SGOTM 04 - Team VQ

[AlanH]

Welcome to your C_IV Warlords SGOTM 4 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.

The Game
This Monarch difficulty game is on a Standard size, Gyathaar-special, fractal map, at Epic speed, against 7 rivals including India. All victory conditions are enabled except Diplomatic, but the laurels for this contest will be awarded to the teams who achieve the fastest Space defeat by Gandhi.

Versions
This game will be played in Warlords Version 2.08 only.

It will be played using the current version of the HoF Mod. This is version 2.08.003 for Windows. There are insufficient Mac players to form a Mac team. so it will be played in Windows only.

If later versions of Warlords or the HoF Mod are released they cannot be used for this game.

Your start file will be available on the SGOTM Progress and Results Page at midnight, server local time, at the start of February 23.

Here's the starting position - click the image below to see a larger version.



Map Parameters
Playable Leader/Civ - Ragnar of The Vikings
Rivals - 7 civs including Gandhi (who is locked in war with Ragnar)
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Fractal, cylindrical, medium sea level, temperate
Game Speed - Epic
Diplomatic Victory Disabled
All other settings are defaults

Notes

• Please visit the C-IV Warlords SGOTM reference thread to check out the rules and procedures to ensure that you are adequately prepared for this game.
  
• Warlords v.2.08 is supported for this SGOTM. No other versions can be used, and you will have to stick with the same version throughout the game.
  
• Teams will compete for up to four awards - the Gold, Silver and Bronze Laurels for the fastest finishes, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher.
  
• Awards will be given to teams who achieve Space defeats to India in the least turns.
  
• 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.

Please enjoy the game

 

[healium]

am I the only one waiting for the file?

 

[namliaM]

Hmz, I thought this would be released tonight not yesterday...

We start with Hunting and Fishing, I see no problem with settling in place unless we want to move 2 West losing 1 turn, the clams and coastal location which I dont think is a good thing.... and we are currently located on a plains hill, allways nice for the extra hammer

Do we want to try for an early religion research Myst => Something?
Or go for a more conventional route like Agriculture/AH => Mining => BW?
Or pick up sailing early on for the Trading Post and Galleys?

Both the Pig and the Corn give us 6 food, so I think we only need research either AH or Agriculture early for we will allready have food plenty by just connecting up Clams and Pigs or Corn.

Production:
Starting by working the Grass-Forrest-Hill, switching to the Plains-Forrest-Hill after the border pop, offcourse working the clams once the nets are there.
Workboat (11) => Worker (26) => Warrior (35)
Workboat (11) => Warrior (20 + Size 2) => Worker (33)
By turn 26 we have got 285 commerce/beakers, more than enough to research any tech of our choosing.

Anyone have any idea how to get an AI to speed along without us beeing able to trade with it?
Do we want to piss everyone off at us? and have Gandhi trade his way?
We need to cripple the other AI I think at some point... I think...
Do we need to "make room" for Gandhi so he can grow some more and be larger than the other AI?
I think also we may want spies to sabotage the other AI if they are building SS parts...
What about UN and the diplo victory? How do we prevent that?

Lets get the ideas out there....

 

[bobrath]

Diplo victory has been disabled, so no worries of that. We absolutely will need to have spies - both to keep an eye on Ghandi and to sabotage other civs in their space race attempts. BTW, if there would be some way that we could have the shrine (ie found) of the religion that Ghandi ends up taking.... well that's some free early scouting. So yes, if we can snag an early religion (perhaps 2?) then I think we're in a good spot. Not sure if we want the world lined up against us or against Ghandi tho.

I'm not sure how to encourage a civ to tech faster, we need to go read the original game to see how teams did it in civIII.

BTW, that scout should be moved SW before we make any settling decisions, but I seriously doubt that moving Ragnar's capital off the sea would be anything besides DUMB. That site is scary nice for whipping and economy.

 

[namliaM]

I see no point in moving the settler 1 south, losing the Pigs. Moving the settler 2 south loses us all 3 resources and picks up a mountian + no new resources + 1 tile we cannot see right now, this tile does have a forest => Low probability for a resource to be there. In any case not a resource worth losing out on our starting spot....

I see no sense what so ever in moving either 2 south or 1 south.
To me the choices are:
1) Settle in place
2) 2 west, go inland => I think I agree with bob, a bad move
3) 2 North, I would have to double check in game but it looks like there is more land due north of there... It destroys a forrest and losses a turn, but all things considered the 2 hills are allmost the same.
The one thing we know for sure is we change 2 ocean tiles to coastal tiles, the rest... at this point is guessing for me...

No Diplo is nice, I forgot....
I was thinking about rushing Gandhi along... Can one gift GPs? And can one gift them to someone you are at war with?
Gifting Gandhi some GPs can make a real difference....

I dont know how much help the C3 game is... CIV is a totaly different game.

That site is scary nice for whipping and economy.

It has to much food actually. With +4 +4 +3 and +1 (lake) + 2 (CC) there is a food surplus of 14, even working the 2 Plains hills and 2 grassland hills (-6 food) we have a surplus of 6.
With the hills mined we have 3 + 3 + 4 + 4 + 2 (CC) = 16 hammers per turn.
At size 7, working those resource tiles + hills: +5 fpt/16hpt/8+3commerce.
Which IMHO is just crazy, unless Gandhi is our next door neighbour

 

[Cosmichail]

Checking in.

I see no sense what so ever in moving either 2 south or 1 south.
To me the choices are:
1) Settle in place
2) 2 west, go inland => I think I agree with bob, a bad move
3) 2 North, I would have to double check in game but it looks like there is more land due north of there... It destroys a forrest and losses a turn, but all things considered the 2 hills are allmost the same.
The one thing we know for sure is we change 2 ocean tiles to coastal tiles, the rest... at this point is guessing for me...

Can one gift GPs? And can one gift them to someone you are at war with?
Gifting Gandhi some GPs can make a real difference....

I don't think you can do much with an AI you at war with. We just would have to keep the other AI's from bothering him too much.

Proposed Roster:

Greyfox
Bobrath
namliaM
Maquis (welcome back)
Scowler
Healium
Cosmichail
Frankcor (lurker)

Again not order of play....

Also the comment made by Lexad in maintenance thread may be a way to get Gandhi to peace since Gyathaar has mentioned it is ok to try and get him out of the state of war. Which then would make it a lot easier to gift stuff to him (except cities if he's our vassal).

 

[Maquis]

Checking in (for the first time in 3 months!? LOL)

I would agree to settle in place. We've got tons of food, and I like the coastal start. Trading posts are nice, faster ships from the get-go! Plus we can the hell out of it!

 

[bobrath]

Ghandi will be unwilling to talk to us as long as we're at war. So no gifting via diplomacy screen will be possible. IIRC I've never seen the little gift box button when I'm at war with a civ and my units are in their lands, so gifting units (including GPs) will be impossible as well.

The original version of this GOTM had India starting out on a single island in a lake right next to your capital. Not sure if TPTB will do something similar. I'd like to expect that Ghandi will indeed be near by, but we'll have to be careful that he's not so close that we are forced into a long land war with him. Makes me wonder if perhaps Ghandi will indeed be close enough to "steal" those clams from us.

I'm only part way through the winning team's thread, but I'd highly suggest that folks at least skim some of those team threads to see the challenges we'll face (WW) as well as some possible solutions.

 

[namliaM]

Also the comment made by Lexad in maintenance thread may be a way to get Gandhi to peace since Gyathaar has mentioned it is ok to try and get him out of the state of war. Which then would make it a lot easier to gift stuff to him (except cities if he's our vassal).

The latest on that by AlanH:
"You are allowed no peace treaties with India" will change to "You are allowed no peace treaties with India, and you must immediately declare war on Gandhi or his master if you ever find that you are at peace with him, either directly or via a vassal relationship."

For Gandhi to be that close so he can steel the clams is near impossible... culture on that tile will be so dominant so soon... no way!

I had a look at the save...
There are jungle tiles to the south, east and west of that Mountain.
There are 4 land tiles North of the settler hidden in the fog. Also due north of that grass hill is a river plains hill and another plains hill due east of there.
XX = Unknown
Px = Plains hill Forrest
Gx = Grass hill Forrest
PH = Plains Hill
GH = Grass Hill
Pl = Plains
Gr = Grass
Co = Coast
Oc = Ocean
GF = Grass Forrest
GP = Grass Pig
La = Lake
Gc = Grass Corn
Cl = Clams
GJ = Grass Jungle
Mo = Mountain
R = River
XXRPH PH Pl Gr Co
PH GH PH Px GF Co
GF GP La GC Cl Co
Gr GF GF PH Co Oc
Gr Gr Gr Gx Co Oc
Gh Gr GF GF Co Oc
XX GF GH Gr Co Oc
XX GJ Mo GJ Co Oc
XX GJ GJ PF Co Oc

Due to the jungles beeing there moving the scout SW and/or migrating the settler south is No go... It will do NOTHING for us...

By moving 2 north we "waste" 1 turn.
Lose out on:
5 Grass
1 Grass hill
2 Coastals
2 Ocean
And gain:
2 Plains hills
1 Grass hill
1 Plains
1 Grass
2 Coastal
3 fog tiles which we cannot possibly know, worst case they are Coast without seafood.

 

[bobrath]

My proposal to move the scout SW was solely with the intent of then going NW on the next turn and picking up the height scouting advantage. I can see that going NW then W on the first turn would probably net us better "scouting"

 

[GreyFox]

Hello guys, checking in.

I'll relinquish the helm this time to someone else. Let's take turns, shall we?

(inner voice: what a good time to pass the captainship to someone else when the objective of this game is to lose ).

I haven't look at the save yet, and haven't even read namliam's numbers. Will post something more when I have done either (or both).

-

 

[Scowler]

Quick random thoughts

BTW, if there would be some way that we could have the shrine (ie found) of the religion that Ghandi ends up taking.... well that's some free early scouting.

I like the sound of that.

Apart from getting our own empire up and running, scouting out the area will be important. We need to find out where Gandhi is, and also where and who his neighbours are. This will inevitably have an impact on our early strategy, for example...

Do we need to "make room" for Gandhi so he can grow some more and be larger than the other AI?

If he is blocked in by somebody like Alex we might need to spend time taking that bastard out.

If it is just the two of us on a landmass, to what extent will our own expansion be affected?; do we allow him to expand in a certain direction to access resources that might permit him to develop more effectively?

And if he is on a different landmass...

 

[GreyFox]

I think we should just settle in place. No sense moving the settler anywhere with the visible resources and tiles.

If it was the same asCiv3 SGOTM, we can expect Gandhi to be nearby. If so, one possible thing to do is to build some wonders in cities neighboring Gandhi, and have Gandhi capture them. Possible wonders to gift are UoS, Space Elevator, Internet.

Note that they are all late wonders, because I think the initial phase of this game is the same as all games: we must first get ourselves to a strong position before thinking about winning. It does not matter if Gandhi is weak initially, we don't want him to get too strong and crush us prematurely. Letting him capture a wonder like Internet is one way to "gift" him techs. We can learn the techs, and trade the techs to someone else, making 2 civs know the tech, thus effectively "gifting" Gandhi the tech.

In summary, I think what I am trying to say is that we must play this game as if to win, and only when we became the tech leader / strongest civ in the world then we start thinking about losing to Gandhi.

-

 

[healium]

also signing in...

lets just settle in place and do the "Workboat=> Size 2 => Worker" thing.

maybe later in the game we could try to have someone small thats willing to trade with us and ghandi, but i agree with GreyFox, lets try to become strong enough to actually be able to intervene in any way we feel like.
early religion seems tempting, but maybe something conventional like the mentioned Agriculture/AH => Mining => BW with sailing right after that might be a good compromise.

 

[namliaM]

I think there may be merrit in moving 2 north.
With the 2 plains hills there and the plains tile we lose out on 3 hammers but gain 9 with enough food to work everything and have +1 food left.
Making our captitol 16 hammer -3 + 9 = 22 + 50% (Buro) + 25% (forge) = 38 hpt

That would be a verry strong production capitol, but less whipping... and probably less commerce than the original site. BUT with all that jungle down south there are plenty of grass tiles there to cottage up (assuming we can grab that), more open grass is due West = More cottaging?

 

[GreyFox]

Disagree with moving north, the titlles north of 2 north are unknown, there is absolutely no way to tell which is better to warrant wasting 1 turn and move north. Settling on site is good enough.

Is it a rule to complete SGOTM3 before starting SGOTM4?

 

[Cosmichail]

Is it a rule to complete SGOTM3 before starting SGOTM4?

No worries mate I finished it tonight. Diplo victory at 1872.

Disagree with moving north, the titlles north of 2 north are unknown, there is absolutely no way to tell which is better to warrant wasting 1 turn and move north. Settling on site is good enough.

I totally agree let's not waste a turn to find that we want to go back to the original site.

 

[Maquis]

So, looks like most of us agree to settle in place. I haven't seen a real roster yet, just the proposal from Cosmichail. Since Greyfox has decided not to start us off, do we want to set our roster up according to timezone? (I've been out too long, so I don't remember where 1/2 the members are!)

Let's get this show on the road!

 

[GreyFox]

I did not say I would not start it off, I just meant someone else should be the VQ Leader

I proposed that namliam takes both honor (since he is most enthusiatics of us all

SO namliaM, post a roster and get us rolling ... just don't settle 2 North

--

 

[namliaM]

Why not settle 2 north? The plains hills are there no matter what land is further north... One thing we do have is a guarantee we can work those tiles with all the food allready here and would make our capitol a very strong producer even if there are only coastal tiles.

Right now our capitol is a bit of 2 worlds and we have no idea if we can get another big productive city like this, Right now we can make sure there is.
And we can be sure that we have plenty of grasslands to cottage up, there is grasslands West and south in that Jungle...
Plus moving the capitol 2 north will enable us to fit another coastal city south of the capitol OUTSIDE of the jungle, beeing productive right away. With the capitol in place where it is now will not allow for that. Forcing us to place it inside the jungle, having to chop first (and get Iron working).

As you can see I think there are some good advantages to moving north, tho it losses us a turn and a forrest. But teams who play it save...

Having the honor of leading this team, I will hold of on starting this for atleast one more day. Hoping someone will change their minds... (also I dont have time right now... will have started in 24 hours) Please someone change there minds or I will have to settle in place
namliaM => Official VQ starter?
Greyfox => SG veteran, can fix my mistakes
Maquis => formerly known as VQ leader
Bobrath => SG Pro
Healium => New kid on the block
Scowler => Weekend man
Cosmichail => #3 finisher (finaly)
Frankcor (lurker)