would be unfair if we could circumvent them not wanting to talk to us. (Not that I'm saying CAII should be disabled, just maybe not use the tech screen or something)

 

[SuedecivIII]

Hey guys. I actually have experience with always war Pangea. From what I experienced, emperor was always totally doable as long as you survived the initial wave of units. From there, it's decently easy to fight on two fronts and eliminate one AI. You just have to be very conservative. On the other hand, on demigod it's near impossible.

For start locations, can we rule out C? My reason is that spawning along the Y axis in the middle of a landmass seems to strongly suggest a 60% water archipelago or something similar.

If we're doing always war, we'll want a favourable start. Germany has great traits for AW: scientific, since we'll be doing all the teching ourselves and not trading, and militaristic, for obvious reasons.

They also seem to have a secure peninsula start in a corner of the map. I like that, the only reason it might be objectionable is if we're all alone. Spawning alone on an island in AW kind of defeats the purpose.

 

[Elephantium]

Sure, I'll play.

Reading a couple of the old Rat (and Greebley) series games might be instructive:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/rat-34-awe-random.311414/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/rat37-very-random-awe.321541/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/gr29-awm-vs-30-civs-pangea.358266/

* well, the first page or two of each thread, anyway! Just enough to get a feel for AW games.

 

[CKS]

This is a good idea, but read all of rat37 - it's only 3 pages. Reading some of these always-war SG were really helpful the first time I tried one.

 

[tjs282]

Speaking of, does CAII allow you to see the techs known by civs that won't speak with us?

No. While Civs are still refusing to receive your envoys, all of their tradeable assets are hidden on the 'Trade options' screen. (Hah -- envoys, what envoys? This is going down to last civ standing!)

However, once their status changes to 'Will talk', you can see any of their techs to which you have the prereqs in that screen (just like you can on the CivIII trading/diplomacy screen).

I'm not sure exactly how much the CAII 'Technology' screen shows, because I almost never look at it, but I would be very surprised if it showed any 'spoiler'-type info beyond what the Trade-options screen shows.

 

[Elephantium]

Yah, Rat37 is especially good as a signpost for "what doesn't work" (veterans of AW, too!)

 

[jarred!]

Neat, I think I was lurking around the time of that Persia game, at least I remember it for whatever reason.

So we're playing start D as an AW (declare on contact w/ no peace). Where do we settle? If we want to settle on wines (to avoid pillage), then I think 1NE is a nice spot. Otherwise, tjs' suggestion of 1SE is good as well (avoids 1food coasts w/o a harbor). Can anyone tell if that is jungle or forest? The proximity to the equator makes me think jungle, but with default graphics they look similar.
If y'all want me to play the opening, you'll have to wait until Sunday. It might be better to have a more experienced player play the opening though.

 

[Elephantium]

It looks a bit more like jungle to me. I like the tile 1SE.