SGOTM 09 - Xteam

[AlanH]

BtS SGOTM 09 - Back to the Future

Welcome to your BtS SGOTM 9 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 is the second Beyond the Sword SGOTM. Thanks, Gyathaar

You are Pericles of Greece. You have travelled back to 4000 BC, but you took with you a knowledge of several modern technologies. Your task is now to return to the modern era as fast as possible, and to reach for the stars.

This is a Quick speed, Monarch difficulty game on a Standard sized mystery map. There are no goody huts, no events and no city razing.

Pericles is Philosophical and Creative. The Phalanx is your unique unit, replacing the Axeman; and the Odeon unique building replaces the Colosseum. As well as your usual starting techs, Hunting and Fishing, you brought with you a comprehensive library of text books.

The Objective
All victory conditions are enabled, but laurels will be awarded to teams with the quickest Space victories.

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 here on Friday, March 27.
• The latest Save for your team will be linked on the Progress and Results Page throughout the game.
• Please plan to complete the game within three months of the start date.
• NOTE: Barring unforeseen disasters there will be a four month final deadline.
  I shall declare winners and losers from those teams that have finished on July 27, 2009.

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

​

Map Parameters

• Playable Leader/Civ - Pericles of the Greek Empire.
• Characteristics - Philosophical and Creative, starts with Hunting and Fishing
• You and all the AI also know Fascism, Scientific Method, Physics, Medicine, Flight, Machinery, Replaceable Parts and Superconductors
• Unique Unit - Phalanx (Axeman)
• Unique Building - Odeon (Colosseum)
• Difficulty - Monarch
• Game Speed - Quick (330 turns)
• World size - Standard
• Rivals - Probably
• Landform - Mystery
• Environment - Not saying
• Other settings - No city razing, No goodie huts, No events

Notes

• Please visit the [URL="http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=168439]Civ4 SGOTM reference thread[/URL] 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 teams with the fastest Spaceship victories, and the Wooden Spoons for the finishing team with the lowest final score.
  
• 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 game, and the best of luck

 

[leif erikson]

Reserved for Future Use

 

[leif erikson]

Welcome back XTeam for SGOTM09.

Special Welcome to PaulisKhan and Grover22. If you would like, please take a moment to introduce yourselves.

Please do not feel as though you have to spell out my handle, leif or le will do fine. We'll find a suitable abbreviation for you as well.

Please check in and let's get ready for another great game!

Haven't had a chance to play the practice game SCT provided. Any insights.

EDIT - Forgot to tell you that I am going to be out for a few days, more or less.
I have an all day meeting on Saturday. On Sunday afternoon I leave to take my son to visit a college which has accepted him. I will return late on Monday evening. Hopefully, I can keep up with things a bit. I will probably have 15 pages of posts to read through drooping eyes...

 

[rrau]

Checkin in.

War's tough with crossbows from the start. That's what I found out from the practice game.

Does anyone know how to make a game with the techs added? I tried to do an advance start in worldbuilder but couldn't figure it out.

[edit] We probably need to game out some practices with different start strategies before starting the actual game.

 

[leif erikson]

Checkin in.

Welcome back rrau. Hope you are well.

Does anyone know how to make a game with the techs added? I tried to do an advance start in worldbuilder but couldn't figure it out.

I think I may be able to do this. I'll have to have a look in WorldBuilder. I'm getting better with it...

If not tomorrow evening, then early next week.
Unless someone beats me to it.

 

[rrau]

OK, thanks. No rush, though. I need to work all day tomorrow then do chores around the house on Sunday.

 

[DJMGator13]

Gator checking in. Welcome to our new players.

I've played SCT's practice game partway thru, but it was enough to see that starting with those modern era techs changes several things.

1) Great Library, Parthenon & Temple of Artemis are obsolete from the start of the game, as are monasteries, since we already know Scientific Methods.

2) Great Scientist tech preference path is "altered" from a normal game, again because we already know later era techs.

3) I started a new game which copied over my autosave files before I remembered to move them so I'm going from memeory here. But if we rush towards Liberalism, then techs like Electricity and Genetics are available as freebies. With the proper setup and if we know what our tech lead is we could setup even better choices.

4) We're a CS sling away from maces since we start with Machinery.

 

[leif erikson]

OK, thanks. No rush, though. I need to work all day tomorrow then do chores around the house on Sunday.

I just booted up SCT's save and now I am confused about what you are looking for?

Are you looking for a save other than SCT's? Or can we use the one he created to game the opening?

EDIT - I just realized that the worst part of this game is listening to that depressing, modern era, music for all our turn sets.

 

[Grover22]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for taking me aboard. I'm looking forward to this. I hope to learn a lot here.

I did play around with SCT's save a bit. The two corn farms pumped out six food almost right from the get-go, and it took more or less constant monitoring to avoid growing into unhappiness. With the bountiful food it was easy to crank out an army of workers to terraform the land. I wound up building lumber mills in the forests along the river (because those mills add a commerce in addition to the hammer), and forest preserves for extra happies in many of the other forests. My capital got up to size nine (I think) without a religion or the odeon or happiness resources, just from the forest preserves. There were enough non-river forests around that I probably could have pushed it higher.

The super corn tiles also made it easy to push out settlers fast. I founded three other cities pretty quickly, targeted BW and construction, built phalanxes and a few spears until cats were available, and then cats after that. I didn't think of researching iron for xbows.

Anyway, I plowed into Sury with my army and took three cities (including his capital) from him without too many losses. He'd hit me with airships every turn, but they didn't do too much damage. He was smart and moved the airships out of cities the turn before I took them. I think if I had to do it again, I'd have waited until I was sure I could take a city in a single turn rather than weaken it in one turn and polish it off the next. A couple times I got cities down to two barely-conscious defenders on one turn and finished them off the next, but the airships escaped in between.

My attack petered out on city number four. I sacrificed some cats and got no return from it, basically, and Sury brought up enough reinforcements that I wasn't going to make any more progress.

Maces and xbows were probably the way to go.

Grover

 

[leif erikson]

Anyway, I plowed into Sury with my army and took three cities (including his capital) from him without too many losses.

You should have no trouble fitting in here at all!

 

[ShannonCT]

Checking in.

I had a few goes at my practice save. A couple of observations I had:

1. Windmills and watermills are strong improvements. Environmentalism makes grass windmills 2f2h3c, and electricity adds one more commerce. Grass watermills are 2f2h1c, and electricity adds 2 commerce. Getting electricity with the Oracle would be a strong play, because we could do it with very few prereqs. The extra commerce would make self-researching CS quite fast, and we'd have a big tech in our pocket that we could trade for a lot later. The CS-sling here is high risk with perhaps less reward.

2. Forest preserves give 1 happiness to any city in whose BFC they lie. So building cities with forests in their overlap is a good way to have high happy caps all around.

3. We have techs Flight, Fascism, and RepParts. That means a beeline to Gunpowder-Rifling let's us build paratroopers. PTs are strength 24, and can move faster into enemy territory than mounted units. A paratrooper-airship war in the early ADs should make quick work of anyone left on our continent. I'm half expecting some kind of barrier where paratroopers are necessary, a la GOTM39. A couple of well placed airports will also give much needed troop speed.

 

[leif erikson]

Nice work.

While we need to have a look at the map, wonder if we can make that hammer economy work for us. Gyathaar chose techs wisely and left us having to find our way to Assembly Line.

As watermills and windmills are strong, then perhaps we should plot a quick course towards Assembly Line? I suppose that depends also upon the lay of the land?

Where to move the Scout? North looks like coast, as does east. A coastal capital would allow us The Great Lighthouse for a commerce boost. Think there will be more water about?
Pyramids might be nice too, although how effective are Wonder in Quick? Great Engineers might be useful?

EDIT - What can we convert into beakers quickly?
Off to

 

[PaulisKhan]

Hi everyone, thanks for having me on board.

I'm Paul from New Zealand, Pauliskhan is the gaming tag that I adopted first for Civ I (mongol much), which has remained with me for every online or strategy game I've played since then.
In the intervening years people have referred to me variously as Paulis, Pauli or PK but you can make up your own minds as I'll answer to anything.

It could be fairly said that Civ is where I first got into gaming.
I've played every version of civ since the first, including all expansions and enjoyed them all immensely.
I initially struggled with the economic aspects of Civ IV and so for a long time my games were almost exclusively based around conquest rushes, eventually though even war starts to feel stale and a desire to participate in a BotM saw me get my first space victory in at least a year.
Appreciating the complexity and variety of strategies that could be implemented to play a game from start to finish through virtually every tech in the tree I decided to start participating in the HoF games as well.
I eventually achieved a first placed space game at every difficulty, although not always the best over all mapsizes and even managed to knock Ironhead off the deity table for a fleeting moment (since then a few games have been knocked down to number two or worse) .
I still spend a lot of time playing or strategising for space games, however the neccessity of taking larger risks to improve on some of the better finish dates means that failure is starting to enter my vocabulary on an increasingly frequent basis.

I have little experience with SGOTMS and risk analysis is a major flaw in my play that I make no attempt to hide. Too much time playing HoF means that I'm quite willing to launch a 50/50 rush where failure simply means regenerating a new map and trying again.
Such a thing is not an option here and so I will be expecting heavy input on my turnsets, possibly above and beyond what you might wish to provide

I do not play quick speed at all, this will be an entirely new experience to me. Perhaps the only thing I can bring to the team is some firsthand experience of what NOT to do in a competitive space race.
I am currently participating in a SG with Obselete, Snaaty, Dirk, Sleepless and Auron in an attempt to get used to criticism, and to get some practice with screenshots, turnsets and strategy debate.
If at any point you become unhappy with my contribution to the team then please don't hesitate to scold me, I appreciate that this is very much all of your team and I'm here on a working guest visa.
I'll do my best to contribute effectively and positively.

Good luck to all, let's have some fun =)

 

[PaulisKhan]

ok housekeeping done with - to business, I had trouble playing Shannons save.
The UI was not visible for me, although I could play from memorised shortcut commands this is probably not going to be optimal.
I have successfuly been downloading other HoF save games to open up and check, as well as picking up the SG save game I'm currently involved in.

Any suggestions?

 

[Grover22]

PK,

I had the same problem or a similar one with the user interface. I found that if I minimized the screen with alt-tab and then switched back to it, the UI came up.

Alt-I (I think that was the command) to toggle the user interface did nothing until after the alt-tab minimization procedure. After that, Alt-I worked normally.

Cheers,

Grover

 

[DJMGator13]

1. Windmills and watermills are strong improvements. Environmentalism makes grass windmills 2f2h3c, and electricity adds one more commerce. Grass watermills are 2f2h1c, and electricity adds 2 commerce. Getting electricity with the Oracle would be a strong play, because we could do it with very few prereqs. The extra commerce would make self-researching CS quite fast, and we'd have a big tech in our pocket that we could trade for a lot later. The CS-sling here is high risk with perhaps less reward.

I missed the Oracle in my one shot at the practice game, but still self researched CS in 13 turns aided by an Academy from the 1st GS. Taking Electricity from the Oracle would open up Radio and Fission as options for the Liberalism free tech.

Before we get to the real game I think it would be good if SCT or Fred could detail how the "hammer research" process that one of the other teams used effectively in the last SGOTM works. In general we should have a startegy from the start of what key techs are required to get to the max research level. So even though Radio may be available for free from Liberalism there maybe a better tech that will speed us to Corporations and Assembly Lines faster.

 

[DJMGator13]

PK,

I had the same problem or a similar one with the user interface. I found that if I minimized the screen with alt-tab and then switched back to it, the UI came up.

Alt-I (I think that was the command) to toggle the user interface did nothing until after the alt-tab minimization procedure. After that, Alt-I worked normally.

Cheers,

Grover

One of the keyboard references I have indicates that Alt-I removes the interface, while Ctrl-I minimizes the interface.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Welcome to the new and old members

I have played a little with the test save, but only the opening moves until 2nd or 3rd city is founded.

1. Windmills and watermills are strong improvements. Environmentalism makes grass windmills 2f2h3c, and electricity adds one more commerce. Grass watermills are 2f2h1c, and electricity adds 2 commerce.

The early availability of these improvements is probably the most important aspect of this game. When a hill can be improved to yield 2f+2h+4c=8 it's almost as powerful as a resource tile. I think it will shift the balance in favor of more aggressive REX i.e. building more cities than usual early on.

Getting electricity with the Oracle would be a strong play, because we could do it with very few prereqs. The extra commerce would make self-researching CS quite fast, and we'd have a big tech in our pocket that we could trade for a lot later. The CS-sling here is high risk with perhaps less reward.

I have also arrived at the conclusion that the Electricity sling is better than CS sling. It's hard to pass up the chance to get such an expensive tech (almost 6 times as expensive as CS) and even though CS is more useful we can get it quite fast through self research or by bulbing with a GM.

2. Forest preserves give 1 happiness to any city in whose BFC they lie. So building cities with forests in their overlap is a good way to have high happy caps all around.

Yes, I also saw this. A forest preserve will give a happy face to multiple cities if it's placed in the fat cross of all the cities considered. I think we should be very conservative about chopping forests in the fat cross because it will be better in the long run to keep a higher happy cap

 

[Frederiksberg]

Before we get to the real game I think it would be good if SCT or Fred could detail how the "hammer research" process that one of the other teams used effectively in the last SGOTM works. In general we should have a startegy from the start of what key techs are required to get to the max research level.

Maybe PaulisKhan can explain the details. I suppose it has been discussed in the HOF. Dynamic wrote that he used it for his Space Race games.

What has happened in BtS is that the hammer to beaker conversion ratio is changed from 3:1 to 1:1. This means that in the late phase of a game you will often get more beakers for your hammers when building science directly rather than building infrastructure in your cities or units.

In a Space Game your main priority should be to maximize the beaker output and every single build should be considered with this in mind. So the tough decisions will be judging when to build settlers/workers for peaceful expansion, when to build infrastructure/Wonders for beaker multipliers, increased growth, etc, when to build units for military expansion and when to build science/commerce.

A good example of the dilemma in the early game is the Pyramids vs REX. With a philosophical leader it seems natural to go for a specialist economy and Representation for the extra beakers. This may conflict with the desire to expand fast and keep many forests for extra happiness. So which way is best...?

 

[ShannonCT]

As watermills and windmills are strong, then perhaps we should plot a quick course towards Assembly Line? I suppose that depends also upon the lay of the land?

That's still a long way away but getting AL with Liberalism might be a goos goal.

Where to move the Scout? North looks like coast, as does east. A coastal capital would allow us The Great Lighthouse for a commerce boost. Think there will be more water about?

Unless there's something spectacular to the north, I think a inland capital is stronger. If we move the settler south, we might find more hills or riversides for windmills and watermills. A city placed on the north coast later could share the capital's corn and serve as a GP farm. I've been settling my capital 1 south of the settler.

Pyramids might be nice too, although how effective are Wonder in Quick? Great Engineers might be useful?

Wonders work the same at all speeds. With the strength of watermills and windmills, it looks to me like a full-blown specialist economy is ill-advised. We can run a couple scientists in each city as they reach their happy caps. With a Philo leader, spreading specialists around gives good GP production. Maybe if we find some stone, we can gift it to a nearby AI and let them build Mids for us to conquer.