SGOTM 04 - Trash Team

[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

 

[remconius]

Hey all, checking in.

Played with most of you in previous SGs, but I am curious to see who we all are:
Name, age, City, Country, Timezone, Civ background, Personal…

Who am I: Remco, age 32, live in Amstelveen, Netherlands. Timezone GMT +1.
Civilization: Played Civ since the original series. Started succession gaming in SGOTM2, and have since played almost a dozen SGs for Civ IV in the last months. Right now my focus is on SGOTM. Was Captain of Pioneer Knights for SGOTM2 and 3.
Personal: Happily married, 2 kids (nr 3 in progress). Employed as a Project Manager for a Food Company.

I was happy to be invited into this team by Pigswill. Looking forward to having a fun game!

 

[stuge]

Checking in. Good to see 3/4s of the Independence team here.

Who am I? Tuomas, 17 years, (18 tomorrow), living in Helsinki, Finland. Currently studying, hope to study in a university in a few years. Avid sports fan. Will do any sport provided it isn't soccer.

Played Civ2 & 3 single. Bought CIV, discovered SGs and nowadays check the forum everyday for new games.

As for the game itself, settle in place?

 

[Cam_H]

Stuge! Woo-hoo! 18 to boot! and more !

I commute between my job in a rural area and home. Friday -> Sunday is time. Timezone is -9.30 GMT if anyone can work these things out.

I played Civ2 and got quite involved with customised games and was co-editor of Scenario League on Apolyton for quite a while, and did quite a few modder tutorials. I played Civ3 but hated it until Conquests came out, which I enjoyed, but not as much as Civ4.

As for the game ... have Pigswill, Cabert and I got a surprise for you guys!

 

[pigswill]

Hi all.
I'm Peter; married , no kids. 50 in two weeks time old: ). I work as a community psychiatric nurse in a mental health crisis team. I live in England (gmt 0).

Played civ 1 a lot, never got round to playing civ2, gave up on civ 3 after a while coz I was totally unimpressed by distance and corruption. Enjoying civ 4, been playing SGs for a few months now. Can't really comment too much on sgotm3 until its officially finished.

Tuomas

 

[remconius]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Stuge!

As for the game ... have Pigswill, Cabert and I got a surprise for you guys!

Hmmm.... Did you guys already talk about this game ?

My ideas about the game:
We are at War with peaceful Gandhi, but we have to lose from him by space defeat! So we have to aid Gandhi, but we can never gift him anything.

I feel we have to do two things:
1. Make Gandhi's life as pleasant as possible (eventhough he will be attacking us and building military instead of science). We need to provide room for him to expand, we could even build cities near him and have them captured by Gandhi. We could also destroy useless cities he builds...
2. Keep other civs small They should not mess with Gandhi, but if they can support him fine. They should not be big enough to beat Gandhi to space. If anyone declares on Gandhi we should attack them as well.

Our civilisation
Techs:We have Hunting, Fishing. We could go for wheel > pottery > writing to use our financial advantage and build cottages. Or Agriculture > AH to build improvements. Or the normal power start mining > BW.
UU: Berserker (replaces Maceman) starts with Amphibious warfare and 10% city attack.
UB: Trading Post (replaces Lighthouse) Navigation I promo for naval units.
Traits: We are aggessive and Financial. So our berserkers (and other melee) get Combat I. Financial means we get more commerce, especially from water and river tiles.
Overall: We are well suited to be coastal, rule the seas, attack from ships and be aggressive.

The start
Starting position is good on food (lake, clams, pig, corn), production and forests. The scout can move S, E to reveal south.

My main question mark is the plains hill with the blue circle 2N from the settler.... Probably a little Gyathaar hint that suggests more stuff up north.

Moving 2N with the settler would not cost us any resource and grant us a plains hill for the capital and whatever else shows up.... I think it's worth the extra turn.

 

[pigswill]

It has to be admitted that cabert, Cam_H and I have been talking to each other already ; we've been playing as the nucleus of the Trash Team in the P666 series for a while now.

On the other hand it has been somewhat exclusive so I can understand you not being 100% happy about this .

Basically what we've been considering is playing a practice game in the thread. Couple of reasons for this:-

1) To discuss strategy and tactics in the context of an actual game rather than as an abstraction.

2) To get used to each other's playing styles and learn to play together as a team before playing sgotm4 itself.

Edit: We've got the best part of four months to complete the game so as long as we all play regularly (average of 20-30 turns per week) we'll finish in plenty of time.

 

[pigswill]

As for the game itself I've had a couple of early thoughts:

Build up some tasty wonder-packed cities (colossus,GL, Glib) and let Gandhi capture them.

Stomp aggressive civs initially; let the tech hogs develop peacefully so they can trade with Gandhi then stomp them when they start building spaceship themselves.

 

[cabert]

Hi all, happy birthday stuge

I work as a community psychiatric nurse in a mental health crisis team.

we sure can use your profile in here

As for who I am, I don't think I need to be THAT precise in a public forum
I live in France (GMT + 1 if I'm not mistaken), I'm an engineer, have a wife and 3 daughters that don't like me playing cIV .

And about talking before starting the game, since there was no thread open and the team wasn't really formed, we had no real choice, sorry guys.
Pigswill somehow sumed up what we were talking about, let me just add one thing :
We need to discuss our Grand Strategy a lot before moving anything.
I've never played to lose, and this variant is somewhat crazy (that's where your profile is needed Pigswill ).
I believe :
- we need to find India as late as possible to avoid him being in war mode
- in the meantime we should build up nice capturable cities for him, including ?

I'd say some nice to have wonders for a philo leader (not us!) include the pyramids and the great library, but gandhi would use the pyramids to switch to US, that isn't a big help in the early game. I'm a bit clueless.
Cam, did you manage to build a test game?
Or better to play a test game?

 

[remconius]

No problem you guys discussing ahead. There was no thread so no place to talk. My only worry was that the plans were laid out and carved in stone. It is clear that this is not the case. I am all in favour of lots of talk before starting.

I always urge teammates to play testgames before we start. it gives a good feel for the settings. I suggest we build a fast testgame (quick speed) for the general idea of the game: can we make Gandhi build a space ship while at war with us. And we could have an epic speed test game to optimize the first turns, so that techs, worker actions and build orders fit together.

I dont mind putting some test games together tonight, but if Cam builds one I'll play that.

Not sure about building wonder packed cities, I would prefer to take cities from Gandhi's neighbours and have Gandhi take them from us. We need a solid base of 8-10 cities to be able to keep Gandhi safe.

 

[Cam_H]

OK ... this has been 'constructed' by a WorldBuilder newb ... I've opted to not include the HoF mod as part of the set up. We have a 'house rule' never to make peace with Gandhi (because I don't know how to be 'always at war' with Gandhi but no other tribes). The 'blue circles' are not the same as the official game. I've done it at Epic ... if Fast or Normal is preferred, then I don't mind one iota if someone (looking at Remconius ) wants to roll up an alternate map. I have not played this, but it should play alright.

Do we all play to 2400BC and compare results as per our traditional 40 turn rounds, or do we have something else in mind?

Pigswill - it might be good if we discuss '15 turn' rounds and 'half-time breaks' and 'Cam's tantrums because a friggn Granary was built in St. Petersburg' at some stage.

Remconius ... absolutely nothing carved in stone, let me assure you! We just want to play a test game because it has dawned on us that we're not sure as to what works and what doesn't work with this bizarre variant.

Please note that I can only play on Fridays-Sundays 'Australian time'.

I'm looking forward to this - it should be great fun!

 

[cabert]

about testing, I already expressed my feeling somehow.
But remco's option of taking neighbours' cities and semi gifting them to gandhi sound appealing too.
I think one full length test game should help us having some insight.

 

[remconius]

Thanks for the test game, Cam. I'll have a crack at it tonight and make one at quick speed. So we can play faster and see if Gandhi will actually build the metal bird and how we can support him.

 

[MrMahk]

Hello everyone, checking in and looking forward to my first ever SG.

My name's Mark, which is where the name MrMahk comes in...I'm 16 and live in NY (EST or GMT-5). I played CivIII and CivIV, but as I said I have yet to take part in an SG.


As for the game, I pretty much agree with what remconius said about sort of "watching over Gandhi" - let him do what he wants (except killing us!) and don't let other AIs gang up on him.

I'm sure our strategy will evolve over time here because as this is a fractal map, anything is possible- we and Gandhi could be on the same island, separate islands, Gandhi could be alone on an island with Monty and Toku , every civ on a big pangea, etc... so we really don't know what to expect yet.

As for the start, I am pro-move 2N. Whether we move the settler 2N or not, there will be at least 3 food resources in the fat cross. If we move 2N, there is 1 extra visible hill we can work and what appear to be 2 additional hills that would be in the fat cross, which could make the capital a big production powerhouse.


Lastly- Stuge I just met you, but happy birthday!

 

[stuge]

Aww, thanks for the cheers, guys!

Helping a civ to win faster while at war with them certainly takes some dodgy thinking. Remconius already gave us some ideas, which dovetail partly into my own.

- Making sure that Gandhi doesn't get beat up.

- "Trimming" his civ. (You _don't_ do anything with that iceball city.)

- Building up a solid base at first. Then devouring any nearby civ and letting Gandhi capture our old core. Rinse and repeat. Just be careful that we don't feed him over the dom limit.

- If Gandhi's land looks underdeveloped, we can just march workers over. Although giving our own over to slavery isn't pretty.

I'm also in favor of test games, but these strategies depend a lot on the map and we have here a Gyathaar-special fractal, so it's impossible to know what to expect, like MrMahk said. So let's not get too caught up in testing.

As for the start, moving the settler 2N certainly won't hurt. We're not going after a religion here, so a couple of wasted turns don't matter.

 

[remconius]

I'm also in favor of test games, but these strategies depend a lot on the map and we have here a Gyathaar-special fractal, so it's impossible to know what to expect, like MrMahk said. So let's not get too caught up in testing.

True it could go any way. What if Gandhi is on a single square island and he is surrounded by islands with aggressive neighbours

Or he could be on a small island with us. Then we have to pull an independence day and migrate

Anyway, I'll make a quick test game and report back.

 

[stuge]

Okay, ran a small test tonight and it seems that Gandhi is enough of a warmonger to come at your cities quite aggressively, so I'd say that the "feeding
him cities"-strategy might well work. Didn't test any other parameters, though. But I'd say that a mining ->BW opening with worker -> work boat -> warriors/archers ->settler is the way to go. Whaddaya think?

Pigswill, can you post a roster for when we are ready to go?

 

[pigswill]

We all ought to decide on basic stuff like who's captain. I was captain of trash in sgotm3, remconius was (is) captain of pioneer knights. I'd be quite happy if remconius wanted to be captain (or anyone else for that matter).

In terms of availability Cam_H can only play at weekends (though can make constructive comments at any time). Anyone else limited in when they can play?

What about we play an open succession game from Cam_H's save; we all play and post at 2400bc, compare opening strategies, pick the 'best' then play on again until say 1000bc.

 

[remconius]

I would be happy either way with or without captancy.

Good idea on all trying the Cam_H save to get the best opening moves.

What is also important to see how the game plays and what factors we can use to influence Gandhi's race to space. I guess if we attack him. he'll get more WW which wont help him...
We could start a random game with Ragnar, and Gandhi at war in quick speed to see how far we get in a hurry...

 

[Cam_H]

[Edit] Demo game removed [/Edit]

I'm sure our strategy will evolve over time here because as this is a fractal map, anything is possible- we and Gandhi could be on the same island, separate islands, Gandhi could be alone on an island with Monty and Toku , every civ on a big pangea, etc... so we really don't know what to expect yet.

This game will re-enact the historical Civ3 SGOTM 09 challenge. It is 4000 BC. You are the Viking leader, Ragnar. You have met the Indian leader, Gandhi, and you have signed a pact in blood. The Vikings agree to teach india the art of war, and make them strong through conflict. In return India will take the Vikings to the stars.

You start the game as a neighbour of India. Following the pact you are at permanent war with Gandhi, and will remain so for the rest of the game. You are allowed no peace treaties with India. And India must win by space victory. All victory conditions are enabled except Diplomatic, but the winning team will be the one that gets India to Alpha Centauri, and does it fastest.

The highlighted bit is mine, but it's from the Sign Up thread.

I've got a few thoughts ...

War Weariness:

Do not actually attack Gandhi if at all possible, and try to lose as few troops as possible. War weariness is a condition of losing troops in combat and razing cities, so we need to turtle up as best we can as far as our conflict with India's concerned.

Tech' rate:

We have to play like Cabert. Make any trade which isn't wasteful. We have to keep pushing the AI's technology rate along, so that means trading with tribes that don't despise Gandhi.

Conceding border cities:

I agree that this seems to be a good move provided that we vacate the city of troops beforehand and as per below, don't 'shoot ourselves in the foot'.

Remaining competitive:

It's no use if we end up conceding so much to Gandhi that we can't influence the later game.

Test Game: (Please note - replacement test map)

I'm very happy to play a quick game if that helps.

Otherwise ... sorry about this ... I have scrapped the last 'test' start and replaced it with this one. Please use this instead.

I knew the last game's map and having thought about it I have opted for this one, which is going to be more useful and less frustrating. If we are to use an Epic game, then this map should probably be used in preference to the one I posted yesterday. It uses the HoF mod.

Apologies if you have spent some time on the first test map , but I think that this one will work much better.