SGOTM 07 - Fifth Element

[AlanH]

Welcome to your C_IV SGOTM 7 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 team lists are at the end of this post.

The Game
You are Qin Shi Huang, the great Chinese leader. You find yourself on a tiny world, surrounded by all the other vanilla civs. You can only build or own a single city, and the difficulty level is .... Deity!

The Objective
This Deity OCC game is on a Tiny map, at Normal speed, against 17 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, and using the latest vanilla HOF Mod.

Windows players need the HOF Mod at: HOF-1.74.002.
Windows players who have not installed BtS 3.13 will need to swap their vanilla CvGameCoreDLL.dll file so that their Civ4 installation is compatible with copies that have the BtS installation. Download the new DLL zip file here. The enclosed Readme file gives details for the installation.

Mac players are in a separate team as the HoF Mod cannot be made to work cross-platform. They will use Civ4 for Mac version 1.74, and HOF-Mac-1.74.002.

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 April 24.

Please try to complete this game within three months of the start date.

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

​

Map Parameters

Playable Leader/Civ - Qin Shi Huang of China.
Characteristics - Industrious and Financial, starts with Agriculture and Mining
Unique Unit - Cho-Ku-Nu (Crossbowman)
Rivals - All of them
World size - Tiny
Difficulty - Deity
Landform - Continents
Environment - Temperate climate, low sea level
Game Speed - Normal
AI Aggression - Normal
Barbarians - Normal
Permanent Alliances - Enabled
City Razing - Enabled. China auto-razes to enforce OCC.
​

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 laurels will be presented to the three teams who achieve victories in the fewest 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.
  
• Do NOT view any other team threads until you have submitted your last save - win, lose or retire.
  
• Do NOT download any other team's save.

Enjoy your game, and please be nice to each other

 

[WastinTime]

Checkin in. Never done one of these, but I *think* I understand the rules.

 

[BLubmuz]

Index of Fifth Element turnset reports for SGotM7:
The linked post has a link to the thread which opens the entire page.

SGotM7 results

turn 00 - 15 (Balthalion 04/27)
turn 15 - 26 (greatbeyond 04/30)
turn 26 - 36 (WastinTime 05/01)
turn 36 - 47 (Sweetacshon 05/04) Alpha in, as planned
turn 47 - 55 (Blubmuz 05/05) Venetian merchants are shaking the ancient world with trades
turn 55 - 62 (Sabre 05/08) Academy in, as planned
turn 62 - 71 (dutchfire 05/11) Great Library and CoL in, as planned
turn 71 - 79 (culdeus 05/15)
turn 79 - 87 (Balthalion 05/18) first war (America)
turn 87 - 94 (greatbeyond 05/24) the most discussed
turn 94 -101 (Merum 05/26)
turn 101-108 (WastinTime 05/28)
turn 108-114 (Blubmuz 06/02)
turn 114-121 (Sabre 06/04)
turn 121-129 (dutchfire 06/07) First on Lib (for 1 turn)
turn 129-134 (culdeus 06/11) 2nd war (KK)
turn 134-138 (Sweetacshon 06/13)
turn 138-145 (Balthalion 06/16)
turn 145-152 (greatbeyond 06/19) First on Physics
turn 152-159 (WastinTime 06/20) Peace
turn 159-166 (Blubmuz 06/21)
turn 166-177 (Merum 06/25)
turn 177-184 (culdeus 06/26)
turn 184-192 (dutchfire 06/27)
turn 192-201 (Balthalion 07/01)
turn 201-212 (greatbeyond 07/09)
turn 212-222 (WastinTime 07/11)
turn 222-235 (Blubmuz 07/15)
turn 235-244 (dutchfire 07/18)
turn 244-248 (culdeus 07/20)
turn 248-2xx (Balthalion ?)
turn 2xx-2xx (WastinTime ?)

 

[BLubmuz]

reserved for something else

 

[WastinTime]

See, I screwed up already. I posted before the reserved space, sorry. I'm going to be trouble for this team.

So how did the name "Fifth Element" come about?

 

[BLubmuz]

cheking in

Welcome to the new members, and welcome back to the veterans of FE.

I'll play the test game (you can find it here) probably tomorrow, i waited to post my fresh impressions on this thread.

Yes WT, the rules are simple: mainly avoid to visit other teams threads 'til we'll have finished.

I got my ideas about this game, but since you are here, i guess you'll be our strategist, and we (me at least) try to follow what you propose.
A discussion will be always helpful, at least to better understand what another member can propose, or to help some 50/50 choice.

I hope we can run for a laurel this time.

crossposted
don't worry, also in the last game i arrived too late.
I guess Merum, which is the only remaining founder of the team knows better (i arrived in SG2), but i suppose they was the team 5, so Fifth Element arrived.
I don't want insult you remembering it is something tied with alchemy.

 

[WastinTime]

test game? how does that work? I was going to set up a similar game to see how it feels too. I can just use yours if that's what you've done.

 

[BLubmuz]

It's a game with the same settings and usually a starting position reproducing the one showed in the SS in the Staff's post.
Of course you can't know where your actual adversaries and the strategic resources are, but usually it helps.

After all members will have completed the "cheking in" i'll post some hint about how to post the TS report and so on, or you (and the other new members) can take a look at our SG6 thread.

 

[Sabre]

Sabre checking in. Glad to be a part of this team. I used to play SGOTM's for CivIII with Team Tao and I really enjoyed how the team would get into some great discussions on how to proceed. Checking some of the old Fifth Element threads it looks like I can expect the same here.

 

[MacBalt]

Checking in. This will be my first SG too, but I'm looking forward to it.

 

[greatbeyond]

greatbeyond checking in while far away from home. I have already played a couple of test games using the save I made, which I believe Blubmuz has attached. I'll be able to give more comments on Sunday when I get back to my pc.

 

[Sweetacshon]

Hi everyone! Guess what? I have some homework for you! All of these are unusual is one way or another, but give excellent ideas for this game.
Modified map OCC strat guide.
Modified map SG.
Fantasy map script, but no wb involved.
So, have a read and play the test, and we'll have a good shot.

So I lost in 1820 by dogpile, but I was going well until I got lazy. I was able to nab the mids with chopping (but of course this has to be balanced with health later), and the GLib was no problem. Oracle went early, I don't know how feasible it is to go for both mids and oracle. There weren't that many other wonders that I wanted to build. NW- GT, Nat Epic , Wall St, Oxford, Ironworks. I was also able to grab liberalism.

The trouble was that I didn't finish, and also didn't really have any idea how I was going to win. Going for the UN is an option, I guess, as is an PA with dom or culture wins. Conquest is doable with a good tech lead. We have to decide very early, but perhaps resources will dictate our path. How did everyone else go

 

[Sabre]

I was decced early (875bc) by the Mongols and ended up stuck in Beijing with every resource razed before quitting. Guess declining his demand for crabs was a bad idea.

I also managed to build the Pyramids (2080bc) and was well on the way to the Great Library.

I'll read the links and give it another shot today or tomorrow.

 

[dutchfire]

WastinTime, what do you think about trying to get a Permanent Alliance? Would that be feasible?


By the way, which HOF mod version do we need, it's been a while since I played a HOF-game, so I might have an obsolete version.

 

[Sweetacshon]

Whatever the most recent one is - .02 I believe.

A PA is definitely in order unless we go for conquest, imo.

edit: Just notice I typed AP instead of PA in my previous post.

 

[culdeus]

haven't played vanillia in some time and haven't played OCC in a REALLY long time.

Domination and culture and diplo are out right? (well time too)

Conquest in my brief experiments seems to be so dicey. Wouldn't be shocked if there weren't but just one basic war resource in the fat cross and heavy culture expansion (and keeping the pressure back) would be required to get the others.

Settling in place seems to be the only obvious thing to do.

Rushing to Chos might make the early research path easy to set out.

I think having so many AI makes the AI suffer some. They will place absurd cities and put themselves in major revolt jeopardy from the beginning. This will result in large costs and making them backwards. Plus the wars they'll wage will be constant.

Can you even do a space ship with one city?

 

[WastinTime]

WastinTime, what do you think about trying to get a Permanent Alliance? Would that be feasible?


By the way, which HOF mod version do we need, it's been a while since I played a HOF-game, so I might have an obsolete version.

A PA only makes sense if we go for Space. Not a bad option if a couple friendly AI get some land to grow. I don't think this will happen.

If we go Diplo, which seems like the best option, a PA will only hurt us.

Conquest might be the fastest finish, but that doesn't sound like any fun. It will also be frustrating to have the land we clear consumed by the other AI. Since this is Normal speed, conquest will be that much harder. Since it's continents, it gets even harder if we need astronomy.

A diplo game would play a lot like conquest I think. We'd have to kill the uncooperative civs and let the friendly ones fill in the space. Those shared wars will be great for relations.

 

[dutchfire]

Any victory condition we're likely to achieve without a PA? Conquest sounds possible, but hard.

 

[culdeus]

I guess we need to figure out what the carrying capacity of the one city is and what the limits are and when they could be overcome and by what. I'll get to work on that later today.

Is there any reason anybody can come up with to move the city site?

 

[dutchfire]

I guess we need to figure out what the carrying capacity of the one city is and what the limits are and when they could be overcome and by what. I'll get to work on that later today.

Is there any reason anybody can come up with to move the city site?

Riverside, coastal, on a plains hill, with all (but whale) resource in the BFC, keeping all forests, without any snow in reach? Almost to perfect