[BTS] News: BOTM 213 - Charlemagne, Emperor - Starts 16 May

[DynamicSpirit]

BOTM 213: Charlemagne of Holy Rome.

A lovely little rainforest game. As a starting gift, you have two archers. A quick look at the options for this game might give a clue why I did that.

Game settings:
Playing as: Charlemagne of Holy Rome
Rivals: 6 AIs
Difficulty: Emperor
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
Options: Raging barbarians, aggressive AI, no vassal states, no goody huts, no random events
Victory Conditions: All enabled

Map settings:
Map: Rainforest
World Wrap: None
Mapsize: Standard
Climate: Temperate
Sea level: Medium
Map latitudes: -15°S to 15°N


Charlemagne is Imperialistic and Protective, and you start with Mysticism and Hunting.

The Imperialistic trait gives +100% great general emergence and +50% production of settlers

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: Landsknecht (replaces Pikeman)
The Landsknecht benefits from: 100% combat bonus against mounted units, 100% combat bonus against melee units. This compares with the Pikeman which has: 100% combat bonus against mounted units.

Unique Building: Rathaus (replaces Courthouse)
The rathaus is like a super-powerful courthouse: It gives +75% reduction in city maintenance costs!

Starting screenshot

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




To Enter the Competition:

This competition will open at 00:01 am on 16 May 2021, 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 16 Jun 2021.

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 3.19.005 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.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Sorry for the late announcement of this game - I had building work in my house for most of the last 2 weeks until today, which was rather effectively occupying my time! Because of the late announcement, don't be surprised if the Mac saves are a couple of days behind - I haven't given AlanH much time to prepare them

 

[Xcalibrator]

Dude, no worries! We are forever in your debt (ditto for kcd) for running these games at all!

So, move the scout to the deer and think about settling 1S to increase the BFC land coverage? Maybe even settle S or SW of there? Great Wall might be a wise idea. Is that rice on a hill? Can we even farm that?

 

[kcd_swede]

Dude, no worries! We are forever in your debt (ditto for kcd) for running these games at all!

So, move the scout to the deer and think about settling 1S to increase the BFC land coverage? Maybe even settle S or SW of there? Great Wall might be a wise idea. Is that rice on a hill? Can we even farm that?

I'm pretty sure you can always farm a farm-based resource. (Once you research agriculture).
On a rainforest map, access to the sea is meaningless, usually. With raging barbs and protective archers, I'd look to settle on a hill, but not here to waste the rice. Moving scout to the deer makes sense if you are undecided about staying in place or settle 1S, but I'm looking for somewhere better... so scout either 2NE or 2SE or some combination thereof.

I don't really expect to see anything better than in place or 1S, since rainforest maps usually have a clearing where you spawn, but jungles all around. May be worth waiting to turn 3+ for settling somewhere better. I probably tech archery then mining and bronze working... so could be a while before improving the rice, and then it might even be with a mine.

 

[lymond]

I'm pretty sure you can always farm a farm-based resource. .

Yep

 

[High King J.J.]

Dude, no worries! We are forever in your debt (ditto for kcd) for running these games at all!

Yep

 

[NightOnEarth]

This will be my first participation. Forgive my ignorance, but I'm looking for information about "rainforest map", "raging barbarians" and "aggressive AI". I searched the forum for two hours but didn't came up with much. Perhaps there are some articles that cover these topics.

 

[Smiregal]

Hi guys! First I want to join in in thanking the mapmakers for providing new games for years now.
Second I want note that if we dont find any hills south the only hammertile will be the ricehill. If so I probably won 't farm that tile for a long time.
Does anybody know if and how raging barbs affects the date on which barbs will enter our territory. I think with two archers one could go minig, bronze first and then archery if it just affects the spawn rate and not the entry date.

 

[LowtherCastle]

This will be my first participation. Forgive my ignorance, but I'm looking for information about "rainforest map", "raging barbarians" and "aggressive AI". I searched the forum for two hours but didn't came up with much. Perhaps there are some articles that cover these topics.

Welcome to BOTM, NightOnEarth! Here's the best post in the best thread I know of on raging barbs:

Naahh!! There can only be one Guru -- and his name is

Spoiler :

Josh &#8734;&#8734;

Well, here is what I found digging through the 3.17 SDK (finally with a new Debug dll, yeah!):
Barbs enter cultural borders if an appropriate mission is chosen in CvUnitAI::AI_barbAttackMove(). This function is only called for barbarian units with UNITAI_ATTACK (barb animals always have UNITAI_ANIMAL and they cannot enter owned plots anyway). So this represents a direct effect of the difficulty level as non-animal barbs (Warriors and Archers) spawn earlier plus in greater numbers on the higher levels. The indirect effect is indeed given by the conditional behavior of the barb units depending on the total number of non-barb cities on the whole map (not continents! -- the continents(=areas) only determine their number of needed barbs according to their unowned tiles).

There are 2 thresholds:

A) NumCities > 2*NumPlayersAlive:

• Barbs will enter your territory if they can pillage an improvement on their next turn, so the common 1 barb Warriors and Archers will intrude to pillage improvements in your border tiles. I'm not certain about 2 mounted barb units (do barb Chariots spawn regularly?). I know about a random event which places barb Horse Archers on the map, but they demonstrate "special" behavior (they directly target the barbs' TargetCity of the area).
• Barbs will enter your territory if they can attack a city on the same turn --> this should only be possible for the uncommon 2 units.

B) NumCities > 3*NumPlayersAlive:
The restrictions for the missions are lifted to

• pillage on the 3rd turn
• attack city on the second turn
• If the barbs have calculated AREAAI_OFFENSIVE for their AreaAI (huge numbers of ATTACK barb units, most likely after random event; normally it's AREAAI_MASSING) they will straight target their chosen city without any such restrictions.

With GAMEOPTION_RAGING_BARBARIANS it gets even worse (NumCities is irrelevant then):

• pillage on the 4th turn
• attack city on the 3rd turn
• target city when AREAAI_OFFENSIVE

Important things to keep in mind:

• Barbs will ALWAYS enter your borders if they can attack one of your units directly (--> watch your Workers!).
• Once they have entered your territory, they will consider the following options for their current turn

1. pillage an improvement (50%)
2. attack somebody
3. depending on conditions A and B move to another tile to pillage or attack a city (or target a city)
4. patrol --> here they always prefer to move into unowned tiles (this is why they don't enter in the first place; if possible they will move out again; if they somehow get boxed in by cultural borders they might also "have to" enter your territory with this mission)

• Hence they can also change their minds - if they enter to pillage on their 3rd turn, they will choose to attack somebody on their second turn if possible (if you move a defending unit to an adjacent tile).
• There are certainly special situations where barb behavior might contradict the above rules (the code for unit AI is pretty complex...)

On Emperor difficulty barb units are hardcoded to start spawning EDIT: on or after turn 20 when the average # of non-barb cities per player >= 1.5. They gradually replace barb animals over the next few turns. Depending on their distance from your city(ies), that's when you can expect them to arrive at your borders.

Also good to know is on Emperor there is 1 barb unit per 35 unowned tiles per landmass. So if there are only 34 unowned tiles on your landmass, no barb unit will spawn. (Barb animals are 1 per 30) An unowned tile is defined as one not within the cultural borders of any player, including barb cities. Barb units garrisoned in barb cities count toward the total number of barb units that can spawn on a landmass.

I wouldn't worry about aggressive Ai.

Best way to find out about rainforest is open up a rainforest game and go to worldbuilder.

 

[Smiregal]

OMG! I just Sandboxed that thing. And I highly recomend to any unexperienced player (and even the expirienced ones) to at least load a rainforrest map with raging barbs. You are in for a ride.
Anyone interested in what happened in my little Sandbox

Spoiler :

Disclaimer! I made a mistake when creating the map though playing on emperor the ai had deity starting units which means the the Barbs entered my Territoy some unknown Turns earlier than they should have otherwise.

Played till Turn 52
The first barb warrior appeared around turn 20.
The first barb warrior entered on turn 29
A Barb-City spawned north of the lake on around Turn 33 (not sure when exactly)
After that it was just waves of barb warriors after another esspecially coming out of the Barb City.

However I was able to tec bronze before archery and settel a second City after that research went down hard. Me not being able to get any more worker tecs.
I was able to build 3 extra Archers but in no position at all to expand farther. (One Settler in Capitol slow build missed the whipp.
Two Workers build one whipped and 3 Warriors
Barbs pillaged one Deer around T35 and it took about at least 10 Turns before I could rebuild it savely.
First Archer appeared on turn 49.
I had Fishing (commerce. probably not worth it) and Masonry just in.
25 Warriors killed and 1 Archer, 1 Warrior and 1 Scout lost.

Ideas for the Game

If the Scout does not find some hills or gems (Mapmaker could still add those till Sunday ) I'm not sure that moving south is worth it.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Great Wall !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Problems:
You need Archery to defend before masonry
You need Bronze or the Great Wall will take forever
You need to build Archers for defense delaying The Great Wall

Possible Solution:
I did only prechop the forrest and If one does not move south with the Capitol he would have 80 Hammers for the GW and with only one Whipp and 2 or 3 Turns one could get the Wall

Any Suggestions?

I will Sandbox this again with correct AI-Starting-Units and see if I can find a solution.

In case you wonder if you will be able to build the Heroric Epic when you reach Lith, I can assure you you will

 

[Xcalibrator]

Very helpful, Smiregal. Without trying a test myself (which I really should do!), build lots of warriors to fogbust, along with the scout and one of the archers, but keep the 2nd archer close to home. Tech Mining, Masonry, BW. Start the GW as soon as you can, and time some good whip overflow to start it off. Remember, fogbusters prevent spawning inside a 5x5 square, even if you can't see all the tiles within it--you can use option-X for BFC overlays to help you gauge your coverage. Fogbusting from a hill or forest/jungle should be easy here--barbs will often mindlessly attack your defensive (hopefully fortified) position and die.

 

[Smiregal]

build lots of warriors to fogbust, along with the scout and one of the archers, but keep the 2nd archer close to home. Tech Mining, Masonry, BW. Start the GW as soon as you can, and time some good whip overflow to start it off.

This approach was actually on my mind when I said I want to sandbox this again.
Since I belive that Barbs probably won't enter before Turn 40 I think we will have enough time.
Nonetheless one needs to Sanbox this, because if the timing does not work out the game will be either lost or in a way worse position than the approach with going for archery First. When stopping my Sanbox on turn 52 I was in a save position. Research was crap and it shaped up to be a really slow start but save. If this Strategy only works half of the Time it is not viable in my opinion. More fun of course but only every second game.

I also realised that I made a mistake when I said:

If one does not move south with the Capitol he would have 80 Hammers for the GW and with only one Whipp and 2 or 3 Turns one could get the Wall

I somehow had only the 120 hammers from SH in mind. It ist 150 of course which means two whips.

 

[kcd_swede]

This will be my first participation. Forgive my ignorance, but I'm looking for information about "rainforest map", "raging barbarians" and "aggressive AI". I searched the forum for two hours but didn't came up with much. Perhaps there are some articles that cover these topics.

A good resource for learning about all the map types is here:
https://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/map-scripts-guide/#continents

Just be aware you should never trust a mapmaker to keep to the script. So stay flexible in your plans and take advantage of the unexpected.

 

[High King J.J.]

you should never trust a mapmaker

Yep

 

[Smiregal]

Second Sandbox

Spoiler :

In an nutshell Xcalibrators Strategie definitely works!

Played to turn 52 again

Some additions that might be helpful:
Ok. When you don't play deity barbs are not nearly as fast. The first Warrior I saw arrived on Turn 42. Never saw an other one.
Since I had the GW at Turn 36 I don't know at which day they whould have entered.
One has the time to move South if one preferes more Landtiles.
I Mined the Hill first before improving the deer.
I used one overflow from a whiped worker and two chops although the second worker did not even contribute to the GW.

I tried this strategy on Deity too and it worked.

Deduction:
I did overexagerated the barb situation big time after my first Sandbox.And I mean really overexagerated.
Emperor is not Deity afterall! Duh!
In the End the GW Will probably still be Worth it if you dont want to build a bunch of Archers.
One does not have to go straigt for GW you can put a Settler in between.

Note to self. Always check you settings carefully when sandboxing.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

If the Scout does not find some hills or gems (Mapmaker could still add those till Sunday ) I'm not sure that moving south is worth it.

Haha nice try. But in all honesty, I figured adding gems would be cruel because you'd see them there and not be able to use them because you'd be too busy fending off all the barbs. So it seemed like an act of kindness not to give you any.

 

[Conquistador 63]

On Emperor difficulty barb units are hardcoded to start spawning on turn 20. They gradually replace barb animals over the next few turns. Depending on their distance from your city(ies), that's when you can expect them to arrive at your borders.

If I got it right, turn 20 is only 1 of 2 required conditions, the other is Number of cities >= 1.5, as the post below. Not entirely sure "raging barbs" override this one. In my sandbox it wasn't until ~t35 the first non-animal barb appeared (checked map in WB each turn).

Barb Animals start appearing after game turn 5 (hard coded, independent of game speed). As mentioned earlier the game stops spawning them if both of the following two conditions are met:

1. The average number of (non-barb) cities per player must be >= 1.5.
   .
2. A certain number of game turns must have elapsed (depending on difficulty [iBarbarianCreationTurnsElapsed] and game speed [iBarbPercent], marathon is special with 400%).

​

So in a quick deity game animals are usually only created in just 1 IBT (5->6).

When the era of barb animals is over, the existing creatures are not eradicated in 1 major extinction event. Instead, the game kills off 1 animal per turn until they are all gone and will insert regular barb units (Warriors, Archers, ...) as they are "needed" during the next IBT (can be > 1 unit/turn!, ALL required units are created immediately).

 

[Powerfaker]

I thought city count average had to be >=3. At least that is what seems to happen in reality with regular barbs.
Maybe >=1,5 applies to raging barbs? On Emperor you would have time to fogbust a lot, build GW, and/or expand. Barbs would have time to increase numbers and invade in a big wave which could be dangerous.

The 1 barb per 35 tiles rule is an interesting one to know. If I imagine a 5*7 area at best 1 unit per ±7 turns will enter your borders from a certain direction (there can be multiple directions of course). It should be manageable.

 

[Smiregal]

Since I have an idea how the first 50 turns will play out now I wanted to ask if anyone is willing to share some insight on how to proceed from there. I have probably played only 2 or three rainforestmaps so far (on monarc or lower) and from what I remember I always ended up tecing ironworking myself. During my trials I already felt the urge to do that again, but I have a feeling that this is not optimal. On immortal or deity I could tec aestetics and trade for it, but on emperor difficulty which I belive I played more than any other difficulty I often find myself having to wait for trades like that a long time. Which is not to bad on a normal map but here ironworking seems to be way to important.

My inital thougt is to tec Alpha myself when not teching ironworking.

 

[LowtherCastle]

If I got it right, turn 20 is only 1 of 2 required conditions, the other is Number of cities >= 1.5, as the post below. Not entirely sure "raging barbs" override this one. In my sandbox it wasn't until ~t35 the first non-animal barb appeared (checked map in WB each turn).

That’s what I used to always think. And indeed, I think you’re right. I was confusing spawning with entering borders. So what Dan F mentioned regarding raging barbs only has to do with entering borders not spawning.

I will correct my post above for clarity’s sake.

Note that it is possible to know exactly which turn that threshold is met in any given game. From the demo screen you can follow the number of cities created using population statistic. I have done that in the past in games where the Barbs were likely to threaten my completion of the great wall. It’s a PITA so I doubt anyone’s gonna want to do that.

In this game it is 11 total cities (7*1.5=10.5).