[BTS] news: BOTM 118 - Prince, Starts 5 Nov

[DynamicSpirit]

BOTM 118: Saladin of Arabia.

A rather crowded tectonic map. Since this is prince level, I suspect you won't have much trouble making some space for yourself. But beware. The Gods have been kind to the AIs, and bestowed a few gifts on some of them. Maybe if you'd been a bit nicer to the Gods, they'd have given you something better than lots of plains and a single warrior...

Game settings:
Playing as: Saladin of Arabia
Rivals: 12 AIs
Difficulty: Prince
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
Options: None
Victory Conditions: All enabled

Map settings:
Map: Tectonic
World Wrap: Cylindrical
Mapsize: Small
Climate: Temperate
Sea level: Medium


Saladin is Protective and Spiritual, and you start with Mysticism and The Wheel.

The Protective trait gives free City Garrison I and Drill I promotion for archery and gunpowder units and double production speed of Castle and Walls

The Spiritual trait gives no anarchy and double production speed of Temple and Cristo Redentor

Unique unit: Camel Archer (replaces Knight)
The Camel Archer benefits from: can withdraw from combat (15% chance), requires knowledge of Guilds, Horseback Riding and Archery, and requires access to nothing. This compares with the Knight which has: cannot withdraw from combat, requires knowledge of Guilds and Horseback Riding, and requires access to horse and iron.

Unique Building: Madrassa (replaces Library)
The madrassa gives +4 culture/turn as opposed to the +2 from the library. And it can also turn 2 citizens into priest. This is in addition to the +25% science and being able to run 2 scientists.

Starting screenshot

This is the start of the game (click for a bigger image):




Note that in this game, any espionage-culture victories will be counted as cultural victories.

To Enter the Competition:

This competition will open at 00:01 am on 5 Nov 2016, server local time (UTC-6:00). From that date and time, you'll be able to get your chosen starting save >>>here<<<.

Submit the save after your victory (or defeat) here, by 5 Dec 2016.

Here is a link to a list of the differences between Vanilla, Warlords and BtS.

Software Versions

Windows: This game MUST be played in Beyond the Sword (NOT Civ4 Vanilla or Warlords), patched to version 3.19, and with the BUFFY mod version 3.19.003 installed. You can download the BUFFY mod here. Players using Windows Vista or Windows 7 are encouraged to read the notes on Vista fixes here.


Macintosh: This game MUST be played in Beyond the Sword (NOT Civ4 Vanilla or Warlords), patched to version 3.19, and with the Mac BUFFY mod version 3.19.003 installed. You can download the Mac BUFFY mod here.

While playing...

Remember - for your entry to be accepted, it MUST be your first attempt to play this game, and you MUST NOT replay any turns. If you make a mistake while playing, you have to live with it, learn from it, and carry on the game without replaying.

We will open 'spoiler' threads during the month for players to discuss what happens in their games. Do not discuss any details of your game outside those threads.

 

[haphazard1]

12 AIs on a small map? Crowded is too mild a description. Looks interesting and I have not played as Saladin in quite some time, so count me in.

The start looks pretty bleak. And if the AIs have been favored by the gods...getting some better land quickly is going to be vital. The resource-less camel archer is nice, but that's a long time to wait. Hmmmm. Will need to think about this one.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Warrior rush?

 

[High King J.J.]

(Sigh) Only warmongering setups these days. Maybe with prince level I might survive but I hate attacking too early. Usually that cripples the economy, expansion and tech rate leaving me vulnurable to other civs that tech something useful and ally against me.With the kind gods' gifts to the AI's I won't even think about warrior rushing. I bet our neighbours have at least a City Garrison 3 Longbows in their capital...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Settling in place seems fine.

Do recall that if you want to explore with your Settler, moving onto an Oasis square will eat up all of a Unit's movement points, and settling on top of an Oasis square is not possible.


The Warrior's health bar looks to be reasonably long. Would an AI even start with a Unit stronger than a Warrior if our Warrior's health bar is that long?


Gifts for the AIs might mean their Settlers being placed on top of Plains Hills Copper squares and being gifted Bronze Working to start, as an example.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Prince AIs do not have Archery and thus Archers. So they will have only Warrior defenders early on. Up until about turn 25, the Prince AI seems to defend with a single Warrior. In lower difficulty levels, I've heard that the AI will even leave its capital undefended in the very early game; probably not the case for Prince level though.

Just building three Warriors to join the initial Warrior should net the player an early second city. That easily justifies spamming three Warriors early on. At worst, the Warriors could steal several Workers.

Regarding the AI Civs settled on Copper and starting with Bronze Working: I seriously doubt that the map maker did that. It might result in several very early losses when players tried to steal workers before seeing evidence of AI Copper connection.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Note that there's an issue which means it's possible the Mac save won't be available until a day or two after this game is released. Will post here with any updates.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

(Sigh) Only warmongering setups these days. Maybe with prince level I might survive but I hate attacking too early. Usually that cripples the economy, expansion and tech rate leaving me vulnurable to other civs that tech something useful and ally against me.With the kind gods' gifts to the AI's I won't even think about warrior rushing. I bet our neighbours have at least a City Garrison 3 Longbows in their capital...

Without saying anything about this particular game: If the AIs are crowded that can sometimes help you, especially on lower difficulty levels: Firstly, it means each AI won't be able to expand much, making them much easier to conquer. Secondly, if there are more AIs in the game, then you have more changes to play them off against each other diplomatically. You can get them to declare war on each other. And if AIs are cramped, they'll have fewer resources, so you might be able to get better trades.

That's in general. Whether or not any of that applies to this game is something you'll have to find out!

(I like the map though - I'm very jealous of you guys that you'll be able to play this game and I can't!)

Also, no one seems to have picked up on the minor detail that the opening post said that gifts had been bestowed on some AIs!

 

[High King J.J.]

Also, no one seems to have picked up on the minor detail that the opening post said that gifts had been bestowed on some AIs!

I seemed to say that our neighbours may have longbows, not that everyone had them. That should count for some AI's (unless we're at a center hub with all civs as close neighbours with no contact to each other...)

 

[LowtherCastle]

Hm. With this new interface, I can't find the map scripts link. ANyone know how to locate that so I can see what tectonics looks like?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Hm. With this new interface, I can't find the map scripts link. ANyone know how to locate that so I can see what tectonics looks like?

I'm not sure offhand where the link is I'm afraid. However, I would caution that tectonic can produce vastly different looking maps depending on the options you choose. In this game, I've given no information about the options - I've merely stated that it is (some variety of) tectonic. Realistically, that's not much different from telling you that you'll have to find out what map type is when you play (Nice chap that I am )

 

[DynamicSpirit]

btw further to my earlier post, the issues with the Mac saves have been resolved (thanks to AlanH working extremely quickly) - so the Mac saves are up.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I'm not sure offhand where the link is I'm afraid. However, I would caution that tectonic can produce vastly different looking maps depending on the options you choose. In this game, I've given no information about the options - I've merely stated that it is (some variety of) tectonic. Realistically, that's not much different from telling you that you'll have to find out what map type is when you play (Nice chap that I am )

I used to link to it from the CIV link above, but now that's indecipherable, weird and useless. In fact, all sorts of links that I used to use have vanished forever.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I used to link to it from the CIV link above, but now that's indecipherable, weird and useless. In fact, all sorts of links that I used to use have vanished forever.

Even worse, there area few links in the CIV screen above, such as CIV Info Center that go to a Civ III page. sheesh

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Sadly, the migration of the forums to new software has not been painless

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Spoiler threads are now open