SGOTM 06 - Xteam

[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.

 

[leif erikson]

Reserved for future use

 

[leif erikson]

Welcome back team!!

And welcome to Jimmy Thunder and ShannonCT. If you would post a quick introduction for the others, I would appreciate it. Just where , roughly, you're from and your Civ experience? Something like that?

If you have any questions about how we work, please ask.

I had planned to have some trial saves ready, but I haven't had time to make them. I hope to complete that this evening.

I reserved the first post in case we want to index our thread. Hopefully, we'll finish so fast that will be unnecessary.

EDIT - Please check your installations with the test file to be sure you have the proper .dll's and HoF Mod. Thanks.

 

[ShannonCT]

Hello XTeam. It's my pleasure to be going to war with you all. I am a math/economics teacher from Connecticut, near New York City. I guess that would put me at GMT-5.

I am a former member of Memphis Blues from SGOTM2 & 3 and I have played a good number of GOTMs (mostly last year). I would rate myself competent at Emperor level games in Warlords and BTS.

I generally am pretty free to discuss strategy and play turnsets, although I will be out of town December 19-31. During this time, I will not have access to the game, but I will still be able to go online.

I'll get the ball rolling with a practice game I created to match the opening screenshot (using a modified Continents map, rather than Big and Small):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/87280/SGOTM6-Test.CivWarlordsSave

 

[leif erikson]

Hello XTeam. It's my pleasure to be going to war with you all. I am a math/economics teacher from Connecticut, near New York City. I guess that would put me at GMT-5.

Welcome! Thank you for joining us.

I generally am pretty free to discuss strategy and play turnsets, although I will be out of town December 19-31. During this time, I will not have access to the game, but I will still be able to go online.

I think this is a good start to our first discussion. I have heard from several team members that they will be in and out from now through some part of the Holiday period. I am thinking that we should use this time for some game testing. For those who have some time that is. And we can use this time to talk about some of the things we find. Then we can look at our first turn set at some time after Christmas, or later, whenever we think we are ready?

I'll get the ball rolling with a practice game I created to match the opening screenshot (using a modified Continents map, rather than Big and Small):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/87280/SGOTM6-Test.CivWarlordsSave

I'll try to give it a shot tomorrow...

 

[rrau]

Checking in

I'll need to download the files and mods as I haven't done that yet.

The things I noted on the test games as problems were: getting dogpiled, not having horses, iron or copper in one game (hopefully he's not that cruel!!), and the economy crashing due to WW and whipping and not getting courthouses because of building military units.

As far as the start goes, I'd like to recommend moving the warrior SW to the wood hills. I'm not sure I'd go for either gold hill (The one to the NW because we couldn't scout other around it before having to commit and the one to the SE because it would take 2 turns to settle) Or the grass hill (2 turns and can't scout to look to see if it was better before committing). As it is, I think settling in place would give us a very strong capital. 2 food, 2 luxuries, ok on hammers and hopefully one of those hills has copper in it.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

Hi XTeam!

This is my first SGOTM, so I want to add plenty of value to the group and perform well on my turnsets. I've read through XTeam's last game and see that there is a high level of discussion, everyone is very capable, and there is a good atmosphere in the team.

Here's my intro I posted a few weeks ago at the end of the SGOTM5 thread:

I've been playing Civ4 since about April this year and got hooked on the GOTM series. I enjoy playing to win, and have generally done pretty well in the Games of the Month, often getting close to the fastest award categories. Anything I know about Civ I have learned from these great forums, so I enjoy contributing wherever I can in the GOTM and HOF subforums (that's where I crossed paths with DJMGator). My strength is probably in understanding the main strategies and mechanics for a particular game. I'm not the best at continually micromanaging and prioritising every worker movement and city tile! (Although I do pay plenty of attention to micromangement in the early BC years to squeeze those last drops out of my fledgling civilization )

I live in New Zealand GMT +13, so am a similar timezone to the Mad Professor (2 hours ahead of Australia).

I don't have heaps of time to play Civ, usually limited to a couple of evenings a week, but I check the forums most days during breaks at work. I am a Civil Engineer working in the water and wastewater industry, just a few years out of college/university.

Bring on the always war!!
I've only played 2 always war games, both from Games of The Month -won them both so that's a good start, right?

I'll be able to play most days during the Christmas/New Year period, however I'm away for a long weekend 14-16th Dec (1 year wedding anniversary )

 

[leif erikson]

Checking in

I'll need to download the files and mods as I haven't done that yet.

Welcome back rrau.
Hope the file downloads go easier than last game.

Hi XTeam!

This is my first SGOTM, so I want to add plenty of value to the group and perform well on my turnsets. I've read through XTeam's last game and see that there is a high level of discussion, everyone is very capable, and there is a good atmosphere in the team.

Welcome and thanks for joining us!
I'm sure you'll do just fine. I appreciate your checking our thread and I hope we can maintain that level of discussion and play.

I'll be able to play most days during the Christmas/New Year period, however I'm away for a long weekend 14-16th Dec (1 year wedding anniversary )

Congratulations on your first year. Hope you have a GREAT time!!
We'll allow your absence for a few days, I guess...

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

Some initial comments about the game:

Conquest or Domination seems to be far and away the best victory conditions to pursue - unless the map prevents it.

We don't have any info on the number of AI's yet.

One key to AW is sending out 1-2 unit raiding parties to all the civs on your continent very early on. They can park up on forest hills and stop the AI workers and stagnate their growth. In Vanilla CIV the AI will just suicide on your fortified units, but I think in Warlords they will build a couple of archers and attack in succession. This will be a good area to try out in practice games. Also, in Warlords the AI won't go after worker bait but I've found that scouts work very well instead. This can be another cat n mouse way to stagnate the AI early on and lure out units from their cities leaving only the minimum number of defenders. Try it in your practice games.

We want to know about as many of the stupid AI military practices as we can.

In AW games you also want to fight at high combat odds more than usual, because your opposition grossly outnumber you in hammer production and they will come to you. This can mean having a "magnet" city on hill on your border frontier to block off your more productive core land. Also using mixed stacks and making the use of terrain bonusses really makes a difference.

 

[leif erikson]

How about the use of Catapults, and other siege weapons, to break down enemy stacks and increase our odds with our attackers? Better yet, Trebs to take their cities...

 

[ShannonCT]

One key to AW is sending out 1-2 unit raiding parties to all the civs on your continent very early on. They can park up on forest hills and stop the AI workers and stagnate their growth. In Vanilla CIV the AI will just suicide on your fortified units, but I think in Warlords they will build a couple of archers and attack in succession. This will be a good area to try out in practice games. Also, in Warlords the AI won't go after worker bait but I've found that scouts work very well instead. This can be another cat n mouse way to stagnate the AI early on and lure out units from their cities leaving only the minimum number of defenders. Try it in your practice games.

We want to know about as many of the stupid AI military practices as we can.

I noticed this a lot in my practice games: Parking a single warrior in a good defensive position next to a city causes the AI to bring in its workers, and it wont attack until it has 4-5 archers (even though it usually only loses 1 archer in killing the warrior). Pinning an AI capital between the sea and a warrior or two is a great way to keep it stagnant.

I also noticed what you say about worker bait. Sometimes, I'd have an undefended worker in my borders but the AI wouldn't go after it when my warriors were within attack range (not that I'm recommending leaving workers vulnerable).

My full write-up to follow...

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

Yep, seige weapons are always good. In AW games you do tend to fight more defensive wars and in the open field where seige is less useful (as opposed to normal games when you walk your stack right up to a peaceful civ's capital and take over all of their cities in 10 turns with your catapults )

I should also add that at the start of the game, once you have met a civ, they somehow know if your capital is undefended and any scouting warrior/archer they have will make a direct line towards it. There were many embarassing defeats in GOTM22 in the first 15 turns due to this.

 

[ShannonCT]

Leader and Civ:

English UU and UB probably aren't going to come into play. Hopefully, the game will be over by then. Churchill's Charismatic trait means that along with a monument and gold, we have a happiness cap of 8 in the capital and 7 in other cities. Happiness won't be a limiting factor in the early game. The Charismatic XP bonus should help our early warriors get a second promotion more quickly. Killing an enemy scouts gives 2 XPs, defending against a beast gives 1, and attacking a beast gives 2. Desirable promotions would be Woodsman I/II or Combat I/Shock. The protective trait is pretty useless at this level. If horses or copper is nearby, we can probably skip archery altogether. The only interesting thing to do with the Protective trait is to use the 100% bonus for building walls along with the additional 100% bonus from stone to turn overflow hammers from chopping and whipping walls into gold at a 1:3 ratio (see Hammer Overflow article in the War Academy).

Always War:

This setting is going to affect our opening strategy. On Prince, the AI starts with two scouts if Hunting is known, and two warriors otherwise. Our initial warrior is going to have to stay close enough to home to race back in case an enemy warrior breaks for our capital. AI warriors wont attack a city if there is a full-strength warrior defending. At the beginning, when we can at best produce 3 hammers per turn, a warrior takes 8 turns, too slow to protect an empty capital. Our initial warrior may need to just circle around our starting location (to find a potential spot for our second city) and then come back home. Once we have a few additional warriors, we can look for good opportunities to earn XPs and start using them to kill the AI warriors that might harass our workers, and to fortify on defensible terrain next to enemy capitals. The AI is overly cautious about sending out workers and settlers when there is an enemy sitting next to their city. As long as we're at war with everyone, we should use the opportunity to prevent anyone from hooking up resources.

Map and Opening Screenshot:

Big and Small, medium sea level maps that aren't "highly modified" are usually such that one can reach every AI (but not necessarily circumnavigate) by galleys. The highly modified map may invalidate this point. It's probably more reasonable to assume that we will need Astronomy to win by conquest or domination. From the opening screenshot, my best guess is that we are on the Big continent, about halfway down, near the west coast (there appear to be two lake/ocean tiles visible on the western edge of the fog). Jungles and rivers generally don't appear together except on the Big continent. Assuming we're starting on a Big continent with several AIs, we should be looking to rush someone with axes or chariots.

Here is a random sample of Big and Small minimaps for those who don't have BTS:

Spoiler :

Our starting location is decent in terms of growth oppportunity. Pastured cows and farmed bananas each give 4 food, enough to work a gold hill and 4 grass hills. Plus there are 5 mystery tiles in our current fat cross that might reveal another resource. Moving our warrior 1 west will reveal whether there is any compelling reason to move our settler south. Settling on the dyes would give us an early research boost and still give us access to cows, gold, and bananas, but we might want to know what the two mystery tiles to the north contain before committing to settling south.

Tech Path:

Generally I would beeline for animal husbandry when grassland cows are present. Settling on the dyes and opening with hunting and animal husbandry allows a worker to start improving the cows as soon as he is built. Opening with agriculture and animal husbandry would give us a more useful tech but delay the cow pasture by a few turns, in which case, our worker could build a mine or banana farm first if there are no grains around. BW first would be a better tech for whipping/chopping a few early warriors to secure our area against AI warriors.

 

[leif erikson]

My intention is to create three or four saves to test different availability of resources. I've completed the first and will attach it. I imported the map script from into Warlords to create the save. The settings are:
Map- Big and Small
Size - Standard
Climate - Temperate
Sea Level - Medium
Speed - Epic
and then Normal Continents, Islands and Islands mixed in.

You can tell me what resource conditions I tried to create...
The saves were created in Warlords with HoF Mod 2.13.002 and the .dll's. If you can play them, you should be set for the game save when it appears...

EDIT - Please note the added saves.

EDIT2 - I just found a minor error in the first test game. The Gold Hill to the west is a grass hill instead of a plains hill.

The saves:

 

[rrau]

Before trying any of the saves, how is this AW played? Where you start at war with the first civ you meet and as soon as they're gone, then you DOW on the second civ you met? Or is it always war with everyone? I haven't played an AW game in a LONG time.......probably a civ3 sgotm.

 

[leif erikson]

In CIV, when you meet another civ, the game automatically declares war on them for you. Then you can never make peace.
No negotiations either, so diplomacy is removed from the game.

So, you are always at war with everyone else...
And it is do unto others before they can do unto you...

 

[Frederiksberg]

Welcome to the two new guys on the team - well actually I already know ShannonCT from the "Memphis Blues" team that ceased to exist after SGOTM3.

I think it's a good idea to start with some test games and then start the real game after New Year when people get back from their holydays.

In the last SGOTM we came in 6th after CRF, CRC, Murky Waters, OSS and Smurkz. CFR are not participating this time so in order to improve we should aim for 4th place or better. What can be done to achieve this? In the previous game we made a couple of strategic mistakes. One was to under estimate the impact of WW and not reacting to solve this. Another was attacking too late. I hope that the test games will give us a better grasp of which strategic areas are important and how they are best handled. We also made some mistakes in the execution of the strategy. In this particular SGOTM the common errors were to build improvements that were not really useful like Courthouses and Lighthouses and forgetting to improve important resources. In some cases good MM'ing advice was lost because of the large number of posts before each turn set. Could we do something to prevent this? Maybe by writing MM'ing suggestions (like "improve these tiles next", "hire a scientist", "build a Courthouse") with a different color or in a separate section?

I'm sure that the addition of Jimmy Thunder and ShannonCT to the team is not going to make the number of posts go down!

One key to AW is sending out 1-2 unit raiding parties to all the civs on your continent very early on. They can park up on forest hills and stop the AI workers and stagnate their growth. In Vanilla CIV the AI will just suicide on your fortified units, but I think in Warlords they will build a couple of archers and attack in succession. This will be a good area to try out in practice games. Also, in Warlords the AI won't go after worker bait but I've found that scouts work very well instead. This can be another cat n mouse way to stagnate the AI early on and lure out units from their cities leaving only the minimum number of defenders. Try it in your practice games.

We want to know about as many of the stupid AI military practices as we can.

I agree that raiding parties is a key thing to keep the AI backwards. I guess it's also the only way to scout. In the previous SGOTM some teams used a trick were they left captured enemy cities undefended to trick enemy archers out of nearby cities.

Big and Small, medium sea level maps that aren't "highly modified" are usually such that one can reach every AI (but not necessarily circumnavigate) by galleys. The highly modified map may invalidate this point. It's probably more reasonable to assume that we will need Astronomy to win by conquest or domination.

This is a key issue. Do we need Astronomy to achieve domination or conquest? I suspect this might be the case since this SGOTM would otherwise be somewhat similar to the previous one. In any case we can't rule out this possibility. It means that we need to balance the early war effort and the research speed. Information gathering will be important so maybe we'd better get those raiding parties out fast.

 

[leif erikson]

This is a key issue. Do we need Astronomy to achieve domination or conquest? I suspect this might be the case since this SGOTM would otherwise be somewhat similar to the previous one. In any case we can't rule out this possibility. It means that we need to balance the early war effort and the research speed. Information gathering will be important so maybe we'd better get those raiding parties out fast.

I know one thing I don't do well in my games, and I think our team could use some work on, is better management of Great People. I read one of the succession game threads in which Great Scientists were used to speed the path to Astronomy (one for Compass, one for Optics and two for Astronomy). If we think we need this, then I think we should try and plan for it early in order to maximize the timing and availability of Great Scientists to support the effort.

That said, there are other things we can use Great People for as well and, during test gaming, keep that in mind and see what can be accomplished.

On Astronomy, I think an aggressive scouting plan may be useful as well, in case we need some culture bridge cities, easier than Astronomy if that is all we need?

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

Information gathering will be important so maybe we'd better get those raiding parties out fast.

This is a key aspect. The game is called Gyathaar's Mystery game so anything could be thrown at us. Normally you know largely what to expect from a map and can pretty much create your strategy for fast victory before you even play the first turn. But for us, with this mystery game, gathering information early and processing it appropriately will have a huge bearing on our result. It makes every early unit we have a valuable tool that we need to squeeze the most out of.

We should give our starting warrior a name and then see how many daring and heroic missions he can accomplish in his lifetime.

On the lightbulbing strategy - if you are completely tied into it you need to plan your GP's with 100% chances and work out the fastest way to get the required number you need (e.g. Which is fastest?: 1st, 3rd and 4th person from the GPfarm and 2nd from auxillary city OR 2nd and 4th from the GPfarm and 1st and 3rd from auxillary cities...)

Also, it's important to not open up unwanted techs on the GP tech preference list (does everyone know about this hard-coded order of preference?).

EDIT:
And I agree with test games and start in the new year.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Also, it's important to not open up unwanted techs on the GP tech preference list (does everyone know about this hard-coded order of preference?).

I use this reference: Great People Tech Preferences

The only interesting thing to do with the Protective trait is to use the 100% bonus for building walls along with the additional 100% bonus from stone to turn overflow hammers from chopping and whipping walls into gold at a 1:3 ratio (see Hammer Overflow article in the War Academy).

I suppose this is the one: Hammer Overflow

Very interesting that you can actually generate gold this way.