SGOTM 05 - Misfits

[AlanH]

Welcome to your C_IV SGOTM 5 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
You are Temujin, Leader of the Mongolian Hordes. You have tired of fighting the Barbarians, and so this time you have decided to join them instead. You will win a glorious victory in this Monarch game, of course, but you are teamed with the Barbarians, and you have to adapt to Barbarian assets and liabilities:

• You have no starting techs.
• The barbs are your friends, and are fighting on your team.
• You will benefit from the Barbarian capability to explore the world in animal and human form.
• You can research, but you will also learn techs that the Barbarians learn.
• .... And you start off at war with everyone on the planet except the Barbarians. You can make peace with anyone.

The Objective
This Monarch difficulty game is on a Standard size, Gyathaar-special map, at Epic speed, against 7 rivals. All victory conditions are enabled, and the laurels for this contest will be awarded to the teams who achieve the earliest victory date in the game.

Versions
This game will be played in Civilization IV version 1.74, using special HoF Mod 1.74.SGOTM5.

Schedule
Start files for each team will be available on the SGOTM Progress and Results Page at midnight, server local time, at the start of July 25.

I propose that you aim to complete this game in three months, that is by the end of October 2007.

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



Map Parameters
Playable Leader/Civ - Temujin of Mongolia
Rivals - 7: China, Japan, India, Arabia, Spain, Persia and Greece
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Special, sort of a fractal archipelago
Environment - Temperate climate, medium sea level
Game Speed - Epic
AI Aggression - Normal
Barbarians - Raging, and teamed with the Mongols
Permanent Alliances - Not Enabled
City Razing - Enabled

Notes

• Please visit the Civ4 SGOTM reference thread to check out the rules and procedures to ensure that you are adequately prepared for this 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. The number of awards will depend on the number of teams.
  
• All teams must play the sponsored variant - awards will be given to teams who achieve victories 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

 

[Heathcliff]

Hi guys!

My name is Heathcliff and I am from southern Sweden.

We should find out some funnier team name... anyone has any suggestions?

Has anyone tried to play with these settings before i.e. allied with the barbarians. I guess we should try it out, each of us so we know what it's like. Im not really sure for example how the barbarians research....

I have thought some of the game, I think the most important wonder to get in this game paradoxally is Stonehedge, which use to be pretty useless otherwise. The reason for that is that the barbarian cities dont use to build cultural improvements and therefore never has border expansion. But if we build Stonehedge I guess, they'll get an obelisk each in their cities like if you are teamed normally.

As the mongolians we just must use their UU, *replacement for Horse Archer*, they can travell fast and support the other barbarian troops when needed... I guess quick to Animal Husbandry, so we know where horses are is a good start, so we know where to build our second city. But I suspect we will have them inside of our capital.

I will be abroad lots of the time until 10th of August, so maybe I wont be able to write so frequently in the begging. But Ill try.

 

[marowaker]

Hi guys, checking in

I agree, we should change our team name to something other than "new team"

Unfortunatly, i have no idea how to mod the game, so i can't supply a practice game for us to do.

I had forgotton that we could build wonders, strangely we don't need many scouts because barbarians will be running around the map all the time.

I was thinking assisting the barbarians to rush someone and kill them early so we can get a new base, or a good one for the barbs. This all depends on te map though.

Starting position looks.......interesting, depends on what is in the fog.

 

[cnwjr]

Hiya.

I'm in the U.S. (West Coast) GMT-8.

One thing to keep in mind is that this is an archipelago type map and that fishing & sailing will be needed to get around much. We are almost certainly alone on our island, though we'll encounter others via our friends, the barbs.

I agree that stonehenge will be useful to claim territory as our barb allies found cities. They won't capture many(any?).

 

[marowaker]

Hmmmmm...... forgot this is an archipelago map. Yes we do need fishing and sailing much earlier than usual. One idea we could do is build the oracle and use it to take a medieval military tech like Feudalism. That way, barbs get longbows much earlier than usual. We also don't need ANY military early apart from the unlikely case if there is someone on our island.

 

[Softnum]

Remember, though, that we're going to get tech bleed from the other civs.

The Barbs will capture cities. But they also have the same AI as the computer, so they'll attack and raze size 1 cities, and sometimes keep cities you didn't want them too. But they make great scouts in the early game.

A few questions become:

Once we are in more control of the continents, do we set aside land out of LOS for the barbs to spawn? Obviously this would help, as it's basically free hammers. But the barbs will plot down cities too, and they don't spawn in their own LOS (I think).

Do we adjust tech strategy based on the fact that we will pick up many techs
from the 'bleed' from other civs.

I'll see if I can drudge up the practice saves we were using before.

--Snip-- Nevermind, I found the link in the maintainence thread.

I'm Brendan, BTW. I live in Chicago, IL.

If Alan really wants this game finished in 3 months, we probably will need to hurry things along.

 

[failedreality]

Hey all,
Just joined up on the team.. I'm fairly new, so I'm here to learn alot and help where I can....

 

[marowaker]

If we want a new name (I doubt new team is ideal), we will want to change it quickly since the game starts in less in 24 hours. I would suggest something like the barb hordes or something like that .

I don't think we will 'bleed' tech from the other civs (Presuming that i believe that you think it works like the internet), i think we will get techs that is based on a flat rate of year(far behind when you are meant to get it) Examples could be axes at 1000bc(this is raging barbs), longbows at 500ad and rifles at 1500ad(this is purely estimate). But they still benefit from military techs that we discover.

With less than 24 hours to go, it should be time for a roster if anyone is willing to take the job .

Still waiting for Piko, Master_of_Ar and tonyf12 to show themselves.

 

[AlanH]

It would be a good idea for someone to PM the missing members of your team. They may not have bothered to come back to the game management threads since sign-up.

 

[failedreality]

Bard Raiders, Team Rage, I dont know...
Bard Rage..

Couple of lame ideas..

~fr

 

[Softnum]

I don't think we will 'bleed' tech from the other civs (Presuming that i believe that you think it works like the internet), i think we will get techs that is based on a flat rate of year(far behind when you are meant to get it) Examples could be axes at 1000bc(this is raging barbs), longbows at 500ad and rifles at 1500ad(this is purely estimate). But they still benefit from military techs that we discover.

The barbs get a certain number of beakers per turn - per tech - based on how many people in the world that specific tech. You will see this in the technology grid of the game we play, cause you can see the breakers rise for all the beginning technologies. (I can't find the link to this info, but it's in one of the SGs or games that was played with this info)

I propose a roster on thread order:
Heathcliff
marowaker
cnwjr
SoftNum
failedreality

10 rounds each should be good. Unless you want to go 20/15/15/10...

Heathcliff, you will get a world map once animals start to spawn, so I would encourage you to post it when you get it. This will tell us if we're isolated, etc.

 

[Softnum]

I also sent a PM to our three stragglers.

 

[failedreality]

Someone I know added a thread on the signup sheet to play on the team as well. forum name: mauer

Hopefully he will be added

 

[Mastiff_of_Ar]

Mastiff (not Master) checking in! I'm new to this, but I'll do my damndest... It might be good to put me pretty low in the batting order. I'll be back on to discuss more stratagy a little later in the day. I'm on the west coast, too. Just much north of CNWJR.

For a name... Would "Barbarians" work?

 

[Heathcliff]

Can we change so Marowaker starts instead im going away a few days now.
Thus:

marowaker
Heathcliff
cnwjr
SoftNum
failedreality


What should we start to build?

I think a worker and techtowards animal husbandry to work the cows. If we dont have a seafood in radius, then we can start with fishing.
But I dont know which tech we should take that leads towards AH. Perhaps hunting-AH, if we dont have something that needs a farm then agricultural ofcourse. Hunting is towards archery, as we have always war we might need to get an archer up quite early if an enemy is close. Also dont go too close from capital with the warrior as its always war - the AI on monarch alway sends his first warrior exploring, building another for defence and then worker 2 archers settler. So the first warrior they send out exploring we must have our warrior in our town for it, if they are close.

Another start is Mining-bronzeworking to allow chopping early. An advantage with that is if we have copper, we can rush with axemen.

What do you think?

 

[Softnum]

-- Didn't see H's post --

Add Mastiff to the end of the list too.

I think hunting will come from barb bleed, and isn't really a research priority. Also, we don't have to explore much cause: A) We'll get barb exploration. B) We can't get goodie huts. I like the mining - BW theory, cause the barbs (might) start spawning axes once we get to BW. And that would be useful.

And, as a clarification, we do start at war with everyone, but the variant isn't 'always war.' So we can declare peace like normal. And some of the AIs will offer peace once we meet them.

 

[AlanH]

Hey guys, I never expected New Team to be your real name. What do you want to be called?

Your name has to be branded into your start save, so you don't get your file until you tell us the name

 

[Softnum]

The Misfits? Since we didn't fit anywhere else and I watches too much TV in the 80s?

 

[Mastiff_of_Ar]

The Misfits? Since we didn't fit anywhere else and I watches too much TV in the 80s?

Works for me! I'm all for the BW strat, I'd like to send raging axes at all the AI's... will we suck up enough beakers for Mysticism to still get SH?

 

[Softnum]

Maybe. I wouldn't count on it though. If anything it'll take us no time to research cause of bleed.