SGOTM 01 - Geezers

AlanH

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Welcome to your C_IV SGOTM 1 Team Thread. Please use it for all internal team communication, turn logs and discussions. Subscribe to it to receive notifications, and do not visit the other team threads for this game until you have finished. Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest. I hope you enjoy the game.

This game will be played in Civ4, patched to v1.61.

This first SGOTM will not feature any advanced variant.. the winner simply will be the team that wins the game at the earliest game date with either domination or a diplomatic victory. All victory conditions are still enabled though, with exception of Space Race, so you have to avoid getting another type of victory (and of course prevent the AIs from winning).

Individual start files for all teams will be available on the SGOTM Progress and Results Page at midnight, server local time, at the start of May 12.

Here's the start position.


Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Hapshepsut of Egypt
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Mystery
Game Speed - Epic

Permanent Alliances are turned on (can form permanent alliances after either communism or fascism is researched)
Space race is disabled.
Egypt is locked into war with Huayna Capac of the Incas.
Egypt is locked into peace with an unknown civilization.

The map is hand built, and therefore may not have a standard configuration.

Please visit the following links to ensure that you are adequately prepared:
Civ4 SGOTM reference thread

Notes:

A. ONLY Civilization4 v1.61 is supported for this SGOTM. All teams will compete for a single award - the Gold Laurels.

B. All teams must play the sponsored variant - victory will be awarded for the fastest victory by either domination or diplomacy.

C. All saved game files uploaded to the server are parsed through software that extracts and archives data about your save, including reload count for each turn set.

Good luck to your team, and remember rule #1: Enjoy your game :D
 
Looks like I get to post here first :) I posted in the signup thread but I'll repeat it here in a bit more detail:

I've not played a SG before and I only get the occasional win at Noble in SP so I suggest I go at the end of roster.

IMPORTANT I am away on holiday from 12 June to 28 June inclusive. Hopefully we'll be just about done or finished by then anyway. Let me know if this causes any major problems.
 
I sure hope this is the right team... How do we know? hardy har

Just to let you all know, the team name has absolutely NOTHING to do with that players ability. Unless it's based on the lowest level. Just checking in for now. I'll give this all a look later, as I just got home from work. I hope you all give it a look as well and have some ideas or thoughts.

A little info on me, I'm a salesman for Blue Bell Ice cream, 29, and from Texas. Married with 2 kids and I like meat. As in red meat (vegetables are bad for you). Pretty normal goob here.

Anyways, as far as team play, I say we might want to go with the regular 24/48 rule strictly. My last SGOTM we did this and it moved the game along quite nice. I was even skipped once, so if it happens don't get your feelings hurt. But, that's just a suggestion.

Can't wait for the game to start, and to get to know you!

EDIT: Actually I just read the sign up thread, and we don't have to have the team name be Mauer. Any ideas and shoot them this way, as the current name is to identify the coordinator. Why it's me I'm not sure *shrugs*

Also, we need to get together a turn roster. Is there anyone that wants to start things off? Not me btw.
 
welcome all...

lets let the discussion begin.

this will be tricky as i am currently in a SGOTM for civ 3 as well.

markh is on that team with me, so if we make any posting errors, just know that our stupidity and the fact we are playing 2 games at once is the reason why.

lets start the discussion on the starting position and our first possible city and opening moves.


One thing i would like to point out is that this is the first succession game for civ 4 , so very few curveballs will be thrown our way.

for the starting town, i suggest a movement of SE, then settle. this gives us plenty of flood plains, that when "hamleted" can create a bounty of wealth.
this also gives us some shields from the hills and horses. i am open to ideas though.
i am willing to go first, if no objections.

let your input ride in this thread boys... any ideas that you might think are dumb or useless could actually help us out a lot!!!

lets have some fun!
 
I'm curious as to why move before settling. I can't see that big an advantage. Which direction should we move the warrior initially or do you want the warrior in the city asap? I would probably vote to move N. What do you think of mining for first tech?

As mentioned in my earlier post I think I should be last in the roster as I think most, if not all of you, have more experience.

How many moves do we take? More for early starters and then 10 after?
 
Well, we're not looking at many "unimproved" hammers from that starting spot. The flood plains look nice, and I hope them there hills are nice to us. I wish the warrior was to the west of us so we could have a better look see w/o moving the settler.

I'm no expert, especially at tile picking, but moving SW would keep the lake in play as well as the cattle and the flood plains as well as possibly revealing a few more hammers.

I would hate to wander for too long though, as some fighting men will be required before too long because of the Incans.
 
Hi all... checking in.

Following Mauer's lead: I suspect I am the geezer of the bunch, 46 years old. Also married, also have two kids, although I suspect they are a bit older than Mauer's (18 and 15). I'm a director with an IT services company, live near Philadelphia (I did live in Texas from 1989-1991).

As far as Civ IV experience... I have been successful up to and including deity. However, I've gotten to those higher levels by focusing on fast warmongering. I have decent experience at culture, almost none at spaceship. I've never gone for a diplomacy win.

I've never done a SG, so you'll need to bear with me as I figure it out. I'll try to read the rules/conduct thread before we start.

One tactical note. Good news is my travel is infrequent. Bad news is I am out of town all of next week. I might be able to monitor the forum and chip in my 2 cents, but won't be able to play next week.

On to the game... I need to spend some more time looking at the start, maybe mock one up to see how it feels. I don't think I've ever played Hatty before. My first reaction is to move the settler SW. Main reasons: get on the plains hill for the extra hammer in the center square, get the cows into play, and it looks like there are a couple more hills to the W and SW of the plains hill (and W of the cow). The extra hills along with the floodplains could make a kick-ass production city.

juballs2001, my issue with SE is health. It looks like too many floodplains to me... at monarch, we will be health challenged already. I don't know if we will be able to support much population (maybe all the extra breads from the FP will overcome the health issues). I need to try a test start to see.

Sam_Yeager, I like warrior N. My gut feeling is our second city is to the north to grab some of the FP tiles we are passing up by settling south. In any event, he needs to go exploring, its too early to put him on guard duty.

As far as tech, since we start with Ag and have cows nearby, I would think about AH. Get a pasture on that tile, along with the extra hammer from the hill, and our early city is rockin'. Maybe pottery is second to get some cottages on FP. Need to think about that some more.

On other thing... pretty early on, we should decide about domination vs. diplomacy. Something tells me this map is set up such that fast domination is not a given. I think we need to get some feet on the ground and assess the map asap. I could be talked into a scout or two (I almost never build them). If we find ourselves on a fairly small chunk of land, it may make sense to take advantage of all the cottageable FP around and beeline for UN.
 
Sorry for the double post... forgot one thing.

Haven't thought of a team name yet. RE: Team captain, obviously one of you guys who has played SG before.
 
Mauer said:
I'm no expert, especially at tile picking, but moving SW would keep the lake in play as well as the cattle and the flood plains as well as possibly revealing a few more hammers.

Ah... SW not SE and hammer from the hill. Yes, I see what you mean.

Mauer said:
I would hate to wander for too long though, as some fighting men will be required before too long because of the Incans..

Absolutely. Although I wonder just how near old Capac is to us.It's interesting that the two victory conditions are domination and diplomatic. Perhaps Capac is across the ocean....

@The-Hawk - I'm not sure how feasible it is to decide on domination or diplomatic yet. Maybe aim for domination initially until we get the lay of the land. I see your point about AH. I was thinking about mining to get more shields earlier but perhaps we can research that second followed by archery.

As for team captain then it looks like juballs2001 or markh if we are looking for previous SG experience.

This is early morning for me and I can't see the forums from work easily :( so I'll check in this evening.
 
Hi, guys. I am 32 years old and from Germany. I am an export manager and a single.

I played 2 SGOTMs in civ3 and various succession games. I have CIV since it was released, but got it to run just 2 weeks ago and I am just playing my second game to get a hang on it, so prepared to get a lot of stupid questions.:)

Just to let you know I play civ for fun, but of course I will do my best to get a good result for the team. Criticism is always welcome, but it should be in a fair way.;)

From what I see I would settle either S or SW to get the cows into play for sure. I like S even more as we will have more hills for a lot of shields. SW would be too many floodplains in my opinion.
 
markh said:
Regarding the name : what about "Hatty wreaks havoc" ?
Sounds like we're going for domination :) I tend to try to cover my back so what about "Hatty's revenge" instead?

On the quick synopsis front I hit the big 50 later this year so The-Hawk's safe :) Perhaps I should have named myself OldGeezer :lol: I work in IT infrastructure development aka automated server and application builds etc.

I notice juballs2001 has volunteered himself to go first with which I have no problem. The-Hawk's out next week so either goes first instead, unless he can manage a quick second, so maybe goes last. In which case he'll probably have to clear up the disaster I've left :) which probably makes me 5th. Any other views? Team captain :confused: Do you want to keep it Mauer? I suggest juballs2001 if not.

EDIT What about turn lengths? According to the maintenance thread it's up to us.
 
It looks we are a rather old team.:)
I'm 43 years old, born and raised in Austria, now living in lovely Pennsylvania, York to be exact.

As for the game, moving SW to get the additional hammer and the cow seems to be the obvious way to go.
Any ideas about research path? What victory condition should we shoot for? What to build first?

I think we should have an agreement on these basic issues before we start playing
 
Ok, I'll throw my opinion out there real quick then.

How about "Geezers" for the team name, Domination for VC, warrior first and AH to tech? Just opinions, ignore if you desire.
 
old team?? nope, im 25... well i guess that is still older then the usual 18-25 year olds you get o0n here....


the start... well SW works well too, but i mean health will be an issue in most cases due to the abundance of floodplains.

the forests are in play as well to the north and that would make a nice chopping city.

Geezers works for me as a team name!
 
I don't mind to much about the final team name. Geezer is fine, Mauer is good as well.

For further discussion, I would like to lay out a few strategic plans and options:

We have to make two decision right at the start. What to research and what to build? Both decisions depend a little on the planned victory condition as well.

Research options:
1) The high tech pace path:animal husbandry - writing - alphabeth
This one is best suited for heavy trading and therefore high tech pace. Suited extremely well for diplo victory
2) The early religion path: mysticism, polytheism, monotheism (if poly fails)
can boost early income
3) The chop and expand path: Mining, BW
early expansion and possible axemen rush, suited for early wars

Builds:
For research 1: worker, warrior, settler seems good
For research 2: warrior, settler, warrior, worker seems good (nothing to do for an early worker, it will take some time because of no improved tiles)
For research 3: warrior, worker, worker, settler (I don't know if chopping is still a good strategy with the new patch

If we want to go for domination, research 3, for diplo research 1 would be my way to proceed.

Personally I would try the diplo victory, but if the majority wants to go for domination it's OK.

Any comments?
 
You know, I wonder how many other teams are gonna shoot for the diplo path. Maybe we should go that route. I'll stick with Ronald on this one and change my desired VC to diplo, and I concur with his summary of options...Research option #1.
 
Some other thoughts:

I've never played a game where I was locked at war. Anyone know what this does to war weariness? Seems like it will be rampant unless it is somehow turned off?

Given we are locked at war, it seems that diplo will be all the more challenging (this is from the guy who has never gone for diplo ;) ). Huayna and anybody he makes friends with will vote against us. Makes me think that a little AI bashing may be needed even to win diplo. Maybe do enough conquest to insure we can vote ourselves in?

I find it a bit odd that space race is turned off. That makes me think that Gyathaar designed the scenario to insure that domination and diplo will both take a while. As a result, he had to turn off space so the AI's wouldn't get there first. So, I'm guessing we are on an islands-like map... which means it will take a long time to get out and take over enough land for domination.

Maybe as Sam_Yeager said we can't decide until we know more about the world. To me, this means we should not do early warmongering. Focus on getting our science going (tech path 1) and explore the world. If we later decide we need to bash some heads, we use macemen or knights.

By the way, I personally like the idea of diplo... for me it is something new. But I am OK either way.
 
Team Geezers sounds good.

Regarding the VC I cannot really vote as I do not have a feel for the speed of a game going for diplo. We just have to keep in mind that the team finishing at the earliest date wins the competition. The warmongers do not have to research that many techs and in civ3 domination was possible with cavs or even knights on a suitable map. Due to lack of experience I do not know whether this is possible in CIV, too.
 
it is possible on civ 4 depending on the type of map.

if pangea, a conquest or domination win can be attained fairly early with even horse archers. if archapolegico or contnents it will be harder as the civs on the other side will be more prepared for oncoming barrages.
 
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