JF01- Whip Frenzy (Open SG)

jeffred1111

Chieftain
Joined
Feb 6, 2009
Messages
53
After reading Daghie's open SG thread, I thought about starting my own. They look fun and seem to make for a relaxed atmosphere. It would aslo play pretty quick.

Some rules/ideas I have thought about:
- No turnlog. Thread discussion, lurkers are fine (and very much encouraged) as are pictures. But no complicated dotmaps, spread sheets or any of that stuff. We must somewhat fly by the seat of our pants here.
- You post "got it" and you play as many or as little turns as you like, with a minimum of 5. You have 48 hours to play once you've gotten it. If the SG has been inactive for 96 hours, you can take another turn.
- Please wait for the previous player's save before posting a "got it".
- This is for fun*.
- No cheats or outright exploits. If you have a question, refer to the HOF rules and to your good judgement.
- No automation of any kind.
- Our trade rep is golden (you'll see why later).

Now for the game itself and the "proposed variant".
- We cannot revolt to a government that uses any other means of rushing other than poprushing (Despotism, Feudalism, Communism and Facism).
- We can revolt at will.
- We cannot research ANY optional techs. We can trade/buy/sell them though.
- Victory conditions are all on but we must win either by Diplomacy or Space Ship.

World conditions are
- C3C 1.22
- Emperor
- Standard
- Wet/warm
- 70% Continents
- 4 billion
- Sedentary barbs
- India.

* I reiterate this point. I don't care if we lose or if somebody makes a HUGE mistake (I'll rpobably be the first one to do so): the only thing I'd like that everyone pays attention to is trade rep, no governor/automation and go-to commands, just for the sake of gameplay. Play this as if you were playing a solo game people and have fun. So that means that if you want to raze cities or poprush stuff, don't come here and ask if it will mess our complicated MM setup of sharing tiles between 4 cities. Go for it! Just liek real life, builder's styles will clash and it will only be more fun.
 
Arabs play pretty interesting with 2 weakish traits but a fast and cheap UU. The Ansar rush can really take territory fast. The Hittites have better traits but a weak UU. Russia rarely shows up in SGs, so they might be fun. I might take a set here and there with any of those tribes.
 
Russia it is then. I'll probably fire this at Emperor: after thinking about it for a while, this variant won't be THAT hard for a diplo or SS victory and Monarch probably won't be challenging enough.
 
Isn't Communism an optional tech?

Depotism to Feudalism, now that will be a long drive. That is one full age. The others are even further off. Only one revolt :)eek:) will be tough, no matter which government is chosen.

Since these governments don't get played very often, I do like the idea. Why not play as a REL civ (only one turn of revolution anarchy) so that you can try to get to all three governments in one game?
 
Despot to Feudalism I don't really think of as all too long. I've played plenty of fast reserach games where I don't get into The Republic until the middle ages.
 
We might be hurting if Literature isn't researched until late MA. No optionals researched might mean interesting tech choices....Currency sling, anyone? You realize Communism is an optional, so we'll have trouble getting it.
 
We cannot research any optional techs, but we can trade/buy or sell them. Communism is usually in the AI's top priorities so getting it might be a little rough, but eventually, we should be fine. And by the way, if we are scientific and we get nat, so be it: we don't lose, but we only curse the RnG.

I'd say we either play as Russia, India or Arabs. Cast your vote and I'll roll some starts tomorrow night. I'd prefer Russia if we can only revolt once. India is a no brainer if we can revolt twice*. Arabs would be more of a challenge due to the expansionist/religious combo. India's commercial and Russia scientific traits will help with research, wich will probably be the biggest challenge. With Russia/Arabs, I see us trying to pop A LOT of huts early on.

Difficulty level ? Emperor or Monarch. Monarch we shouldn't be too picky about starts.

I'm also thinking about going with 60% water instead of 70% to make science farms and such more viable.

* We should probably go this way or force us to revolt to every poprushing gov :) Some newbie play !
 
I played a Sid game that I stayed in Despotism the whole game and got through the modern age. By the time I felt I could go ahead and revolt, I was so far down the road I decided to not do it.

Spoonwood is correct, you often are not that far from the next age when you learn Rep/Mon. Especially if you do not take it with Philo.
 
As VMXA alludes to, this should work as doable at any level. Just get up to the domination limit and use scientists to research the rest of the tree. I don't understand the rule about no optionals though... how does that fit in with the pop-rushing government idea? I can see you want to make research more difficult for a SS or a diplo game, but almost always, if you can get up near the domination limit you can research the rest of the tree yourself fairly easily. As an example... I had 6 turn research on *future techs* without a single library, 0% research in my pangea demi-god histographic game. How? I had a slew of scientists. I guess getting Sanitation might work out as hard, but still.

Kill 'em and research. Feudalism makes it a bit harder since it has war weariness. Really, if you play 60%, I doubt it all too much harder than a normal domination game, as once you get there you have a slew of land for specialists. I say you do it as India, by the time you found the second city you have to do scientist specialist *only* research, you can buy technology for cash, but you can't trade one tech for another, you can research *any* tech you want, and you do it at demi-god or deity possibly even with an "average" start. It's well doable.
 
The "no-optional" is to:
a) Increase the challenge
b) Make us take different research/military strategies

Even if we weren't allowed to revolt to Republic, I'd say that we would still go for the Rep slingshot, only to trade it later. We would do the same thing with PP or Demo probably. Now, we'll have to compete for tech monopoly in AI attractive branches while in Despotism or Feudalism.

It would also make government choices a lot more easier by basically having us bypass feudalism. Now, with Communism and Facism off the table for a good while (unless we coerce the AI into researching them faster by gifting), we might actually have to revolt to Feudalism in the MA.

Here are the starts. I was lenient and din't roll too many. Those that have no food bonuses have one after expansion. I plopped down the settler but forgot to take screeshot AFTER :sad:

The starting locations
Spoiler :

1 has a wheat south. 3 I think the wheat is north plus two other silks.

The mini-maps
Spoiler :


My preference would be 2,3,1,4.

Also, here are the final rules of the variant:
- We cannot revolt to a government that uses any other means of rushing other than poprushing (Despotism, Feudalism, Communism and Facism).
- We can revolt at will.
- We cannot research ANY optional techs. We can trade/buy/sell them though.
- Victory conditions are all on but we must win either by Diplomacy or Space Ship.

I will edit the first post.
 

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I vote Arabs, having a 1/4 trait and a weak one will force us to be more creative. India also would be fine. We could set up a rule to trade for Communism as soon as someone else researches it, and revolt ASAP.
 
I like your order of preferences. All of them are viable, 4 might be interesting if the GH revealed a tech, but floodplains causing disease is a major random factor. If 3 has 3 wheat, a worker factory could be a nice bonus.
 
I don't think we need a rule to trade for Communism as soon as it is possible: we'll probably do it anyway :lol: Arbas would be fun, but we sure would need to be VERY creative what with the weak expansionist trait and religious only counting towards less anarchy turns since we'll need to go spaceship wch means culture = not a strong priority.

I also want to play with Jumbos.
 
I really think the idea of doing all scientist research once you found the second city makes it more interesting. It's doable... especially with India... because you can either use the Temple of Artemis or maybe even Sun Tzu's as a pre-build on The Great Library. The Great Library can get you Chivalry, which can then works out useful for jumbos. We could even then give it away, and take it back to get Military Tradition, and shortly thereafter, you can have a slew of specialist farms in a Feudalistic government to do real research without any commerce science. Just manage weariness through markets and the luxury slider. If unhappiness comes, you have more beakers towards research.
 
Jumbos are pretty fun, we had a blast in India stomps the world. Go Ghandi! As learned there, the massive unit support made WW less a problem due to our wars being faster. A big swarm of Jumbos made short work of even the Greeks. We could always make peace in this if WW becomes an issue, unlike that game.
 
I think I'll just let someone else play the first 20-30 turns (you can even play until we have our first tech), to make for a change. If no one picks it up, I'll play. I have chosen start 2 (a=1, b=2, C=3, d=4). Note that it it is the only one I haven't "settled" to check the lay of the land. We might have surprises, but that's the name of the game. If the surprise is too big, the other saves are also attached.

I reiterate, it is save B, the first one attached.

Remember to play as fast as you can ;) No turnlogs !

Good luck !
 

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I played 32 turns, until we learned Writing.

We have three cities, and a Settler due in 1 turn.

Delhi will become a Settler facory once it has a granary, so research set to Pottery.

One lux found, no tribes met.

When sending out the next Settler, be aware that there is a loose barb somewhere in the vicinity of Bombay.
 

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"Got it" + here are my turns.

Turnlog

Spoiler :
Remember, we need no freakin' turnlog!


Summary: After the last ruler bowed down due to acid reflux, Leader JeffRed of the Indian surveyed his mighty empire. He saw that it was great and ordered a few builds to claim even more land. He also met both the Iroquois and the Persian, getting into somewhat of a tussle with the Iro, who probably popped too much conscripts out of their goody huts and didn't know what to do with them...

Since we were at war, I wasn't able to connect furs. There's a road gang near the hill city who will be able to connect the future city to them. Also, we have both iron and horses, altough the iron was a great coincidence, since I chose to build on crappy land instead of shooting for the wheat-o-rama first, reasoning that we could effectively "close" our core by doing so (the Iros were already buzzing around t two turns into my rule).

We are up Lit on everyone, Math on Persia (I chose Lit as my free tech, since looking at the map, we were against a few alpha-tribes and our Pottery detour was threatening to ruin any kind of slingshot). The Iros and Persians didn't want to part with Mansonry nor Bronze Working unless I traded Writing on contact, so I couldn't really shoot to pick up any of the higher cost techs. Well, the next builder has the choice of either starting the GL or not building it and using Lit as trade bait to gain us the required techs to launch us into the MA

Also, the Iros have MW. This prompted me to sue for peace, trading them Math and getting Myst, HBR and gold in return.

Also look out for riots and MM some commerce on last build turns, some cities will grow in size or produce new units this turn. We have a sizeable warrior stack in the iron city for some upgrades, if cash permits down the road.

Pictures and save coming.
 
It just occured to me that I picked freaking Lit. as my free tech :( Well, what we do now ? Leave the no-optional rule alone ? Force us to gift it to everyone we meet on contact ? Cane me ? Forget about it ?

Crap, I said in the first post that the huge mistakes would be made by me ;) Do I know myself or what ?

Anyway, here's a picture and the save.
 

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