Open Challenge Game - A lamb in the horde of wolves

[pawelo]

“A lamb in the horde of wolves”

A small tribe has emerged on a river shore, inside the jungle. A peace loving folk, wanting nothing but a decent life in this fertile landscape. What will become of them? Will they survive in a hostile neighborhood ?

Map Script: Pangaea
Climate: Moderate
Sea Level: Medium
Resources: Standard
Game Speed: Normal

Civilization: Native Americans
Leader: Sitting Bull (Philo, Protective)
World Size: Standard
Opponents: 6 AI, Home selection
Difficulty: Prince
Victory Types: all enabled
Options: Aggressive AI
Versions: BtS 3.03 ( having waited too much for 3.13 )

Variants:

1) We are peaceful:
- we cannot declare war on an AI
- we have to settle for peace as soon as possible, checking every turn during war and accepting peace without conditions
- we seek to get peace by every mean, giving away tech and gold if necessary
- we cannot sign defensive pact, get vassalized / vassalise ourselves
- we must prove our peaceful nature by refusing to pay for any military upkeep. However, attacked by more than one neighbor, we may temporarly pay for our troops. Still, as soon as this war is over, we have to disband all extra units, letting them go back to their homes and civil life.
By war, I mean the whole war, not just if one civ settles for peace and the other still fights. I imagine we settle for peace with the weakest of two and fight with the other one, while disbanding our troops...
Changed on 27/09, 7h40 PM GMT ( thanx nbcman ):
- we can, and are encouraged, to go for Pacifism. To defend our cities, we accept to pay 2 defensive units in each when running Pacifism
end of changed rules
- we cannot run spy missions, use great spies for offensive, run the slider above 0% - we enjoy our intimacy and want the other AI to enjoy theirs
- if we get a Great Spy, we can use his wisdom to enlighten us for many years ( start a GA - translation )
- we can build spies and use them for defensive means - we don't want AI peeking in our houses
- we cannot be the first civilization to get Iron Working, Rifling, Military Tradition and Industrialism – if we are about to discover one, we have to check before if someone has it already
- should we get a Great General, we can only use him to be a Military Instructor to teach us how to defend ourselves
- we cannot do piratery (no privateers), by the way we don't even see the point of doing so - we want everyone happy, us and everyone around us

2) We have our OWN beliefs and don’t want to share them:
- if we want a state religion, we have to found one – we cannot spread it among the AI, ask AI to convert etc. – otherwise, paganism/no state religion. We can never run Free Religion because we are proud of our beliefs.
- we cannot built religious buildings of AI religions that may have accidently spread to us

3) We value our people
- therefore we will NEVER use the whip
- we will never give away one of our cities to the enemy, even for peace settlement
- should one of our cities fall to the enemy, we can stay in war until the turn of getting our city back
- we value our people more than the nature surrounding us - CHOPPING trees is allowed in this game to allow cottaging (money means good life for our folk), farming (food for people) and other quality of life enhancing improvements. We are also encouraged to chop defenders whenever AI declares war on us - we have to defend our homes at all costs

4) Our people value the life we live and are ready to defend it when necessary – we can draft defensive troops in war, only for defense purposes.

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Our Hero:



Here is the start:



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This is an open challenge game. Everyone is welcome to try it. I can’t make it a succession as I already know the map and the AI. I’ll still play a shadow game on my side.

All you gamers out there, do you think you can face six aggressive Prince AI with different religions than yours, knowingly trailing the power graph?
We will see…

I don’t know how challenging will it be to you, it seems pretty challenging to me I’m also very interested about different ways to deal with such a hostile environment situation.

Please use spoiler tags to report your games.

Best luck everyone!

 

[pawelo]

I have just came around slobberinbear game - the BTS role play challange. Hope this Sitting Bull one won't be too much for the community...

Enjoy!

 

[shyuhe]

Are you basing the powergraph on demographics? I think it takes into account population size so if you have large cities, you may have a bigger military than a small civ with a small army. And you won't have any way to shrink your pop short of starving all your cities.

 

[madscientist]

One important point, espionage. To the get the powergraph numbers you need a certain number of EPs against that CIV (BTS change). The default from the capital may not be enough, maybe not even when courthouses come arround.

Another point, if someone like Joao is met and declares war he typically requires heavy tribute for peace (unless he's being plastered). Do the native Americans have to give up a city for peace if that is what the AI wants? How about a tech?

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Jungle in the initial fat cross? on a Pangaea map? woah... nasty.

 

[xanadux]

Yeah may need to change that last in the power graph thing. Building walls and castles give a lot of power too. And just one other civ getting vassalized with a tiny empire and behind in tech could make this untenable. Of course, you don't need to be able to see AI demographics to know you are last in power ... just look at soldiers rank in the rankings screen.

 

[Acidicjew]

As you can't wage war, or have a good chance of getting a common religion, it makes conquest and dominations impossible, and diplomacy pretty unlikely (though possible if you can get the largest countries to get free/no religion and support you, obviously only with UN). As we are aiming for lowest demographics, we are staying bottom-low in the chart, so time victory isn't very possible either. This basically leaves space race, which can be hard with the powergraph limitation (staying behind in growth and tech), and cultural victory. Now I'm not all too sure about culture... is it affecting the powergraph? I would imagine so but I can't recall... if it does, it could mean you will have to cut the growth or military power in order to stay low and still being able to produce high culture score.

What victory are you aiming for and what will be your general strategy to get there under the limitation? Sounds like a real challenge, should be interesting

 

[xanadux]

Culture doesn't effect score. But I believe he is talking about power (military power), not score. It is only prince level, so this should be doable if enough land is available. Both cultural and space are possible. I do think the power limitation may be a problem. Perhaps limit the unit support cost allowed? Maybe no more military allowed than 5% of total gold produced if slider were at 100% gold?

Another clarification ... being peaceful, are we allowed to capture an enemy city if they declare war?

REX will be a priority, even if it dumps the economy because war is out. With protective and the UB and UU, defense shouldn't be very hard early game. If going cultural, grabbing several of our own religions will be a priority. Judaism and Confucianism and Taoism should be doable, and Philosophy would be prioritized for Pacifism.

 

[r_rolo1]

Privateers usage allowed?
Did you allowed vassals/colonies ( things can get ugly if the AI decides to make a colony in a frozen nortern island ( they can appear in pangea ) )?

Looks interesting... Will try if I have time ( a scarce resource for me this days )

 

[Giaur]

I never played on prince before. I skipped from Chieftain to Monarch. But maybe I'll try ...

edit: If we are so limited, then maybe collecting money is the way to go. Not to make any use of it, just for fun.

edit2: Hypotetically 5 of our cities jump to higher pop in the same turn. And Native Americans are no longer at the bottom of power. The best way to be at the bottom again is using Slavery (which is disabled).

 

[slobberinbear]

I have just came around slobberinbear game - the BTS role play challange. Hope this Sitting Bull one won't be too much for the community...

No worries. Have fun with it!

What about wood chopping? Allowed or not?

 

[shyuhe]

I tried playing around a bit... I don't think it's possible if you judge "power" by the soldier count of the demo screen. I have built a worker and researched AH. My soldier count is now 5k but the lowest AI is 3K. I've tried disbanding my only warrior but that leaves me with 4k So I can't even train a settler now!

On the other hand, I don't have nearly enough EP to view the power graph on the graph screen so I can't work around that either I think the best is to link it to unit maintenance. Say that it can't go over 0 gold no matter what (that should still be enough to support at least one MP unit + worker per city).

 

[KMadCandy]

"- we cannot run spy missions, use great spies, run the slider above 0% - we enjoy our intimacy and want the other AI to enjoy theirs"

does keeping a spy in my own city as defense, to decrease the other guy's chance of success when he uses his spies, count as me "running a spy mission"? and if a great spy is born, can i use him for a golden age? is the limitation that "we cannot ... use great spies" in any way, or that we cannot use them infilitrate others? clearly if i can't run offensive spy missions on them i won't be running a zillion spy specialists, so i doubt i'd get a bunch of great spies, i just have fun playing rules lawyer sometimes.

 

[xanadux]

I think the spirit of this is no offensive spy missions. Certainly even a completely peaceful civilization would see the value of protecting their citizens with defense to opponents' spies. Building spies for defense, and running counter espionage missions should certainly be allowed.

 

[pawelo]

Wow, guys, what a nice interest
I left for a few hours, and here we are with many precisions to give.

Fisrt of all, I wonder if I didn't make it to big with this jungle around. On the other hand, this one being prince, it is doable. Also, a settler's move might be an option, as it is only moderate climate - not much jungle.

As for the powergraph, the best thing to do is to look at total soldiers in Demo. This way, we can use walls and castles ( protective must be useful anyhow, no ? ) with no soldiers raise. Anyway, as Shyuhe mentionned it, it is impossible to do it right ahead.

New variant then:
- must be lowest in the number of soldiers after IW discovery

I know, IW is arbitrary ( why not BW for instance ), but it lets AI the time necessary to build some units ( and it will ) and bypass our small military.

@Slubberinbear - I allow chopping, it's already too hard I know, the Role Play spirit isn't there, but with no whip and agressive AI, trailing in the total number of soldiers you have to have at least one way to defend yourself against an invasion.

@KMadCandy - Great Spies cannot bomb the AI. Using them for GA is the only way to go with it.

In answer to all other spying questions - passive AI spying is alright, as long as every known AI has the same spying weight, the slider remains @ 0% and no spy is used for offensive means. You can build a spy to counter-espionnage - as I said our peaceful folk enjoys its intimacy and don't like foreign espionnage very much

@r_rolo
Privateers are banned - agressive (well, disguised but still agressive) action on AI.
Colonies and vassals are allowed for AI - maybe I should have limitated it. Though, with a pangea, there won't be any major colonies.

@giaur
We are not commited to suicide our troops as soon as we bypass an AI. We have just to stop producing military as long as the AI stays behind. It means that, if an AI gets hardly beaten, our military is frozen until the AI disappears completely. We can upgrade ( I'm not entirely foolish neither ) or train a new troop disbanding an old one, as long as our soldiers counter remains still.
This one, I will leave open to suggestions on what do we do if an AI is left with 2 cities as vassal for exemple - I would suggest to ignore this AI and stay behind all the others.

@xanadux
We can get an enemy city while in war declared by the enemy. On capture we must keep it and give him back as soon as the war is over. We value his people but they don't belong to our folk. The only warring condition is to check for peace on each turn and settle for peace asap without conditions ( maps, techs, gold... ). We can keep for us all war money for captured cities.

@madscientist
Our folk may NEVER give away a city for peace. It can, and even has to, give away a tech or money if it helps settling for peace.

As for winning conditions, only three options are open for me : time (hard, due to military limitation and no warring ), space ( not that hard in fact - you just can't be the first to discover key offensive techs - you can drive the eco-highway at your wish ) and culture ( should be one of the easiest due to Philo and GA farming ). Conquest and domination are out due to rules, and Diplo / AP are unlikely due to religion incompatibility with the whole world.

I will update special rules below.

Great gaming everyone and don't forget to drop by and report from time to time! I don't want to force "every 50 turns" reps, but you are welcome whenever you want ( and have time for it ).

Don't forget spoiler tags and your saves!

Cheers!

 

[xanadux]

AFAIK, walls and castles strongly effect power rating (same as soldiers if I am correct), making this pretty impossible if must always be last in power. It is a pretty arbitrary restriction, given the possibilities of a very weak AI out there. I strongly urge a different form of military production restriction.

 

[pawelo]

AFAIK, walls and castles strongly effect power rating (same as soldiers if I am correct), making this pretty impossible if must always be last in power. It is a pretty arbitrary restriction, given the possibilities of a very weak AI out there. I strongly urge a different form of military production restriction.

Must have crossed our posts

You're perfectly right for this. How about this one:
""
As for the powergraph, the best thing to do is to look at total soldiers in Demo. This way, we can use walls and castles ( protective must be useful anyhow, no ? ) with no soldiers raise. Anyway, as Shyuhe mentionned it, it is impossible to do it right ahead.

New variant then:
- must be lowest in the number of soldiers after IW discovery

I know, IW is arbitrary ( why not BW for instance ), but it lets AI the time necessary to build some units ( and it will ) and bypass our small military.
""

 

[r_rolo1]

Colonies and vassals are allowed for AI - maybe I should have limitated it. Though, with a pangea, there won't be any major colonies.

My problem with the colonies is exacly that one. If a AI makes a weak colony ( or BTW gives a bad beating to another AI, leaving it with 1-2 cities), by current rules you need to have less soldiers than a 2 city vassal .... not good. IMHO the less power rule needs a serious rewriting or a drop out...

EDIT: Maybe just appliable to free civs :scratch head: ?

 

[pawelo]

My problem with the colonies is exacly that one. If a AI makes a weak colony ( or BTW gives a bad beating to another AI, leaving it with 1-2 cities), by current rules you need to have less soldiers than a 2 city vassal .... not good. IMHO the less power rule needs a serious rewriting or a drop out...

EDIT: Maybe just appliable to free civs :scratch head: ?

Going for your variant - the new made colony is the same case as a heavy beaten and vassalized AI. I will adapt it in the main post.

I would not drop the rule - we have to prove our peaceful nature

 

[Giaur]

Spoiler :

I gave it a try, but Ragnar brought many forces. 2 crossbows, 1 mace, 1 elephant and 1 spear all died against 6 cats, 4 harchers, 1 sword and 2 chariots. Pretty unwinable conditions. Better solution woud be 0 military unit upkeep. Especially when some civ (in my game Hammurabi) is very weak. It was a nice game, but conditions should be better balanced.