SGOTM 06 - Trash Team

[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.

 

[remconius]

Remconius reporting for duty!

 

[remconius]

Index to turnset reports:

1: Remconius (move warrior on turn 0)
2: Remconius (turns 0-40)

 

[chopster]

chopster reporting for duty!

A little background - I'm 31, married with no kids (yet). I live in Australia, so I'm probably in a different time zone to most (GMT + 9:30, although it's daylight savings here at the moment so it's +10:30 - just before 6:30pm here now).

I joined this SG in order to force myself to participate in more strategic thinking and planning of my civ games, in order to improve my play. And for fun of course.

I have both expansions, so I'd love to play with you guys in anyother SGs as well if we all mesh well.

Also, I'm unlikely (possible maybe but unlikely) to have internet or CIV access from 22nd December until probably 29th but possibly as late as 2nd January.

Game thoughts

Some randoms at the moment:
Always war - minimal exploration until we have solid defence/attack plan?
AW may also influence our early research paths.
Protective archers may come in real handy.

Initial settling location - current spot will allow us to work all hills in fat cross with some surplus food (post Calendar) at size 7. Irrigated Bananas will allow this before Calendar but no surplus food. Do we want to consider moving?

First warrior move? 1W? 1SW?

 

[cabert]

Cabert reporting for duty.

AW isn't my strong point.
A few things I learned in the few games I played :
- 1 defender in a city is never enough. Even a very good one.
- no trades = very slow tech pace. It's not easy to win by space in this setting. Easiest victory condition is conquest.
- Initial exploration is double edged. The AIs go into war mode as soon as they see us. This is not good if we don't want to fight, but it avoids the AIs teching too fast for us (building units doesn't help teching).
- we don't need alphabet early, nor currency.

 

[patagonia]

patagonia checking in.

To update you on my computer situation - my PC's working again, but I haven't been able to track down my Warlords disc yet. I'll have another look and hope it turns up soon so that I can join the roster properly.

Some initial thoughts:

AW - agree with Cabert's points above. Being pro/chr is a real boost, mainly from the point of view of defending resources (like the gold) early in the game. First build in the capital should be a warrior to avoid any unpleasant surprises at the hands of AI scouting units. Conquest is likely to be the quickest route to victory, but we'll probably have to tech to astronomy with the big and small script being used.

We may see the odd archer stack coming at us early on depending on which loons are near us (if any). From HBR onwards, the AI tends to go very cav-happy so pikes/longbows are a big boost.

With this being prince level and us being charismatic, we'll have a high happy cap to work with, so HR isn't quite the priority it might be. Is it worth building ourselves a henge? Monuments don't obsolete until astronomy so we'd get a boost to culture and happy everywhere for quite some time.

It's Warlords, not BtS, which means settling in place is marginally better than settling on the river (no levees), and there are also no slave revolts so we can go whip-happy!

In terms of a gambit, is it worth pursuing the Oracle > Feudalism sling? That'll allow us to expand with impunity and with gold at the start location we've definitely got the beakers to do it in time.

 

[remconius]

I made a better pic of the starting position:

what I see are three places to settle:
1. In place - fastest and a good solid spot
2. Southwest - plains hill for an extra hammer, Bananas from the start and more rivers to cottage. I think that does make a difference as we'll be teching ourselves.
3. Unknown, but based on what the warrior reveals. there seems to be ocean in the SE which could make an interesting capital location especially with sea resources.

My plan would be to move the warrior SW and post a screenie.

Also I have not played many AW games, so I will play a few test games to get a feel. I think others who are unfamiliar with this should try some as well.

 

[chopster]

what I see are three places to settle:
1. In place - fastest and a good solid spot Agreed, it's solid.
2. Southwesteast - plains hill for an extra hammer, Bananas from the start and more rivers to cottage. I think that does make a difference as we'll be teching ourselves. We can do some further analysis to determine exactly what we'll be giving up, and what we'll be gaining. Also this is a grass hill, so no extra hammer.
3. Unknown, but based on what the warrior reveals. there seems to be ocean in the SE which could make an interesting capital location especially with sea resources. I had thought of the possibility of settling 1 SW. Can do so on the first turn still, so no time wasted. This loses the bananas, but might have access to another food resource to make up for it. Again, proper analysis of this is required, and can't fully be done until after we move the warrior.

My plan would be to move the warrior SW and post a screenie. Agreed here, I think that move reveals the most tiles that have any bearing on the decision of where to settle "Trashville".

Also I have not played many AW games, so I will play a few test games to get a feel. I think others who are unfamiliar with this should try some as well. I've not played much, although when I first saw that the game was AW, I did play a test. This led me to believe that minimal exploration, save for scouting city locations, was the best route - until we're ready to fight. Also, settler escorts are required, and defending resources and workers is important.

See comments above.

Also, 1N, 1NE of the settler is a grass hill, not a plains hill (1 food), 1E of settler is forest grass (no hill), 1SE is a grass hill forest (not plains hill forest).

 

[chopster]

In terms of a gambit...

Speaking of gambits, how about rushing a nearby neighbour?
Axes or chariots?
Stealing workers?

 

[stuge]

Checking in and ready to prod some buttocks.

Agree on moving warrior 1SW and posting a pic. I'm in favor of settling 1SE but let's see what's still out there. A seafood resource in SW would be sweet.

AW puts some extra considerations in city placement. Especially frontline cities should be placed for optimal defence. The ideal frontline city is placed on a hill with clear flatland all around, allowing us to lure AI units to it and destroy them in the open. If the enemy gets onto high ground or into a forest, prying them out will be costly. And we have to maintain a good kill ratio if we wish to win. 1:x, where x is the number of enemy civs, or higher is required to out-produce the AIs. Also, we must identify hill/forest chains running through our territory and cut them off with forts or whatever to force AI pillagers to flatland.

That's it for now. I'll come up with some more later.

 

[cabert]

Speaking of gambits, how about rushing a nearby neighbour?
Axes or chariots?
Stealing workers?

it's AW, worker kidnapping is not happening (except if we manage a woodsman 2 sneak attack)

 

[patagonia]

it's AW, worker kidnapping is not happening (except if we manage a woodsman 2 sneak attack)

To follow on from that, we need to be very careful in attempting an early rush assuming there's anyone close enough to make this practical.

The AI will go on a "war" setting as soon as we make contact, which means we lose the element of surprise that we'd have in a traditional game. Rushing stacks therefore need to be bigger and ideally head straight for the capital, bypassing any satellite cities.

An early rush is great if we successfully take one opponent down, but a failed rush could well cost us the game. Based on my experience of AW, the most important first step is to secure our own borders and production base, then to target one opponent after another aiming to eliminate them.

Am I correct in assuming AW means no capitulation?

 

[patagonia]

Unfortunately the thread from strategy & tips about this that a few other users and I had contributed to has been pruned so here's a potted summary:

In essence, early game strategy revolves around teching to Writing and Monarchy before building the Oracle and then taking Feudalism as the free tech. The point of this is to gain the ability to build longbows at or pre-1000BC giving you uber defensive units that the AI can't counter until it starts to build cats in large numbers.

To do this, we need to pick up quite a few techs (not necessarily in this order):
Hunting, agriculture, AH, the wheel, (pottery), writing, mysticism, med/poly, priesthood, monarchy. We'll want to slot bronze working and archery in there too if we can.

It's beakers that limit this gambit, rather than production. Based on settling in place (since that's what we can see), the capital can work cows + gold from size 2 onwards which easily takes care of the beaker side of things. We should be able to pick up the second gold with city 2 or 3, which will further boost our economy.

If the rest of the team like this opening strategy, I'd favour growing the capital whilst building stonehenge and then spitting out a settler party or two while we tech towards monarchy in time to build the oracle. Having both of those wonders in London will give us lots of GPP, and settled great prophets will be a big boost to our economy and production capabilities, plus we'll open up vassalage very early on (extra EXP and free upkeep on several units).

It seems counter-intuitive to invest hammers in early wonders in an AW game, but there's a decent payoff here if we're willing to gamble.

 

[pigswill]

Hello trash people.

Having decided to have another go at Civ I'm having some computer problems: not currently on internet at home and my old graphics card blew up and my new graphics card remains unhappy. But these should be fixable.

Regarding early game I think archery early on is essential and I also think we should be doing some local exploration and aim to settle a couple more cities asap. The big headache is going to be keeping up in tech so having a research city early on is important and we'll also need at least one unit pump.

Feudalism beeline sounds good. probably shouldn't get too wrapped up in long term strategy until we know what we're dealing with.

 

[cabert]

agreed on early archery.
Local exploration should not lead to an empty capital, though.

 

[chopster]

Definitely agreed on that!

ALso, I like the Feudalism strat - Vassalage + Charismatic + Barracks + Protective = Super Longbows!

As mentioned, the sooner we can get the two gold we can see on line, we can really crank the research pace.

 

[stuge]

This is prince, so an archer rush should be possible, given the right circumstances. We could even try stifling with some well-placed archers.

The feudalism slingshot is great, I once tried it with Churchill in a noble AW game and it was serious kickass. As long as the enemy has nothing better than classical units, massed longbows can easily take cities. they allow you to totally cripple the AIs and keep your core safe, focusing on research and then steamrolling the AIs with superior units.

All strategies are somewhat map-dependant, however, so let's focus on a solid start. Early archery sounds good to avoid a warrior dogpile or something else as ridiculous.

 

[remconius]

We are still waiting for Cam, but I can already post a roster proposal:

(in order of appearance)
-Remconius (30 turns)
-chopster (25 turns)
-cabert (20 turns)
-patagonia (15 turns)
-stuge (15 turns)
-pigswill (15 turns)
-Cam_H (15 turns)

Not sure if we should go down to 10 turns sooner.

 

[chopster]

I'd also suggest that even in the middle of a turnset, any crucial decision point should be saved and discussed.

Being always war, the turn time might be longer for each turn, with lots of units to move etc and therefore shorter sets might be a good idea.

We can always adjust on the fly.

 

[remconius]

Downloaded the save and here is a normal pic of the start: (notice the ocean on the west)

I dont think we should rush into this game, but the strategy will be somewhat dependent on what happens in the first turns.

Proposal:
-Move warrior SW and post a screenie.
-Then we can decide whether we use the settler for some turn 0 exploration before deciding where to settle. This is prince so I am not worried about settling in turn 1 or 2.
-In deciding we should compare sites tile-by-tile.