No happy people

[shyuhe]

Hi all,

As promised, here's our next SG. The variant rules as discussed are:

We are not allowed to benefit from any happy or health resource. We may connect them to our empire but must immediately trade them away if we do so. We are NOT allowed to use HR. We are allowed to build health bonus and happy bonus buildings, however.

Our game settings:


I have no idea what kind of fractal we pulled. We can re-start if we're isolated (but not semi-isolated).

And our start position:


Let the debate on warrior moves begin


Roster:
shyuhe - UP
mysty (on deck)
Silu
Ras
bbp
Mutineer

note, the save is locked assets with BUFFY 3.19.003. Don't forget to upgrade!

 

[shyuhe]

And not that it matters for the first turn set, but the starting save.

 

[Jet]

Lurker's: Are you allowed to keep Horses?

 

[babybluepants]

Checking in.

Did you PM Mutineer and mdy? Maybe we should reserve the open spot?

Rough start, man. NW seems like the most promising (both warrior and settler), though we probably give up horses/copper 2S or SSW. Unless there's a Agri resource somewhere west, this might not even be a worker-first start. I was hoping to have an option on an early religion gambit, but we'll need base techs bad by the looks of it.

@Jet, I think we can hook up horses, yes. It's not technically a happy resource.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Checking in Warrior move on hill? I'd like to move nw if we see another food resource...

And yeah, we should PM Mutineer and mdy

 

[shyuhe]

Yeah I'll PM Mutineer and mdy.

I'd like to move NW for the greener tiles as well.

 

[babybluepants]

Warrior move on hill?

Sounds good.

 

[Fleme]

(= Silu, visiting & too lazy to change acc)

Checking in (loving the variant!), looking like an obsolete-start Echoing warrior on hill & settling in place/nw, looks like a decent one (for IMP, mass settler for low city size ) since we can utilize both cows before writing since either isn't river-hooked-up

Need to see more before deciding open tech, worker first is dubious if we don't have agri/hunting resource. Maybe even religion first if we have sth like open dye grass river/ grass forest silk?

 

[shyuhe]

edit: We're not counting horses as happy resources even though we're Justinian.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

one nw or 2w for me... one nw can be settled this turn and has more production and river tiles so it gets my preference

Ras

 

[Silu]

+1 1NW Lucky to have all that stuff on non-river tiles

 

[babybluepants]

Yeah, 1NW for me, too. Awesome start actually - we can use all the resources, like Silu said.
Warrior first, tech agriculture?

 

[mystyfly]

Only just seen the thread, checking in

I'm also for 1nw, start indeed is great. We start w/ wheel/myst IIRC (woot early roads ) so agri > ah...

Just to make sure, we are allowed to hook up copper/iron/horse/stone/marble/uranium/oil/aluminium, right? And only HR is banned... should be a fun game, we'll likely see lots of WS, but few

 

[shyuhe]

I can go settle 1NW but what kind of economy are we going to run long-term? We should think about that before we start playing the game like any other normal game. ICS is one viable economy for our restrictions. The other is to just grow into unhappy and whip all the red shirts away, or to use the culture slider to artificially increase your happy cap (we can use aqueducts to somewhat mitigate unhealthy). Thoughts?

 

[babybluepants]

I'm thinking that long term the health restriction is much more severe than happy, since the only thing that increases it until very late is the Aquaduct. We're very lucky with the start location having all off-river resources, but we might have to be really inventive with city placement to get any food going. Generally speaking, grains, livestock and seafood are hard, if not impossible to unload through trade, since everyone just has them. So, a river corn will be tough to use for food.

I really don't know at this point, since it depends so much on the map. The capital turned out ok, and we already have a non-river corn visible for a second city.

Both early stone wonders are great here, btw (I mean Pyramids and HG, though I suppose Notre Dame is actually good for once and also stone-based).

Edit: Do we have Random Events on? Maybe we luck out with herbalism two SG's in a row.

 

[Silu]

Hippodromes are banned, right? Otherwise we could cheese around the restrictions by using the culture slider for mass happiness on top of the Horsie happy. In any case, 'Mids Repr is very lucrative (and a no-brainer if we have Stone). With Specialists we could stagnate cities with specs and use culture slider cheaply, settling a very tight dotmap (IMP helps) to max out the city amount to work around the low caps.

Biggest sources of "early" non-resource happy: religions (a big one, we should maybe aim to bulb a religion or two, being SPI and all), colosseums, culture slider, Notre Dame. What did I miss?

 

[nzk13]

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?

 

[shyuhe]

Hippodromes are banned, right? Otherwise we could cheese around the restrictions by using the culture slider for mass happiness on top of the Horsie happy. In any case, 'Mids Repr is very lucrative (and a no-brainer if we have Stone). With Specialists we could stagnate cities with specs and use culture slider cheaply, settling a very tight dotmap (IMP helps) to max out the city amount to work around the low caps.

Biggest sources of "early" non-resource happy: religions (a big one, we should maybe aim to bulb a religion or two, being SPI and all), colosseums, culture slider, Notre Dame. What did I miss?

Hippodromes are not banned (yet ). No buildings are banned under the rules so we can abuse the culture slider if we want. Obviously that'll lend itself to a total SE though, unless we're going for a culture victory. Or perhaps we should just outright ban the use of the culture slider since it's way too powerful given our otherwise strict restraints?

 

[babybluepants]

I think the culture slider's ok for the moment. HR is what pushes us through the mid-game infrastructure build-up, tech-slingshot phase typically, so we'll have trouble there, IMO. Also, the slider does come at a price, giving up tech+gold. We can decide later, depending on how the game's going, as far as I'm concerned.

Hippodromes should be ok, as well. No different than other buildings that contribute happy. The Ottoman UB would be more powerful, for instance, and I wouldn't ban that one either. Personally, I think the cheap SPI temples are more powerful here than the horse happy, given that we'll have small cities and limited whip production.

 

[bestsss]

if you go for culture victory that would be the lamest decision ever.
Free religion+cheap temples should carry you well, imo.