SGOTM 08 - Gypsy Kings

[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

 

[Ronnie1]

saved for later

 

[Ronnie1]

still saved for later

 

[Ronnie1]

maybe 1 more for later

 

[oyzar]

And we are off! Thoughts on start: AH-> fishing-> BW , lets get some testgames running. Both to sim the start and to check if a CS slingshot with oracle is viable. As for long term strategy: victory in 300 turns with all the wonders is obviously possible which means any options under 0.2 wonders/turns is not viable. This is a tech race, gifting pretty much all techs to everyone seems pretty mandatory, as does getting as big land area as soon as possible... Obviously if we are in the big area or the small area will matter alot for how we aproach expansion. We will probably have to capture most wonders(hopefully including shrines). Of the ancient wonders oracle, maybe mids and maybe GLH seems like the ones that could aid us the most...

 

[Ronnie1]

Please let me know that you are here. Subscribe to this thread and the maintenance thread.

Please follow all GOTM/SGOTM rules.

Here is a link to the "standard Gypsy Kings" rules from the last game, read it please, comments welcomed. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6729099&postcount=3

Lets have some fun, and GET A MEDAL!

 

[mystyfly]

Now this is it, my first post in a SGOTM

I don't see a way to start this game that is clearly superior to others. I think worker first is given as we don't start with fishing. With gold and mining our worker has something to do. I think however that we should be able to start on our first WB as soon as the worker finishes and would rather research fishing > AH > BW. With BW we could easily chop out one or the other wonder. Oracle then, to take CS would be nice. Also GLH would be good economically just it eats a lot of hammers with no double-speed resource. Still I think we should go for it especially with those forests around.

Which AI there is (nearby or overseas) matters very much too and our plans will need to be adapted. Tough I also foresee lots of tech gifting to keep the pace high and victory early.

I think we should also should make sure we get some Great Prophets over time so we don't miss out on those "free" wonders once we get the holy cities.

We should also plan to build a scouting WB pretty soon.

 

[Ronnie1]

I'm here obviously, welcome to Rusten and Mystyfly!! Very glad to have you both aboard.

I'm also on board with AH>FISHING, then possibly Pottery before BW, but we obviously need to look at those options more closely.

 

[oyzar]

Whyever would we want pottery before BW? We need something for the workers to do! As of AH fishing, we need food first and AH first probably gives us a 4 food resource faster... We could test all aproached concerned with early game micro using adrianj's testsaves though.

 

[mystyfly]

Why would you want pottery before BW? is early followed by . comes later. Also we won't be building granaries that early.

OTOH early chops can do wonders...

 

[oyzar]

Doubt we would want any wonders before we have at least a couple more cities, the strength of our triats is certanly rexing(fast granaries, workers and borderpops). Just because the aim is to have a ton of wonders by the end game doesn't mean we should waste ton of hammers on them in the early game.

 

[mystyfly]

I doubt we'd overstretch by building oracle + GLH especially since GLH is an enormeous boost on these kinds of maps. Especially with those tons of forests around.

 

[oyzar]

That depends on if we are on big or small and we do have some time to build those wonders, i guess we should check the dates glh and oracle normaly goes in these games...

BTW: Great tips, set post per page to 40 instead of 20, it helps alot with keeping up with these threads.

 

[Ronnie1]

the strength of our triats is certanly rexing(fast granaries,

thanks for backing up early granaries.

 

[oyzar]

Well fast granaries doesn't mean we should ignore the power of chopping... We can just one pop whip the granary when needed anyways...

 

[mystyfly]

I think the overflow-to-gold "exploit" hasn't been banned is it? In this case we could use some forests to get some money to deficit-research a certain tech.

Just a random idea that struck me.

As for really early granaries: They don't get built that early and for a reason. They're just not worth it that early. Also the only scenario where they would probabely be worth it is with a high food capital and lots of whipping...

 

[oyzar]

Overflow whipping / chopping at a 2:1 ratio isn't exactly hot... Non-banned things that might be more usefull is gifting upon meeting so we can get +4 imeadiatly(although i guess this is somewhat lessened by the fact that we'll gift away a huge amount of techs anyways...). http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=152399 here for list over allowed / disallowed things...

 

[Ronnie1]

We actually showed in SGOTM6 I believe that granaries at size 1 were best if that is an option, and there are no other immediate needs. If u pop rush from 2 to 1, regrowth is the fastest.

 

[Conquistador 63]

Greetings to all, and welcome aboard, Mystyfly and Rusten!
It is obvious some simming/testing is in order, but I like Fishing/AH and worker followed by a WB or 2. What comes next would depend on early exploration, and with enough neighbors, beelining writing/Alpha (Creative=half-priced Libs, so we could run a couple scientists early) could even be an option. I doubt we could pass up early BW, though.

 

[oyzar]

Well granaries are no doubt the first build in most of our cities... But not in the capital obviously...