News: GOTM 11 Pre-Game Discussion

[Pious_Pete]

I´ve played four different test starts, all with crabs etc in the start location i.e. they are vaguely like our start.

I find that you don´t get overwhelmed by barbs immediately. 35 turns or so is enough time to get your defenses in order...

...provided that you don´t get sidetracked. If you do get sidetracked and don´t defend properly, the barbs come in such numbers from all directions that you easily get overwhelmed.

I´m not entirely convinced about relying on archers for defense. Early on the game you´ll be fighting barbs one on one. Archer vs your archer on a hill/forest is an advantage; but you are going to lose sooner rather than later, especially if the barbs come in twos (they do). It seems too risky to me.

I´m going to go for bronzeworking a.s.a.p to see where the copper is. In the test games I found that you could get the bronze connected up provided you chopped a settler.

The axemen had little difficulty holding the barbs at bay.

 

[Sarek]

Yikes...
Played out the start attached earlier in this thread. Smoked the game! I only hope that the start is that easy (and I normally play Prince level), but don't expect it to be..................

 

[Cabledawg]

I was the guy who posted that start. I added copper and iron on the island....prolly not the best test game.

 

[Shillen]

I've had no trouble at all defending against barbs with archers. An archer on a forested hill against another archer is almost impossible to lose. If there are 2 barbs then put 2 archers on the tile. Archers are cheaper to build than axemen and you don't need a second city in a likely poor location to build them. Maybe ainwood stuck copper in our radius, but if that's the case, then going bronze working early is blind luck, and no indication that it was the correct choice to make. Researching bronze working means a lot of barbarian axes. You're better off defending with an archer against another archer than an axeman against an axeman. Each time once I get around to researching bronze working as soon as I do about 3 axemen show up on the screen within 3 turns where it had been nothing but warriors/archers previously. With my luck, I'm assuming there's no copper anywhere near and that researching bronzeworking early is akin to suicide. I'm not risking it.

 

[Jar Jar Binks]

I made this test load up as close to the screenshot as possible. Very hard to survive past 50 AD, unlike the previous map this is not isolated

 

[ShannonCT]

btw am I correct in thinking that the 1-food yields on the sea tiles indicates they are coast, not fresh water lake, and that therefore it is absolutely certain that if we settle in place, that city will be able to build a lighthouse? (I'd be veeeeery frustrating to find out too late that you can't).

Barring some deceptive hand editting by ainwood, the water we see in the screenshot is a sea and not a large lake. The large lakes for highlands are a bit odd; for a given lake, either all the tiles provide 2 food and 2 gold or all the tiles provide 1 food and 2 gold. But seas distinguish between coastal tiles and ocean tiles.

Edit: I guess the the reason that some "lakes" on large lakes give 1 food is that they are actually counted as seas. But large lakes maps dont have any deep sea tiles as in the screenshot, as far as I've seen. So count on being able to build the lighthouse and Colossus.

 

[malekithe]

Barring some deceptive hand editting by ainwood, the water we see in the screenshot is a sea and not a large lake. The large lakes for highlands are a bit odd; for a given lake, either all the tiles provide 2 food or all the tiles provide 1 food. But seas distinguish between coastal tiles and ocean tiles.

Any body of water in the game that is 10 tiles or greater in size can not be fresh water. That is why you see the difference on large lakes maps. Some "lakes" are less than 10 tiles, so they get to all be fresh water tiles. Others are 10 tiles or bigger, so they get to be coast tiles.

 

[redemption438]

The Navy Seal challenge

If you want to make sure the fun UU plays a role, here's a challenging victory condition:

Win the game by conquest, BUT without attacking any AI until you have Navy Seals...

So you can:
-fight barbarians all you like
-attack AI units defensively if someone declares war on you
-bribe AIs to fight each other

But you can't attack AIs in their territory or pillage them until you have your first Navy Seal. Then you can rampage.

I might try this for the heck of it. And I might lose.

 

[JerichoHill]

I think thats suicide, but good luck.

Kudos for another test map, I'll try it out

 

[Khalid]

Just looking into my crystal ball.

We complained about the great starts we had on the last 2 GOTMs and people said, their like more winning on lower difficulties with chalenging starts than on higher difficulties with lots of bonuses. GOTM 10 was extreme on this.

So I think this one would be an opposite. I would bet we don't have copper near, maybe iron somewhere. And I think we are on a lonely island. We shouln't have a problem defending the island and staying alive. But the challenge is: are we able to conquer more land from barbs with no resources? And can we hold it?

That's my view of the game so far. Looking forward to it.

 

[Shillen]

Based on the first test game posted on this thread...I would say an island makes the game infinitely easier than a non-island start because of the raging barbs setting. He's definitely done us a favor by putting the western border next to us and the coast is helpful as well. The difference between a start with land in all directions and a boxed in start like this GOTM from my few test games is remarkable. So while I do think ainwood is attempting to make a more difficult game, he probably didn't want to just throw us to the wolves. If he put us in a wide open area with no AI's nearby and no borders to block incoming barbs we'd probably have a lot of pissed off people in the spoiler threads who didn't properly anticipate the raging barbarians setting. Am I correct in assuming this is the first GOTM to use raging barbarians? I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't give us copper but gave iron in workable range. But then I wouldn't be surprised if he gave us both copper and iron in workable range either. I'm not a mind reader.

 

[ShannonCT]

Yeah, an island start would be too easy ... no threat from the barbs or AIs to your starting cities. And since crossing the sea with galleys is possible, it wouldn't cause much delay to a conquest or domination strategy.

SGOTM2 has raging barbs, but this is the first for GOTMs. Every team that has posted a SGOTM2 spoiler had copper within 4-5 tiles of their first settled city and had iron in the fat cross. Since ainwood created this game after playing the early part of SGOTM2, he might be taking ideas from there.

 

[Dagnabit]

You are definitely correct in that a city built 2E will have less land squares to work and less production.

That said, I don't agree with moving 2E at all for a couple reasons. First, as you said settling in place is an unbelievably nice location. Two clams is plenty of food to work all 4 grassland hills with mines on them and you get at least 9 different river tiles (at least 5 of which are flat grassland for cottages). The capital can be both a great research city and a great production city right away if founded in place.

I only count 3 grassland hills in the fat cross what am I missing? I do think settling inplace will make a reasonably good research city. I am inclined to send warrior west along coast and 1st worker a couple turns to NE in search of second city location before returning to work hills.

 

[Shillen]

I only count 3 grassland hills in the fat cross what am I missing?

Sorry, there were 4 in the first test game that was posted in this thread which mixed me up. It's still a good production city, though.

edit: Changed "great" to "good".

 

[DaviddesJ]

Barbarians can show up on the map at turn 31. They can only show up in the fog, so it would be a minimum of 4 more turns before they could attack your capital. But that could mean trouble if you're planning for your first defender at turn 39-41. You could always pull back your original warrior to be safe.

Will they enter your territory, this early? Normally they won't. But maybe they do, when "raging barbarians" is on.

 

[DaviddesJ]

If you want to make sure the fun UU plays a role, here's a challenging victory condition:
Win the game by conquest, BUT without attacking any AI until you have Navy Seals...

I don't see how this is challenging, at all. By the time you get to Navy Seals, you'll be WAY ahead of the AIs. Conquering them all, quickly, would be a piece of cake.

 

[ShannonCT]

Will they enter your territory, this early? Normally they won't. But maybe they do, when "raging barbarians" is on.

With raging Barbarians, they will enter your territory on turn 1, if they exist. Of course they wont start spawning from the fog until sometime after turn 30, but if you popped some from a hut, or if you try putting them on the map in WorldBuilder, they will go for you right away.

 

[Conquistador 63]

... they will go for you right away.

From my few test games (random starts, not the saves available here), not 100% true, but again not far from it. Annoying pattern I found out, when they do show up, they can, at times, simply walk past your fog-busting stationed troops outside your borders, not attacking them but instead going to your city area to pillage or attack city.
So, besides having to clear fog, you may need to "garrison" choke points, and these can be plentiful (and useful) depending on mountain range patterns.

 

[Markus5]

I found out out aggressive the AIs were in my test game. I built a financially growing civ and was massing an army to invade Egypt. Freddy went from happy->cautious->angry in just a couple of turns. His attack was quite affective. So, a cautionary note, appease your neighbors until you have sufficient troops.

 

[DaveMcW]

Will the save support HOF Mod 1.61.008?