News: WOTM17 Pregame Discussion

[Thrallia]

I'll leave that to others to tell, I didn't even know that settling corn/rice or wine would give bonuses until GOTM27.

 

[Ronnie1]

I believe that settling on the spices give +1 to the city square until calendar, and then you get immediate use of the resource as well.

@ Thrallia, What is the water level for this game?

EDIT: Tested with Vanilla WB as I've temporarily misplaced my Warlords CD.

I was wrong about the coin, there is NO bonus for settling on the spice. I thought that spot might be a good one as well if you got a bonus. But with no bonus, and losing the forest, I'm tempted to go the the PH N or settle in place.

...what do the ai's start with?

3 Archers, 2 scouts, 2 workers, and a settler of course!

 

[Thrallia]

I honestly can't remember what the water level was...I didn't change it, so it is likely medium(unless at some point I changed it for an HOF game and it kept that setting despite my changing everything else)

 

[cas]

EDIT: Tested with Vanilla WB as I've temporarily misplaced my Warlords CD.
I was wrong about the coin, there is NO bonus for settling in the spice. I thought that spot might be a good one as well if you got a bonus. But with no bonus, and losing the forest, I'm tempted to go the the PH N or settle in place.

I tested in BtS and no bonus for spice settlement. Also no bonus after Calendar (other than +1 happy). If it is next to a river you get the extra +1 coin from that, but this one is not next to a river.

I'm unsure about the 1N PH. The +1h isn't very exciting in a city that will already have high production from PH mines. But the extra defense might be nice if we have an aggressive neighbor.

cas

 

[Jove]

This is an exciting set of parameters to me. I don't know what I'll do, but I'm sure I'll give it a go.
Settling in place looks attractive. The spices are a nice 4-yield tile, working that at least until the borders expand looks good. Long-term, and with so much food available, just mining the plains hill will yield more hammers and goodies. And again, so much food makes for good settler production. As happy looks like the limiting factor, spreading out to claim some happy bonuses and increase maxpopulation seems the way to go. Quick libraries = early scientist specialists. I'd consider setting up for a trio of great scientists, maybe augmented later by some engineer points or whatever else I can get, marathon speed notwithstanding. I think Immortal can feel quite a bit different at marathon speed

 

[LowtherCastle]

Hey cas, you're back! Playing again?

 

[hellwitch]

But the extra defense might be nice if we have an aggressive neighbor.

cas

Wow i've never see such an aggressive neighbor ever. And if you are stuck at the capitol in the corner of the map you've alredy lost the game.

Anyway there is a good article in the Strategy part for maps. From there it look like that only Ice Age map with Wide Continents need Astro. All the other subtypes seems to have preAstro conection between the islands. From the picture the map doesn't look like Wide Continents so maybe we wont need Astro this time.

And for the playing strategy - i wonder if Oracle-MC-Pyramids gambit is posible. It is imo - with cheep forges, Industrial thrait and lots of forest near by.
I find this leader as one of the best wonder happy one - Industrial, cheep forges, cheep Libraries(for GL), Creative - gives you the ability to take more strategical resources with single city and the chance even to steal a quarry from the AI with culture presure.

All all this possible wonders and cheep culture building makes me thing that Cultural victory is very nice option.(The problem is that i've never made such)

 

[Erkon]

This Ice Age map doesn't look like pangaea or continents. Usually those kinds of Ice Age maps have very pressed coastlines and no islands. The opening screenshot suggests this will be more of an islands or snaky continents map. Depending on the sea level, that could mean conquest is possible without Astro.

I've generated a few maps with WB, and "Wide continents / medium sea level" typically requires astro for conquest/domination. The coastlines can be locally irregular, but a few turns of exploration will quickly reveal the type. Narrow Continents may need a cultural bridge to reach with galleys. The Islands / Small Islands maps does not require Astro.

Low sea level maps have about 1160 tiles (1166, 1176, 1162, 1155, 1140, 1094, 1155)

Medium sea level maps have about 1000 tiles (1008, 1008, 1003)

 

[Gosha190]

Thrallia
Have you tested your map? Or may be someone else did?

 

[cas]

Wow i've never see such an aggressive neighbor ever. And if you are stuck at the capitol in the corner of the map you've alredy lost the game.

Anyway there is a good article in the Strategy part for maps. From there it look like that only Ice Age map with Wide Continents need Astro. All the other subtypes seems to have preAstro conection between the islands. From the picture the map doesn't look like Wide Continents so maybe we wont need Astro this time.

And for the playing strategy - i wonder if Oracle-MC-Pyramids gambit is posible. It is imo - with cheep forges, Industrial thrait and lots of forest near by.
I find this leader as one of the best wonder happy one - Industrial, cheep forges, cheep Libraries(for GL), Creative - gives you the ability to take more strategical resources with single city and the chance even to steal a quarry from the AI with culture presure.

All all this possible wonders and cheep culture building makes me thing that Cultural victory is very nice option.(The problem is that i've never made such)

I've seen the AI be that crazy, but it might have been on agg AI setting. Also, if there is a close neighbor and you employ worker-steal along with an early war...it is possible for the capital to be attacked. Not likely, but possible. the hill would be good for last line barb defense at any rate. I'll probably settle in place, though.

as for stuck at the corner already lost etc...I tend to play minimalist and build as few cities as possible. Diplo is possible with one city, although very difficult at this level and we don't appear to have a lot of resources to trade.

While this leader is suited for wonderbuilding, I will only prioritize 1-3 wonders (depending on resources). But I'm only able to beat immortal occasionally playing diplo / culture.

I don't bother with dom / conquest very often as I consider the game mechanics heavily advantaged towards warmongering in Civ. Space just takes too much time, cities, and mm for my taste. Once in a while it is fun.

Hey cas, you're back! Playing again? )

Ya, I guess you could call it playing. Remembering everything I forgot about this game and trying out BtS.

cas

 

[greatbeyond]

I have finally caught up with the backlog of games and will try to do some testing. For those who are interested here are some test games. As usual I've tried to exactly match the screen shot including suspected placement on the world map. From my tests using the "Islands" setting, you will find lots of small islands with a few bigger ones, but no continent size islands.

 

[Ronnie1]

Thanks for the effort greatbeyond, but I believe there is a problem with your links!

EDIT: Missed that the site was down, more than likely the problem!

 

[LowtherCastle]

I also tried those links, greatbeyond. All I can save are gif images, rather than sav files. If you get a chance to re-establish the links, I'd appreciate.

 

[Gnejs]

@Thrallia:

Any chance that you could let us know how many land tiles there are? It is info that can found as soon as we open the starting save anyway...

 

[LowtherCastle]

On marathon ice age, I'm tempted to stroll in search of a gold or gem tile. Reseach is going to be slow. At least go up on the hill and peek.

 

[Thrallia]

I don't have a clue how many there are, guess you'll have to open the save to find out :crazyeyes:

 

[greatbeyond]

I have re uploaded the saves, see my original post. I discovered that I forgot to load the HOF MOD before starting them. I 'll see if I can fix that.
I also discovered that if the map and starting location are anything like mine then it will be a very difficult game. I have tried two games so far, both on Contender. After doing so, I might be tempted to go for Adventurer Growth is very, very slow by settling in place. I tried a Warrior rush to steal workers, which I was successful at each time, but I wasted so much time building units slowly that I fell behind. I am thinking conquest and domination, at least early dates will be very unlikely. I grew my army and attacked my neighbors but with city razing turned off, it became a crippling blow to my economy and i couldn't muster any research. I started one game going Fishing, then Sailing, then Hunting to Archery, then Mining to BW. Because of the lack of gold from capturing cities, I couldn't manage any research at this point. Second game I went Mining to BW, then Fishing, Hunting, Archery, and Sailing, again my economy ground to a halt. Even though I had captured several cities, I couldn't capture them quick enough to provide the need gold from pillaging. I think I'll try a couple of games going the peace monger route. One thing that was surprising was that even though it is a big map, 4 civs were within 15 to 20 tiles. Also on the islands map, they are almost all so closely spaced that I don't believe Astro will be required for island hopping.

 

[Munro]

Excellent! Another Immortal game.

Interesting combination of settings as well - no city raising should mix things up a bit.

Edit: with 2 months, I wonder if I'll actually have time for a practice game for this one... (Looks like it might be needed too).

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Ice Age has lots of land, I think. Very low sea level.

Ah yes, you're right. I'm confusing 'ice age' map with the cold climate setting on other maps (which reduces the amount of useful land coz of the thick icy poles).

For some reason I don't think I've ever loaded an ice age map so beyond what I've read in/deduced from this thread I have no idea what the map is going to look like. I've decided to keep it that way and play the map cold. Should make the exploring more fun. Especially as I won't know what clues to look for to see if astronomy is needed for contact - can only do that by brute force by exploring what I can with galleys and seeing how many civs I encounter...

Would invite others to do the same but since I'm guessing that's impossible for most people, since most people do already know what an ice age map looks like.

 

[Thrallia]

DS, you've played at least 1 other Ice Age map, as it was used for GOTM4(Emperor, India, I believe)