[BTS] News: BOTM 122: Escape from 2016 (Noble) - starts 4 Jan

[DynamicSpirit]

BOTM 122: Escape from 2016!!!!

Escape from 2016 ... You are trapped in a horrid Fantasy Realm world. You desparately need to find a way to the lush green grasses of reality that you hope will be 2017. Be assured that reality does exist on this map. Your starting area may have generated by the Fantasy Realm script, but most of the map is actually fairly normal. The trouble is - it'll take quite a bit of work to break out of the Fantasy Realm area. To help you out a bit, you start with a Great Spy. Unfortunately 2016 intervened again, and managed to put your Spy on almost the opposite side of the World from your settler.

Oh, and just to add some mild interest to the game, the AIs commemorate some of the people we've lost and some of the events from 2016.

Game settings:
Playing as: Sitting Bull of Native America
Rivals: 6 AIs
Difficulty: Noble
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
Options: Raging barbarians, unrestricted leaders, no goody huts
Victory Conditions: All enabled

Map settings:
Map: Show Me the Place
World Wrap: None
Mapsize: Standard
Climate: Temperate
Sea level: Medium


Sitting Bull is Philosophical and Protective, and you start with Fishing and Agriculture.

The Philosophical trait gives +100% great people birth rate and double production speed of University

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

Unique unit: Dog Soldier (replaces Axeman)
The Dog Soldier benefits from: base strength = 4, requires access to nothing, and 100% combat bonus against melee units. This compares with the Axeman which has: base strength = 5, requires access to copper or iron, and 50% combat bonus against melee units.

Unique Building: Totem Pole (replaces Monument)
Besides the +1 culture/turn of the monument, the totem pole gives +3XP to archery units built in the city.

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 4 Jan 2017, 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 4 Feb 2017.

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.

 

[High King J.J.]

I've always hated Fantasy maps with their abundant ice and tundra. And of course raging barbs. Mapmakers are . (Have I said so earlier? I can't be sure, I'm .)
I can't even decide where to settle. I guess migration towards reality is unwise given the raging barbs. We are in the uttermost East. I hope we don't have a close neighbour called Putler ready to invade and lie about it, in permanent alliance with his lapdog Donald Dump. I guess Britain will be there, far removed from everything else thanks to Brexit. I wonder who is playing Princess Leia in this? Where is Infidel Castro? Can we eradicate the Daesh ragheads from the face of the Earth or is North Korea given a free ICBM from the start? Stay tuned and find out.

 

[haphazard1]

Fantasy map (at least the start)...oh boy. Crazy stuff. And I second High King JJ about all the ice -- yuck!

Where to settle...hmmm, toughie. The map edge is a problem, stranding the seafood is a problem, the ice is a problem. What to do? At least there is some food, and some nice shiny metals. Raging barbs...well, we are protective, get totem poles, and can build dog soldiers. But what other surprises may be left over from 2016? Only the Shadow map maker knows!

Thanks for the game! Looks interesting.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Sitting Bull is a euphemism for President-Elect.

 

[lymond]

Very awkward start here. I'm pretty sure the clams cannot receive a LH. Moving for either seafood takes one away from a lot of good tiles. I'm almost inclined to move for an inland city. 2 coastal cities for both fish and clams very odd. I could see a city 1S of deer and 1SW of settler working, but not sure I like either for the capital.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Very awkward start here.

But of course What would be the point of a start that doesn't make everyone think?

I'm pretty sure the clams cannot receive a LH.

I believe you are correct. To clarify - as far as I've been able to establish from testing:

• A city can build a lighthouse if it is adjacent to sea (fresh water doesn't count). Any body of water of 10 tiles or more is considered to be sea. 9 tiles or fewer is automatically a fresh water lake.
• To build a galley or other boat, the city must be adjacent to sea AND that sea must cover at least 20 tiles.
• For workboats, the rules are different. The size of the water is irrelevant. A city can build a workboat if it is adjacent to water that contains something the workboat can improve, no matter how small the sea or lake is. But if there are no fish, clam, etc. in the water then the city can't build a workboat (there wouldn't be any point really)

Remember, workboats and other boats can travel through cities or through forts that are in your cultural borders - so that might be a way of getting workboats to otherwise inaccessible fish etc. (But the game doesn't seem to allow for this when working out whether a city can build workboats).

Putting this together, that means there's probably no way to get a lighthouse on the clam crab, but there are a couple of ways of getting a workboat to it.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Sitting Bull is a euphemism for President-Elect.

Is it? If so, that wasn't the intention. The main reason I chose Sitting Bull was that I figured the real-life Sitting Bull's life was somewhat unfortunate and that seemed to match the theme of the game of being an unfortunate player trying to escape from a year that many people think of has having been something of a disaster. That and his unique unit isn't too overpowered. This is after all only noble level

 

[MarleysGh0st]

Is it? If so, that wasn't the intention.

I think LowtherCastle was just picking out the second part of that name and then pairing it with a common word for its waste product. And before this thread gets any more political, I'll just say that a nice fantasy realm can be preferable to a reality/nightmare.

I think I'll settle 2S on the tundra rice. Will that resource give any bonus to a city built there?

 

[LowtherCastle]

But of course What would be the point of a start that doesn't make everyone think?



I believe you are correct. To clarify - as far as I've been able to establish from testing:

• A city can build a lighthouse if it is adjacent to sea (fresh water doesn't count). Any body of water of 10 tiles or more is considered to be sea. 9 tiles or fewer is automatically a fresh water lake.
• To build a galley or other boat, the city must be adjacent to sea AND that sea must cover at least 20 tiles.
• For workboats, the rules are different. The size of the water is irrelevant. A city can build a workboat if it is adjacent to water that contains something the workboat can improve, no matter how small the sea or lake is. But if there are no fish, clam, etc. in the water then the city can't build a workboat (there wouldn't be any point really)

Remember, workboats and other boats can travel through cities or through forts that are in your cultural borders - so that might be a way of getting workboats to otherwise inaccessible fish etc. (But the game doesn't seem to allow for this when working out whether a city can build workboats).

Putting this together, that means there's probably no way to get a lighthouse on the clam, but there are a couple of ways of getting a workboat to it.

So would that mean a city two tiles from the crabs can't start building the workboat until the borders expand?

 

[LowtherCastle]

Is it? If so, that wasn't the intention. The main reason I chose Sitting Bull was that I figured the real-life Sitting Bull's life was somewhat unfortunate and that seemed to match the theme of the game of being an unfortunate player trying to escape from a year that many people think of has having been something of a disaster. That and his unique unit isn't too overpowered. This is after all only noble level

Just a joke. Part II is that President-Elect is a euphemism for Bull-Sitter-In-Chief.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

So would that mean a city two tiles from the crabs can't start building the workboat until the borders expand?

For assessing whether you can build a workboat, the game doesn't care whether the resource is in your cultural borders, it only cares whether there is a resource in that body of water. So you would be able to start building a workboat immediately in that case.

I think LowtherCastle was just picking out the second part of that name and then pairing it with a common word for its waste product.

I think I'll settle 2S on the tundra rice. Will that resource give any bonus to a city built there?

2S actually ice-rice, and no you won't get any food bonus. I've never fully understood on what basis the game decides to give an extra food to the city tile. However a rule-of-thumb I use (which I don't think has ever let me down so far, but I don't know for certain if it's correct) is that if you put a city on a tile with a resource, and if the relevant improvement without irrigation (farm, pasture, etc.) would have given the tile at least 4F, then you get the extra food in the city tile. But ice-rice-farm will only give 2F (3F if you can bring irrigation to it from the fresh water), so there's no extra food for settling on it. (Note that settling there will still give you the extra health from the rice though).

EDIT: A couple of other tips that may be useful:

• Settling on a flood-plain destroys the flood-plain. So as an example, if you settle 1NW on the tundra-flood-plain which is currently showing as 4F, that would destroy that flood-plain so you'd only get 2F in the city tile.
• You can't settle on oasis tiles (so don't get tempted by N-NE )
• As far as I can make out, once you know civil service, irrigation can spread through any city that's on flat land (ie. not a hill), even if it's on ice or desert (I'm not quite certain about tundra). So if you settle S-SE on the ice, that should automatically spread irrigation to the ice-rice next to it, once you know civil service. (Once or twice in the past, when playing GOTMs, by putting a city on a desert that stood between grassland and fresh water, I've managed to irrigate areas of land that would have otherwise been completely impossible to get any irrigation to).
• Do pay attention to the bread slices that show tile food yields: Fantasy realm can give very odd combinations of tile+resource, which can give unexpected amounts of food on some tiles.

 

[kcd_swede]

Fast BW makes sense here, so I am tempted to go for both gold and silver mines in the capitol, and not get sidetracked going for a whole bunch of worker techs to make the multiple food tiles improvable.

 

[haphazard1]

Putting this together, that means there's probably no way to get a lighthouse on the clam, but there are a couple of ways of getting a workboat to it.

Am I blind (quite possible), or are you referring to the crab in this sentence?

Definitely a puzzle, deciding where to settle.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Oh yes, sorry, I meant crab, not clam. I'll edit to fix that.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Spoiler threads are now up!