News: BOTM 33 - Starts 21 August

[MacBalt]

Tenochtitlan had a lake to protect from barbs so I am betting we can have the GW to act as that lake.

Actually, when the Aztecs arrived at the lake where Tenochtitlan would be built they were the barbarians.

When the Aztecs arrived in the Valley of Mexico, most likely in the mid-13th century, they were surrounded by powerful neighbors who exacted tribute from them. They were forced to occupy a swampy area on the western side of Lake Texcoco, where their only piece of dry land was a tiny island surrounded by marshes. http://www.angelfire.com/realm/shades/nativeamericans/aztec.htm

 

[srad]

Did several test on how to play the first 50 turns and I guess I will go for this (assuming the scout will not reveal something very interesting when moved):

1. Settle: 1E.
2. Tech: AH, Mining, Masonry, Agri
3. Improvements: Pasture on cow, mine the three hills, maybe farm on fp
4. Build: Worker, Warrior, Barracks or Warriors, GW

GW is done on T42. This looks pretty save.


I tried settler first but then GW is delayed after T50 and this looks as too late especially regarding the barbs. Too much of a gamble but if it works surely the better kick off.

 

[budweiser]

[*] Oh, by the way, I realize it's pretty frustrating if your unique unit's special abilities are wasted and I didn't want you to suffer that frustration. So I've removed all the nearby copper or iron. (You know, it was quite surprising just how much copper or iron the map generator had put nearby that I had to remove, just so you could better enjoy playing with your jaguars).

I wonder does this imply close neighbors?

It makes me sad to lose the hammer tiles in any event.

 

[Grifftavian]

Snip...
Please PM me if/when you see errors.

Bal - loaded your game and played about 70 - 80 turns; didn't see any errors

An AI Civ built the GW before I got around to thinking about building it

Settled 1N and put Archers with Guerrilla I promos on all the hills around the Capitol to fight off all the barbs.

 

[chopster]

Your biggest advantage over the AI are in worker actions, city planning and specialization, and long-term strategizing. At Monarch AI has pretty big advantages advantage in tech costs and build costs. Might be fun to watch a game where you abdicate a few of your main advantages, but why do so in a BOTM? You will learn more if you make the decisions yourself and then in the comparisons after the game critically evaluate those decisions. But the main thing is to have fun, so by all means enjoy however you like!

I find it very difficult to stay interested in a game long enough to finish and submit unless I play them quite quickly - I enjoy the early game so much more than the late game, and once I feel I'm in a winning position I often start a new game.

At Monarch, I feel I can give up a few pretty big advantages and still be competitive with the AI, so I thought I'd see if I really can.

 

[Seanirl]

Aztecs. Nice. I like Aztecs, what with their Sacrificial Altars and all.

Monarch is higher than I usually play I think so that should be interesting. Still, I did very well in the end (well for me I mean ) when I DID finish the last BOTM long after the deadline had passed. I got Augustus Caesar and I usually get something more like Dan Quayle

I find it very difficult to stay interested in a game long enough to finish and submit unless I play them quite quickly - I enjoy the early game so much more than the late game, and once I feel I'm in a winning position I often start a new game.

Speaking of which, I really hope Civ V fixes the boring tedium of late game. I mean, the kind of late game where you own about half the world with 30 cities or something and have to micromanage a wall of tanks to roll over your neighbours.

The 1-unit-per-tile rule should help with that somewhat I think.

 

[cas]

Speaking of which, I really hope Civ V fixes the boring tedium of late game. I mean, the kind of late game where you own about half the world with 30 cities or something and have to micromanage a wall of tanks to roll over your neighbours.

The 1-unit-per-tile rule should help with that somewhat I think.

You will have to pay much more attention to terrain details and positioning on a hex map with 1-unit per tile. So I think late game wars will only be more tedious...but maybe the limited number of units will help.

With a stack of 40 tanks in Civ4, it is just mindless blitzkrieg roll and stack-attack.

I'm in favor of the 1-unit per tile thing...and I'm ok if we have less units and each one has more importance.

cas

 

[Seanirl]

So I think late game wars will only be more tedious...but maybe the limited number of units will help.

Hmmm... hard to say how it'll balance out I suppose. Still, even if it takes longer, it might not necessarily be more boring. We shall see

 

[MacBalt]

Bal - loaded your game and played about 70 - 80 turns; didn't see any errors

Thanks for checking it out Grifftavian. I keep trying to find a bullet-proof way to get the wall and a settler out before all hell breaks loose, but it ain't going to be easy unless something succulent pops up out of the shade... I'll keep trying I guess...

 

[mabraham]

Plan:

Goal: Fast conquest
Settle: 1E unless scout finds something after going to hill NW of settler
Tech: AH mining masonry BW IW then backfill and beeline Writing, then Constr with science specialists
Build: worker, warriors, Great Wall, settler for horses or silver, Pyramids (for Rep to Constr, then Police)
Military: Use Jags or Horse Archers to knock out at least one neighbour (maybe keep their capital, that's all, else maintenance will kill us), then probably turtle until Construction. Remember to grow a Jag to Woodsman III, then Medic II certainly before conquering the east, but ASAP regardless.

If I don't get GW, then I'll use a mobile defence of whatever's chunkiest in my arsenal and be happy with my pile of for deficit research and the easy XP. That will make Pyramids tough, so I might skip them. Obviously, if a neighbour builds either, then they're on the top of the hit list.

 

[kcd_swede]

Thanks for checking it out Grifftavian. I keep trying to find a bullet-proof way to get the wall and a settler out before all hell breaks loose, but it ain't going to be easy unless something succulent pops up out of the shade... I'll keep trying I guess...

"Any strategy that requires building a certain wonder is a flawed strategy" - STW (paraphrased).

I've played two different opening tests at emperor level, one with the GW and one without. The GW is helpful, and can be done without slowing down early development too much. But a strategy without the GW also is quite successful. I'll probably try the latter just to be different. Everyone should probably keep that in mind if they happen to fail GW build.

My own observations on Raging Barbs is that archery is a very high value early tech.

I'm thinking worker first, then warrior/barracks to grow to pop 2 or 3, then settler. Send strong garrison unit out ahead of settler, or risk losing new cities. Tech should be something like AH>Mining>wheel>Archery>BW or some variation thereof. Note, if there are no accessible horses, I will probably go for the GWall and put masonry after mining, and maybe tech ironworking instead of waiting to trade for it. Depends on the neighborhood, whether there is a jag-rush possibility or not. I'd really like to get the medic promotion on my scout... hopefully the wolves will cooperate.

Lots of options... it should be interesting to compare the first spoilers (up to about 500BC) to see how the various choices play out in the real game. I hope everybody is going to be taking notes and share when the spoiler threads open.

 

[MacBalt]

I'm thinking worker first, then warrior/barracks to grow to pop 2 or 3, then settler. Send strong garrison unit out ahead of settler, or risk losing new cities. Tech should be something like AH>Mining>wheel>Archery>BW or some variation thereof.

I *think* I'm going to go for the wall anyway. My best luck so far has come with something like this:

PROD: Worker, 3 Warriors, GW...
TECH: AH, Agr, Masonry, Mining, BW...

If this works, then settler is next (for horses) and tech moves to an Oracle slingshot to Feudalism with the long term plan being conquest by knights. Of course...

"Any strategy that requires building a certain wonder is a flawed strategy" - STW (paraphrased).

...so this plan will probably be entirely moot by T40 or so.

Either way I'll let you know how it goes...

 

[Xcalibrator]

Arrgh. This is silly, letting peer pressure and/or ego get the best of me. But I'll take the Challenger save, too. [size=-2]I may regret this...[/size]

 

[shyuhe]

Is it too early to ask for a spoiler thread?

 

[Luven]

Hi Guys

This is the first time i will play a GOTM. Its actually the first week i play this game, but i read a few tipps here in the forums and watched some of TheMeInTeam youtube commentarys, so im pretty confident in terms of gameplay.

I played CivII a lot when i was younger although, i never did the real stuff with "power democray" or something like that but i was pretty decent i guess.

Now i wanna make everything correct here, so i have some questions.

I installed "BUFFY 3.19.003" and loaded the save with it, which added some new buttons and messages to the interface.

I know i am not allowed to load an earlier save. And i don't plan to, but i am interested, could somebody find out if i did ?? Maybe Buffy records it ??

If i am stupid, and i can tell u i already was, am i allowed to start the game completely new from the beginning at 4000 bc ?? I lost my first settler to a lion while wandering around alone with him (like i always did in CivII, there were no shadows once explored ^^).

Ehm yeah thats it for the moment. I am looking forward to CivV and just wanna enjoy the time until release.

Mfg Luven

ps: my english isnt perfect since im from switzerland, sorry about that.

 

[godotnut]

I feel like something challenging and also different for me, so I will go challenger save with an emphasis on espionage. I'm thinking diplo mostly by sword.

 

[mabraham]

Hi Guys

This is the first time i will play a GOTM. Its actually the first week i play this game, but i read a few tipps here in the forums and watched some of TheMeInTeam youtube commentarys, so im pretty confident in terms of gameplay.

Well, that's good, but there's heaps of differences in Civ4 compared to the previous versions. Read lots and widely on this forum, but be aware that some of the advice predates Beyond the Sword... The first piece of advice is to not just build a million cities. City maintenance will kill you.

I played CivII a lot when i was younger although, i never did the real stuff with "power democray" or something like that but i was pretty decent i guess.

Now i wanna make everything correct here, so i have some questions.

I installed "BUFFY 3.19.003" and loaded the save with it, which added some new buttons and messages to the interface.

I know i am not allowed to load an earlier save. And i don't plan to, but i am interested, could somebody find out if i did ?? Maybe Buffy records it ??

Yep.

If i am stupid, and i can tell u i already was, am i allowed to start the game completely new from the beginning at 4000 bc ?? I lost my first settler to a lion while wandering around alone with him (like i always did in CivII, there were no shadows once explored ^^).

If you're planning to play competitively, then you need to be aware that you'll always have a useful starting location within a square or two. The further you travel, the slower your win

 

[Luven]

I actually didn't meant my very first settler but the first one i built. Question although remains the same, am i allowed to start again from 4000bc ?

In my first try the thing with the settler happened and in the second one i got killed by barbarians (never played raging hordes). So i couldn't really participate here if i'm not allowed to restart on 4000bc. Which wouldn't be that bad, i can still share my progress here and i just don't get the entry in the HOF thing right ??

Well, that's good, but there's heaps of differences in Civ4 compared to the previous versions. Read lots and widely on this forum, but be aware that some of the advice predates Beyond the Sword... The first piece of advice is to not just build a million cities. City maintenance will kill you.

Its not my first game, its my first week, so i already played a few games and i managed to win a space race game on prince. And there you were right, i almost died because of city building. Over a period of about 30-50 turns in the midgame i could only set the science rate to 0-10% cause of the maintenance but i managed to recover

I guess my biggest problem at the moment is that i don't know the AI very well, who will trade at what attitude, or who will make how much war and stuff like that. So i generally try to get the most spread religion and if possible i keep the stronger AI's on pleased and hope they don't declare on me

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Welcome to the GOTM, Luven! Enjoy your games!

You are not allowed to restart from 4000BC - that would get your game disqualified (and we can tell!). Restarting from 4000BC would give you an unfair advantage since you'd already have some idea of the map, you'd know where the good places to settle and to explore are, you might know who and where your neighbours are etc. There's no way to fairly judge such a game against the people who followed the rules and therefore are having to adapt each turn to the new information that their exploration reveals.

Of course, if you do want to restart, you can still play the game privately for your own enjoyment, but you shouldn't attempt to submit what you've played into the competition.

 

[Luven]

Ahh okey I get it.

Makes a lot of sense i think once you don't blunder anymore and once you got a sense of what you really shouldn't do or what can really ruin your game. So i am out of this one, since i already restarted and going back to where i lost the settler wouldn't work either since now i know the map now, i guess.

I'll still play the game and i am looking forward to see in the spoiler thread what you managed to establish, which is probably a lot more than me anyway