[BTS] News: BOTM 152 starts April 15

[Deckhand]

BOTM 152: Stealth Destroyers.

Sid vs the Destroyers.
My last deity game was too easy. So, by popular demand - you start surrounded by barbarian Stealth Destroyers. Don't worry, it's at Settler level - so I'm sure you will find some way to prevail.

Game settings:
Playing as: Sid Meier
Rivals: 6 AIs
Difficulty: Settler
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
Options: No goody huts, no random events
Victory Conditions: All enabled

Map settings:
Map: Donut
World Wrap: None
Mapsize: Worldsize_standard
Climate: Climate_temperate
Sea level: Sealevel_medium


Sid Meiers has no traits, no unique unit, and no unique building.


Starting screenshot

This is the start of the game:




Adventurer Class bonuses:
You start with two work boats.

Challenger Class bonuses:
Deity level

To Enter the Competition:

This competition will open at 00:01 am on 15 Apr 2018, 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 15 May 2018.

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.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

You're taking evil to a whole new level!!

 

[Deckhand]

But but.. All those tiles also have Fish!
(I just had trouble uploading that screen shot.)

 

[Alquest]

np, ill just send spies to the other civs to get gold. Then make more spies to bribe all the destroyers. Easy.
Oh wait, this is not ra3.
Damn, flight on 1 city?

 

[Deckhand]

Damn, flight on 1 city?

Looks like I was too . Maybe with decent land and only a couple destroyers, a player could sneak a settler across to next ring and break out. Or with decent land at settler, eventually get to flight. Maybe I will try to develop a better version of this in the future.

 

[Xcalibrator]

OK, I'm often a little slow on the uptake, but I did eventually realize this was for April Fool's. Before I accepted that conclusion, however, I did ponder how hopeless things were. Do barb naval units stay out of cultural borders during the early game (20 turns or so?) Would they teleport away when the borders expand? I suspect not. OK, what about the Great Wall, or is that only for land units? IF the barbs respected your borders for awhile, the two Adventurer Save workboats would help you grow quickly and research/whip your way toward the Great Wall. IF that worked on naval units, then you'd be cooking and could settle the desert ring, which has room for 6 cities. 32 fish tiles divided among 7 cities. Build the Moai to get some production, yeah! Run lots of seafood-fed specialists and bulb your way to .... profit!

Or maybe this would be a good save for WastinTime (the Deity level version, of course), while the rest of us could play without the inconvenient destroyers.

 

[Pangaea]

The Great Wall wouldn't work, as they don't prevent barb galleys either (and those are always a right pain). If we shipped a worker over to build a fort, would that get us out, or would all those boats also use it to escape and cause all sorts of torment? At least they could mess up the AI too.

Maybe it would actually be interesting with a game like this, at least if there weren't so many boats! But even with just one, it would tear up any fish you improved (right?), so it would take time to get anywhere.

 

[LowtherCastle]

The Great Wall wouldn't work, as they don't prevent barb galleys either (and those are always a right pain). If we shipped a worker over to build a fort, would that get us out, or would all those boats also use it to escape and cause all sorts of torment? At least they could mess up the AI too.

Maybe it would actually be interesting with a game like this, at least if there weren't so many boats! But even with just one, it would tear up any fish you improved (right?), so it would take time to get anywhere.

Our culture won't make it to the ring to allow a fort to act as a city. It would be cool to plant a city there and let barbs capture it, let all the battleships escape, but there won't be any barbs there to capture it. This is actually quite an intriguing scenario.

 

[Alquest]

Well... at the proposed settler setting...
Assuming we do have iron or copper on our poor lands.. The destroyers dont show up, you can sail through them and they dont stop yr city from working tiles. They just kill everything that endturns in their sea. They dont use a fort to sail out. You can get an early religion, lighthouse gives food and slavery makes food into hammers. You can use a galley to drop a settler on the ring of land, after loading, wait a turn in the city, move, and unload the settler before the galley gets destroyed. Wich gives one a 3 4 outer city at 1 AD (and i suck) Which is more or less the same as the AI. An AI that is hopeless versus CS slingshot and the other things. And also sooo slow that there are some sizeable barb cities when u get about astronomy. And that includes a lot of detours. Trade worldmap, whip musketeers, transport and kill barb longbows.

I would have to say it's doable.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Clever joke, but it would actually be quite interesting to play, if you at least gave us a bridge of Coast squares from the outer side of the Desert ring to the inner side of the larger, mostly-Grassland, "mainland" ring. I.e. Don't make us research Optics before we can meet the AIs and Astronomy before we can reach the AIs. With such a Coast bridge, we might even find a couple of AIs coming to meet us before we meet them, since BtS AIs prioritize building Exploration Work Boats.


Things Worth Testing
There's a good chance that the Barb Stealth Destroyers will cluster together, allowing for a Galley to actually make it through them from time to time in order to drop off a Settler payload.

It would be interesting to find out what happens when you move onto a square with a Stealth Destroyer on it... do you actually attack it? Is the square impassible? Can you obliviously sail over top of it, with it only being able to attack you on the Barbs' turn?

I haven't checked, but we should probably still be able to work the Fish squares (without Fish Nets on them), since the Barb Stealth Destroyers should be invisible to us and thus we should still be able to work whatever square they are on.

I'm not sure whether a Stealth Destroyer has the ability to Blockade... I would think not, since then you wouldn't really be in stealth mode anymore, but it would also be worth checking out that possibility, to ensure that the map wouldn't be unplayable.

Also, we should test to confirm that a Stealth Destroyer can actually Pillage seafood... Caravels cannot Pillage, for example, which is why I often laugh when AIs "upgrade" their Triremes to Caravels, especially when I only have Galleys to my name (which Triremes are ideally suited to destroy).

I wonder if the Desert ring is sufficiently large for Barb Cities to appear on it, meaning that you might to self-tech Archery so that you can send an Archer along with your Settler.


The Challenger setting is also fine by me.


And, who knows? Maybe there's a Desert Iron or two in the Desert ring. One can at least hold out hope, and those who actually self-tech Iron Working could be rewarded.


In terms of the joke, I do like how clicking on the picture led to a different view of the map (Hello, World Builder!)... please don't do that normally, as I normally don't click on the picture link (and others may not, as well), but it was a nice addition to your joke.


P.S. If we really are playing as Sid, doesn't that fact mean that we are the Barbs, and thus the Stealth Destroyers should be ours, righit?

It's a real playable game. But I loaded it as BOTM 153, and can't be downloaded until April 15. By then I expect the real 153 to have replaced it.

So, this game might actually end up being playable if the next BOTM does not get released on time.

 

[Deckhand]

In terms of the joke, I do like how clicking on the picture led to a different view of the map (Hello, World Builder!)... please don't do that normally, as I normally don't click on the picture link (and others may not, as well), but it was a nice addition to your joke.

P.S. If we really are playing as Sid, doesn't that fact mean that we are the Barbs, and thus the Stealth Destroyers should be ours, right?

AlanH recently fixed the picture links so they work as intended.

DS gave us a game as Sid. I don't recall if that was without barbarians as I don't think we get to control them. If you did, they would just be a financial drain unless they can bombard.

Currently Sid has no traits. I think he will be Philosophical and Industrial In Buffy 5.

 

[Pangaea]

Currently Sid has no traits. I think he will be Philosophical and Industrial In Buffy 5.

Smack on Financial too and we have a winner!