SGOTM 05 - Trash Team

[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

 

[pigswill]

Well after having serious doubts about playing bizarre variants for sgotm shortly after losing sgotm4 I have had a reconsider and think I will indeed give this a go.

However I'm going to have a whizz at wotm11 and will probably pick up BTS and related patches after that which could be a week or so away. Also RL is being cumbersome which don't help so I'm not looking to play any turns very early.

 

[Cam_H]

Hi all! Good to be back!

(a.) Pigswill - Pleased to hear of your rekindled enthusiasm ... you sound totally pumped to be getting back into it - chaffing at the bit and all!

(b.) It would be nice to have a practice game to play with - did anyone get one up in the end that didn't crash? I'm still not sure what we can and can't do - for instance gifting Settlers to the Barb's in the early game - let alone what strategy works. Will the Barb's be any use to us at all, or are they merely a distraction and we may as well just play like this was more or less a traditional game with Barbarians turned off?

(c.) I presume we're going for Domination or Conquest here, but do I presume incorrectly?

(d.) Team Captain - I'm very happy for Pigswill to do it again ... but Piggy, what's your thinking?

(e.) We didn't get any 'unassigned' team members?

 

[stuge]

And ready to prod some buttock.

I have no clue on how to set up a test game like this. Remco?

I don't think that the barbs will be a huge factor. They'll help early on with exploration, basic research (maybe) and if we get really lucky, they might burn a couple of AIs' second cities. Beyond that, we'll be on our own.

My idea of a grand strategy involves finding horses, building chariots and seriously harassing the AI, keeping them small and undeveloped. This game could suit a pre-1000 AD keshik conquest, although I doubt that the map will be that easy.

EDIT: Reading comprehension is a wonderful thing. "Sort of a fractal archipelago." Keshik-rush my bottom.

 

[remconius]

Hi all, good to be back!

This time as father of 3, I am ready to go.

It would be great if Pigswill can captain us again. If, however, RL is troubling him as he mentions, I would be happy to lend a Captaining hand for this game.

I will have a look at what we know so far and try to post a summary as well as a test game.

 

[pigswill]

Real Life holds some temporary distractions (house got flooded on Friday) but nothing too long term I hope. Having followed some of his games I'd be more than happy for remconius to captain (if his real life distractions permit).

Might be worth checking out some of the posted test games (which presumably will be vanilla 1.61) and could play a few sets either in series or parallel to find out the implications of our civilised barbarian status.

Barbarians could be significant throughout the game if for instance we razed cities or polished off fog busters then they would have fog to breed in (and form new barb cities).

 

[remconius]

Allright then, some initial thoughts from the pre-discussion thread:

BASICS
• 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:

• 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.
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
• A big problem will be war weariness. The barbarians don't suffer from it, but they collect war weariness points for the whole team. As they will lose lots of units in foreign territory that will ramp up quickly.

Keshik (6/2/50)
Horse Knight Unique unit for Mongolia; Replaces Horse Archer
1 first strike
Doesn't receive defensive bonuses
Ignores terrain movement costs
+50% attack vs. Catapult

EXPLORATION
• You will benefit from the Barbarian capability to explore the world in animal and human form. You will see barbs all over the map.
• No Circumnavigation bonus
• Oh, and if you want to pop those delicious-looking huts, you'll need to settle there...(or get them with border expansion). If you move onto a hut it will be destroyed.

EXPANSION
• Not just that. How about having a half a dozen scouts from the animal kingdom telling you exactly where your enemies are, followed up by barbs doing the same. The only thing I haven't seen yet is a barb galley... .

RESEARCH
• You have no starting techs.
• You can research, but you will also learn techs that the Barbarians learn.
• When barbs has cities, they will research techs as well, but since they have really high unit support (and no capital, so really high city maintainance), they will most likely run 0% sci.. however barbs get free beakers every turn in every tech that is known by at least 1 civ (however it can be rounded down to 0 beakers for cheap techs if few civs know it)
• In test games I have received free techs occasionally, which I assumed were techs the barbs were getting free from the AIs by some mechanism or another. I assumed this because the first free tech I got was Archery, before there were any barbs on the 'planet' (about 3200bc). Later when I received fishing, I went into WB and all AIs had it. When I received Mysticism, all AIs but 1 had it.
• I suppose it's also possible that the barbs researched these techs, and started with Archery, coming into existence at around 3200bc.
• When the civs of the world hit a new era (I do not know what the cutoff is, but I think 50% is fair and close) the barbs jump an era and learn ALL techs from the previous era.
However, during the interim, they do research current era techs, so they may learn 2 or so before the next era leap.
• barbs get free beakers every turn in techs that is known by atleast 1 civ (it can be rounded down to 0 beakers thou).. when all civs know a tech, they get 3% of the beaker cost every turn.

DIPLOMACY
• The barbs are your friends, and are fighting on your team.
• .... And you start off at war with everyone on the planet except the Barbarians. You can make peace with anyone.
• Teamed as in Teamed. It's a feature of Civ4 that civs can be teamed together. I don't believe it's possible to break a Team up.
Barbs get techs at a rate determined by the research rate of all the other civs, and they get your techs.
• If we make peace with a civ, the Barbs do too.
• The implications are that you'll have a hard time with diplomacy because of all the team identity stuff...on the plus side, we won't have to escort our settlers anymore
• No diplomacy with the Barbs
• But more importantly with the list of leaders (none of the loose traders), there will be no tech trading before you get a leader to friendly (which is effectively cautious).
The same for bribing anybody to war.
There will be no trading of any kind with Tokugawa ever.
Open borders with Alex, Isa and Saladin would also require to get them to friendly first, which looks pretty impossible starting with -3 for having declared on them.
• There is no difference whether the others are cautious or pleased. Both is effectively annoyed. So unless there is a chance to get somebody to friendly (maybe possible when sharing a religion with Asoka or Cyrus), there's not much point in trying to get on the good side of the civs.
They are at war with the barbarian team only (atWar is a team feature). That's not different than normal start of the game. They will also get no mutual struggle benefit by being at war with us, so the usual animosities between war and peace oriented AIs still apply.

And BTW we will also never get mutual struggle points with any AI. Again that's a team feature and not applicable to the barbarian team.

VICTORY
• GOAL: earliest victory date!
• Does the Barbarian land add to our own? Yes


Strategic advantages
• Barbarian scouts – Give great Intelligence.
• Barbarian technologies (especially at era turnover) – Allows us to focus on one path and Barbs filling in gaps.
• Barbarian cities – We could try to nurture and protect a barb area to make use of their benefits. Give them culture with religion, work their lands.
• Barbarian units - They get better if we give them tech. Early BW pops axes all over!

Strategic disadvantages
• War weariness – Which we’ll need to counter with happiness, police state, jails, etc.
• Tough to make friends – First we need to sisn peace…. perhaps we adopt a religion to make friends. In the test game not so tough...
• Little Trading/diplomacy – Alphabet will be of limited use. Guess military is the only way early on.

Here is the test savegame: View attachment Temujin BC-4000.Civ4SavedGame (version1.74 and HOF Mod 1.74.001)

 

[remconius]

Some early learnings from the test game:

-BW early gives axes to barbs, cool! They took a city!
-AI come to sign peace early. This leaves them free from Barb thread. I say no peace!
-I got free archery early on.

[edit]
As I played on I got a whole bunch of other techs: Agriculture, wheel, mysticism, fishing, etc while I was developing mining, BW and IW
[/edit]

 

[Cam_H]

Captain Remco ,

Good post ! Thanks for the link to the test game - I can't play it (weekday) but am looking forward to having a shot at it on the weekend.

So I guess one question (of the many questions) that we need to kick around is what we intend to do about tech'-ing ... rely on the Barb's capacity to freely pick up new technology, or whether we try to set up some triangle diplomacy so we at least have some trading partners? If the AI comes begging for peace early on, I think we need to have a good feel for where we go on this one.

"... sort of a fractal archipelago ..." sounds like a pain ... lots of navy if we're going the Domination path.

I like the idea of building up Barbarian cities' Culture with religion

. With a few Spirtual leaders on the map, religion might play a particularly interesting role.

I really must tell cabert that I signed him up for this game!

 

[cabert]

I really must tell cabert that I signed him up for this game!

now I know

Captain Remco ,

Good post ! Thanks for the link to the test game - I can't play it (weekday) but am looking forward to having a shot at it on the weekend.

seconded

So I guess one question (of the many questions) that we need to kick around is what we intend to do about tech'-ing ... rely on the Barb's capacity to freely pick up new technology, or whether we try to set up some triangle diplomacy so we at least have some trading partners? If the AI comes begging for peace early on, I think we need to have a good feel for where we go on this one.

I think we should make peace (cease fire) with our not so close neighbours. We don't want WW piling up. If the barbs see workers/settlers grabbable, we can declare again.
Barbs dropping individual units aren't doing much anyway, so I guess it's better to sign for peace and let them pile a few units.

"... sort of a fractal archipelago ..." sounds like a pain ... lots of navy if we're going the Domination path.

that's why we need to make it so that the barbs take and keep a few cities on the other islands .

I like the idea of building up Barbarian cities' Culture with religion

. With a few Spirtual leaders on the map, religion might play a particularly interesting role.

we may have a hard time founding any religions, but capturing holy cities is better

 

[remconius]

I think we should make peace (cease fire) with our not so close neighbours. We don't want WW piling up. If the barbs see workers/settlers grabbable, we can declare again.
Barbs dropping individual units aren't doing much anyway, so I guess it's better to sign for peace and let them pile a few units.

Good to see you are back!

I like the idea of having the barbs pile units before redeclaring. We can fight wars without getting involved. I guess they only pile units if they have cities, otherwise they rely on fog to reappear. Without cities, we wont be able to use the barbs later on. We should make sure they have the best military techs. (archers, longbows, muskets, grenadiers for defense and axes, maceman, horse archers for attack)

Something to remember is that if we sign peace before writing, our barb friends also cannot enter their borders to explore and they wont pillage. From the test game I would prefer to rush for BW so our barbs start popping axes very early. Then we can sign peace in combination with OB after we get writing.

We should try both scenarios (stay at war or sign peace early) till 1AD and see what the barbs have accomplished vs how many units they have stacked. In my first test game a barb axe managed to take over Beijing!

I agree with Stuge we should do some early rushing if at all possible.

 

[cabert]

the more I think about it, the more I think a cease fire is the way to go to allow the barbs to settle a city or 2 and keep them

and rushing to BW is a nobrainer IMHO

 

[remconius]

Do we have any idea about the mechanics behind barbarian settlements appearing? when, why, how?

Also do barbarians continue to appear or is there a max. kill one, new one appears. So a wolf gets killed and an axe appears.

 

[cabert]

As far as I know it's just fogged tiles that matter for appearance, it's a matter of date (best way to know is the test map) for switching from animals to units, it's a matter of globally known techs for the type, that's all I know.
I know nothing about max units.
For those who played the terra map more than I did, is there a link between number of barb units and number/size of barb cities?

just my opinion, without facts proving anything :
- I think there won't be any barb city until the barb units appear
- I think the max number of units for barbs is linked to the support they can afford, after they have settled/ captured at least one city.

My guess would be to start thinking about cease fires when the cities are threatened (or at least settled).

Another question : do tiles revealed by barbs spawn barbs or not?

 

[stuge]

I too agree with early BW and signing treaties with those civs we'll be attacking later on. Our superior exploration should make identifying targets easier.

Also, the idea of focusing on military techs and letting the barbs backfill for us sounds good to me. Gotta play a test game and see how much those buggers can be trusted in this regard. (Thanks for the save Remco.)

 

[patagonia]

Checking in...

Could one of you kind souls point me in the direction of the patches/mods needed to play this game? Has much changed from 1.74 to the new version?

In the meantime, I'll have a think about possible strategies. Early BW sounds like a no-brainer to get our barb buddies some axes. Following that, n non-variant games I'm a fan of early HBR with the Mongols, but whether that's appropriate here I don't know. If it'll prompt the barbs to spawn lots of HA that can't be a bad thing though. They may not take cities, but they'll pillage the AI to death.

Thanks to remco for setting everything out above.

 

[Cam_H]

Patches and Hall of Fame Mod.

It doesn't, on the face of it, look like the upgrade from vanilla 1.64 to 1.74 has changed much. Cossacks got a bit nerfed, late-game upgrades got nerfed (can't upgrade Marines or SAMs to Mech' Infantry), and the AI will be able to nuke.

I'm looking forward to tinkering with the test game and happy to go along with Remco's suggestion in #11.

 

[cabert]

HBR seems quite appealing, and it's certainly fitting in our "tech towards military" option. It will give our barbaric friends good pillagers, which is exactly what we want them to do.

 

[pigswill]

War Weariness is rarely a problem in the early game so maybe one approach is not to rush towards peace asap but let our barbarian pals pillage freely at the start to hold back the AIs.
Do barbarians need the resources or just the technology to build units? They seem to spawn axes easily enough without copper, will they build HAs without horses?

 

[cabert]

War Weariness is rarely a problem in the early game so maybe one approach is not to rush towards peace asap but let our barbarian pals pillage freely at the start to hold back the AIs.
Do barbarians need the resources or just the technology to build units? They seem to spawn axes easily enough without copper, will they build HAs without horses?

I really hope so
Related note : hunting is cheaper than BW, and allow spearmen.
Could someone test if the barbs spawn spearmen with just hunting?