[BTS] News: BOTM 258: Washington, Monarch, Starts 15 September 2023

[kcd_swede]

BOTM 258: Washington of America.

You will play on a reversed Terra map. That means you start alone in the new world, and the AI opponents are all on the distant continents. You will need better boats than shown in the picture to get there. But the abundance of ice is accurate. I gave you an extra scout to help you fogbust against the raging barbarians who will be plentiful.

Game settings:
Playing as: Washington of America
Rivals: 6 AIs
Difficulty: Monarch
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
Options: Raging barbarians, no goody huts, no random events
Victory Conditions: All enabled

Map settings:
Map:</b>Terra, but you start alone in the new world</li>
World Wrap: Cylindrical
Mapsize: Standard
Climate: Temperate
Sea level: Medium
Map latitudes: -90°S to 90°N


Washington is Expansive and Charismatic, and you start with Fishing and Agriculture.

The Expansive trait gives +2 health/city and +25% hammers for worker production and double production speed of Granary and Harbor

The Charismatic trait gives +1 happiness/city, and -25% experience required for unit promotions

Unique unit: Navy SEAL (replaces Marine)
The navy seal starts with the march promotion, meaning it can always heal when moving. It also gets 1-2 first strikes, which the marine lacks.

Unique Building: Mall (replaces Supermarket)
Where the supermarket makes your citizens healthier, the mall makes them more profitable and happier too: +20% commerce in its city, and +1 happy with each of hit musicals, hit singles and hit movies!

Starting screenshot

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




Adventurer Class bonuses:
n/a

Challenger Class Equalizers:
You get to play on Deity level!!! But to give you a chance I replaced your warrior with a Bowman and a Skirmisher (which are unique units from other civilizations normally). The AI will all start with Monarch level units PLUS a worker, just to give it that Deity feel. Good Luck!

To Enter the Competition:

This competition will open at 00:01 am on 15 Sep 2023, 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 Oct 2023.

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.

 

[Fippy]

That sounds creative
Home alone in a nightmare.

 

[kcd_swede]

That sounds creative
Home alone in a nightmare.

It will hopefully be a worthy challenge to all. And for the Challenger class people... well, I'm not really competent enough to say its playable, but since I can survive the barbarian assault, I'm guessing that you folks who like a Deity challenge will be rewarded with praise if you can win by anything other than culture. So the gauntlet is thrown, show me what you got. And for those of you who prefer a Contender fight, there is a premium on REX without economic collapse. I am intending to play it out to completion myself, and will award a special one-time award to everyone who beats me.

 

[lymond]

I gave you an extra scout to help you fogbust against the raging barbarians who will be plentiful.

So generous!

 

[Fine_Distinction]

wow, that's sounds very interesting - but also very tough but great to have another unique game - and generally another BOTM to play. Thank you very much @kcd_swede, @DynamicSpirit, @AlanH, @MarleysGh0st and others keeping BOTM alive

 

[Fine_Distinction]

So generous!

 

[Frederiksberg]

Interesting map. I'm tempted to give the challenger save a go. Culture won't be easy, the problem is how to get any religion at all. Even AP cheese could prove difficult.

 

[Fippy]

TGW should be doable on monarch (even without stone or IND).

 

[DynamicSpirit]

TGW should be doable on monarch (even without stone or IND).

That is true, and on this map will probably be game-changing enough to be worth beelining for, even at the cost of delaying early expansion.

In terms of settling, that plains hill to the NW looks very tempting, although it loses one seafood. Faster start plus more anti-barb fogbusting/defences in the early game. I'd probably move the warrior onto the PH first to check out what's beyond it, while the scout checks to the SE to see if there's any other tempting seafood. Then go for the PH unless the scouting shows anything different.

 

[Fippy]

Yup can make space for a good double seafood city (shared fish as needed) with the ph move.
Perfect for running 2 scientists in time while avoiding a Gspy from TGW

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Yup can make space for a good double seafood city (shared fish as needed) with the ph move.
Perfect for running 2 scientists in time while avoiding a Gspy from TGW

So thinking more about The Great Wall, I think teching should be mining-masonry-bronze working (to chop for the wall). And build should be worker-warrior-greatwall. It would be nice for expansion to throw in a workboat before the warrior but I'm not sure we can risk the delay in building the wall. From a quick test game, it'll be 18 turns at monarch level to have masonry, plus 1 turn to move to the plains hill. At size 1, working the mined grassland hill, it'd then take 30 turns at 5h per turn to build the wall (150 hammers) but hopefully that can be shortened by chopping forests, and growing the city to use more production tiles - if there are any other ones to the NW. Does anyone know how many turns we'll have before the barbs show up?

Shame that the great wall generates a spy - who is going to be useless for anything other than exploring + golden age on this map, since we won't have contact with any other civs until optics.

 

[Fine_Distinction]

Does raging barbarians affect the time when they are appearing, entering cities etc? or just increase numbers?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Does raging barbarians affect the time when they are appearing, entering cities etc? or just increase numbers?

I don't believe it impacts the time that they first appear: It just means that they instantly start beelining for and attacking your cities - you no longer have the grace period after they've appeared when they refuse to enter cultural borders. I'm not clear if it actually increases their numbers or not, but either way, with a continent to ourselves, it's pretty much guaranteed that their numbers will be very high since barbs spawning across the entire continent will have only one place that they want to immediately head towards....

In a way, it could almost be fun to try deliberately not building the great wall to see what happens. The trouble is, with that strategy, if we don't have nearby copper and are therefore able to build axemen before the barbs appear, then we're basically toast.

 

[kcd_swede]

So generous!

Ave Imperator, morituri te salutant - Emperor Claudius​

For those about to ROCK, we salute you - AC/DC

 

[LowtherCastle]

With 7 players, raging barbs will enter our city culture once there are 1.5 x 7 =10.5 cities. So that’s 11 cities. 4 AIs have to their second city. If you really want to get geeky, you can follow the number of cities using the population statistics turn-by-turn on the F9 demographic screen.

Pop1 = 1000
P2 = 6000
P3 = 21000
P4 = 48000
P5 = 90000 <<<<< EDITED
P6 = 150000
Use worldbuilder for more as needed

So you take the average population score for the 6 AIs x 6 and you have a number describing the population of X AI cities. When it comes time for AIs to settle their second city, you’re looking for changes in the population number that represent a new pop1 city, that is, +1000.

Example:

T30 population, rival ave: 39,000
39,000x6=234,000, which you know corresponds to 4 pop4 cities and 2 pop3 cities because you’ve been tracking their city pop each turn:

(48,000x4)+(21,000x2)=234,000

T31 ave pop = 39,166.67 x6 = 235,000. A pop1 city was settled.

Of course, in the game it’s likely to be more complicated but still easily solvable because innadditio to a pop1 city settled, another city might grow a pop or get whipped down. You have to figure that out. That’s why it’s easier turn by turn.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Settling on the plains hill also means you can build a worker and 10 turns!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

With 7 players, raging barbs will enter our city culture once there are 1.5 x 7 =10.5 cities. So that’s 11 cities. 4 AIs have to their second city. If you really want to get geeky, you can follow the number of cities using the population statistics turn-by-turn on the F9 demographic screen.

Pop1 = 1000
P2 = 6000
P3 = 21000
P4 = 48000
P5 = 96000
P6 = 150000
Use worldbuilder for more as needed

So you take the average population score for the 6 AIs x 6 and you have a number describing the population of X AI cities. When it comes time for AIs to settle their second city, you’re looking for changes in the population number that represent a new pop1 city, that is, +1000.

Example:

T30 population, rival ave: 39,000
39,000x6=234,000, which you know corresponds to 4 pop4 cities and 2 pop3 cities because you’ve been tracking their city pop each turn:

(48,000x4)+(21,000x2)=234,000

T31 ave pop = 39,166.67 x6 = 235,000. A pop1 city was settled.

Of course, in the game it’s likely to be more complicated but still easily solvable because innadditio to a pop1 city settled, another city might grow a pop or get whipped down. You have to figure that out. That’s why it’s easier turn by turn.

Thanks for that explanation. That is really interesting. I hadn't realised population statistics rise so dramatically with city size.

So if barb entry depends on numbers of cities, that explains why the actual turn they appear varies a bit from game to game - something that had puzzled me.

I guess if you are following those stats in the very early game in order to track when barbs will become dangerous, then it's a bit easier: The AI is unlikely to research bronze working during that time so whipping is unlikely to be an issue: Cities will only ever grow, and only by one population point at a time. (I think the hanging gardens is the only thing that could cause a city to grow by more than one pop point in a turn, and that definitely won't get built so early on).

Out of interest, do you know what the trigger is that causes barbs to start entering cultural borders when raging barbarians is not switched on?

 

[LowtherCastle]

For non-raging barbs, it’s number of players times three cities. This case it would be 21 cities.

 

[Conquistador 63]

With 7 players, raging barbs will enter our city culture once there are 1.5 x 7 =10.5 cities. So that’s 11 cities. 4 AIs have to their second city. If you really want to get geeky, you can follow the number of cities using the population statistics turn-by-turn on the F9 demographic screen.

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

@LowtherCastle : Interestingly enough, the latter (very old) post claims that with raging barbs on, the numbers of cities is irrelevant. Is it really, though?

Another nice information that might be worth sharing:

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).

 

[Fine_Distinction]

@Conquistador 63, @DanF5771 posts on barbarians imho are the best, never failed me so far. I just forgot how it relates to raging barbs.