News: WOTM16 Pre-game Discussion

[Thrallia]

WOTM16: Carthage

Game Details:

Game settings:
Civilization: Carthage (Leader: Hannibal; Traits: Financial, Charismatic)
Rivals: 7 AIs
Difficulty: Emperor
Map: Fantasy Realm
Mapsize: Standard
Worldwrap: Toroidal
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Epic
Options: Raging barbarians, no tribal villages
Victory Conditions: all enabled

Hannibal:
Hannibal is Financial and Charismatic; starting with fishing and mining. Financial gives you +1 in any tile that already has at least 2 . Charismatic gives you +1 in every city and +1 monuments and broadcast towers. It also costs -25% experience to upgrade your troops.

Unique unit: Numidian Cavalry(replaces Horse Archer)
The Numidian Cavalry has a lower basic strength of 5, as opposed to 6 for the Horse Archer, and has -10% city attack as well. You have immunity to first strikes, no defensive bonuses, and +50% attack vs Catapults and Trebuchets. You get +50% vs melee units and start with Flanking I

Unique building: Cothon (replaces Harbor)
The Cothon gives you an additional trade route when you build it, in addition to the normal benefits you get from a Harbor, but it costs 20 hammers more at 100 hammers.

Starting screenshot
This is the start of the game (click for a bigger image):



Adventurer Class bonuses:

1. Extra Military: One of your citizens has proven proficient with a bow and has joined your warrior in service of Carthage.
2. Gifted Sages: Your people have learned knowledge of Agriculture from a passing shaman.

Challenger Class Equalizers:

1. Amnesia: Your people are suffering from amnesia and have lost all knowledge of technology.
2. Gifted Sages: Every AI has knowledge of one additional starting technology.

To Enter the Competition:

This competition will open on 22 January 2008. From that date, you'll be able to get the starting saves at here. Use the same URL to submit your completed entry, which you must do by 10 March 2008.

Civ version

This game MUST be played in Warlords (NOT Beyond the Sword or vanilla Civ), patched to version 2.13 and with the HOF mod version 2.13.002 installed. You can download the HOF mod here.

While playing...

Remember - for your entry to be accepted, it MUST be your first attempt to play this game, and you MUST NOT replay any turns. If you make a mistake while playing, you have to live with it, learn from it, and carry on the game without replaying.

Finally, if you have any problems while playing this game(crashes, etc) please notify either AlanH or myself via pm.

 

[Ronnie1]

Nice first game Thrallia! I always felt the Numidian was kind of worhtless though. I suppose it is a little less susceptible to the spear, but I'd take strength 6 for the trade off any day of the week.

 

[Thrallia]

Well, its basically a stronger chariot, only it's good against any melee unit. axe, sword, and spear(well, less likely to die against a spear), but I too have never really liked it...let's see if anyone can put it to good use this game

 

[Erkon]

Excellent Thrallia!

I find this kind of map very generous in the sense that it enables a vast set of potential strategies. Is the image blurred intentional, or would it be possible for you to put up a high-res image? As it is now, it's hard to distinguish the underlying terrain (plains/grasslands/hills) of the stone tile, and if the gems is jungle or forest, which makes the pre-game discussion a bit harder

 

[Thrallia]

I believe the stone is on a tundra hill. Unfortunately, that's as high-res as my screenshots are gonna get...apparently whatever I used to use for saving .jpg files was a trial version, and all I've got now is paint perhaps alan could get better screenshots posted if desired and he finds time to.

 

[Erkon]

I believe the stone is on a tundra hill. Unfortunately, that's as high-res as my screenshots are gonna get...apparently whatever I used to use for saving .jpg files was a trial version, and all I've got now is paint perhaps alan could get better screenshots posted if desired and he finds time to.

Yeah, Paint will compress the image a lot.

Have you tested to remove the interface with ALT-I and then take the screenshot? Then you can use the .jpeg directly.

Thanks for the stone info.

 

[AlanH]

perhaps alan could get better screenshots posted if desired and he finds time to.

I've replaced the small and high res shots. The high res one is a 250 Kbyte file. I hope it gives you what you want.

FYI the south eastern stone is on hills/forest/plains, giving four hammers. The western gems are on forest/grassland. The three corn tiles and the spices are all tundra, one with forest. There's only one jungle tile, on tundra, and there are a few desert tiles, one with incense. There's Fantasy for you!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Wow, it's nice to be back playing as a competitor And one of my favourite maptypes too - thanks Thrallia!

Two questions: Are we allowed to know what the resource placement setting is (rational/irrational/crazy)? And for challenger, do all the AIs start with the same extra tech or different ones?

Hmmm, decisions. Offhand I can't see any good reason for not settling in place. With raging barbs on emperor level on an all land map, having the capital on a hill could be vital in avoiding early conquest defeats to barbs. I'd like to go BW first to clear the forest and free the gems, but on these settings I fear that could be dangerous, so it's more likely I'll beeline for archery first (After all, it's not like any mine on the gems is going to last long without at least archers to defend it).

I love that our unique building is next to useless on this maptype and our unique unit looks a bit too wimpy to use much - assuming that we can build it at all and we're not sitting on a horseless map - that would be funny!

 

[ShannonCT]

Two questions: Are we allowed to know what the resource placement setting is (rational/irrational/crazy)? And for challenger, do all the AIs start with the same extra tech or different ones?

Three corn in the same place seems to be consistent with crazy resources. Irrational resources should be more evenly spread out.

 

[RobertTheBruce]

Fantasy is a big map so there will be a lot of barbarians. Corn and probably either gems or stone are two of the three common resources on the map. The barbs could get quite scary if there is no copper or horses nearby so early archery may be a priority on this map.

Barbarian control is one of the few things Numidian Cavalry do well so they may be worth building in this game if there are horses.

 

[ngraner42]

What about 2SE to grab the stone and a quick Wall. The barbs on a heavy land Emperor map should be pretty intense.

 

[Conquistador 63]

Well there is stone nearby, so I assume teching to masonry for an early GWall could be a good investment. I might move warrior SE and depending on what I see I would even consider moving settler near the stone or settle on top of it. Otherwise, a 2nd city should go there.
A test game would be much appreciated.


EDIT: ngraner beat me to it, I am a slow typing guy

 

[JerichoHill]

I think going for the GWall might be a good strategy
Here is a test game

http://www.megafileupload.com/en/file/38716/Schizico-BC-4000-CivWarlordsSave.html

I did not edit anything beyond what was shown in the illustrated map, except I will state that horses are near

 

[Gnejs]

Ooooh! Sounds like fun!

I will definitely give this a try. Probably settle on the stone unless the land beyon stone hill is really pathetic. Mining=>Masonry

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Yeah on balance I think I agree. Settling away from the stone would mean having to research BW and the wheel and have a worker to build a quarry before you can get the stone to help you with the great wall. Settling on the stone avoids that so should get the great wall a bit faster - may even be doable without building a worker first. (And after the great wall, worker-stealing will be a lot easier without having to worry about defending your capital from barbs.) Heck, even if settling on the stone gives a really crap city, it may be worth it for an early GW.

 

[Niklas]

Hmm, never played or even saw a Fantasy Realm map before. Anyone care to give a quick rundown on its distinguishing features? (Or a link to somewhere that discusses it.)

Settling on the stone gives 3 hammers in the CC, I'd say that's good enough to take the chance and settle there. And yes, a GW will likely be very useful.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Basically an all-land map, a few small lakes. No discernable climate: Different landtypes distributed randomly with next to no correlation between what's on one tile and what's on the next. Expect a lot of difficulty in finding good long-term city sites with enough food for the city to grow big (because everywhere you go, there's ice, desert, mountains and tundra randomly mixed in). And the good sites that are there are very hard to spot on a glance, you have to really think about them.

Resources, Thrallia hasn't yet said which resource setting he's picked, but it looks like he's picked one of the ones in which resources preferentially appear on exactly the landtypes that they would never appear on in any other map (thus the corn on tundra). As ShannonCT has pointed out, the three corns suggests crazy resources - if so, then four resources will be basically everywhere - you'll get sick of seeing them wherever you go , and another 8 randomly chosen resources will not appear at all, so you may find there are some units that can never be built. IIRC in WOTM05 there was no coal, so no railroads.

WOTM05 was fantasy realm, so the pregame discussion and spoilers from that will give you some idea.

 

[Niklas]

Thanks a lot DS for the info, that's a perfect summary.

 

[Thrallia]

in WOTM5, there was also only 1 iron.

I used crazy resources, but have modified the distribution of some resources quite a bit.

As for the challenger extra techs...on Emperor, all AI start out with hunting and archery in addition to their normal starting techs, so among the other starting techs, I've selected somewhat randomly for each AI.

 

[Erkon]

I've replaced the small and high res shots. The high res one is a 250 Kbyte file. I hope it gives you what you want.

FYI the south eastern stone is on hills/forest/plains, giving four hammers. The western gems are on forest/grassland. The three corn tiles and the spices are all tundra, one with forest. There's only one jungle tile, on tundra, and there are a few desert tiles, one with incense. There's Fantasy for you!

I swear I read hills/forest/tundra for the stone, and I tried to mimic that tile at no avail. It has to be plains, and now I read hills/forest/plains. I'm going crazy as the map

Anyway, I've manipulated JerichoHill map to look more like the original. Otherwise it's the same map (copyright to JH )

Regarding the city placement. Where to build the GreatWall? If stone is abundant, then the Industrious AI will build it in no time.

Potential start: Settle on stone (T2) and build warriors. No need to start with worker due to lack of infrastructure techs. Research Masonry. Send our warriors to explore (keep 2 as garrison). Build GWall. Completed ~T50 (2500 BC). This is about the time when the human barbs spawn, and they are swarming!