RBTS7 - L'estasi Dell'oro

[darrelljs]

Welcome to RBTS7 . We're going to do something a bit different here, running a competitive rather than a cooperative SG. While there is some precedent for this in civ3, we're going to take a slightly different approach. We've divided into three teams of two players, each pursuing their own victory condtion. Instead of adhering to a list of complicated rules, we have a gentleman's agreement to, in T-Hawk's words, "further our own victory condition, but play fair and don't actively sabotage the other player". Here's the game settings:

Map Script: Fractal (snaky Pangaea, courtesy of Sulla)
Sea Level: Low
Game Speed: Normal
Turn length: 10
Difficulty: Monarch
Civilization: Spain
Leader: Isabella
World Size: Standard
Opponents: Seven
Options: No events, no huts
Turnset Length: 20 (initially)
Version: Beyond the Sword v3.13

A Spiritual leader was an obvious call, and Expansive is a nice generic trait that doesn't strongly favor any one victory condtion. Sulla has promised a good map for us with one AI having an "exceptional" start, I'm curious to see what that means . The difficulty level had to be low enough to allow the possibility of victory (a Time victory is like kissing your sister), but high enough to prevent the Domination team from running away with it. We'll start with 20 turns per player to allow some coherence, but might need to revise that downward depending on how things play out. Here is the roster:

Roster
Space 1 - mostly_harmless
Domination 1 - Garath
Cultural 1 - timmy827
Space 2 - Qwack
Domination 2 - darrelljs
Cultural 2 - T-Hawk

The teams were randomly selected. Its not particularly fair that T-Hawk is on the cultural team, but at least it will make for an interesting challenge . The starting location has some possibilites:



Let's see whether the space cadets move the Settler. Oh, and since part of the fun will be seeing how each team strategizes their way to victory, we'll try to provide at least a summary of our deliberations. This will be done in spoiler tags of course, since we musn't be privy to each other's plans. It will also give me an opportunity after the Domination team wins to go back and explain in detail where the bad guys went wrong .

Darrell

P.S. Five points to any lurker who can explain the title .

 

[Winth]

If I am not mistaken, you had bad luck, because it's a sentence that accompanies my favourite movie in its "ins and outs!". In the movie "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly" (if you didn't watch it, you SHOULD, even if you don't like westerns!) when a

Spoiler :

bandit Tuco penetrates the old cemetery, where 200.000$ is supposed to be buried. He looks for the right grave eyeing everything like insane, because he needs just the cross called "UNKNOWN"... right beside "Arch Stanton"... where it's buried. Or at least supposed to. While he's looking, we hear a beautiful score by Ennio Morricone called "L'estasi Dell'oro... or "The Ecstasy of Gold!".

The tune for this is so epic that it fits scenes of suspicion PERFECTLY.

And I think it means that the exceptional starts means that

Spoiler :

AI has 8 gold resources, you pwn him, say: "Like old times, four for you, four for me... I'm sorry, AI" and leave him hanged on a rope with 4 gold mines, and then shoot his rope loose. While he's screaming...

Enough spoilers!!!

(BTW: Oh, it's not a translation probably, because I have listened to this piece several times and I got around the name. )

 

[Qwack]

I think we all know who will win...

Spoiler :

Yep, thats right, Barrack Obama.

Checkin In.

 

[Qwack]

wheres the save Darrell? Or are going to have to deal with your IRRESPONSIBLE behavior and bad memory in this SG also

Doesn't look good for your team Darell.

 

[mostly-harmless]

Space Cadet mostly-harmless checking in.

 

[darrelljs]

Heh-heh...grab the save from RB, I was going to post a save pack (end of each round) at the end of the game.

Darrell

 

[mostly-harmless]

Alright, will get it from Sullla's post.
"Got it"

mh

 

[darrelljs]

If I am not mistaken

Great flick, huh? I actually meant to play the song at the end when they had the three way stand-off, as its more appropriate for this game, but too late now .

Darrell

 

[Winth]

Great flick, huh? I actually meant to play the song at the end when they had the three way stand-off, as its more appropriate for this game, but too late now .

Because darrelljs, yooou know what you aaaare! Just a dirty son of a -----!!!

(no, it's not meant to be taken offensive; it's a exclusive joke for those who watched the movie. )

 

[Garath]

Just confirming that I am present.

If mostly_harmless does want to do any inter-team start discussion, I'm happy to do so, but it seems from the lack of posts that that isn't necessary.

In which case, I'll just await the save.

Garath

 

[mostly-harmless]

Sorry guys for the delay. Will play and post tomorrow.
mh

 

[Qwack]

mostly_harmless suggested that we (The space team) should use forum spoiler tags to discuss our strategy in this thread rather than PM's or email for the benefit of lurkers, and I completely agree with him. So heres the first entry .

Spoiler :

Since Spain starts with Mysticism, and since there is a team going for cultural victory, we will not found any early religions (Its a good thing the cultural team has their first turn set last since its the easiest condition out of the three in my opinion).

Mostly_Harmless pointed out that there seems to be open water in the southeast (Which after I viewed the screen shot more closely seems to be the case). Since we start with fishing, and an ocean capital is really nice for research and science and will hurt the other 2 conditions (Less hammers for domination and less land tiles for cultural), it would seem like a great idea to move the warrior 1 SE or SW to see if there is ocean down there and if there is, we can move our settler to that location. The question is whether we should give up the river tiles (Which can be cottaged later) to move to the ocean for some important tech wonders (Colussus and Great Lighthouse) and to hurt the other 2 teams.

I would lean towards saying yes, although a fish resource or two would make the decision much easier.

 

[darrelljs]

mostly_harmless suggested that we (The space team) should use forum spoiler tags to discuss our strategy in this thread rather than PM's or email for the benefit of lurkers

Hmm good idea. Let it be known that quoting a spoiler tag reveals the text (not that I read it of course ). Garath, I suggest:

Spoiler :

We build lots of units and take the AI cities. I don't see how we can lose this thing if we follow that plan .

Darrell

 

[Garath]

darrelljs: [SPOIL]Hmm, I like your thinking. I can't help feeling that it's a little cruel to the poor AIs. I also think that we should carefully read the RB Honourable Ruleset. (so as to avoid doing any of *that*, of course...[/SPOIL]

Spoiler :

Note that, of course, the above spoiler is intentionally not actually spoiled. I'm just messing with people.

Also, I'm afraid I'm not the best warmonger this game has ever produced, so I'll follow your lead on the plan. I like anything that means we can't lose. I'd like to further suggest that if we focus on fast units, since we'll need to be able to strike as quickly as possible during our limited windows of opportunity. Spain's UU can only help us with this.

Unless the space team think that the ability to chop forests is worth giving us the knowledge of where Copper is, I doubt that I'll have any ability to prosecute a war within our first turnset. That means that our first chance will be during your set, turns 80-100. It's a little late to be starting fights for the first time, but hopefully we'll be OK.

A rules question: Is Domination strictly Domination, or does it also include Conquest? The initial concept had a player for each of them, so this was never explicitly mentioned.

Garath

 

[timmy827]

Alright, let's get the culture discussion underway...

Spoiler :

Initial thoughts: On a pangaea, I wouldn't worry too much about founding religions. We should if we have inherit a good setup for founding, but I think beelining Music is more important; if we can get the free GA the AI's should be discouraged from researching long enough for us to build the Sistine (although the other teams might be anxious to make any justifiable trade to get Music into the AI's hands.)
I'm used to playing the "safer" cultural victory, preferring artist hordes over cottages/slider so your civ doesn't fall behind in tech. But here I think slider might make just as much sense as the other teams will be prioritizing research and military. I don't need to tell you how good corps are; I forsee some crazy Caste System scrambling to get the right GPs once we have the techs as I doubt the other teams will let us store them. Not sure how much else is worth discussing until we get to my first turnset, but I'm sure you have some ideas up your sleeve.

 

[NoChildren]

Lurker's comment:
This is an awesome idea for a SG, i really wish i had time to still play SG's. I will follow this one with great interest though. It'll be fun to see how much you could change an empire in just 20 turns, going from 100 culture slider or running artists with CS to going all out drafting.

ps. it's definitely the best western ever made

 

[mostly-harmless]

Looking around our starting site with the warrior reveals a coastal spot with clams & cows. This looks nice for a capital spot.

We are settled and get working on a fishing boat right away.
Research is directed towards Hunting, obviously with AH in mind for the cows.

Spoiler :

This should also work well towards a fast library. Is really not much special in the early game for a space victory. So I focus on research to go with the theme.

Hunting and AH are in and research is directed towards Writing.
The workboat is finished and brings in the clams, helping Madrid gain a pop point.
Since AH is in and those cows are right at our doorstep a worker is ordered up.

Our bear-chased warrior has discovered what looks like a choke point to the west.


Done.
Next up is Garath.

mh

 

[Winth]

lurker comment:

Just keep the way you're going. And may God have mercy upon your soul.

But I, Lurker of Civfanatics, minor to SuccessionGamer of CivFanatics, will tell you something. Where we are, you can be either a Lurker or a SG-er. You chose my way, I chose mine. Mine was harder, what with all those not very informative reports or extensive hunger for new updates.

Look!
S-u-r... There's no "L'estasi Dell'oro" on it!
(This is the first time where lurker in a succession game adopts a variant - stay in character and throw out random references to westerns).

 

[Garath]

I see it and will play either today or tomorrow. It doesn't look like there's all that much that I have to discuss yet, after all - you haven't even managed to meet any AIs yet, so how am I supposed to kill them?

Garath

 

[MyOtherCar]

P.S. Five points to any lurker who can explain the title .

A bit late, but I didn't read past the first post, before I found this.

Now my question is, which one of you is the 'Ugly'?

"You're a good-looking boy: you've big, broad shoulders. But he's a man. And it takes more than big, broad shoulders to make a man." -- High Noon