News: COTM55 Pre-Game Discussion

[templar_x]

i see, you already took that remark into account. i wondered how civsteve would solve this with a settler.

any corruption would kill the factory in sparta then, though.

if sparta stays the capital, i´d sell the rax right away. it wouldn´t be of any use for a very long time.

 

[Schalke 04]

Hm, even if there was wheat under the fog, it would not be enough to establish a four turner in Athens, due to the lack of shields. I really hate these sandy maps

But enough shots in the darkness. We will see what's going on when we can bust the fog

 

[AutomatedTeller]

and such a 6-turner in sparta would take a LONG time to set up...

 

[templar_x]

i understand, it´s quite the same but with one mined desert instead of a hill. eliminates the 1 food wasted in my scheme above and is a little bit faster to build up .... but still takes very many worker turns.
thanks for drawing this up.

@ templar: OK, here we go:

you need:
1 mined oasis (o)
1 mined desert
4 irrigated floodplains (fp)
2 mined hills (h)

Size 5:
+4f +5s (3fp; 1h; 1o)
+4f +5s (3fp; 1h; 1o)
+2f +7s (2fp; 2h; 1o) +2s (mined desert)
Size 6:
+5f +5s (4fp; 1h; 1o)
+5f +5s (4fp; 1h; 1o) +2s (mined desert)

total shields: 31

I think this would work, but it's definitely tough in terms of tile improvement. MM is manageable though.

Athens as a capital and wheat under the fog would change everything of course. Btw: where is the save

 

[civ_steve]

It looks like I can't place a city on the map AND have you start off with a settler to establish your capital. The city on the map becomes your capital by default. So which is more desirable:

1.) As shown, Sparta is your capital, you get the free barracks (Open and Conquest class), and you can found Athens as a 2nd city wherever you wish.

2.) Athens is founded where the settler is and is your capital, and you get Sparta with the free barracks (Open and Conquest class), so you lose the freedom of choosing your capital site.

3.) You get two settlers, 1 as shown and 1 at the Sparta site. Ultimate flexibility for city locations and choice of capital location, but loses the free barracks.

I'm tempted to go with 3 and drop the barracks all together. Turns out I'd have to up the Gold for Open and Conquest to pay for it until you get your economy running.

By the way, the 5 defenders at the chokepoint count for units to support, so the 2nd city is almost necessary to keep the support costs down. I also took away the ability to disband them so there's no way to avoid that cost.

 

[Yilar]

Make the 5 defenders free of unit support and go with option 1, but change the name of Sparta to Athens

 

[AutomatedTeller]

any or all are fine.

 

[eldar]

I like Option 3 best. The free barracks is nice but as was suggested, it's just an extra -1gpt to start with and we'd rather have the 10 extra gold from selling it.

The 5 defenders can be made "slaves" can't they? If so that would be helpful.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

well, we'll be having barbarians pretty fast, so veteran units might not be a bad thing. Of course, Hoplites are pretty tough...

 

[donsig]

I like option 3. This game sounds like fun.

 

[Spoonwood]

Option 3. Other than barbarians, the barracks might not come as all too necessary (desireable) for a space or diplo game. I have a bunch of thoughts already... after Henry and Edward.

 

[Rustwork]

looking under the fog i think we have incense on the floodplain.

if the settler was to be our capitol, then it would have been the city to get culture and to grow. growing would allow us to use the incense (?) and we could use both fish. the fish gives the most gold without improvement. i'd like that to be our capitol.

if we let the other city simply grow we would have many specialists, bypassing the corruption. i've read we don't want to use specialists early in a game. could this be an exception?

if the barracks would make managing the early game too difficult then we shouldn't have it. if not having it would make out game too difficult then allow it to be affordable and i prefer option 2. otherwise i prefer option 3. option 1 i think is the worst choice for us.

if we go with option 3 i will probably settle both in place and make the southern city the capitol.

 

[PaperBeetle]

I'm pretty sure that flood plain and incense is not a valid combination (at least not without editorial tweaking). If we are still talking about that tile 2NE of the settler, I suspect that the artefact in the fog is nothing more interesting than one of the green pips denoting food (in the same configuration as the pips on the tile 1NE of the settler).
It would be interesting to know if the water was fresh. 3fpt fish would save some time irrigating floods, and would reduce the risk of disease that always blights this kind of start.

I wonder what happens if we dow the AI on the other side of the choke as soon as we meet them. Will they write us off as unreachable, or will they suicide their starting units trying to take down the blockade? If they go for the latter option, we have a good leader-farming opportunity.

 

[Spoonwood]

Alright,

I don't see the point of a granary for this sort of start. Floodplains don't make for reliable growth, the granary will take really too long to build, and it comes as very difficult to get production up all that high, so I think it better to go granary-less and just pump out settlers sooner. Anticipate population losses from disease at some point. On top of this, we've got Barbie around and I don't think we want to deal with her blonde behavior for very long. On this, do we want cheap warriors to help with her, or hoplites? I'd usually think warriors over spears, but I think with Greece fewer hoplites instead of more warriors comes as the better choice. Now that's two opinions of mine.

With these two tribes always at war I forsee the game going different directions:
1. Those four AIs remain constantally at war, so we only have three opponents in the tech race. This makes things not complicated at all, in my opinion, tech-wise and perhaps it means the tech pace might even bore some of us who like fast research Deity or Demi-god games... but I don't think this all too likely really.

2. Fairly early on you'll see two AIs get exterminated (two of the ones permanently at war). After all, it's Sid and the AIs can kill each other really quick once they get any sort of advantage at this level (or so the Sid Vicious thread suggests, as well as my watching of warring AIs at lower levels). This implies that we end up with 3 regular tribes and 2 monstrous AIs fairly early on I'll guess (note the word guess). If so, this implies we'll have a faster tech pace than a normal Sid continents game. In that case, hold onto your hats, especially if you think about those AIs that early on absorbed their warring opponents then attacking trading with the other AIs around for a bit and possibly then even quickly crushing them to a pulp soon after that. A 100k loss could then become a MAJOR problem. Even if only one of the AIs does this fairly early on, I think we could still have a superpower AI really quickly. Maybe I don't know this game as I think I do, but I think the constant warring condition will really make things tougher on us in the long run, since I foresee at lease one quick extermination happening. Only play-testing will tell though.

2 cities from the get-go, so max on Writing sounds about right, I'd think.

The AIs will pop that hut by the guerrilas and you'll get some warrior to attack the guerilla.

Anyone who doesn't get to Philosophy first will be forced to drink Hemlock with Sophists.

 

[Spoonwood]

Ignas,

I'm up for going Space or Diplo, but I'd rather go Open than Predator.

 

[civ_steve]

I went with option 3 so you can choose where you want the capital, and added a Worker to the Open and Conquest saves. Sparta with a free barracks was a fun idea, but not really that helpful. Original picture with Sparta is still shown so that everybody can see all the spaces originally revealed, but you really do get a 2nd settler. Oh yes, the immobile defenders at the chokepoint do NOT count towards your unit count.

Saves are up - have fun!

 

[Kulko]

And now? Whole new problems to solve.

Sparta as Capital looks like the better idea now, unless Athens is on a lake?

Would you move any settler?

 

[Spoonwood]

I think Sparta since it has the oasis nearby. I wouldn't move any settler, but moving to chop the forest at least deserves a second thought.

 

[Peebo]

Well, I've never played a Game of the Month before, or a level above regent, but maybe I'll give this a shot and see how quickly I get destroyed

 

[Megalou]

How is that tough? I mean apart from being SID?

As i have never played that level before, can somebody give me some hints.

- Is a Lit Monopoly possible at least?

If I remember correctly, in randomly generated SID games I was utterly unable to build the Great Library or even get a monopoly on literature. I may be wrong about lit, because what I was experimenting with was solely the building of the GL, but the collecting of beakers for literature used to take roughly as long as the GL prebuild. I don't recall if I had free alphabet, but it would be strange if I hadn't.

PS. I did not accept any random map. DS.