Jumpmasters 1B: Power is Knowledge (Vanilla, GOTM mod - Emperor - No research)

[AlanH]

Ok, I lied about lastly. City-settling. I assume that at this level, we'd have to go to a 3 or 4 spacing, I'll have to smack down my OCP habits immediately. Realize this is a bit early for the discussion. I just like to talk!

Hello No, it's not early, as I think it can affect our early decisions on roads and even, as I indicated, on first city position.

I have never been in favour of OCP. Settlers take a long time getting to sites, you waste lots of tiles that can't be worked by small town populations, you can't share defensive troops/MPs between cities because the distances are too far, you have to build temples or libraries just to join up your culture border, dada ... dada ..... and you don't get any benefit from it until after Sanitation by which time you should've won or lost

My preferred placement is RCP at 3-3.5 and then 6 or 7 according to how the rivals are positioned. On an island it's going to be even more important to squeeze towns close together. I got about 15 close-packed towns on the starting island in the recent Spanish GOTM, and had a really productive and effective civ as a result.

 

[DJMGator13]

The sheep won't give us three shields in despot as it's at 1 + 1 currently and hasn't absorbed the despot penalty. No point mining it until we get to Monarchy or Republic.

Good point, but are you positive? I just looked back at my GOTM29 and a mined Wool hill was giving 2f/3s in despot. The food was reduced but not the shields. Does the penalty only apply to one item (either food or shield) and not both? I usually only notice it affecting (reducing) food.

 

[AlanH]

You're right! But for the wrong reason! Mining a hill gives you two shields, not one. One goes to the despot penalty and you get the other as a third shield. Thanks!

 

[Grunthex]

I have never been in favour of OCP. Settlers take a long time getting to sites, you waste lots of tiles that can't be worked by small town populations, you can't share defensive troops/MPs between cities because the distances are too far, you have to build temples or libraries just to join up your culture border, dada ... dada ..... and you don't get any benefit from it until after Sanitation by which time you should've won or lost

Oh, I know! I just haven't been able to break myself of the habit, even knowing it was killing me. It was just so beautiful in the Modern Ages...

My last couple of games I've been FORCING myself to go to a 4-4.5 distance, and I'm already seeing the increased benefits... but it's still a fight every time I get a settler. Needless to say I'm looking forward to the dotmapping session to see if I can plan one of these super-crazy-tight builds.

 

[DJMGator13]

@AlanH

I like being right even if for the wrong reason which is how it usually happens.

Question on the Treat save: The zip for it had some other files to load, but if I'm already modded to the new MB-GOTM mod do I still need to load those other files?

EDIT: It loads and all the units display and are in the Civlopedia in my reg GOTM modded version. Looks like those other files are not needed (already included).

 

[Mistfit]

Ok got some sleep. Howdy to all of the team members. I am a monarch level player on pretty much all three civ titles I have played for about 6-8 months. It seems that most of my victories come by U.N. or space, so I guess that puts me in the builder catagory. I would be very interested in getting pointers on early war mongering. I stink at mathmatics, so don't expect to many long posts from me in that arena. I would really enjoy winning this one by force. Mongols in Space or Gengis the Peacemaker does not quite have the right ring to my ears. I have not got my civ modded yet, I have to wait for tomorrow to download the gotm stuff (expect questions from me when I get home and try to set this up tomorrow evening)

Let's have at 'er

 

[DJMGator13]

AlanH - Congrats on SGOTM2 finish.

I have potential roster order, since the first player gets 20 turns and everyone else gets 10 how about:


- Karasu (Since he'll be unavailable in August lets get him as many early rounds as possible)
- Nikof (1st jumper to sign up & could sneak in 2 or 3 rounds before he is unavailable late july)
- AlanH
- Grunthex (2nd of the Jumpers to sign up)
- DJMGator13
- Mistfit (3rd of the Jumpers to sign up)

We may want to reshuffle the roster in August when Karasu is on vacation.

 

[nikof]

Roster works for me!

Did you notice this quote from mad-bax?
"You're on an island, and you can't research anything, and it's emperor level, and I've given extra units to some of the civs.... Just pause for thought..."

Do we have a back-up plan if there aren't any other civs on our island to research for us? Sit on the coast and wait for a ship to come by?

 

[Grunthex]

Build big slingshots. Fire units across straights.

But let's assume Mad-bax gave us someone to on. The terrain west of start looks yellower, and I think we're more likely to have land in that direction. South/southwest being greener I think means we're more likely to have the shore that way. Ok, so it's a guess. It's the best I've got for now!

My install should be good tomorrow, I got sort of caught up in a little after work going-away party. Until then, what exactly HAS M-B modded on us? In GOTM 25 where these nice units came from, it seemed like there was a custom tech-tree. Do we get something different there, to go with the units and resources?

 

[mad-bax]

No. The tech tree is starndard. Tech-trees are difficult to mod quickly, so I went for low risk.

 

[Karasu]

The roster looks fine to me. I'd gladly swap position with Alan, as he was already available to start the game and I am spending a couple of day at my mother's... without Civ...

If no other adjustments are needed, we can kick the game off (I'll update the roster in the first post).

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It seems there to be a slight preference for the bloodshed over the peaceful victory conditions. Are we going to confirm this and decide to go for domination / conquest (depending on the one-tile islands), or do we want to discuss a bit more the options?

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I managed to give a look at the start position -by the names of the other civs and of the additional files, it seems that MB has been pretty busy adding exotic units -I am starting to suspect that it's slightly more than "the odd unit here and there"...

Moving the settler W and found on the forest is tempting and would most probably make a better use of the available land (well, from the little we can see in the starting picture).
But we would loose access to the sea, which might be quite important.
And we would not pop the second hut with border expansion (ok, a minor point, but still nice to have).

Regarding the scout: moving 1NW1W on the hill seems preferable to me, especially if we consider the fact that we start the game quite close to the south pole.

 

[AlanH]

Roster works for me!

Me too. if Karasu wants to swap that's cool too.

Do we have a back-up plan if there aren't any other civs on our island to research for us? Sit on the coast and wait for a ship to come by?

There's nothing else we can do. We'll have to sit eagle-eyed scouts on headlands and look for neighbouring islands, and hope we can shout across to exchange techs. If that doesn't work, by definition, a ship will bring with it all teh necessary techs to allow us to go a-sailing. We'll have to use those river tiles to best effect to build a solid treasury so that we can buy them when they appear.

But we would loose access to the sea, which might be quite important.

Only until we can pop a settler and build a seaside resort. That can happen quite fast if we prioritise it over the granary. Meanwhile we can't use sea access for anything until we have Map Making, so I doubt if we'll miss it. The only hazard would be if the AI grabs all the coastline before we can pop a settler. But if they are settling that close already we'll have bigger problems on our hands.

 

[AlanH]

Sorry for the double post

If I'm UP, then I've GOT IT, but I'll wait for confirmation of the roster before I start, plus any last comments on my proposed starting moves:

Research to CB in case we pop a tech, scout NW to hut then west to check the western terrain. If it looks like we have a settler factory then move settler west to forest and build Karakorum (see, I've done some GOTM 25 revision ), in 3950 BC, and nail the science slider firmly to the left hand endstop.

We shall need to review whether a settler factory is appropriate as we explore. That will depend on the space and the competition for it. But for safety, our early moves should assume it is.

As we are delaying our start by one turn, and the space we have to explore may not be very big, I'm thinking we should build a warrior first rather than a scout to discourage an early sneak attack on our capital. A warrior will also come in handy as an MP and will pay for himself fairly soon, as we only get one content citizen at Emperor. When we've seen a bit more of the space and terrain, we can choose our next builds from archer/warrior/scout.

By the end of my turns we'll have to decide whether we want to pop a settler before building a granary. Again, I think that depends on the competition for space. If we have time we should probably build a granary, as we'll then be able to flood the available space with a city every four turns. If we are in danger of having nowhere left to settle then we should pop a settler and get down to working out how to build our territory using pointy sticks.

Lemme know when we're good to go. If there are any really serious surprises during the first 20 I'll come back for discussion before committing us.

 

[Karasu]

Fine with me, Alan. Let the game begin

Ok with buiding a warrior first. Actually, the map being islands we may not even need more than a couple of Scouts.

Good point on the granary too: if we haven't got too much land to settle, we may even want to reconsider building it at all. Even more so if we find one or two food bonuses near the starting position.


EDIT: updated the roster, here we go:

- AlanH: up and forming the first Mongol hordes
- Nikof: warming up
- Karasu
- Grunthex
- DJMGator13
- Mistfit

 

[DJMGator13]

Sounds good to me.

With all that FP we could probably get 1 settler out before building the granary. But we are going to need several workers if we go settler factory route for capital.

@our Jumpers: once you get your modded Civ up you should definately play a few rounds of the GOTM25 Treat that AlanH posted. Very neat units. AlanH did a nice quick write-up on them also. He only left off 1 unit that was in the Treat - the Bagator Horde, which is a nice 3(6)/2/3 unit, that can retire as a Steppe Settler.

 

[nikof]

Warming up here (i.e., time to pause GOTM and get this game installed!)

Quick question - is there any difference between popping a hut with a unit, as opposed to with border expansion?

 

[Mistfit]

Sounds good to me. I don't think we should choose our victory conditions until we have most of the map plotted out. We could be setting ourselves up for hardship if the map does not match up with the direction we choose.



Edit: Land info

Edit#2: are we playing with the different water movemet values? How about squids?

 

[AlanH]

AlanH did a nice quick write-up on them also. He only left off 1 unit that was in the Treat - the Bagator Horde, which is a nice 3(6)/2/3 unit, that can retire as a Steppe Settler.

:cough:

The fourth and final UU is the Bagatur Horde, which is basically unstoppable. It needs Chivalry, Horses and Iron, and if we can build these before there are too many muskets around we should be able to finish the game.

@Mistfit: Just a personal opinion - I'm not sure that using mapstat is a valid move at this stage. I reckon it's a spoiler until you get the full map by your own efforts, and that's the rule I work to in GOTM. So for now, I haven't looked at your table beyond seeing where it came from.

Sorry for the delay, I think the forum must have dropped my subscription to this thread - I was wondering why it was so quiet after my previous posting frenzy

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I'll get stuck in. Back in a while ...

 

[DJMGator13]

@AlanH - RE: Bagatur Horde - oops - I even printed out your post and I still missed it. :lol


@nikof - I'm not positive but I think when a GH is popped by Cultural expansion it will not give barb warriors.

 

[nikof]

Just realized I hadn't properly introduced myself in this thread. How rude.

I've been playing Civ3 (vanilla only) for less than 3 months. Have a Monarch diplo victory under my belt. Had been working on my first Emperor game, playing the Russians towards spaceship, but it's on hold now. I think it was going okay, I finally took half of my starting continent from the Greeks, with the Romans stuck in the jungles down south. Had to re-load a save when the two of them ganged up on me very early - chalked that segment up as a "loss".

GOTM 32 is going much better, despite a few boneheaded moves. (Hey, if you chop the forest providing the only shields around, several resources still won't get you a 4-turn factory! :-/ ) And no re-loads, of course. Haven't posted on the spoiler thread yet because I'm trying to play enough to finish. The continent is mine, and I'm milking and waiting for some military advances to take over enough other territory to approach the domination limit.

What else? Biggest constraint on my playing right now is 3-month-old Joseph.
Pros: Cute smile! :-D I'm up at 3am anyway, why not play some Civ?
Cons: Time consuming. Hard to concentrate on tactical niceties when a baby is squalling in your ear.

A few things I've been thinking/wondering:
1) Can any of the Mongol UUs trigger a golden age?
2) Has anyone seen a good summary table of worker-turns-to-complete-improvements? My combinations of workers is often less than exact.
3) I fully agree with keeping an extra warrior around the new cities for MP/defense, surprise attacks hurt me in my Emperor game.

Thing I write to myself most often in my Civ notes: "Play Slower!"

Cheers,
nikof

p.s. "Power is Knowledge" - heh, I love it!