SGOTM 10 - Maple Sporks

[AlanH]

BtS SGOTM 10 - Armageddon

Welcome to your BtS SGOTM 10 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.

In this, the third BtS SGOTM, Gyathaar wants nuclear devastation. Stalin of Russia starts in the Renaissance era in 1285 AD, in a world with five Aggressive AI civs. He is hell bent on world conquest, BUT he can only capture a city if he nukes it first.

It's a fight to the nuclear death in an Epic speed, Emperor difficulty game on a Small sized Big and Small map. There are no goody huts, no events, no city razing, no city flipping, no Vassals. Only Conquest is enabled.

It's a standard Renaissance start, so you get a lot of techs at the beginning. Cities are created with pop 2 and a few buildings. You start with two settlers, two longbows, one explorer and a worker. The AI start with two settlers, four longbows, two explorers and a worker.

Versions
This game will be played in Civilization IV Beyond the Sword, version 3.19, using the new all-singing, all-dancing HoF Mod BUFFY-3.19.001. This HoF Mod version is available now. You can download it here.

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 3.19 before updating your copy of BtS, or create and update a separate copy.

Mac players can only join in if they are able to run the Windows game on their system.

Timetable
The game will start on Friday, August 7 .

Your start file, and then each submitted Save for your team, will be linked on the Progress and Results Page throughout the game. Please ensure that you only download your own team file.

The finish deadline is December 7 2009. If any team has not finished by this date they will be deemed to have retired, and will not be eligible for any awards.

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



Map Parameters

• Playable Leader/Civ - Stalin of the Russian Empire.
• Traits - Aggressive, Industrious.
• Unique Unit - Cossack (replaces Cavalry)
• Unique Building - Research Institute (replaces Laboratory)
• Renaissance Era start - turn 277, 1285 AD.
• Difficulty - Emperor
• Game Speed - Epic (473 turns)
• World size - Small
• Rivals - Five
• Landform - Big and Small
• Other settings - No city razing, No Culture Flips, No goodie huts, No events, Aggressive AI, No Vassals
• Victory Conditions - Conquest Only

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 Conquest victory, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher. You will drop down the final ranking table* for each city that you capture without nuking it with a direct hit first. A "Capture" is defined as any method of obtaining a city other than by building it yourself using a settler. A "Capture" also includes retrieving a city you originally built but lost.
  
  *The final ranking will sort teams in the following order:
  1. Win, lose or retire. Wins go first. Retirements go last.
  2. For wins, the number of un-nuked cities captured. Zero missed cities go first.
  3. For wins, the finish date.
  4. For losses and retirements, final score will determine their rankings within those categories.
     
• 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.

Have fun.

 

[Norvin_Green]

Signing in. Anyone ever play advanced starts?

 

[Sengir]

Signing in, will be able to discuss a bit for two days before all hell breaks lose here

Haven't played a advanced start ever, but I'm planning to try it tonight.

Also, we have two settlers, two longbows and a worker. Anybody care to determine the best movement orders? Will also try to do some foggazing tonight.
Did it already.

Spoiler Foggazing :

Plains Forest in the southwest is probably a hill as well.

Also, a reminder: trying what you can get for a peace treaty or trying out different trades is not allowed in a HOF game, as it involves reloading/making changes to the game by someone else then the current player.

 

[Norvin_Green]

Also, a reminder: trying what you can get for a peace treaty or trying out different trades is not allowed in a HOF game, as it involves reloading/making changes to the game by someone else then the current player.

Thanks for this reminder as its a habit that I have from our other SG's.

If we settle in place with one of our settlers it is going to have so much food. I'm not sure how many cities we'll have but it can pump settlers/workers for us and then be our GP farm.

I think first we move the explorer SE-SE to see the coast on the eastern gold.

What civics will be available to us? Also being industrious & aggressive (mostly industrious I'm talking about here) are there any wonders that would help us?

 

[Whosit]

Checking in.

First thing first, I still need to install BUFFY. I know it can get along with BUG, I'm just not sure if running it has any implications for normal SGs. I'll be trying to look that up, but if anyone here knows that, lemme know.

Secondly, I just played a bit of an advanced start with mostly the game settings we'll be using so I have some insights. First: If you start next to Genghis Khan (with Aggressive AI on), build units and never stop . . . . I'll play another test, but I think that we don't need to be in an awful hurry to put our second settler down. I ended up settling both cities before the AI put their second down and Khan ended up using his second settler to blockish me. So it may be worth waiting a dozen turns to find out where the nearest enemy is and settle in their face, or otherwise wait to pick up a strong site.

Our cities start with a Granary, Aqueduct, and Forge--and two population. Several wonders are available from the get go, but in my game (and considering that this is Emperor) most of them fell pretty quickly. If we're anywhere even close to an AI, I think we're gonna have to focus on military. ESPECIALLY because taking back a city we lose before we gain nukes is gonna cost us points. So we have to make sure that we never lose a city.

As far as starting civics, we have . . . several. A good chunk in each category, except the economic civics (only Mercantilism, but most AI will switch to that immediately). Also, all the religions get founded a few turns into the game, at least they did in mine, so each CIV will likely have their own religion, making things fun. Another note about no city razing is that we can't do very much when the AI or even Barb towns pop up just a little off our dot maps.

As far as our particular start goes . . . .

South Longbow: 1SE onto gold hill.
North Longbow: 1N or 1 NE, depending if we want to see the coast or get to that grasshill.
Explorer: Because they can move onto forests or hills with no penalty, we can either send him east or even 1SW-1S. His move may depend on what the south longbow sees.

City placement: Settling 1 settler in place seems good. We have a boatload of food here. 1 of each type of seafood (+ health!), 2 of 3 grains visible (can't tell if the rice is irrigated, but we can fix that by farming 1S of rice/1SW of corn). It's a little hard to tell about a second, really too soon to say. Depending on how cramped the land is, we may not end up settling at ideal distances. The capital could be a GP farm, unless we settle other cities so that they overlap with some of Moscow's (or dare we settle a Stalingrad? It might distinguish us from other teams if nothing else) food.

Really too early to make any decisions without seeing more of the land. Though we probably want to get that iron hooked up fast.

Oh, right, one other note about my single test game so far: Getting a second or even third worker out quickly will help get our infrastructure up fast.

 

[nocho]

Checking in! So it actually started, cool.

So what will the roster order be? Norvin as dedicated captain should kick it off I guess, and can have the honours of making up an order (use dice if needed...). I'd prefer to be toward the end, as I'll have limited access until about the 16th of august. Surely will be online and technically could play, but well, holidays also means civ has slightly lower priority. But only slightly .

Settling in place looks good. Second city should probably pick up the 2 gold mines. As I understand the 2nd city will be a holy city as well, so great wall street place. Maybe the 2 nd city should go 1SW or 1S of the western gold, depending on coast and river access. And if more food resources show up. If not I'd let this city get the corn and rice and leave the sea food for capital. But well, have to see more of the map.

So this being HOF and all that, it's technically and rulewise no problem if a player (especially the 1st one...) just plays a turn, saves, posts some screenshots and continues? I guess and hope not. So if the save comes available, I'd say
- move settler 2 to gold hill,
- move NE longbow NE
- move SE longbow SW
- move explorer onto a gold hill, if settler 2 shows directly coast to the east, explorer goes with settler 2, if not, explorer goes to eastern gold hill.
- settler 1 can settle immediately I think, regardless of what shows up.
Then come back for discussion!

Oh, and maybe the worker should actually chop the forest he's on directly into a second worker before starting to irrigate. As Whosit pointed out, getting resources up online quickly will be more important than ever.

 

[Whosit]

Let's see, it looks like rules and regulations are here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=168439

Important note: It looks like we have to upload our saves through a certain method. And they also say a couple of spoiler threads will be opened, the first of which requires a selected scribe from the team to post a summarization of their results so far. I nominate myself, because "Team Scribe" is a cool title. And it looks like the admins will appoint a coordinator to make sure everyone in our team checks in and doesn't vanish.

Norvin might like this rule: "6. The team captain will be responsible for maintaining the roster, and skipping people. He will also be responsible for the nomination of a scribe. He will act as a conduit between the team and the staff. For your team, he is the law."

I'm guessing we can discuss the game as much as we like here? And that we're restricted from looking at other team forums?

Oh, yes . . . "8. Access to opponents' Game Threads is expressley forbidden until you have won, lost, or formally abandoned the game, and submitted your final save. Even then, do not post in opponent team threads until both teams have finished. Unauthorised access to game threads will incur a penalty which can include permanent exclusion from the GOTM forum and all associated events, and disqualification of the entire team from the current event. Please note: This is not an idle threat. All SGOTM threads are monitored on a 24/7 basis. The staff is confident that it is not possible to lurk in opponents threads undetected."

Hrm. Well, I clicked on another thread to see if I was blocked. Hopefully that won't disqualify us. Soooo . . . don't be adventurous like me. (I figure I might as well admit it rather than assume that the staff's omnipresent eye wasn't watching me.)

Annnyway, nocho's actual question: I don't think there's any restriction to stopping and posting some information (though you can't post the save except through the prescribed method). Just so long as you don't reload anything. So you can't experiment with deals and whatnot. The only other thing I'd note, and this may just be for me 'cause I'm relatively new to the forums, is the whole "got it" thing. I didn't realize I'm not supposed to say that until after I have downloaded and opened the save.

-------

Regarding the plan itself, nocho has a good idea. Scouting the settler 2 is smart, as is chopping a forest (in my SP games, I always forget chopping! Reminding me to do that here is OK, too). Oh, and I don't know which/how many civics we'd want to change to and when, but slavery is an important one (Serfdom might be appropriate to Russia, but some historical accuracies might have to be sacrificed). Serfdom would let our workers get things done much faster, which is good, but Slavery let's us whip out Infrastructure, and most importantly, troops.

We should probably build Longbowmen until we get iron hooked up, then maybe add in some Crossbowmen and Pikemen. I really don't think we need Macemen as we won't be attacking any cities until long into the future. The one problem is that we'll have to wait until cities grow a few sizes before they can build any of these troops in a reasonable amount of time. Oh, and research will be slow at first. But we can start off by researching Gunpowder! Why not?

I think that Musketmen > Crossbowmen; but Longbowmen > Musketmen for defense. Crossbowmen's +50% vs. Melee is about equal to the Musketman's 9 vs. everything. But Longbowmen in cities on hills with the proper upgrades can still be quite deadly, as you all know very well. Oh, maybe we should get Theocracy, or something, since we'll have a religion. Vassalage could be good, but Bureaucracy might be better. Dunno. Since we're not spiritual, changing all those civics is going to be a pain.

 

[Whosit]

OK, in other news, I think I have BUFFY working as a mod. Had to check "no custom assets" in the ini file or whatever. Wonder if that'll cause problems. Either case, it doesn't like the settings for my test game saying that it's "not HOF appropriate." It noted that all victory conditions must be enabled.

If that's true for our game, where we must win by conquest, and city razing is disabled, I wonder how we can possibly avoid a Domination victory.

 

[Sengir]

The HOF warning is only for games you start and you want to enter into the Hall of Fame. For (S)GOTM, the saves are provided by the Game Administrator and as such have no such restrictions.

About the game:
We might want to use our settlers for scouting the first turns as well, as switching our civics will cause at least 1 turn of anarchy (1-2 civics), but most likely 2 (3-4 civics) and perhaps even 3 turns (5 civics). This means our settlers can scout for at least 1 turn, returning to a good city spot on the second and founding it on the third, when we come out of anarchy. Worker can still start chopping immediately as it will take 5 turns on epic... though switching to serfdom might mean you have to check on the guy to make sure he doesn't finish to quickly.

I'm also doubting whether we should adopt our own religion immediately. On the one hand it give us extra benefit from the religious civics, but it will also give us diplo penalties with everybody. If we stick with no religion for a while, the AI's are more likely to start bashing eachother instead of us.

Civic options available to us:

• Government
  • Despotism
  • HR
• Legal
  • Barbarism
  • Vassalage
  • Bureaucracy
• Labor
  • Tribalism
  • Slavery
  • Serfdom
  • Caste
• Economy
  • Decentralization
  • Mercantilism
• Religion
  • Paganism
  • Organized Religion
  • Theocracy
  • Pacifism

The easy choices are HR and Merc as there are no other options in those categories. For Legal we should probably go Bureaucracy as it is stronger during infra buildup then vassalage. Labor.... Both serfdom (faster workers) and slavery are good options. Seeing however the amount of food lying around I suggest going for slavery for whipping and get a couple of workers out asap.
Leaves us the religion category. If we don't adopt a religion, the only benefit is in the diplo bonuses for favourite civics. At this point we don't know what those will be however. All options have their benefits really:

• Paganism - Low upkeep, costing us less money. Only to be considered if we decide not to go with a religion. As changing all 5 will give us 3 turns of anarchy, leaving this as is, should be considerd as an option.
• Organized Religion - High upkeep. Decent chance of meeting an AI with this as favourite civic. If we adopt a religion (either ours or that of a neighbour) it will help tremendously with the infra buildup, provided we can spare the hammers to spread it around.
• Theocracy - Medium upkeep. Giving the setup of this game I give this the highest chance for an AI's favourite civic. Also gives us free xp on units, if we adopt a religion.
• Pacifism - No Upkeep. This might be worth it, especially if we adopt a religion right from the start (or turn 6). This would give us double the GPP, and as we are running Merc (free specialist) and have a forge (engineer), this would give us an engineer on turn 28, the second with a little luck on turn 50, giving us 2 wonders (hopefully).

Not sure what my vote would be, but I like the idea of getting us a couple of wonders with early engineers. After turn 50 we will probably be running scientists as well, poluting our pool, so the engineer change get smaller then, but hey, we can have two wonders by then. That is going to cost us in diplo terms however.

 

[Whosit]

We may indeed want to run an Engineer Specialist ASAP. I played a 2nd game at Ren start and the AI got a lot of Great Engineers and took a few wonders with them. If we can get the, um, is it the Swegan Paya? The Wonder that grants all religious civics. We can get access to gold quickly (double production) or use an engineer if we can get one early enough. It might be worth it to try and access Free Religion earlier. Or perhaps not.

Though the Pacifism run would be nice, we'd just have to be careful when the AI comes along and doesn't like our religion.

 

[Sengir]

Also, I agree with Whosit as scribe (with the exception of my last post, I'm not really that verbose ). And Norvin should be coordinator as he got us into this mess.

 

[AlanH]

lurker's comment: The spoilers fell into disuse a few games ago, and we don't open those threads these days. I think teams found it too much hassle to create them, and there was little enthusiasm for discussion in them. Most of the discussion about the games seems to happen in the team threads after teams have completed the game.

 

[AlanH]

Hi, Maple Sporks, welcome to the SGOTMs.

As you are new to the SGOTM competition, I'll keep an eye on your thread to see if there are any problems I can assist with. But please don't depend on me doing so. If you have any specific issues, by all means bring them to my attention by Private Message (NOT a Visitor Message, as they are public). In answer to a few points I've picked up ...

OK, in other news, I think I have BUFFY working as a mod. Had to check "no custom assets" in the ini file or whatever. Wonder if that'll cause problems. Either case, it doesn't like the settings for my test game saying that it's "not HOF appropriate." It noted that all victory conditions must be enabled.

If that's true for our game, where we must win by conquest, and city razing is disabled, I wonder how we can possibly avoid a Domination victory.

I shall create your starting saves with only the stated victory conditions enabled, and with assets locked. You should not receive the HoF warnings, as BUFFY is designed to suppress them for xOTM start saves.

And it looks like the admins will appoint a coordinator to make sure everyone in our team checks in and doesn't vanish

You assign your own co-ordinator/captain/keeper of the roster, and organise your team as you wish. It's up to you how you keep everyone in line and get to the finish in time. Please don't assume I'll do much to help, unless you specifically ask for assistance.

You seem to have a good grasp of the rules. Please don't jeopardise your team's efforts by trying to push your luck with them. This is a friendly competition, there's nothing at stake but a few pixels of award graphics, and your good and honourable reputations.

I didn't realize I'm not supposed to say that until after I have downloaded and opened the save.

That recommendation is just to ensure that you are really ready to play when you say you are, and that there are no problems with the save or your installation.

 

[Norvin_Green]

What did I get myself into?

I am probably the worst person to be team captain as I am very indecisive but maybe I can learn from this.

First things first. Whosit will be our team scribe (I mean he volunteered plus his writing cracks me up). BTW, I was going to suggest that you submit a CIV story.

Next, the roster. With nocho and Sengir having time away issues I'm going to move them back a little in the order. We won't have the save available until August 7th anyway so nocho will only miss a week of gameplay. Anyway, here is our intial order:

sturick
Whosit
Sirloin
Norvin Green
nocho
Sengir

Why you ask? Dunno really. If nocho is back in time I might even swap with him. If anyone has suggestions or needs to move let me know soon please.

I like all the suggestions I've been reading so far. I will try to get some turns in on an advanced start soon.

I guess my question is how do we plan to map out our territory and NOT take any AI or barb cities and still compete tech-wise?

 

[Whosit]

Well, unfortunately, our friendly Staff-man says that the "scribe" position is no longer in use since the spoiler threads fell out of favor. But I can nominate myself for vice-captain! I'm easily the most organized out of my friends (kind of scary) and if they can't decide when/where to get together, I tell them!

We have about four months to do this thing and the variant means that we won't be able to start taking on the world 'till the late industrial/early modern (can't remember exactly when nukes fall in) so we really can't afford long delays between sets. It doesn't sound like there are any set rules on how long a set has to be, though I could be mistaken. As far as logistics go, we'll have to keep a good eye on this, preferably noting skips ahead of time. Should we have a minimum number of turns per set, or would that be too restrictive? I was thinking 10, but then, this is CIV, so something crazy could always come up on turn 2. Either way, we should decide as a team how to manage our sets, but we should probably lean towards something stricter than standard SGs for this.

But anyway. CIV Story. I read a few of those awhile back, maybe I should think about it.

But back to the matter at hand!

Norvin brings up a good point about keeping up with techs. We'll probably want several cottage towns, and if we can, one city that grabs both those gold and works cottages (preferably city #2 so it will also be a holy city). We really may want to hold off on taking on a State Religion and any Religious Civics until we see who and what is where. We want to avoid wars at all costs! At least until we have nukes. Any city we lose before we get nukes is gone (unless we want to take a penalty for re-taking it without nukes).

We need to think about our tech plan, too. I think that we should focus on military techs and science techs. Military for obvious reasons: Defend ourselves, and ideally keep a strong enough military that no one wants to mess with us. However, this is Emperor, so I'm not sure how well we can do that while keeping our infrastructure strong. Science for, well, teching faster. Astronomy and Education will be key techs. Gunpowder < Rifling, too. Either way, it'll be a long time between techs until we get things up and running. A side-line to Democracy may or may not be worth it. Emancipation will get our cottages growing faster, but dunno if we want to spend time teching that.

But a more-or-less beeline to Fission would be wise. Maybe even try to hit Liberalism first. Dunno.

 

[AlanH]

I've had a couple of PMs from Norvin. I replied directly to the first question, but the second message prompted me to write some of the basics of the reloading rule that may be useful to you all. so I am posting my reply here:

In regular SG's we might move our scout 2 spaces and then post a save for everyone to look at without actually finishing a turn. Is that acceptable here and if so do we post the save in our thread or in the upload thread?

I'm not sure why it's necessary to post this sort of save. All you are doing is showing your team mates what new territory has been exposed by the scout, and a screenshot should achieve that.

You can't upload a first turn save to the server, as it would replace the true starting save. You *could* post it in your team thread, though I try to discourage this habit as it can lead to confusion about which is the latest save.

Understood. Does it count as a reload though if the original player moves the explorer and then saves the game to finish the turn after getting team input?

It's only a reload if you go backwards in time and load up a save either from an earlier turn, or from an earlier point in your current turn. In this case it would be a reload if you moved the scout, then quit, then reloaded the start save. You might then move the scout or the settler in a different way based on the knowledge gained the first time. That's a no-no! So save the game after you've moved the scout, and load that save to continue the game.

Save as often as you like while playing, but always save immediately before quitting. When relaunching, always start from the latest save.

The only exception is if you suffer a crash and have to load up an autosave. You must then replay any moves you made during that turn as accurately as possible. You should *all* set your autosave interval to save at the start of every turn so that you never have to go further back than the start of the current turn. Use Notepad to open .../My Games/Beyond the Sword/Civilization IV.ini. Change the entry for autosave frequency to 1 (it defaults to 4):

; Specify the number of turns between autoSaves.  0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = [b]1[/b]

 

[Norvin_Green]

Thanks for the info and fast response too!

 

[Whosit]

Ah, good advice. Done and done.

 

[sturick]

Signing in...finally.

I apologize for my late arrival.
I wasn't aware that the thread was open until Norvin PM'ed me...thanks by the way.
I also have been distracted by my solo game.

I was able to eek out a space race victory.
Very proud to say that I have achieved victory on Immortal!
Sorry bout that but my wife could care less and I wanted to tell someone.

On to this game...

In my test the thing that I noticed was that many of the Wonders went flying off the table very quickly. Makes me think that people were running Merc and Paci to pop an engineer. Not a bad idea.

The other thing I thought of is this...nukes don't come around for quite a while.
This means we are strictly in REX mode until we have access to nukes.
Or possibly harassment mode.
Our best strategy might be to remain religion neutral until we can pair up with the strongest civ we can find. Then let them be the bully and kick some butt while build our empire.

I will play another test game soon for more insight and I will look at the opening screen in more detail tomorrow.

 

[Norvin_Green]

I was able to eek out a space race victory.
Very proud to say that I have achieved victory on Immortal!
Sorry bout that but my wife could care less and I wanted to tell someone.

Congrats!! Don't apologize. I think that there should be a thread dedicated to this topic! My girlfriend can't believe how intently I read through our SG's and amount of time I devote to this game.

Speaking of which I'm going to give it a quick try right now so that hopefully I'll be able to contribute something to the play of this game.

I messed around a little with BUFFY and have to say that I like what I see.