SGOTM 08 - Fifth Element

[AlanH]

Welcome to your BtS SGOTM 8 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
This will be the first Beyond the Sword SGOTM. Thanks, Gyathaar

Following his recent honeymoon in the Far East, Gyathaar, aka Suryavarman II of the Khmer Empire, is just Crazy About Wonders. He has decreed that he will win a glorious victory and that his total Wonder points per turn played will then be the envy of the world.

Suryavarman II is Expansive and Creative, with the Ballista Elephant to assist in acquiring Wonders he can't build himself, and the Baray to allow him to build the Hanging Gardens.

It is a Normal speed, Monarch difficulty game on a Standard map. All victory conditions are enabled.

The Objective
The winners will be the teams who achieve a Victory by any means, and who score the highest Wonder Points per Turn Played.

Five Wonder Points are awarded for each Wonder controlled by the Team, and are displayed as the 'xx' in "yy from Wonders (xx/310)" when you hover your mouse over your score in the game screen. 310 is the maximum Wonder Points score you can achieve if you control all Wonders and National Wonders.

Versions
This game will be played in Civilization IV Beyond the Sword, version 3.17, using HoF Mod 3.17.001.

If a later BtS patch is released during this game you will NOT be able to use it to play. You will need to complete this game in version 3.17 before updating your copy of BtS, or create and update a separate copy.

As there is no Mac version of BtS, Mac players can only join in if they are able to run the Windows version on their system.

Schedule

• The Team threads will open shortly.
• The start files will be published on Friday, September 12.
• Please try to complete the 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 - Suryavarman II of the Khmer Empire.
• Characteristics - Expansive and Creative, starts with Hunting and Mining
• Unique Unit - Ballista Elephant (War elephant)
• Unique Building - Baray (Aqueduct)
• Rivals - 7 AI civs
• World size - Standard
• Difficulty - Monarch
• Landform - Big and Small
• Environment - Temperate climate, medium sea level
• Game Speed - Normal
• Everything else - Default

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 highest Wonder Score per Turn Played, and the Wooden Spoons for the finishing team with the lowest final score.
  
• You can capture wonders, or build them yourself. Remember you cannot capture national wonders.
  A victory in turn 100 with 10 wonders controlled gets the same score as winning in turn 200 with 20 wonders..
  In BtS the max number of wonders is 62, including corp headquarters and holy city buildings, national wonders, palace and world wonders.
  
• 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

 

[BLubmuz]

Index of Fifth Element turnset reports for SGotM08:
The linked post has a link to the thread which opens the entire page.

SGotM08 results page

turn 00 - 13 - Mesix - 09/14 -- AH in - first worker in
turn 13 - 26 - Blubmuz - 09/17 (scouting turn 13- 16)-- Fishing and the wheel in, start writing (1 turn)
turn 26 - 38 - culdeus - 09/26 -- writing in, library and size 5 in turn 39 - sailing in 2
turn 38 - 50 - greatbeyond - 10/01 -- library in, sailing, Myst, Poly in
turn 50 - 62 - berserks01 - 10/04 -- 2nd city founded
turn 62 - 74 - Sweetacshon - 10/06 -- CoL+Math in, Academy in, marble settled, CS sling performed
turn 74 - 86 - WastinTime - 10/11 -- traded for metal techs
turn 86 - 95 - culdeus - 10/16 -- GLH on
turn 95 -100 - Balthalion -10/17 -- well done, but Pyramids gone
turn 100-115 - Mesix - 10/20 -- Old good Shaka decided to avoid us some WW
turn 115-123 - greatbeyond - 10/23 -- war becomes long
turn 123-135 - BLubmuz - Ulundi gone, met Pericles
turn 135-145 - berserks01 - 10/26 - war continues, circumnavigation, wrong trades
turn 145-155 - Sweetacshon - 11/02 - peace, for now
turn 155-167 - WastinTime - 11/03 - Shaka wiped
turn 167-173 - Balthalion - 11/09 - prepare for war
turn 173-180 - culdeus - 11/13 - Lib for Comm, Port. war well started
turn 180-187 - greatbeyond - 11/17 - First on Econ, GM burned , GSpy for GAge
turn 187-197 - Mesix - 11/20 -- war continues, revolt to caste
turn 197-206 - Blubmuz - 11/21 -- First Portuguese war well finished, Steel in.
turn 206-214 - berserks01 - 11/30 -- Indian war successfully started, first on Physics
turn 214-222 - Sweetacshon - 12/04 -- Indian war goes on
turn 222-231 - WastinTime - 12/08 -- G vassal, J gone, Bou goin'
turn 231-238 - greatbeyond - 12/20 - Celtic war
turn 238-244 - Balthalion -12/23 -- Celts gone, GM born
turn 244-250 - Mesix - 12/30 - HRE almost gone
turn 250-258 - Blubmuz - 09/01/2009 -- 2nd GAge, HRE vassallized, Rome in trouble, UN in
turn 258-262 - berserks01 - 01/17 -- near the end
turn 262-265 - Sweetacshon - Won!!!

Diplo in 1780, 285 wonder points on turn 265 = 1.07547

As we'll see, good, but not enough.
I think we couldn't have done better, see the too early Zulu war.

 

[BLubmuz]

Leaders wonder probabilities

10 - SHAKA
10 - GANDHI
10 - BOUDICA
15 - CHARLEMAGNE
20 - JOAO
40 - PERICLES
40 - AUGUSTUS


Roster - 6 turns/TS from 12/09th
Sweetacshon - UP
WastinTime - on deck
greatbeyond
Balthalion
Mesix
Blubmuz
berserks01 - resting

Lurkers: dutchfire - Merum - culdeus

 

[berserks01]

Private berserks01, checking in

Do we have a created test game for everyone to try or should we just play test games we created ourselves?

Edit: Uhhhh, ok. Maybe I should've read the 07 thread before posting here.

 

[WastinTime]

Checking in

 

[BLubmuz]

Checking in
Welcome to our new members, and welcome back to the veterans.
I think that the VC should be domination, or cultural possibly before the modern era.
The most of Wondes are concentrated in ancient and classical age, but we need to know the map before a good plan can be drawn.
Also we must not build every possible wonder, or we'll lack structures and military.
Surely we must aim for oracle, pyramids, GLH and GLib, and HG, trying to specialize cities.

Just some ideas for now, let's start the discussion.
Test game? yes, but we'll need to know some more of our actual land before to start that one.

 

[berserks01]

I want to remind the team that I will be OOP and civ-less starting tomorrow (9/11) night til satuday (9/20) night.

I might be able to get internet access, but that's iffy seeing as how I'll be on a boat the entire time.

The idea I have is actually pretty simple and kinda stupid. I wanted to build only low hammer wonders so we can concentrate on infra and military and take the high hammer wonders from the AI.

 

[greatbeyond]

A welcome to the new members of our team. I am checked in and have been testing. You can find a test map I created at the end of our SGOTM7 thread
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=271896.
My testing so far has made me realize the victory condition is not as easy as one would think on Monarch.

Choices perhaps; few Wonders, with a quick military victory or a long game with a lot of Wonders. Because it is the highest Wonders/turn ratio that wins, either could be a winner. If Astronomy is required, then the second choice appears much more likely.

Once the Save is posted, we could move the Scout and I could modify the test map. However, I don't think he 's going to reveal a whole lot. I think the Scout's first move should be to the Gold Hill.

Let's discuss where we want to settle as I don't see much reason at this point to move far.There is ample food and hills for hammers at the starting location. Biggest reason I see to settle on the river is it allows hooking up cities/resources without roads, but IIRC we need a tech prerequisite to enable this in BTS. Anyone remember?

As for starting position, I have favored 1SW in my test games so I can Quarry the Marble and use it to hurry Wonders. You have to get Masonry and Sailing first to make it work.
Worker steals are a possibility if the AIs are fairly close.
I have generally favored a Worker first in my tests but want to try some going for a Settler first.

Starting tech research: I have favored BW as it will allow us to chop the nearby forests for Settlers and Wonders and reveal Copper. Obviously this only makes sense if we build/steal a Worker first. I have also experimented with Fishing, then AH to get food production ramped up in prep for whipping.

Map notes:
You'll find on my test map that the other AIs are not very close and there is plenty of area, this was how Worldbuilder created it, I only modified the starting area. Copper seems to be in abundance, Iron less so, lots of jungle areas which may slow down the AI's growth.

 

[greatbeyond]

I have been reading with interest the hammer overflow/ wall exploit. Our AI and starting location would seem to make the exploit, as in the example in the thread below, a very profitable thing to try. This post talks about doing it with a city with lots of food and lots of Hammers.

Quote:
Originally Posted by oyzar View Post
this might be the reason that upgrades work the way they do. Otherwise it would be way to easy to get units for cheap. as it is now you pay about the same in hammer overflow for the upgrades. Wealth is of course usefull for more things than upgrades. whipping 2 pop into a barracks on normal speed as agressive with or running that is allready overflow from forests would give you 135 gold? or even 67 gold from 1 pop is pretty crazy especially at small sizes. one wonder how good HE + GT + forge is in a city that can still produce warriors(not hunting is enough for this right?). Assuming you whip a warrior when its 1 turn from completion thats still 50 gold for 1 pop(and likely 1 turn of growth) and you get a warrior for cheap happiness boost somewhere else. Of course you could just do like in the artillery expriment. If you can ladder up units somehow archer/chariot -> axeman/spear -> catapult/sword -> longbow -> x-bow/phant -> maceman you might get alot of gold. Though it might require loads of chopping anyways as some of the basehammer requirements are quite high.

ok i tried this. It seems quite insane to me. I had a city with HE and GT(high food high production from world builder) and forge. I let it put out 15 basehammers per turn. Here is what i did. Got a swordman axeman and a catapult all within 2 hammers of compleetion. I then started whipping them once each just to see the effect. Building sword -> axe -> catapult it produced 58 160 252 gold in 3 turns at the cost of 3 pop and 3 unhappines with a baseoutput of 15 hammers with 17 hammers left over using HE and forge i got 252/(45*3)=1.86667 times the hammer invested returned in gold, the rest is lost to rounding error and i did get 17 extra hammers with multipliers this is 296/135=2.19 times the hammers invested so not too much is lost. This is quite huge since you can whip pop into gold at pretty much moments notice assuming your allready producing units at a steady rate. It happens fairly often that you get high food high hammer capitals. Alternativly if you want to use your capital to produce other gp's than artists you can put it in a captured capital as they tend to be awesoeme high food and production cities too. This was without burecracy, with it would obviously be higher.

This basically allow you to turn pop into gold at a conversion rate of ~65/1 which is quite decent imo. Of course it comes nowhere near what a super science or comerce city can put out but its quite alot considering its mostly from a city producing units only.

Link for start of discussion on Hammer overflow:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=218272

 

[Sweetacshon]

Red 2 standing by.

It was discussed in the other thread (ahem! Couldn't it wait?!) that we want to win the game as close to the turning point of the wonder/time curve as possible, while moving this point to the left w.r.t time as far as possible. A couple of early thoughts I had:

1. For the curve itself, I'll do a baseline test to see when the AI will build wonders and post a spreadsheet, and adding in our experience and tests, we can fine tune it from there.
2. Moving the curve to the left means keeping up a good tech pace and spreading the tech love, but how are we best to do this? Two ideas that spring to mind are giving "wonder" tech monopolies to industrious civs which we can easily conquer, "religious" techs to those who'll build shrines, and similar for corps, while taking strategic wonders for ourselves and beating down any aggressive or troublesome civs.
3. How do we win close to the point? It'll depend on when it is, and also how concentrated the wonders are (and of course the map). Dom seems most likely, unless the turning point is very late, we can get well ahead in tech, build a heap of wonders and launch or backdoor diplo -- unlikely imo.

I'll post the spreadsheet soon - if everyone could note roughly which turn each wonder falls on in their tests, it'd be useful.

 

[culdeus]

Now don't count out conquest. If the wonders get spread around all over and we have to take many of them it might work best to pillage the non wonder cities and then pin a civ back to one city while we rush wonders everywhere till our wonders/time curve drops.

Domination with the whole vassal/colony thing is a real PITA in BTS. Especially if you want to milk it.

The culture thing is an interesting thought, but if you get lots of wonders in one city you get too much GP pollution as we'll have to build ones that aren't just GA wonders too.

I'm actually having a little trouble locating my BTS disk. I recently moved a lot of my stuff in the house. It's in a box somewhere I imagine.

 

[culdeus]

Just once and for all can we clear up which projects count for wonder points and can we confirm if corporations and holy shrines count as well?

 

[culdeus]

Just FTR

Wonders costing less or equal to 500 hammers and needs for 1/2 cost

Colossus 250 copper
GLib 350 marble
GLhouse 200
GWall 250 stone
HangingG 300 stone
MoM 450 marble
Oracle 150 marble
PArthenon 400 marble
Mids 500 stone
SchwedP 450 Gold
Zeus 300 Ivory
Henge 120 stone
ToA 300 Marble

 

[WastinTime]

Projects don't count, nor do space parts, so there'd be no reason to go for most of the space techs or a space race finish. I agree that Domination is most likely (since we have to capture wonders) or conquest is another (similar) option.

I'm pretty sure we will find that the best wonder/turn ratio comes when you get ALL of the wonders. You don't get many in the first 100 turns, so every additional wonder will bring your average up. We should make a plan to get them all. To me that means carefully planning our GP for corporations and shrines.

 

[Mesix]

Checking in.

Holy shrines should count. Capturing or building shrines early will give a nice gold bonus to allow us to research at a higher rate.

When going for Wonders, it is a good idea to build Pyramids early (in the 2nd or 3rd city), especially if we get Stone hooked up. Don't pollute the GP points from the Pyramids and add a Forge (run an engineer) and build other GE wonders in that city too. We should be able to pop a few GE this way to ensure that we can rush sone wonders before an early win.

 

[BLubmuz]

I confirm that:
- Shrines and Corporations HQs count as Wonders,
- Projects do NOT count,
- National Wonders count.

Specialize cities:
it's what i usually do in time or SS victories:
- Glib city will build Sankore and run only scientists,
- Pyramids city will build HG and HS and run only engineers
- Oracle city will try to build ToA and other prophet wonders
- There's a bunch of artist wonders
- not many for merchants, but surely the GLH is an important one.

We're on Monarch, can we rick a CS sling?
Or it's better use the Oracle for MC?

Much will depend by which AIs we'll find.

I think that settle in place is a good choice (remember we're on normal speed), and found city2 in the island with marble, that's not bad, but we need sailing soon (and i usually trade for it) and a galley, hoping that we don't need to circumnavigate half world to arrive there.

I guess an early WB is important.
Warrior first, research fishing, then WB.

 

[culdeus]

I'm guessing we are up against every single Industrial civ and they are all stacked with either or both stone and marble.

I'm not to keen on building any wonders early that aren't GE wonders. If you time it right you can go Chop Mids-> GE HG -> GE HS Couple that with a forge and iron works and you have a GE MACHINE that can pop many, many wonders for us.

 

[WastinTime]

When going for Wonders, it is a good idea to build Pyramids early (in the 2nd or 3rd city), especially if we get Stone hooked up. Don't pollute the GP points from the Pyramids and add a Forge (run an engineer) and build other GE wonders in that city too. We should be able to pop a few GE this way to ensure that we can rush sone wonders before an early win.

Great strategy.

Don't forget we won't be going to Fusion for the free GE, and we need 2 GE's for corporations. Any extra GEs, as you said, will be good to rush the last couple wonders.

Great People:
We'll get 3 free : GA, GM, GS (music, econ, physics)
We need those 3 above plus a GM, GS, GE, GE for corporations and hopefully around 2-3 prophets for shrines. We need the AI to build the other shrines. In other words, let them have henge. We can use the oracle for our prophet generation.

Edit: in case anyone is planning the great people, we'll also have to have 1 GS for an academy.

 

[berserks01]

Are we planning on milking wonders with a domination victory? That seems to be the case if we're planning on corporations.

If I have time I want to try a quick domination game where I let the AI build the wonders and I just take them, to see if it would yield a better score than a prolonged milked domination game.

 

[culdeus]

Are we planning on milking wonders with a domination victory? That seems to be the case if we're planning on corporations.

I really think this game is going to break my calculator's 5 key. I don't think we'll really have a good feel for the VC till we get well into the game. The builds will almost certainly center on military rushes and then transition to a wonder build-a-thon. There's certainly a chance we won't need/want to research corporations.

It all depends on the math.