SGOTM 06 - Fifth Element

[AlanH]

Welcome to your C_IV Warlords SGOTM 6 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

Gyathaar is playing this one close to his chest. Here's all the intelligence I've been able to wring out of him:

• Prince difficulty
• Epic speed
• You play as the Charismatic, Protective Churchill of the English Empire.
• You start with Fishing and Mining.
• Your unique unit is the Redcoat, replacing the Rifleman.
• Your Unique building is the Stock Exchange, replacing the Bank.
• The map is a highly modified Cylindrical Big And Small map, using the BtS map script. It is Standard, Temperate, Medium sea level.
• Always war. All VCs are enabled. I think the barbs are at default setting.

Here's the start - click the picture for one a bit bigger.

​

Versions
This game will be played in Warlords Version 2.13, on Windows only, with the DLLs as installed with BtS.

It will be played using the current version of the HoF Mod. This is version 2.13.002 for Windows. You will need to ensure that you can run the Asset Checker v2 before you attempt to load this game. Typlically, players who have upgraded to Beyond the Sword will have the right assets. Alternatively, you should be able to make your installation compliant by installing the new .DLLs released for WOTM 15. If you have a Steam installation then you will need to look at this post by ArcadicGamer for inspiration.

If later versions of Warlords or the HoF Mod are released they cannot be used for this game, and you will need to maintain a copy of your installed software at these versions to complete the game.

Timetable
The game will start on December 14th. I recommend you plan for a 4 month deadline for completion.

You will be able to download your start save from the SGOTM Progress and Results Page on December 14th, at midnight local server time.

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.
  
• Warlords v.2.13 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. The number of awards may be reduced, depending on the number of teams who sign up.
  
• Awards will be given to teams who win 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.

Enjoy your mystery tour of the World of Warlords.

 

[Civicide]

First!

Hopefully we can get everyone to check in quickly. This one starts soon!

 

[BLubmuz]

Index of Fifth Element turnset reports for SGotM6:
The linked post has a link to the thread which opens the entire page.

SGotM6 results

turn _00- 21 (greatbeyond 12/16)

turn _21- 40 (blubmuz12/17)

turn _40- 60 (civicide 12/18)

turn _60- 81 (merum 12/20)

turn _81- 95 (greatbeyond 12/21)

turn _95-113 (blubmuz 12/22)

turn 113-130 (civicide 12/29)

turn 130-143 (sweetacshon 01/05)

turn 143-162 (merum 01/06)

turn 162-177 (greatbeyond 01/08)

turn 177-193 (blubmuz 01/10)

turn 193-208 (civicide 01/13)

turn 208-223 (sweetacshon 01/16)

turn 223-236 (merum 01/17)

turn 236-252 (greatbeyond 01/20)

turn 252-267 (blubmuz 01/25)

turn 267-284 (civicide 01/26)

turn 284-298 (sweetacshon 01/31)

turn 298-313 (greatbeyond 02/07)

turn 313-323 (blubmuz 02/11)

turn 323- 333 (civicide 02/26)

turn 333- 345 (sweetacshon 02/28)

turn 345- 356 (greatbeyond 03/07)

Continues in next post

 

[BLubmuz]

Continues from previous post

turn 356- 363 (blubmuz 03/10)

turn 363- 376 (sweetacshon 03/17)

turn 376- 387 (greatbeyond 03/21)

turn 387- 410 (blubmuz 03/28)

turn 410- 4xx (sweetacshon? 03/xx)

turn 4xx- 4xx (greatbeyond? 03/xx)

 

[BLubmuz]

Hi all
welcome back to the old members
and welcome on board to greatbeyond and Strauss

please let us know something about you, including your game experience.

We'll start to discuss about the game after all the members have posted here.

I reserved the 2 posts above (1 of them is my #800, wow!)
for some kind of index, to keep track of the reports and the key decisions without have to bother to look in 20 or + pages.
Hopefully we will NOT be wiped in the first TS!!!

 

[dutchfire]

lurker's comment: dutchfire checking in to watch you win a laurel!

 

[Merum]

Checking in... I think it would be a good idea for us to play up to 1000AD or so in a test game, before we get started. I don't have a lot of experience with AW, but in the couple test games I started thus far, I got my ass handed to me rather efficiently. Thankfully we're on Prince, the test games I played were on Monarch.

Anybody want to put together a save in WB and post up for testing?

Initial thoughts: As much as I hate to research it, I feel archery will be an early must in this game. With Churchill, they come out of the gate with Drill 1 and CG 1, which will at least make them effective defenders. Other thoughts on this starting location are that we might strongly consider worker first, while researching BW, hoping for metal in the FC. Once the worker comes online, maybe we consider mining the cow for food+hammers until we can get AH, and chop-manage a settler while putting the between chop turns into a barracks. We're going to need more than one military production city for sure to keep up.

We may also want to consider moving 1W to settle the hill, for the defensive bonus plus the extra hammer on the city square.

So, tech order: BW, Hunting, Archery, IW if no copper pops, wheel if it does.
Build order: Worker, Barracks/Settler, archer, archer, Axeman (hopefully)

Those are initial thoughts, at least.

I sent a PM to BrianS to see if he has any interest. Hopefully he'll show up.

EDIT: Disregard what I said about mining the cow, because it's on grassland, and therefore, I am stupid.

 

[BLubmuz]

I'll try to put together a test game, with the assets unlocked, so we'll can edit it to see what happens around.
Of course much will depend from the location of strategic resources and the neighbors.

I've played only 2 games with AW, both were GotM:
- the one with Rome was a nightmare, i was been toasted after some 200 turns; IIRC it was monarch, with raging barbs;
- the one with Stalin was on warlord, and i managed a SS win (not submitted, IIRC i was in late).

The difficulty is raised of at least 1 level, in addiction we'll have to research anything. I don't remember if the vassal thing works, i'll try a second WB game to test this.

This time we must know all the mechanics of the game e.g. if we managed to play a test game we can have researched BW in SG5 , but there was the problems with those strange configurations.

What is sure is that the warrior will explore only for no more than 8 turns: a lot of players (some good) was toasted with Rome undefended in that GotM.

Thanks Dutch, i was hoping you signed as an official lurker, your comments would be appreciated.
If you want i guess you'll be in time to do so.

edit
Well, here is the test game.
The settings are the same, i used a Continents map.
I've tried to reproduce the same map, for what we can see from the SS.
I gave us copper in the capital FC.
I've tried to settle on dyes, it gives +1
we can consider this, of course is an help for the very beginning, but after Calendar is a loss of 5 plus we'll have 3 jungle in the FC. On the other hand, the SE gold gives +1
The AI starts with 1 Settler+2 warriors or 1 Settler+2scouts.

In this level the bonus the AI has is small, but after Alpha they will trade techs like crazy, and they will have the "mutual military ..." to improve their relations.
The nice thing is that they do NOT have a big discount on the units upgrades.

I made the test with an advanced start, edited with WB: simply you can't talk with your rivals, thus the vassal thing doesn't work for us (i suppose it does for the AI).
In other words we'll need to wipe them, or they will be a danger.

 

[greatbeyond]

Great Beyond is in the building, but Elvis has left.

I have played Civ 4 warlords since the start of the competitions but have not been very successful til lately. Having been a Civ 3 player for many years, it was hard to get used to Civ4 and then Warlords.
When I saw the announcement, I went out and created a test game, modified the start area to match, and have played 2 games through to about 1500 AD. The one I played, had all but 2 of the Civs on the same continent as us.

If we are on one of the islands, I expect it to be a different kind of game. One thing that was surprising was barbarians seem to spawn like crazy.

If anyone is interested in the test game, I can post it. I'm going to play Blubmuz's test, hopefully tonight

With always war, you can't even talk to the AI to get them to become a vassal.

 

[Sweetacshon]

Checking in. I'm away from home for another 5 days or so, so am unsure of availability, but I should be able to keep in touch. I need a bit of time to think about the position, but thanks for the test, Blub, I'll take a look at it.

Questions I have about the start,which should be answered by the test game:
1. Where to move the warrior? SW to the jungle hill I think, TP should stop here, take a s/s, and we'll discuss it again.
2. Where to settle? The warrior move will help, but at a glance, in place looks ok. I like the option of the 2x 2gpt tiles (we have fishing) if we need early science.
3. What to build/research? BW first, with a worker. As for archery, etc, it'll depend on the tests

Dutch, if you want to lurk and comment on the game (I hope you do), you'd better tell Alan, so you're official.

 

[Merum]

OK, I played the test game up to 1484 AD. One very important lesson I learned is this: We are going to have to fight in multiple directions at once. I managed to kill two of the civs, and bring another to its knees, but in doing so, another got far too powerful and large for me to handle, and eventually overwhelmed me with knights and maces vs my axemen, spears, and cats.

Research is going to be a serious problem. Soon before the attack that ended my game, I ran out of money, and ended up on strike. I had to disband some weak units to keep from losing my stronger ones.

I actually managed to build the great wall, in an attempt to generate a GE to get the mids. I eventually ended up with the mids too, but not by building them. However, taking and keeping the city with the mids was probably a financial mistake given the distance from my capitol and the military resources I had to leave tied up there to protect it.

Vassaling civs is out, because they won't even talk to you with AW checked.

One nice thing that I forgot about from playing BTS all the time is that cats are fatal again.

The common thread here is a crippling lack of money that we're going to have to find a way to deal with. This has been my primary issue in all of my AW "test games" that I've tried to this point. I simply had no money to keep up in research, and eventually end up getting pasted by stacks of vastly superior units. It was 1200AD by the time I actually got CoL for courthouses, and they weren't really useful because I didn't have that many cities, and I had to keep building military in them anyway to stay alive. A steady diet of razing money seems to be key, but as I said previously, we have to spread that razing around so nobody gets too big for us to deal with.

Given that this is a big and small map, we're going to need to get at least Astronomy to win most likely. Right now, I simply don't see how we're going to manage that unless we get a quick kill and lots of space to expand on our continent.

Important techs: BW, AH, Pottery, IW, Construction, Currency
Techs I wish I had gotten: Metal Casting, Machinery, CS (Could it be worth a try at an oracle slingshot???) Military techs would have to suffer to pull it off.

 

[Civicide]

I agree that the warrior should be moved SW.

The starting save is upon the progress and results page now, I suggest we have our first TPer grab it, move the warrior SW, and post a screenshot. Tradition on the team has been to have a new player go first, and I see that greatbeyond has checked in. There's my nomination.

Has anyone PM'd Strauss (our other new member) to make sure he's in the fold?

Remember, this is AW, so VERY minimal exploration with the first warrior. I would have to have this game end on the first turnset

Research path? I'm tempted to suggest Hunting > Archery > BW, but much might depend on what contact we make with other civs. With Churchill being protective (my least favorite trait as it happens) we might as well make use of it from the start. If we don't have nearby metal, Archer Rushes with a protective leader can show some promise.

Barring discovering something extraordinary, I think settling in place will be a fine option. The capital should make for a good production city, with the gold mine providing a nice boost to early research.

I'll warn that I've been traditionally pretty terrible at Always War, but I'll give it my best shot.

 

[BLubmuz]

I pm-ed yesterday to both our new members, and about a week ago to Brian, who's last activity on CFC was 11/27, so i think he's in travel.

As you pointed out, much will depend from the map: if we are with 1 or 2 AI in our continent it can be pretty easy, with more it can be more problematic.

Research:
i think our protective archers are enough to deal with any rival, so i propose
hunting-AH-archery-wheel-BW.

I'll motivate this path when you surely disagree with it: please, try to figure my reasons before to do it.

Welcome (again) GB!
You seem an experieced player and a good addiction to our team.
Please, would you like tell us something about your location?
And perhaps explain your sentence about Elvis?
Please, never forget i'm not an english mother-language.

edit
i noticed few moments ago the save was on line.

I agree with Civ, greatbeyond will open the game, to continue our tradition.
Before to decide where to move the warrior, and SW can be OK, please consider the blue circle over the gold, and eventually to move the warrior over there, then go SW in a half-circle to be back in London.

 

[greatbeyond]

I appreciate the fact that so many people with different languages gather here and use English. I would struggle with having to communicate in a different language. Does Hello and goodbye in a different language count as communicating? Never hesitate to ask me to explain

Background
Live and work in upstate New York, USA, wish I could spend the winter at the beach!

I have played better the last couple of Warlord competitions but I still feel like I'm taking too many risks, as I usually play conservatively. However I have actually won.

How many turns will we be taking, are we sticking with 20 or 10?
Do we want to pause after every 5 turns or so and review what has been done or to assess what is revealed? This is my first SGOTM so I appreciate guidance on the mechanics of game play and etiquette
I will try to not disappoint on my turn.
Thoughts:
MOVES - First move Warrior to SW, unless something important is revealed,
I think settling in place is best. I propose to start with a warrior build first as that allows 1 warrior to go exploring and perhaps pop a Goody Hut. I will keep him within a short distance of the capital.
Scouts can not attack our city or steal our workers

TACTICS - After reading descriptions of other's games I have changed my tactics and have had success going for a worker steal where possible. One concern with this is you should steal them when they are more than two road squares from their city or where you are on a hill or woodland tile, as the AI doesn't seem to want to take the risk attacking.
The other trick I have used is posting a warrior or archer outside their city on a good defensive tile. I then got at least two archers to keep there. This tended to keep the AI in it's city and when it did send a settler out it never had an escort of more than 2 warriors or 2 archers. With the bonuses our archers get they usually defeat the AI archers on grassland tiles.

RESEARCH - I agree with Hunting first as it can lead to AH or Archery. Going with BW first can be a big waste if there isn't any Bronze nearby. I am more in favor of going Archery then AH or Bronze. The key decision here would be how quickly do we build a worker. Where I have not been able to steal one, I have waited until I got to Size 3 to 5 to build one, then If I had BW I could always rush it. If we don't have a worker, he can mine but only bare hills, until we get BW

BUILDS - I propose warrior then maybe another warrior?

reference to Elvis is, that when he died, it was said he "left the building"

Lastly I Will grab the Initial Save and post the screen shot, but not make any movements for at least 10 hours from this post, unless someone feels we should give it longer. I am in Eastern Standard Time 3 hours behind GMT

 

[greatbeyond]

Here is another screenshot of the starting position (warrior not moved yet). If you look at the tile 1N and 3W it looks like coastline, other than that I don't see any initial surprises.

 

[Civicide]

A few notes:

BLubmuz is constantly apologizing for his English, which to me is always funny because frankly it's much better than many native English speakers that I know. He's also pretty good about asking for clarification when a piece of slang eludes him.

As for the game:

There's likely not going to be any goodie huts to pop, at least in our general vicinity. I think Gythaar has been systematically removing them ever since SGOTM3 or so, since an early tech pop or early barbarian pop can make or break the whole game with too much randomness.

Looking at the starting spot, assuming we settle in place:

This sould be a good production spot and a likely spot for the Heroic Epic. Once terrain is improved and we have sufficient health+happiness, I count 17 base hammers, not including the grassland forests (which we will likely want to chop at some point), spread out amongst 4 grassland hills and 1 plains hill (which also obviously has the gold mine), the plains and the cows. The hills will give a food deficit of 6, and we'll get +2 from the cows, +2 from the capital, and +3 from the bananas (post-Calendar). So we should be able to grow (albeit slowly) while at full production. We will probably want to irrigate around the fresh water lake to retain growth while cranking out an army.

I'm fine with an exploration of E first. If we don't think we'd be able to see anything in a move SW that would change our settling in place, then it doesn't matter much. Something like E, SW, SW, NW, NW, NE, NE to get back into the city would be fine and quite conservative enough.

Traditionally we have played 15 turns during peacetime, 10 turns during wartime; since this is an Always War game we'll have to use a judgment call as far as when we're actively engaged in a conflict or not. For the first turnset, 20 turns would probably be fine, since they go so quickly.

 

[Merum]

Well, I speak three languages, English, Mandarin, and Spanish, and can mangle some German, French, and Italian as well, but my mother tongue is English (The proper kind, not the kind Sweetacshon speaks ). Blubmuz thinks his English is worse than it is, and Dutchfire is quite fluent as well, so we really haven't ever had any communication problems on this team. (At least none that are language related )

Where in Upstate NY, greatbeyond? I was borned and grew up in Rochester. They have a beach, you can spend your winter vacation there!

So I've been thinking about my AW results, and wondering if I haven't been overextending my self with offensive warfare, and that's what's been hurting my economy so badly. With the exception of Washington and the mids last night, I almost exclusively raze, and my field stacks haven't been huge, so I'm not sure that's really the answer to the problem. It's going to be dicey finding the balance between commerce and war to keep our economy going, but for sure we have to keep the AIs that we can reach on the hurt, or they're going to blow by us in tech and military as a result.

This makes me think that in the early game, a couple of stacks of 3-4 of our toughest units should go out in diverging directions, looking to harass our neighbors, mug settler stacks, and pin/occupy production squares near capitols, occupying and throttling as much production as we can, until we can build a SoD and do some serious razing.

In Blub's test game, I got lucky and found a civ nearby that had an undefended capitol. I was able to raze and knock him out within the first 15 turns of the game. We should be on the lookout for these opportunities.

I agree that the warrior should circle the city scouting, not really moving more than 2 turns from our borders, so he can hustle it back there if we meet a neighbor. The start spot is probably going to be settle in place, although I wish it were a hill. Oh well, we can't always get what we want.

Greatbeyond, you're the man to start us off, so how about moving that settler, and posting up your screenie? Per AlanH in the last SGOTM, he doesn't want people posting additional 4000BC saves on the progress page, so just save it locally and wait for us to have the discussion once you make the move.

Other notes regarding SGOTM play for 5E:

We use autolog with forum tags, and post the log for the turn in spoilers somewhere near the end of the message.
We don't usually post the log you get when you upload the game, but you're free to do so if you like. Use spoiler tags for this, too.
Screenshots are appreciated for players who may be traveling or at work, but don't stretch the forum page (pet peeve of mine )
Please remember to post an updated roster at the end of your post
Post a "Got it" within 24 hours of the last save going up, or be auto-skipped! We've been lax on this in the past, I think we should enforce it better, personally.
We're here to have fun, but we'd also like to win something other than the prize we've already won.
Major decisions should be consulted with the team, but we don't need three days of discussion for minor stuff.
Civicide rivals Tolstoy in the length of his posts, but they're almost always worth reading all the way through.

 

[BLubmuz]

Oh, Merum said everything about our "customs", so i've nothing to add, but that i agree with the 24/72 rule to be enforced, of course with exceptions for holydays (approaching, dangerously approaching). And that if anyone needs to skip or swap, better he informes us before his TS, so we can plan.
Usually we play 15 turns in peace and 10 in war, with the exception of the first round that we kept in 20 turns.
Since this game is AW, i propose ALWAYS 15 turns, unless there's some big fight and we can reduce to 10/12.

Please never use "automated workers" or long "go to" orders for any unit.
Another thing: leave the fresh-build units without promotions until they are at the front, so we can choose the appropriate promotion from case to case.

About my english: i make good use of the translator for the few(?) words i don't know (or remember), what is scare is the conditional/past/future forms, which i probably miss @80%. The fact is that my italian is rich and cultured, and that i find difficult to communicate properly using a language at a low level.

GMT +3 in NY? i was sure it was +5

About the game
1) fogbusting: i'm not that great, surely there's water W of the N gold, but it can be both a river or a coastline.
have you noticed how the river W of warrior enlarges? i can bet there's coast S of jungle.
2) research: hunting first, AH, archery
3) build: warrior/worker or viceversa: if we decide to start with a warrior, we can probably research archery/AH, if we start with a worker viceversa (BTW this word is exactly the same in italian) delay too much the worker with that gold is a sacrilege.
4) exploring:

In Blub's test game, I got lucky and found a civ nearby that had an undefended capitol. I was able to raze and knock him out within the first 15 turns of the game. We should be on the lookout for these opportunities.

We can try this, sending the warrior straight E: in this case, warrior first is mandatory, otherwise i'm fine with E-SW-and a short path home.
5) settle: i can bet nothing will be revealed to change the options in-place/dyes. I think in-place is better, especially if there's coast in the near S: a city in the river's mouth can be nice.

Sorry for the Civicide-style of this post, and for haven't expressed a definite opinion, but i think it's more important to put all the possible (decent?) options on the table. IMHO it's worth to discuss the very first moves "who well begins made an half of the work" (free traslation of an italian saying "chi ben comincia è a metà dell'opera").

Roster:
greatbeyond - please wait until we've been decided on the above
(strictly alphabetical order)
Blubmuz
Civicide
Merum
Sweetacshon

Strauss ??? if he gives a sign he will play after Merum, but i suppose he's composing some waltz.
and let's see if Brian gives a sign.
for now we're 5.

 

[greatbeyond]

...

GMT +3 in NY? i was sure it was +5

..

What a maroon I am! I 've left the page up for hours on end and when I went to check the time difference, I forgot to refresh the page first.

 

[Civicide]

You're right, Eastern Standard is GMT-5. I'm in GMT-6 but my hours are very strange at the moment (I am, once again, not working, unless you count playing 2000-3000 poker hands a day "work").

What's everyone's availability going to be over the holiday? I should be able to play, as I'll be taking my laptop to visit my family.