News: GOTM 22 Pre-Game Discussion

[LowtherCastle]

Some initial thoughts, not having tried any test maps:

1. Since this is vanilla, we know we're somewhere in the southern half. So if you're worried about getting your capital attacked, settle on a hill (d'oh), but you also might want to settle SW to put that river between you and at least the Northern hemisphere if not more.
2. That said, I think I'll probably settle in place so I can use the flood plains from the start. Powerful starting tile with 4 commodity units rather than the usual three. At pop2 work the lake for faster . Research BW. Build a settler after maxing out my growth, build warriors first. (Not sure if this builds warriors too slowly, though, have to test it.)
3. Contrary to the normal start for pangea, the warrior might want to only scout the nearby vicinity for resource tile exposure and not venture too far astray, thus postponing war somewhat. Go S first and hope we're in the deep south. In particular, go SE and explore along that river, because if copper or iron appears along it EDIT: no iron, copper on riversides (d'oh), you won't need a worker to connect it, just a settler on the tile.
4. If we have no one S of us, we settle in that direction (also in contrast to usual pangea strategies), away from the AIs. That handles our fog-busting and perhaps delays early turf wars. Let the AIs come to you with their settlements. That way they tell you who your first target is.
5. Our admins know how hard this game will be. They almost surely designed in some safety features to help us survive the early game. We're probably deep in some corner of the map, pretty far from the first AI or maybe Mansa is the closest AI. Copper or iron will be along side it (EDIT: no iron, copper on riversides)...in the first or second culture expansion... Something like that.

Of course, after a test run, I might change all of this...

 

[Lehm]

As it is Always War I think it doesn´t matter if Mansa is our closest opponent or anyone else. And he will have Skirmishers instead of archers so I prefer somebody else...

 

[Grampaw]

In the practice games, it seemed like the lone AI archers intentionally stayed out of my borders and skirted the edges, unlike the barb archers, which come right at you.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

WOTM11 was also AW. It was Warlord level but it turned out to be a much harder game. The quick game speed and the map itself made warmongering much harder.

Oh don't remind me! I was really enjoying that WOTM - and towards the end it was going really well - except that for some reason that game made my computer crash over and over again, until I finally reached the point of thinking, there's no way my game is ever going to be accepted as an entry, so I left it

 

[Grampaw]

In the practice games when I built a worker first, all my resources were sooner or later pillaged anyway, so I found I had the best survivability researching BW-IW, then Hunting-Archery. I built Warriors until I could build archers, with a settler after I knew where the iron was, and settled on top of the iron. Only then did I build a worker to make improvements and connect the 2 cities. As soon as the iron city was settled, I built a Praetorian, not bothering with barracks until I could take a breather from the onslaught.

I hope that iron will be in the fat cross of the capitol, because then I won't need to build a settler.

Anyway, Always War at Monarch level may end up being like that GOTM where only one winning game was even submitted.

 

[Mad Professor]

In the practice games when I built a worker first, all my resources were sooner or later pillaged anyway

My experience also

, so I found I had the best survivability researching BW-IW, then Hunting-Archery.

When I played it I went archery first so I could survive until I got to IW. If you manage to get to IW and get praets out, what on earth do you need archery for? If you can get praets out without having studied archery to get you there, you don't need archers, I would have thought.

I hope that iron will be in the fat cross of the capitol, because then I won't need to build a settler.

You have touched on one of the really difficult factors of that posted practice game. No metal in the capital fat cross. AS you said above, keeping your economy unplundered was hard. An iron mine you can put a couple of guerilla archers, and a melee promoted praet on and they will slay all comers, but it's just about impossible to protect a five tile road from several stacks of enemy at once, and invariably, the road gets cut, starving your capital of iron. I found that once the hordes starting coming in from every direction in stacks of six at a time that keeping that iron hooked up was impossible, and so my army construction faltered. On the other hand, iron in the capital's fat cross will be a different matter. And being in a position on the map where you have enemies coming from only one wuarter of the compass points would also be a major plus.

 

[Sarek]

Some initial thoughts, not having tried any test maps:

Our admins know how hard this game will be. They almost surely designed in some safety features to help us survive the early game.

Like maybe the Iron popping up underneath us in the cap?!?
That would be sweet...

 

[Shono Mercy]

Your GOTM 21 submission was accepted. The could be no problem, as the HoF Mod version was correct, and it would not have run with version 1.61.

The only issue was with my submission script, which had not then been updated to recognise the 1.74 game software, as it was relying on the save version to define it, and that didn't change. I fixed that around the time of your GOTM 21 submission.

BTW. I deleted your date and victory details, since they are spoilers while GOTM 21 is still open.

Thanks... Now time to run practice games...

 

[Grampaw]

If you manage to get to IW and get praets out, what on earth do you need archery for? If you can get praets out without having studied archery to get you there, you don't need archers, I would have thought.

You have a point, however, in that particular practice game, I did BW-IW first, mostly to see where the iron actually WAS, and to get a city built there, and the first Praetorian started, but I had no worker yet to build the road and connect it to the capitol. Also, the settler wasn't ready when the iron was found, and the capital needed better protection, and so I did Hunting-Archery because I could get an archer built before I could ever get a praetorian built for protection in the capitol.

 

[cabert]

I played (and replayed) a test game (just the settings, didn't try to match the map) and god is this hard!
I had to reload (restart in fact) 4 times until I found a way to just survive.
Worker first led to sudden death, because you cannot expect your initial warrior to safely come back after some exploration.
Or maybe I should not explore at all?
In my test game, I had iron just outside the fat cross, and needed a second city + a mine + a road to get it. I highly suspect that in the GotM there will be iron next to a river in the fat cross.
I think settling on the SW hill, although losing a turn, may be a winning move.

The other thing I had to face was the constant barb attacks.
I found that having one defender, even a very good one, was never enough.

More testing to do if I want to play a reasonnable game...
I may just skip this one, but since I'm skipping WotM12, that may be too much skipping .
ha well, it's not like I was really playing for a super high position

 

[Mad Professor]

I played (and replayed) a test game (just the settings, didn't try to match the map) and god is this hard!

It is isn't it? Position and landmarks will be important. I'm hoping the real game is kinder in that regard than JungleIII's test game that I played.

In my test game, I had iron just outside the fat cross, and needed a second city + a mine + a road to get it. I highly suspect that in the GotM there will be iron next to a river in the fat cross.

I agree this is critical. Keeping several tiles of road from a second city to your capital intact against the hordes is basically impossible.

I played JungleIII's test game to the bitter end just to see how long it would take me to die. I all but wiped out England with early praets before the hordes got too much, then Cyrus took England away from me, then after a while more I finally lost the iron city and from 700AD onwards it was just sitting in Rome killing literally hundreds of units from every civ on earth as they swarmed in big stacks from all points of the compass to Rome, which in that test game was situated right in the middle of the continent. (Ouch). I finally died in 1262AD. Meanwhile one of my preats reached 96 experience points before dying and two others got into the 80's. It was actually several civs with cats and elephants at once that proved the difference... As you can see from the little screen shot, this praet was one of the force that sacked England early on, then changed to defense duties!



I'm looking forward to seeing the wider situation of Rome in the GOTM. Terrain and location on the continent will be very important. I'm still not sure how to win this one, but I think I can survive a long time.

Really, the only way to win has to be to weaken at least five of the other 8 civs critically before they become strong enough to force you back into your shell, but I'm not sure how to pump out enough praets quick enough to do that. It's too far for a praet to walk to get around them all fast enough.

A way might be to send plundering parties around the other civs while you're burning down cities in one civ in order to slow their development, see if you can spot settlers leaving town and kill them before they settle, and so on - just keep them down and barbaric and burn down their cities one by one. It's the only way to keep them weak enough for long enough to knock them over at this game speed.

 

[Jove]

I like the idea of settling on that plains hill. Settle there, pump out a few quick warriors while researching BW, and hopefully there is copper around. If so claim that and chop/whip axes until the start area is defensible. Develop the food, only grow what is defensible, then if we make it to Iron I think there really is a chance.
I think defense will be key in this game. Whether or not we get bronze I'll want early archers fortified in hills and forests hopefully to destroy units on defense. They're cheap extra units in a game where quantity will count as much as quality.
I'll want to settle at least one town in a strategic location so it attracts AI to kill themselves against impossible odds, kind of like a bug zapper. Say on a hill, across a river, behind walls. If something like that keeps them busy enough we might be able to work on picking them off from another direction. Hopefully there's a mountain range or coast or some feature that narrows the number of directions the AI can come from. There's a lot of ways this map can be tweaked to give us some kind of advantage. The trick is to figure out what that is right away and take advantage of it.

 

[wwassme]

In a couple of test games I noticed that the AI stay out of your borders in the early game if you have a warrior in the capitol. If the capitol is undefended, they come for the capitol. They leave your borders if you move a warrior back into the capitol.

Of course at some point (2500 B.C.?) that changes and they keep coming.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Do you think the admins even tried this game before giving us this challenge...

 

[Grampaw]

Do you think the admins even tried this game before giving us this challenge...

No, I think the difficulty of Always War at Monarch was sorely underestimated. The raging barbs may actually help us a little by beating back the AI some, and giving our Praets some experience points, but when the end game comes, our lack of research power on Monarch will bring a very quick and bitter end.

 

[Boyd]

@ Grampaw...

You have just harshed my mellow.

 

[jesusin]

Do you think the admins even tried this game before giving us this challenge...

I am sure they have, they seem to be very professional.

 

[Capt Buttkick]

Keep the warrior in the Capitol, pop out 2-3 more warriors to put on forest hills around the city. Tech wise, I see two options: beeline IW or go Hunting --> Archery --> AH --> BW --> IW
The more I think about it, the more appealing the second option seems.
Unless we're isolated, with 8 rivals, we'll have furious AIs on our door step pretty early, so beeline IW seems too much of a gamble.

1 SW looks good, 'specially for the Arhcery/AH path. I'll be if the iron is NE or 2E of the settlers position, though...
Will have to think long and hard about that one

Whatever I do, I won't build a worker until I'm sure I can defend it.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I am sure they have, they seem to be very professional.

So true.

Okay, what's your prediction on how many people will win this game...?

Always War is a recipe for lunch meat...and you're the baloney...

 

[azzaman333]

I predict 5-10% will fairly comfortably win the game, 15-20% will either just win or just lose, and 70-80% won't even look like winning.

This is of course assuming that we don't start with some sort of highly convinient chokepoint or isolated start.