News: WOTM-02 Pre-Game Discussion

[Gyathaar]

WOTM 02: Korea

Game settings:
Civilization: Korea (Leader: Wang Kon; Traits: Financial & Protective)
Rivals: 6
Difficulty: Prince
Map: Fractal
Mapsize: Standard, cylindrical
Climate: Rocky
Water level: Low
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: epic
Victory Conditions: all enabled
Other settings: Raging barbarians, no goodie huts


Wang Kon:
Wang Kon is Financial and Protective; starting with mysticism and mining. Financial allows +1 commerce on any tile producing 2 or more. Protective is a new trait in warlords. It gives free City Garrison I and Drill I promotions to archery and gunpowder units, and double production bonus when building walls and castles.

Unique unit: Hwacha
The Hwacha replaces the catapult. The difference between a normal catapult and the Hwacha is that the Hwacha gets a +50% bonus against melee units.

Unique building: Seowon
The seowon replaces the normal university building, and while a university gives +25% science, the seowon instead gives +35%

The starting screenshot is here (Click for larger version)

It is unclear from the picture, but the tile the warrior is standing on is a hill/plains, while the other 3 tiles with beavers on are all hill/plains/forest

The picture is temporary an attachment untill I can get it replaced with a picture in a proper place.

Adventurer Class bonuses:

1. Start with two archers for defence.
2. Start with knowledge of hunting.

Challenger Class Equalisers:

1. Start without the knowledge of Mystisism

 

[MikeH]

No shortage of fur coats then. I'll probably settle in place and go for Hinduism, before chopping a setttler or two.

 

[ainwood]

high food, high production, high happiness, high health, high commerce.

What's the catch?

Am looking forward to this. I think I'll probably settle in place, although I'll move the warrior northwards first.

 

[MikeH]

high food, high production, high happiness, high health, high commerce.

What's the catch?

They must have heard that it's my birthday on the 15th .

I fear you are right though. we're probably alpne on a small continent or something.

 

[Jastrow]

high food, high production, high happiness, high health, high commerce.

What's the catch?

My thoughts exactly. The starting position looks like this should be an absolute cakewalk, so there must be a "special surprise" for us down the line. I wonder what it could be... Should be fun!

 

[drkodos]

My thoughts exactly. The starting position looks like this should be an absolute cakewalk, so there must be a "special surprise" for us down the line. I wonder what it could be... Should be fun!

I'm not loving the start site.

I'm not seeing the high food mentioned, unless you folks are talking about eating those beavers. I'm generally leary of city sites with a superfluous amount of esoteric commodities, but selling beaver has built up more than one kingdom in its day and it looks like it will once again be the world's oldest profession.

 

[ShannonCT]

I'm not loving the start site.

I'm not seeing the high food mentioned, unless you folks are talking about eating those beavers. I'm generally leary of city sites with a superfluous amount of esoteric commodities, but selling beaver has built up more than one kingdom in its day and it looks like it will once again be the world's oldest profession.

Irrigated corn, pastured sheep, 3 grassland farms, lake with lighthouse... 14 surplus food I believe. That's enough to work all 6 plains hills, health and happiness permitting. With 8 more food neutral tiles, you can get all 20 tiles up and running in time to make a difference. Bureaucracy is looking really nice.

I guess the catch is that Protective is pretty useless.

 

[AU_Armageddon]

I imagine a catch too. It doesn't get much better a start.

If you want practice, here's a WotM2 practice map that has a catch...

(HoF mod not built in)

 

[Shillen]

Well starts near tundra usually see 3 times as many barbarians as starts not near tundra, and the raging barbs setting makes that even worse. I doubt we'd be on a tiny island by ourselves because that would just nullify the raging barbs setting. Maybe we're on a really large, but mostly tundra, island by ourselves.

Anyway I'll likely settle in place. Avoiding Bronze Working probably isn't a good idea on this map with all those forested hills/beavers and the high food start. Since we need hunting to connect the furs anyway, it might not hurt too badly to research archery, but since this is warlords (and since we have sheep) I'll probably research AH first for the +50% attack vs axemen chariots, assuming there are any horses. I'll research BW after AH.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

high food, high production, high happiness, high health, high commerce.

What's the catch?

Am looking forward to this. I think I'll probably settle in place, although I'll move the warrior northwards first.

I did to do a big double take when I saw you post that, until I looked back up and saw that it was Gyathaar, not you, who had posted the game announcement.

How does it feel to be playing a G(W)OTM, instead of sitting back reading all our speculation about what you've devised?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I'd quite like to go for a cultural victory, but one slight catch for that is the capital doesn't look like a very good culture city - not a lot of possibility of cottaging much. OTOH being protective is great if you want a peaceful (eg. cultural) strategy and so aren't planning too many wars.

From the POV of civil service, the capital looks good in the medium term - lots of possibility for a reasonable amount of gold soonish, but the lack of cottageable tiles will hurt in the long run. Still, this location should allow an early-ish science lead.

Oh, and it looks a pretty fair bet that there'll be no iron/horses/copper in the capital's radius, coz - like - there's almost no other unresourced squares they could go on

I agree with Ainwood and Shillen about settling in place - there doesn't seem to be much reason to move the settler. I will feel a bit miffed off though if I do that and it turns out there's fish/clam/crabs to the East.

 

[EEO]

high food, high production, high happiness, high health, high commerce.

What's the catch?

Even more ... With raging barbs we have also a free upgrade to 10 xp (maybe less in Warlords) for military units .
Seriously, I think 'raging barbs' is the catch. Provided there is much room around the starting position, it will really slow us down.
Generally, I consider Protective trait almost useless. But in this case, maybe it is appropriate.

With fractal map, all distributions of continents are possible. Knowing it early will be determining for an efficient strategy. Obviously, low sea level and rocky climate will make conquest/domination harder.

Welcome among the players ainwood.
For me, it is amazing because I only know you as GOTM Staff member. Are you playing for score, fastest finish or something else ?

 

[EEO]

I'll probably research AH first for the +50% attack vs axemen chariots, assuming there are any horses. I'll research BW after AH.

It is even +100% in Warlords (attack only).

 

[Redbad]

Maybe settling 1 nw
It swaps 5 watertiles for (cottageble?) landtiles. And we can us the 2 hammer/3 commerce beaver right away.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Since forests obscure the view from hills, and the square 2N of the warrior looks to be a forest, I'm guessing it's best to move the warrior NE rather than N, to get the maximum additional visible land.

 

[cas]

Maybe settling 1 nw
It swaps 5 watertiles for (cottageble?) landtiles. And we can us the 2 hammer/3 commerce beaver right away.

I was thinking 1W which would give 4 more cottageble river tiles and still have access to the sea. settling 1W loses 1 forest and is on top of a beaver...but I consider that an ok trade-off.

cas

edit: can you cottage tundra ? I don't think I've ever tried...

 

[andybrown65]

Would it be a good idea to get the great wall ASAP, I'd've thought that you could then leave most of your cities unguarded as the AI will be defending whilst you can build infrastructure - you could pop out from the Cultural boundaries for promos. Seems like it should be a good race, and I hardly ever bulid the great wall as the Barbs tend to go early if they're not set to raging.

 

[Snetsinger]

I think that I will settle in place, and again try for a Military victory, just to try and improve my war skills. Great wall will probably get a very high priority because it basically nulls any barb problems. That depends of course on what the land mass is like, If it can easily be fog busted or settled quickly I'll skip out on the great wall and go for quick expansion.

 

[pholkhero]

Hey, if the island has enough room for 6 cities, that's fine for me. I plan on going for 4 or 5 or more religions and heading for Cultural. Protective gives you less military on defense, and so you can either have more offense OR a higher Science slider ~

 

[mike p]

Settle in place, agriculture, hunting, archery, masonry, then wheel if we need the happy or AH depending.

build worker (farm, camp, camp, camp) a few warriors, possibly an archer or 2 or 3 and then the Great Wall. (which also pre builds the Great Library using the ensuing Great Engineer). After that start expanding.

Won't worry about bronze working for a while. I'd rather work the 3 hammer camps than a mine anyway.

May even go Challenger on this one, chasing religions would hurt my strategy, though losing a second prereq towards masonry might cost a few turns towards the Great Wall.