News: WOTM 06 Pre-Game Discussion

[Gyathaar]

WOTM 06: Ragnar Lodbrok

[img=right]http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/wotm06civ.jpg[/img]

This game MUST be played in Warlords patch version 2.08. We will NOT accept any games played under any other patch versions, and you can't play it in vanilla (plain) Civilization4!

Further, it MUST be played using the latest version of HOF mod for Warlords. This is currently version 2.08.003.



Game settings:
Civilization: Vikings (Leader: Ragnar Lodbrok; Traits: Aggressive & Financial)
Rivals: 6
Difficulty: Monarch
Map: Islands (map specific settings are not revealed)
Mapsize: Standard, Cylindrical
Climate: Cold
Water level: Medium
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: epic
Victory Conditions: All enabled
Other settings: All default


Ragnar:
Ragnar is Aggressive and Financial; starting with Fishing and Hunting. Aggressive gives a free 'Combat I' promotion to all melee and gunpowder units, and gives double production on Barracks and Drydocks. Financial gives an extra on all plots with atleast two .

Unique unit: Berserker (civil service and machinery)
The Berserker replaces the Maceman. The Berserker has the same stats as a maceman, but get +10% when attacking cities and get a free amphibious attack promotion (no penalty when attacking across rivers or from boats).

Unique building: Trading Post (sailing)
The Trading Post replaces the normal lighthouse. It has same effects as the normal lighthouse, but in addition grants a free 'Navigation I' (+1 movement) to all naval units built in the city.

The starting screenshot is here (Click for larger version)


Adventurer Class bonuses:

1. Start with a free workboat

Challenger Class Equalizers:

1. All AIs play at Settler difficulty instead of Noble (They get higher health and happiness caps)

 

[Terminator3k]

This should be a fun one coming off the GOTM 15 Deity challenge.

Looks good Gyathaar!

 

[DaviddesJ]

Anyone want to make a test game with the challenger settings and play it out for a while? I'm interested in how much it helps the AI. Would these challenger settings be comparable to Emperor difficulty?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Interesting. Nice to see we have a unique unit (and unique building) that could actually be very helpful on this map type. Especially so since the unique building is one that we'd probably have wanted to build in almost every city even without the unique bonus. And a civ that starts with fishing!

The challenger equalizer intrigues me. Are the higher and happiness and health caps really the only difference between settler and noble for the AI? If so, then I wonder if challenger could end up being easier rather than harder? My reasoning is that if you're going for fast conquest (and the map layout doesn't hold you up too much) then you may have won before the higher caps have any effect at all. OTOH if you're going for a slow victory, the challenger bonuses will help better players with their trading partners (it's not uncommon for me on monarch to find that towards the end I'm so far ahead in tech that I have no partners I can buy any techs off. If the challenger equalizers offset that, they could make a fast spaceship win easier).

Yet OTOH Gyathaar seems to have an extremely detailed understanding of the game, so it seems highly unlikely he won't have thought of the same things - so perhaps there's some other way challenger makes things harder that he's thought of and I haven't...?

The main way that it looks like challenger may make things harder is if the higher happy/health caps make the AI more reluctant to trade for happy/health resources. But I've never noticed any evidence that the AI takes its caps into account when deciding whether to trade for those anyway, so I'm dubious whether there'd be any impact there.

Short of someone looking at the SDK source code, a lot of this is going to be guesswork though - it'd be very hard to use test maps to test out what difference the challenger equalizer will make in practice.

 

[Gyathaar]

The challenger equalizer intrigues me. Are the higher and happiness and health caps really the only difference between settler and noble for the AI?

No.. there are other factors too..
basically.. there are a certain factors that affects you as the player when you go from settler to noble (instead of boosting AIs).. changing the AIs level will give them all those bonuses that you get on settler difficulty (more free units I think, lower inflation, less civic maintainance, ...)

As for if it is a good or a bad thing for players.. I guess it may depend on your play style

 

[DaviddesJ]

Are the higher and happiness and health caps really the only difference between settler and noble for the AI?

My understanding is that they would get the production and research discounts for Settler, on top of the discounts that they normally get against a human at Monarch.

 

[vixafox]

A reasonable start considering the cold climate setting. Fish, some production, four forests for chop rushing, and lots of grassland for cottages. Not brilliant but OK.

 

[Priah]

Settings scream for collosus to be built, islands + financial?? Starting city kind of sucks in all honesty, just one food recourse and two hills? Wouldnt be suprised if we get some copper or horses in the capitol.

 

[ewokimpi]

Location of starting circles suggests that there are other food resources nearby. Scouting with both units would probably be useful.

 

[BSmith1068]

Location of starting circles suggests that there are other food resources nearby. Scouting with both units would probably be useful.

Yeah... I think that the scout goes N, then depending on what he reveals most likely NE. The settler goes SE, then depending on what he sees, back to the starting position or onward to the better location.

 

[The Mad Swede]

Yeah... I think that the scout goes N, then depending on what he reveals most likely NE. The settler goes SE, then depending on what he sees, back to the starting position or onward to the better location.

Would it not be better to send the scout SE then south to see whats down there? If the settler must go south east we will lose turns. And I hate that.

Anyway, looking forward to this one. I have never played the Vikings so I will try a small game tonight.

 

[Goodenuf]

Scout NE, Settler SE to have a peek around seems prudent. Losing 1 turn for the settler is likely the worst case scenario here. The starting spot is just ok... not really ideal. Hopefully there are more health/luxury resources nearby.

It looks like water just E of the SE blue circle. Wonder if it's ocean or another lake? Ragnar is curious...

Flying to Europe this week for a business trip... 4 hours of battery on the plane, plus 5 hour layover in Frankfurt should easily get me to the first spoiler criteria and beyond

 

[Conquistador 63]

Nice settings. At first, I thought islands=archipelago, but after looking closer, I found out that they're different map scripts. And by not disclosing map specific settings (those would be # large islands and # of tiny islands), as requested in other threads, it gets even more interesting.
From what I understood, each player will have its own island. Other large islands may or may not be available for grabbing.
"No tiny islands" would mean "get Optics/Astro ASAP!", while "many tiny islands" would allow early island hopping. There are intermediate settings inbetween.
Also interesting to notice jungle to the east, even with cold climate, meaning we're near the equator. I'm tempted to settle in place even with the lackluster start area. Inclined to move scout to hill SE (as The Mad Swede suggested - he should know better, being a Viking himself ) to get to know better what looks another coastal area - 1S3E from settler is a coast tile, isn't it?

 

[BSmith1068]

Would it not be better to send the scout SE then south to see whats down there? If the settler must go south east we will lose turns. And I hate that.

Moving the scout SE will only allow him to move one square (on to the hill). While this would open up some tiles, another alternative would be to move him SW then SE (where I suggested moving the settler). Better yet you could move directly S from the settler's position, showing more coast tiles. This would leave the settler free to found on the first move if nothing better is visible.

My hunch is that it is more likely to have more water food tiles than land (but I could be mistaken) so I would prioritize opening up more coast for viewing.

The original thought was to accept the one turn loss on the settler, but open up a lot more of the map in the first turn (moving scout N).

1S3E from settler is a coast tile, isn't it?

Unless it is a lake...

 

[The Lance]

Interesting maybe with the island start, rather easy start level, and reading week next week I may survive until the first spoiler. Until this point GOM's have done a good job of humbleing me.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

No.. there are other factors too..
basically.. there are a certain factors that affects you as the player when you go from settler to noble (instead of boosting AIs).. changing the AIs level will give them all those bonuses that you get on settler difficulty (more free units I think, lower inflation, less civic maintainance, ...)

As for if it is a good or a bad thing for players.. I guess it may depend on your play style

Interesting, thanks for the clarification! Evidently there's much I have yet to understand about the levels and the civ4handicapinfo.xml file. I didn't even realize you could set AI difficulty levels separately from the player. That seems to me to run counter to how the handicapinfo.xml file is set up, given that each level contains settings for the AI not just the human player. For example I assumed the presence of things like eg. iAIInflationPercent =50 meant that playing on monarch level meant the AI only suffered from 50% inflation - that doesn't seem at first sight to give much scope to adjust the AI difficulty separately.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

This does seem a rather resource-poor start location, although we don't know where the iron/copper/horsies are. On the information there I don't see much point moving the settler though. I tend to strongly dislike delaying my start by more than a turn or so, and the settler's current spot is the only tile that gives you the fish AND the freshwater lake, which between them with lighthouse amounts to a +5 food bonus (as sompared to standard +2-food tiles). And it has hills too, and easily enough food to work them.

But I may change my mind. Right now I'm debating whether to move the scout NE-SE (which will reveal at least 6 extra tiles) or straight SE (which will probably reveal only 3, maybe 4, tiles, but closer to the settler and so more likely to impact any decision about settling in-place).

I agree with Priah about the colossus. 4 commerce from each coast tile is pretty big.

 

[Jastrow]

Can someone please clarify something for me... On these map settings... are we GARANTEED to be alone on our island?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Can someone please clarify something for me... On these map settings... are we GARANTEED to be alone on our island?

No, not guaranteed.

 

[ainwood]

No.. there are other factors too..
basically.. there are a certain factors that affects you as the player when you go from settler to noble (instead of boosting AIs).. changing the AIs level will give them all those bonuses that you get on settler difficulty (more free units I think, lower inflation, less civic maintainance, ...)

SO do those settings actually, well, work? I thought that they were included but internally disabled.