No happy people

[Silu]

^ Reason I thought they are banned is because building them would benefit from Horses as a "happy resource" since we allow hooking them up (would be a tad harsh to deny that). I don't think they would be that powerful but if we want to "stay pure" we could disallow them if we want

 

[babybluepants]

^ Well, maybe Justinian was a bad idea then. I just don't see how we can ban it, since we can't possibly ban horses, and we wouldn't ban theaters with any other leader. The variant is potentially difficult enough... Am I the only one more worried about being able to use food resources than the happy restriction?

I think we could just settle the capital and play through Agri, at least, maybe even AH. That way we can discuss it with some knowledge of the immediate surroundings.

@bestsss,
No, I don't think we'd go for a culture win here.

 

[Silu]

^ Well, maybe Justinian was a bad idea then. I just don't see how we can ban it, since we can't possibly ban horses, and we wouldn't ban theaters with any other leader. The variant is potentially difficult enough... Am I the only one more worried about being able to use food resources than the happy restriction?

I think we could just settle the capital and play through Agri, at least, maybe even AH. That way we can discuss it with some knowledge of the immediate surroundings.

@bestsss,
No, I don't think we'd go for a culture win here.

No, you're not the only one worried about food (especially considering all seafood is banned), but there's not really much we can do about that Maybe allowing Hippodromes is indeed in order for this one.

What about conquests? Do we need to be very careful and be sure to pillage roads on non-river food resources to utilize them? If we fail to do that must we ignore that tile forever?

 

[babybluepants]

What about conquests? Do we need to be very careful and be sure to pillage roads on non-river food resources to utilize them? If we fail to do that must we ignore that tile forever?

I was wondering about that, too... It might get very complicated, as we learned with cottages last time (and this is much more complex, I think, since we can't just refuse working the tile). We might need to raze some cities, and resettle later?

Edit: Even worse, what about random border tiles flipping?

 

[Silu]

Well we can always pillage our improvements (including seafood?), just sucks to have a post-CS irrigated corn and work it as a 3/0/0 tile just because it has a road I think pre-pillaging and thinking at least thrice before taking any city will take us far though.

Why, oh why, can't you pillage your own roads, something I'll never understand

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Can I join? I play on Noble normally, but this would be a good way to learn to play Immortal. So I'll probably fail miserably, but you could criticize me and I'll grow as a result. So am I in?

This is a training game for the OSS team (involved in the succession game of the month competition)... I am personnally OK to have you inboard, though you need to know if you are up for the SGOTMs as well
@team: what do u think?


I will have a look at the discussion about eco a bit later in the evening... though I envision a cultural slider driven ICS whipping/drafting/spying SE crazyeye: )... the "UncleJJ" economy

 

[shyuhe]

@nzk

As Ras mentioned, this is a training game for OSS. So if you're willing to stick around for SGOTM 11 (if and when it happens), you're more than welcome to join. Immortal's probably going to be a pretty steep learning curve from noble though

@bbp

The hippodrome is doubly efficient compared to normal theaters when it comes to the culture slider. But as pointed out, the culture slider obviously comes with sacrifices. Let's say that they're in. We obviously didn't contemplate their use when we were brainstorming leaders (at least I didn't) so I see no reason to ban them now. Also, as bestsss pointed out, FR + cheap religion should net us quite a bit of happy. If we score incense and the appropriate discount resourec, then the cathedrals will be good too.

@Silu

We will have to be careful with conquests and culture flipping tiles. Worst case scenario, we may have to gift away cities to avoid breaking the rule so we definitely have to be careful Let's allow one turn grace period so that we can send out pillaging units to destroy unnecessary tile improvements. It's a pity we can't destroy roads in our own territory...

@Ras

ICS definitely comes to mind, but that's an economy you have to commit to fairly early for it to succeed. Is that something we want to try? I'm actually interested in trying to setup a normal empire under our restraints. As mentioned above, hippodromes + FR + cheap temples should get us pretty far. If we go full SE (think stable 50% culture), that's a LOT of The bigger issue may be figuring out how to GROW our cities that large with our health restriction. Remember - an unhealthy grass farm is basically a 2 food tile (i.e., not worth growing onto).

 

[Silu]

Can I join? I play on Noble normally, but this would be a good way to learn to play Immortal. So I'll probably fail miserably, but you could criticize me and I'll grow as a result. So am I in?

Considering this will be much harder than normal Immortal, it's over 4 difficulty levels over Noble. I think there are much better ways to learn than playing in an SG that's way above your normal difficulty level. The best is probably to play an example game in the Strategy&Tips forum and ask for feedback, 10-turn sets won't really teach the basics behind the bigger decisions. In any case I don't think there's a fast track from Noble to Immortal without going through the ladder

I'd prefer people that regularly win at least Emperor, but if the team is ok then I guess I'm ok as well.

 

[Silu]

Can someone give a one-paragraph explanation behind the "ICS strategy"? I know what it stands for, but how does a strategy like that supposed to work? I've never really heard it in a Civ4 context (except a single mention of ICS with AP&UoS&SM religious buildings), just Civ1/2/3 (only ever played a bit of 1&2 of those).

Pretty sure the difficulty to get food resource yields is much worse than the unhealthiness. It's pretty useless to grow huge with just grass farms. That in mind I echo bbp in saying that playing the starter set would give a much better foundation for the strategy discussion as well than doing it now.

 

[nzk13]

Fine, maybe I'll join a Noble level Succession Game. Any suggestions?

 

[babybluepants]

The hippodrome is doubly efficient compared to normal theaters when it comes to the culture slider.

Yes, I completely forgot about that. Thought it was just horses. Now I understand what you guys were discussing, and I'm not so sure of my stance anymore... Let's allow it for now, and have an option to reconsider later?

If we score incense and the appropriate discount resourec, then the cathedrals will be good too.

Huh? That's definitely a happy resource.

Can someone give a one-paragraph explanation behind the "ICS strategy"? I know what it stands for, but how does a strategy like that supposed to work? I've never really heard it in a Civ4 context

+1

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

ICS: you pack cities as close as possible (usually following a grid). You want to increase the effect of "per city" bonuses. More whips, more growth because smaller cities (and more granaries), more tiles worked faster, more religious tricks to leverage (more temples, more monasteries...), more draft power, more espionnage tx to buildings, more free specialists tx to mercantilism/SoL, more corporation fun...
Oracling COL is a good way (shrine, courthouses) to lessen the increased maintenance due to number of cities at start.

edit: @nzk13: iirc there is a prince SG currently going... maybe they need another team member or u can join for their next game. Alternatively, you can start your own

 

[Silu]

^ Ahh, so pretty much what we already thought. Tons of small cities to avoid cap and get extra food from city tiles. Though I'd much rather have Repr here to utilize mass Library specs than courthouses.

 

[shyuhe]

Can someone give a one-paragraph explanation behind the "ICS strategy"? I know what it stands for, but how does a strategy like that supposed to work? I've never really heard it in a Civ4 context (except a single mention of ICS with AP&UoS&SM religious buildings), just Civ1/2/3 (only ever played a bit of 1&2 of those).

Pretty sure the difficulty to get food resource yields is much worse than the unhealthiness. It's pretty useless to grow huge with just grass farms. That in mind I echo bbp in saying that playing the starter set would give a much better foundation for the strategy discussion as well than doing it now.

Check out the links in mysty's sig line You might recognize some of the players in those games Basically ICS involves abusing spiritual for cheap religious buildings combined with AP/UoS/SM. If you assume a city's maintenance caps out around 10 with a courthouse, then you can break even with a temple + AP/UoS/SM + trade routes. Even assuming 3 internal trade routes at 1 commerce each, you get 2 hammers, 2 beakers, 2 gold, and 3 coin for each city. The only hitch is that to really ensure you get all three wonders, you have to gun for theology a bit earlier than normal - hence my desire to decide on ICS at an early stage as it affects our early tech path and settling pattern. It may not be optimal with our variant because we won't be able to settle cities on some resources.

 

[shyuhe]

Huh? That's definitely a happy resource.

@Silu - mercantilism + SoL + rep is incredibly broken with ICS. You'll need courthouses though as # of city maintenance sky rockets pretty fast. And yes, it breaks drafting, but scientific method also wrecks your economy.

 

[Mutineer]

Hi Folk, I am happy to join you here.

Just making sure I undestand rules:

No use of health happiness resources, that mean we can not connect resource we can not trade away. But that mean we can not use river side resources, as they automatically connected. anythign else I am missing?

 

[shyuhe]

Welcome Mutineer!

We are also not allowed to use HR. I think the consensus is that we are allowed to use the hippodrome as otherwise this variant may be too hard on immortal.

edit: Also, you'll need the newest Buffy. Although it looks like you're playing BOTM so you probably have it anyways

 

[babybluepants]

Welcome, Mutineer!

 

[shyuhe]

As agreed, I moved the settler 1NW and saw another hill and immediately settled in place.



Like our last game, we have a pretty good capital (although not as great as the last one). Research is set on agriculture with worker first for now, but I realized that we hadn't decided on what to research so I paused here. Given that there are no commerce tiles around like an oasis, I think it's prudent to just go with the normal worker agri--AH opening.

 

[babybluepants]

Agree on tech. I think we can build a warrior first. Alternatively, I guess, we could just road a few tiles, but I think I prefer more exploration.