News: BOTM05 Pre-game Discussion

[cas]

...In one test game I played I took out one civ near me pre-0AD and with just my 2 original cities and the AI's cities (he wasn't that far away from me either) I was in the red at 0% science/espionage. I was able to recover but I definitely couldn't have gone after another civ for a while, especially considering the next civ would have been even farther away and had even higher maintenance. I'm thinking cottage spam will be necessary even for a military victory.

I'm probably going for a space race since I consider myself weak at fast military wins.

It's true in my test games barbs have had an extremely minimal effect, and yes it's a flat map unless DS changed the default setting.

Is it possible to let the barbs take over a city and thus rid yourself of the maintenance costs ? And I wonder if a city the barbs take can culture flip back...not sure how that setting interacts with barbs (if at all).

cas

 

[slowrider]

Is it possible to let the barbs take over a city and thus rid yourself of the maintenance costs ? And I wonder if a city the barbs take can culture flip back...not sure how that setting interacts with barbs (if at all).

cas

Played around with this in Worldbuilder and found that neither the barbs nor other civs can raze a city. So yes, the barbs will definately take over a city. The city becomes a barb city which then becomes a magnet for other civs to fight over which they then have to keep regardless of its impact on their economy.

 

[Markus5]

Played around with this in Worldbuilder and found that neither the barbs nor other civs can raze a city. So yes, the barbs will definately take over a city. The city becomes a barb city which then becomes a magnet for other civs to fight over which they then have to keep regardless of its impact on their economy.

Interesting. There's potential in a city-abandonment strategy, perhaps.

I'm wondering if there's going to be copper nearby. It seems scarce in my test maps. Lots more iron. The maps look wonderfully varied. It should be fun. There was one civ that could have placed its second city to get 6 gold hills and 6 flood plains. I should have grabbed a screenie of that.

No forest chops. Armies of jungle-clearing workers. Early, cheap courthouses. With careful expansion a nice civ might arise.

 

[JacktheBodiless]

Here is a test game save modified with Worldbuilder so that our starting position matches that of the screenshot. All settings identical to the BOTM, except, and this is my bad, I forgot to load the HOF mod before creating this game... arrggghhh. Now I will have to redo it!

EDIT: Plus, obviously, I have no idea which AIs are actually in the BOTM. This is a random selection.

EDIT: Interesting fact -- with eleven civs, the game puts one or two in the middle by default.

EDIT: I'll put the save back up once I overcome my laziness and do it in the HOF mod.

FINAL EDIT: And here it is, redone in HOF mod.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

It's true in my test games barbs have had an extremely minimal effect, and yes it's a flat map unless DS changed the default setting.

I didn't. I've added a Worldwrap:None note to the original starting post to make this clear.

 

[Priah]

I usually only win by domination or conquest, so Im not really sure my plan for winning this. Ill probably get a nice lil empire early (6-8 cities) at around 0 ad, kill off another civ mid middle ages, pillage all his cottages and turn all those cities into production powerhouses (everything is going to be grassland). Then Im fairly certain on monarch level ill easily outtech the ai's to cuirasares or whatever, and Ill go on a very tedious and long crusade to rid the huge amount of land of any ais.

To sum it up, minus the different optimum growth strategies at the beggining, it should be like any other game out there.

Another point, I'm definately going to have at least 2 workers per a city at all times.

 

[haphazard1]

Interesting. There's potential in a city-abandonment strategy, perhaps.

Hadn't considered this idea. Hmmm....

I'm wondering if there's going to be copper nearby. It seems scarce in my test maps. Lots more iron. The maps look wonderfully varied. It should be fun. There was one civ that could have placed its second city to get 6 gold hills and 6 flood plains. I should have grabbed a screenie of that.

I agree that copper seems to be quite rare. I had a couple test maps (Small size) which had only 1 copper on the entire map! Iron was usually plentiful, though -- seemed about 1.5 per civ.

I got one of those gold/flood plain cities -- had four of each. Commerce, commerce, commerce!

No forest chops. Armies of jungle-clearing workers. Early, cheap courthouses. With careful expansion a nice civ might arise.

I think the early, cheap courthouses are going to be needed. No city razing is going to make conquest and dom wins VERY tough to achieve without imploding your economy. I dropped myself into the red at 0% science in a couple test games.

 

[hellwitch]

Humm with so many grassland a space can be achieved really fast. Imo it will be possible to have a space before 1650.

About that conquest is harder than domination that is just not true. The only difference is that you will need Feodalism to be able to vasalize. In fact in all my non vanila conquests i vasalize most of the AI's for faster win. In BtS its even better because the control of your vasals is better and you can liberate some of their cities which will not only cut off your maintenance but it will improve your relations too(that could enable tech trading with them you know).

 

[MacBalt]

About that conquest is harder than domination that is just not true. The only difference is that you will need Feodalism to be able to vasalize. In fact in all my non vanila conquests i vasalize most of the AI's for faster win. In BtS its even better because the control of your vasals is better and you can liberate some of their cities which will not only cut off your maintenance but it will improve your relations too(that could enable tech trading with them you know).

I learned this the hard way last time around and second the point now. Thanks hellwitch. This is an important and very usable insight.

 

[MarkM]

you can liberate some of their cities which will not only cut off your maintenance but it will improve your relations too(that could enable tech trading with them you know).

Hmmm. So you are saying that you need to take enough of their cities to vassalize them, then once they are your vassal, gift them back the cities you just took? Doesn't that increase in pop and land give them a chance to just break free of their vassalage to you?

I assume when you say liberate you mean gift, and not create a brand new colony (among other things, that would do nothing to improve your relations with them). And AFAIK creating a colony is not an option unless they are on a separate landmass, so it's not even an option on rainforest map, no?

And to clarify, what I said when conquest would be harder than usual is that losing the ability to raze will force you to 1) have to have more units (for rear guard) and 2) even if you can give them back after vassalization, you are still stuck with supporting them until you've nearly finished the AI off. Do you disagree with both of those points?

 

[Priah]

Hmmm. So you are saying that you need to take enough of their cities to vassalize them, then once they are your vassal, gift them back the cities you just took? Doesn't that increase in pop and land give them a chance to just break free of their vassalage to you?

I assume when you say liberate you mean gift, and not create a brand new colony (among other things, that would do nothing to improve your relations with them). And AFAIK creating a colony is not an option unless they are on a separate landmass, so it's not even an option on rainforest map, no?

And to clarify, what I said when conquest would be harder than usual is that losing the ability to raze will force you to 1) have to have more units (for rear guard) and 2) even if you can give them back after vassalization, you are still stuck with supporting them until you've nearly finished the AI off. Do you disagree with both of those points?

No it wont always give them enough land or pop or whatever, you dont have to gift back every city. I just generally gift back the ones I don't want/any that won't mess up the cultural borders of the other. Not to mention, another strategy is that you dont necessarily have to gift them back to the civ you just conquered, you can gift them to another civ bordering that city, which means that culture invading your other conquered cities wont even be an issue, this is my favorite.

 

[siggboy]

This is some juicy start: Pigs + Irrigateable Rice + SILVER. Monarch difficulty in combination with this has Civil Service Slingshot written all over it (at least for me).

10 AIs (!) on the map, and it doesn't specify the map size (probably Standard, since it's only normal speed). This map is going to be crowded. So either REX very quickly or take out a neighbour early. Unfortunately both doesn't really play along with the CS slingshot strategy ;-).

Oh well, I hate early wars anyway. I guess I'm going to try to grab the tech lead with this OP slingshot and fight a medieval war.

The capital is going to be a cottage monster, making early Bureaucracy even more powerful.

I hope I don't mess this up, as I'm used to reloading after glitches .

 

[Htadus]

I am going for a few early wars. So I hope to pull off construction from the Oracle so my Vultures will have backup. I know....I know... I am guessing we will find copper nearby. But either case archers and cats proabably can take cities too. Since I have yet to score over 100k points, this will be a domination or conquest type of a game. I might even use slavary in BTS for a change.