News: BOTM 13 Pre-game Discussion

[DynamicSpirit]

BOTM 13: India

Game Details:

Game settings:
Civilization: India (Leader: Gandhi; Traits: Philosophical and Spiritual)
Rivals: 6 AIs
Difficulty: Prince
Map: Heavily edited and now bears little resemblance to anything you'd get from the map generator.
Mapsize: Standard
Climate: Cold. Well, it is Christmas. (Yeah, I know, If you live in Australia or New Zealand you'll just have to pretend...)
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Epic
Options: No goody huts. No barbarians. No random events. Oh yeah, and there was this option that said Always War and this being Gandhi I felt obliged to check it. I'm sure it's not important. Hardly worth mentioning really.
World wrap: Cylindrical
Victory Conditions: All enabled. Though I suspect religious and diplomatic would be rather hard to achieve given the settings.

Gandhi:
Gandhi is Philosophical and Spiritual, and the Indians start with mining and mysticism. Philosophical gives +100% great person birth rate and double production speed of universities, Spiritual means you can change civics without anarchy and gives double production speed of temples.

Unique unit: Fast Worker (replaces worker)
A worker. But fast. 3 movement points. He can run fast. He'll probably need to do a lot of running in this game.

Unique building: Mausoleuml(replaces jail)
Like the Jail, the Mausoleum gives +4 espionage points AND +50% espionage points, as well as -25% war weariness and the ability to turn 2 citizens into spies. The extra bonus of the mausoleum is it gives +2 happy faces.

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



Challenger Class Equalisers:

1. No warrior. It's Christmas. The warrior doesn't want to work at Christmas, does he!
2. No techs. Did I mention It's Chriiiistmas? Are You hanging up a stocking on your wall? It's the time that... well anyway, that's the sound of your wise men. Badly out of tune, I think they're drunk. Do you really think they're going to be doing much research for you at this time of year?

Adventurer Class bonuses:

1. Archer. Your warrior has been given the change-warrior-to-archer promotion.
2. Another Archer. Yep, completely free. He may come in useful, given the circumstances. Same starting tile as the first archer.
3. Worker. Yeah, you get a worker. Starts on same tile as settler. EDIT: This worker is an ordinary worker, not an Indian fast worker.

To Enter the Competition:

This competition will open on 15 December 2008. From that date, you'll be able to get the starting saves here. Use the same URL to submit your completed entry, which you must do by 15 January 2008.

Civ version

This game MUST be played in Beyond the Sword (NOT Warlords or vanilla Civ), patched to version 3.17. It must also be played with the HOF mod version 3.17.001. Note that for game security reasons this HOF mod version requires you to be logged in with an account that has admin privileges when you are playing for your game to be a valid entry to the GOTM competition. You'll see a warning dialog if you attempt to start a session without appropriate privileges.

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.

 

[kcd_swede]

Map: Heavily edited and now bears little resemblance to anything you'd get from the map generator.

All metals and horses removed from starting landmass? A hub/snowflake design with Ghandi in the center? Something for 'real men' to relish! Well... I'm pretty sure there is no horse/copper/wheat/corn/gems "made-for-sissies" settling site in the vicinity this time. Or....????

Options: No goody huts. No barbarians. No random events. Oh yeah, and there was this option that said Always War and this being Gandhi I felt obliged to check it. I'm sure it's not important. Hardly worth mentioning really.

Does "Always War" mean that war weariness does not develop? If so, that's a great plus for all the war mongerers.

Victory Conditions: All enabled. Though I suspect religious and diplomatic would be rather hard to achieve given the settings.

Ah yes, the true meaning of Christmas: "War on earth and good will to men".

Hmmm... let me guess... to compensate for making us play Ghandi in an Always War game, you have surely given us some nice soft neighbors, right? Like Alex, Monte, Ghengis, Toku...

It will be interesting to see if this Prince level game is going to feel more like a Monarch/Emperor level, or whether you are an old softy and have a few real Christmas presents in store for us.



I'm considering settling on the hill the warrior is defending, or perhaps 1N of corn. Move warrior first and see what shows up, I guess.

 

[jesusin]

Shame on you, DS! To waste Gandhi in an Always War game!
I am tempted to go for culture anyway! (not that I am not tempted in every single game )

Victory Conditions: All enabled. Though I suspect religious and diplomatic would be rather hard to achieve given the settings.

Not really. Just get a little pop and a few vassals.

Or... is capitulation impossible under Always War?

 

[B1sh0p]

I have to agree, 2W looks good to me. Get the pigs, corn, dyes and gems in the BFC. Lots of fresh water, plenty of hills as well...

Plus settling on a hill for a game like this could definately be advantageous.

I think that's where I'll be settling.

 

[lroumen]

The map is probably shaped in the form of a christmas tree.

-> Ocean to the west (see river mouth and some down southwest).
-> Ocean to the east and south east (that's pretty obvious).

At first, settling on top of the warrior hill seems like a good plan, but you have no access to the sea.
I think there's also the option of settling 1S, plant a second city on the hill 1N of the pigs and the third city 3N of the settler starting position (2W from the fish). The problem is surviving that long. Early archery is a must for defense because AIs tend to pillage a lot.

Ghandi starts with mining and mysticism right? A religion would be interesting for domestic purposes but dangerous if you don't take care of defense and there's few gold tiles to fuel the research quickly enough. A late religion may be better.

 

[srad]

Oha, this one looks really interesting.

I (re-) played the monarch "always war" vanilla GOTM half year ago and this one was really though!
But I hope with the lower difficult level there is a winning chane

 

[Lexad]

Not really. Just get a little pop and a few vassals.
Or... is capitulation impossible under Always War?

It sure is. All Human-AI diplomacy is.

 

[kcd_swede]

The map is probably shaped in the form of a christmas tree.

-> Ocean to the west (see river mouth and some down southwest).
-> Ocean to the east and south east (that's pretty obvious).

At first, settling on top of the warrior hill seems like a good plan, but you have no access to the sea.
I think there's also the option of settling 1S, plant a second city on the hill 1N of the pigs and the third city 3N of the settler starting position (2W from the fish). The problem is surviving that long. Early archery is a must for defense because AIs tend to pillage a lot.

Ghandi starts with mining and mysticism right? A religion would be interesting for domestic purposes but dangerous if you don't take care of defense and there's few gold tiles to fuel the research quickly enough. A late religion may be better.

I usually don't find sea access in the Capitol to be a big deal, unless it is a isolated start or a water map. I doubt either are provided in a BOTM without any indication in the write-up.

I also don't see any disadvantage of an early religion... everyone declares war on you on sight and stays at war with you forever more anyhow. It could delay your researching military techs though, which might be a bad idea. Still... there will be no way to trade for + resources, so an early religion makes a lot of sense from a growth standpoint. Just don't go overboard and found multiple early religions and it will be fine, I think.

Tech order I'm considering is Med>AH>BW if I feel like the mapmaker might be in the Christmas spirit... but DS's write-up suggests otherwise, so I am strongly considering putting archery in the #2 spot instead (I would otherwise never do so on Prince level). Gotta fit Agri in there too... hmmm. Perhaps skipping AH and mining the pigs is called for...

Standard mapsize with 6AI on Prince, I don't worry too much about facing anything but warriors (Huacha?) before I can pull in 4 or 5 techs. I hope.

 

[lroumen]

I like sea access for my capitol, since I always end up building the great lighthouse or the colossus in it. Furthermore, water (and mountains) have added value in always war games. You have to defend your cities from less sides, which can make a big difference.
Therefore, I feel that the access to the sea in the screenshot, both east and west, is just too good to be true.

Early game, you can expand rather quickly as AI warriors tend to shy away from your capital and you will have no problems with scouts pillaging (since they can't). But once the AI gets archers they'll park them right next to your capital on a forest, hill or forested hill. It gets really annoying so the best bit is to chop as soon as possible and keep an eye on most of the hills near your capital. The less hills and forests that are next to your cities, the better.
If you settle on the hill above the pigs, you're good though. Those rivers to the north are good until they reach macemen.

I think you can only mine pigs when they are on the hills. You can probably farm the pigs if they turn out to be next to fresh water (which I think they aren't).

 

[BLubmuz]

Dunno if i'll play this one, AW games are not exactly my favourites.

But i think that settling 2W1S can give more room to a 2nd city 2W of fish.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I love always war games - I find them very exciting and they require a lot more careful tactical thinking (and I'm right jealous of you guys that I can't play this one ). They are however very different from 'normal' games, and because of that I wrote some strategy tips based on my own experience.

In order not to give anything away about the map, I wrote the following stuff a couple of weeks ago, at a time when I knew that BOTM 13 would be Always War, but I hadn't yet designed the map. So it may or may not be relevent to this particular map, but for what it's worth...

--------

Always War can be tough. Expect the difficulty to feel one or two difficulty levels above the notional game difficulty. However many AIs you share a continent with (or can reach you by sea), that's how many AIs will be sending troops at you simultaneously. There will probably be a quiet period at the beginning of the game when the AIs are getting established and so won't bother you too much, other than sending in the odd pillager. Take advantage of that period but don't be lulled into a false sense of security by it. There will come a time when, very suddenly, most of the AIs feel strong enough to attack you properly. The feel of the game could dramatically change within as little as 10 turns. And when that time comes, if you're not prepared, you won't know what's hit you.

Also, don't be reckless about your defences in the very early game. The last always-war GOTM we had saw a fair few people (including me) leaving their capital undefended while their warrior went exploring, and as a result suffering conquest defeats at the hands of the nearest AI inside the first 20 turns, almost before we'd even built a single unit!.

Think carefully about your defences. How many land borders can you afford? How many cities not on hills can you afford? Unlike a normal civ game, your warring probably won't primarily take the form of you sending CR-promoted units in to capture one city after another. Rather, you'll have enemy stacks entering your borders from all directions most of the time. So make sure you leave adequate units at home to take care of them, and be careful with promotions. Make sure you're familiar with unit promotions and think about how to promote units and to coordinate your defences to take out AI units in the field with the least losses. Take care with forests or other high-defence tiles next to your cities - the AI can sit on them while they are building up forces to attack the city.

When you are deciding which AIs to attack first and which cities to keep, be strongly guided by your assessment of which cities you could probably hold once you have them.

Expect to be pillaged, and at times to not have sufficient forces around to stop it. Have enough workers to restore pillaged improvements quickly, and consider whether it's even worth putting improvements on tiles on your borders in the first place. If you can arrange your cities so that key resources (and cottages, if you're relying on them) are well within your borders, and surrounded by your cities that could be a key advantage. It may be worth your while deliberately keeping well-defended but useless cities on hills with few or no improvements on the edge of your empire, just to attract AI attackers and so keep the pressure off your core cities that are doing most of your science or production.

You might find that sending pillaging parties into AI territory is effective (more so than in a 'normal' civ game) because it can quickly get one or two AIs off your back by removing their resources and production capacity while you focus your attack on other AIs. But only do this if you can afford to lose the units from your home front. And if you can put together a stack of units that are strong enough to deter the AI from trying to take them out once inside the AI territory.

Notice what an AI unit is doing (and therefore what mission it's probably on) so you can react appropriately. As an example, the AI will sometimes do things like send a longbowman right through the middle of your territory to get to and defend its city on the other side of your lands. If that's what a unit is doing, then dealing with it is probably lower priority than if it's on a pillaging mission.

Sending units on long Go-to's is usually a bad idea, because they don't react to enemy units until they are right next to them, by which time it could be too late (eg. a worker could have no more movement that turn). If you are controlling the unit movements explicitly, you can probably spot problems ahead and so react appropriately. Be very careful when workers are improving tiles near your borders. Can you see enough tiles to guarantee an AI unit won't appear out of the fog of war and capture the worker the same turn? (I once got caught out by an enemy woodsman-II promoted warrior: They can move two tiles on woodland. Guerrilla-II promoted units can do the same thing on hills).

Most important: At the start of each turn, look around the map to see where AI units are so you can decide how to coordinate your units to deal with them (You may find it worth while experimenting with the Civ graphics options to see which ones make enemy units easiest to spot. Personally I find displaying health bars extremely useful for that). Make sure your game is set so you have to hit return at the end of your turn and NEVER hit return without first doing a visual check to make sure you haven't missed any enemy units. In my games I've lost so many workers by forgetting to do that. Remember this is a GOTM, so no replaying allowed - and we won't accept 'I forgot to check where the enemy units were before I hit return' as an excuse for breaking that rule!

(And if it's any comfort when you do needlessly lose a couple of units through some stupid blunder, just remember that just about everyone else playing and submitting has probably suffered the same thing and had to recover from it. Most likely several times)

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Does "Always War" mean that war weariness does not develop? If so, that's a great plus for all the war mongerers.

War weariness is present, but at a far reduced level compared to normal games. If you can attack and take out AIs quickly enough, you may not see it at all. 'We long to join our motherland' is still present in full force though and may give you much bigger problems

Ah yes, the true meaning of Christmas: "War on earth and good will to men".

Well, hey, in the UK, Christmas usually means tons of 'peaceful' Indiana Jones films on the telly! One has to keep to the spirit, no?

Hmmm... let me guess... to compensate for making us play Ghandi in an Always War game, you have surely given us some nice soft neighbors, right? Like Alex, Monte, Ghengis, Toku...

My, we are cynical today, aren't we....

 

[haphazard1]

This looks very interesting. I have never managed to win an Always War game -- time to give this challenge another try. Hopefully I can find enough time despite holiday traveling -- Always War tends to be time consuming.

Where to settle is a tough choice -- where the warrior is standing is where I would pick for a normal game. But for AW I am tempted to settle in place, and plan for a second city either 1N or 1W of the pigs (depending on whether there is any seafood nearby). Keeping the early cities close enough to support one another will help, and a little overlap won't hurt.

Nasty to have the gems jungled -- prevents us from boosting the tech pace until we can get Iron Working.

I plan to grab an early religion to help provide happiness from state religion and cheap spiritual temples. We will need it, since there will be no luxury trades possible and war weariness does accumulate over time despite the reduced rate for AW --exterminating an AI is the only way to remove the WW from that AI. I would love to have more than one, but that would be too risky to further delay workers techs. Hopefully I can grab a couple later religions to further boost happiness with cheap temples.

So Med (and work the dye to help ensure I get it first), then Agri for corn and farming the dye. Hunting -> Archery after that for improved defense, with BW and AH to see if we have any military resources available. Hmmm, need to fit Fishing in at some point to use the lake, as well,

Builds: start with a warrior (or more than one), and then a worker once the capital grows. Might delay Agri one tech if the worker will not be ready. The starting warrior will stay very close to the capital until the first built warrior is done - close enough to beat any AI unit home, if one appears. If I remember the AW rules correctly, an empty city will act as a magnet for the AI -- it knows whether you have a garrison, even if it would not "normally" be able to see the city. This can be useful later as bait, but is a vulnerability in early turns.

Looking forward to this one.

 

[srad]

Some questions regarding the "always war" option:

1. Is it possible to have vassal states?
2. Is it possible to trade techs? (as far as I remeber "no")

 

[Lexad]

Well, hey, in the UK, Christmas usually means tons of 'peaceful' Indiana Jones films on the telly!

I smell a pun

1. Is it possible to have vassal states?
2. Is it possible to trade techs? (as far as I remeber "no")

1.no
2.no
You can only see what techs they have in diplo advisor, but you can't even contact AI.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Some questions regarding the "always war" option:

1. Is it possible to have vassal states?
2. Is it possible to trade techs? (as far as I remeber "no")

No and no.

AI will refuse to talk no matter what you do. Unless you kill it. Then, it won't refuse, it will merely be unable to .

I'm not going challenger here, just contender for the first time. I'm going to want that that "leg up" (aka not missing initial scouting) just in case we're getting a foul look on our surroundings.

I wonder what the odds are someone takes advantage of the ability to call a diplomatic victory, take just enough pop to put them over the needed threshold after the resolution but before the votes are tallied? That self-vote workaround is the only way I can think of where you can win diplomatic.

This one is exciting. I can feel the bloody warmonger powers concentrating in me already...

Oh wait. No...those are always there. Well it's still exciting.

 

[jesusin]

I've never won an AW game, either. The worst part is not the rain of units, but the ability of the AIs to tech-trade between them, while you can't.

I wonder what the odds are someone takes advantage of the ability to call a diplomatic victory, take just enough pop to put them over the needed threshold after the resolution but before the votes are tallied? That self-vote workaround is the only way I can think of where you can win diplomatic.

The last patch doesn't allow this. If you do it, the voting will get cancelled.

 

[PaulisKhan]

plan:

turn 1) Move settler 2W, Warrior 1 NW

turn 2) Move warrior 1 SW to hill.

if nothing excting shows up, drop city in place for corn/pig/gems/dye, otherwise move settler another 2W to settle on warriors hill and gain river/levee because I'm going to space baby!

-edit- actually, that is definitely the coast to the west too, so I'll almost certainly be settling 2W of the starting location. It has everything in abundance, food, prod and commerce.

 

[Peristarkawan]

Does the Philosophical bonus apply to Great Generals?

 

[Lexad]

Does the Philosophical bonus apply to Great Generals?

No, it does not. You've got Imperialist for it.