News: GOTM 18 Pre-Game Discussion

[ainwood]

GOTM 18: Genghis Khan

[img=right]http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/leaders/leaders0008.jpg[/img]

We keep the difficulty (nominally) the same this month....

This game MUST be played in patch version 1.61. We will NOT accept any games played under any other patch versions, and you can't play it in warlords!

Further, it MUST be played using HOF mod version 1.61.011.




Game settings:
Civilization: Mongols (Leader: Genghis Khan; Traits: Aggressive, Expansive)
Rivals: 6
Difficulty: Monarch
Map: Continents
Mapsize: Standard
Climate: Tropical
Water level: High
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
Options: <none>
Victory Conditions: all enabled

Genghis Khan:
Genghis Khan is Aggressive and Expansive; starting with Hunting and The Wheel. Aggressive allows a free combat 1 promotion for melee & gunpowder units, and double production speed of barracks and drydocks. Expansive provides +3 health per city, as well as double production speed of granaries & Harbors.

Unique unit: Keshik:
The Keshik replaces the standard horse archer. The stats remain the same (strength 6, moves 2, cost 50), but it is the abilities that are the key difference. Aside from the 50&#37; bonus against cataults (which both the keshik & horse archer receive), the keshik doesn't gain immunity to first strikes. It does, however, gain a first strike of its own. The keshik also ignores terrain costs, making it very useful in jungles & hills. Neither the keshik nor the horse archer receive defensive bonuses.


The starting screenshot is here (click for a bigger version!)


Adventurer Class bonuses:

1. Player starts with knowledge of fishing and mining.
2. The hill to the south-east of the settler has gold.

Challenger Class Equalisers:

1. Cattle shown in starting location are removed.

 

[BLubmuz]

Nice that "nominal" difficulty... no horses perhaps?

anyway at normal speed the keshiks become obsolete too fast.

Not a wonderful start, let's see.

 

[ccccc]

Everyone else's settlers happen to start on top of copper?

 

[Capt Buttkick]

My initial thought was to move settler SE. Start with AH to work cattle and reveal horses?

 

[Mighty Dwaarf]

My initial thought was to move settler SE

Mine too....but the longer I look and think about it I'm not so sure??

A) seeing a bit of what looks like jungle peeping out of our northern most view makes me wonder if settling 1SE will limit us to 1 city on/near the coast rather than two that could be fitted by settling by the river and/or plains hill south of cattle??
B) If Ainwood has a gold bonus there for adventurer class, does this suggest that it is not the optimal site to settle??

Nice that "nominal" difficulty...

I think Ainwood may have used the word "nominal" purely due to the criticism (unwarranted IMO) from some people in WOTM8 in regards to other civs starting positions and the alleged difficulty setting for that WOTM.

 

[Thalatta]

I'm inclined to think that the best city site is east, getting the three plains hills (15 hammers/turn and 3 food/turn at size 6 with a lighthouse) and picking up two more grassland forests to chop and cottage. I wonder if the stray tile across the water has copper/horses/iron, but it's close enough that it shouldn't be a problem to get a settler over there.

The advantage of the plains hill to the southeast is alluring, though. It looks like there is at least one hill, maybe two to the south, so moving the scout down to check it out first is probably prudent, whether or not the gold on adventurer is supposed to be a deterrent.

 

[ainwood]

B) If Ainwood has a gold bonus there for adventurer class, does this suggest that it is not the optimal site to settle??

I'm not that clever

That is simply to give the adventurer class people a happiness bonus up-front, and a research bonus that they can leverage throughout the game.

 

[Snetsinger]

My first move will be dependent on where i want to move the scout. I'm tempted to move to the forest east of the cows to see what's to the south or jogging up to the plains hill in north. I won't be settling in place, I'll atleast move one east to get the plains hill to the north rather then the plains accross the water

 

[Capt Buttkick]

My first post was made in a rush so here's another spear of the moment thought: move scouts to the northern plains hill before deciding where to settle?

 

[Vynd]

The spot 1 east of the Settler looks much better than where it currently is. And personally I'd prefer it to the plain hill to the SE, at least in terms of long term potential.

I think I'll use the Scout to see what's available to the south, and unless there are more resources available from the SE hill I'll settle one East. The other possibility would be to look to the north with the Scout, but I think odds of there being a better spot to settle up there than the start location aren't that great since you'd be losing the Cows for sure and probably the Fish.

I'd be surprised if Keshiks are much of a factor on this map. But Genghis gets some nice bonuses from his traits, including some really useful buildings for cheap.

 

[AgedOne]

I'm struck by the number of similarities between this game and WOTM08.
(But I've edited this now to avoid any spoiler info that people wouldn't have had before starting WOTM08)

Both are standard sized, continental maps with high sea-level; We have 6 rivals. We are an expansionist civilization. The game speed is normal.

Some of the strategies that were applicable to WOTM08 would look to be good here, too.

On a continental map, we might expect 2 or 3 rivals.
The strategy I'd be looking at is to scope out the continent as fast as humanly possible, find out what our first weapons are going to be, and hit the first rival hard and early. Then work out what the second weapon-set needs to be, and use that on the second rival. Aim to own that continent by about 500AD.
In the meantime, we want to research Optics and get out there and find the other continent before they find us.

There are some differences between the two games, of course.

• The difficulty is 2 levels harder - and Monarch is significantly tougher than Noble. No mistakes, then!
• The map is tropical rather than arid: different resources & different terrain for travelling through. Those Keshiks will be in their element, for the window of time that they are useful. Surely we must have horses nearby? (Though of course it might be arranged that we have to fight for them)
• We are Aggressive rather than Organised, so smacking the neighbours has been given a bit of a lift
• No raging barbarans. Phew!
• Standard CIV and not Warlords. So no vassals, no unique buildings, etc.

So all-in-all I'm thinking of getting out the battle-plan that I already have in my pocket ready.

 

[Harbourboy]

The main thing I have realised about these games of the month is that reconnaissance is essential because you can't rely on a normal randomly balanced map.

 

[MarkM]

I think I''l go SE-SW with the scout to see what's down further south. based on that I'll decide whether to go E or SE with the settler. I don't see the point of going north with the scout to the hill on the other side of the lake, I find it hard to imagine I'll find anything that will make me want to lose the cows (or the fish). The wine is kinda an afterthought in the whole decision process.

 

[Thrallia]

I'm apparently going a different direction than everyone else is...

In Vanilla, resources still point toward the equator, and the fact that I see coastline at the bottom right of the screenshot makes me think we are at the S end of the continent.

So, my Scout will head NW>NE to the northern plains hill, and my settler will either go 1E(because Vynd is right, the spot 1E is worth an extra turn), or north, depending on whether I find anything worth the trip up north.

 

[Erkon]

The primary candidate tile for the first city is the plains/hill SE. The extra hammer will shave off a few turns on the initial worker, and these turns will be hard/impossible to catch up later in the game. The scout will first move to the hill 2N to challenge the primary candidate. There is ofcourse a risk that bronze is located on the hill that I will settle, but thats a risk I'm willing to take.

When I choose my settling site, I look for the best tile that will get me a settler/worker pair as quick as possible. I will ignore a long term optimal site if the short term effects are suffering.

I'll start researching animal husbandry.

 

[Jastrow]

The primary candidate tile for the first city is the plains/hill SE...There is ofcourse a risk that bronze is located on the hill that I will settle, but thats a risk I'm willing to take.

Actually, in this case there is no chance of that... The Adventurer bonus includes gold on that hill. Since you cant have both gold and copper, obviously there cannot be copper there (and replacing copper with gold would NOT make it an easier start for adventurer so that cane be what happened). So, the SE hill must be resourseless.

 

[kuukkeli]

The spot 1 east of the Settler looks much better than where it currently is. And personally I'd prefer it to the plain hill to the SE, at least in terms of long term potential.

I assume this pretty much means that 1E is obvious place to settle on the Adventurer Class? At least I don't see better options unless scouting the north reveals something absolutely crazy.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Actually, in this case there is no chance of that... The Adventurer bonus includes gold on that hill. Since you cant have both gold and copper, obviously there cannot be copper there (and replacing copper with gold would NOT make it an easier start for adventurer so that cane be what happened). So, the SE hill must be resourseless.

Gold and copper won't ever occur together on a game-generated map, but I think you can put them in the same spot if you're manually editing the map (which, obviously, Ainwood has done). However, I agree with you to the extent that it seems pretty unlikely Ainwood would do something like that.

 

[Mighty Dwaarf]

Gold and copper won't ever occur together on a game-generated map, but I think you can put them in the same spot if you're manually editing the map (which, obviously, Ainwood has done). However, I agree with you to the extent that it seems pretty unlikely Ainwood would do something like that.

He did however put pigs on mountains a few warlord games back, so anything could be possible!!!

 

[AgedOne]

Gold and copper won't ever occur together on a game-generated map, but I think you can put them in the same spot if you're manually editing the map (which, obviously, Ainwood has done). However, I agree with you to the extent that it seems pretty unlikely Ainwood would do something like that.

Just looking at WorldBuilder files, and tried to set a tile with 2 bonus resources on it. I half expected it to crash the game when I started it (it's quite easy to do that with bad editing changes) - but it actually ignored one of the resources and only used the one I named second.

I hate to be a wet blanket - but I don't think it can actually be done.

(Of course, you can put resources on terrain types that they would never normally be found on:
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