SGOTM 12 - Maple Sporks

[AlanH]

BtS SGOTM 12 - Atonement

Welcome to your BtS SGOTM 12 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 heavens split open, heat poured over the innocents, earth spew lava in anguish, light shone over the earth for a short moment. Then darkness, despair, suffering, torment. And death. If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Stalin had now become Death, the destroyer of worlds. And the people of Russia turned against him in disgust. Civil war broke out and the once glorious civilization shattered as a second wave of nuclear fire rained upon the land. Mankind is thrown back to the stone age, with only small bands of isolated stragglers wandering the plains in search of city sites free from pollution. The vast knowledge collected over the centuries is all but lost, with only fragments left for use. As the last piece of modern communication equipment fails, shocking news reveals that the former enemy civilizations were not wiped out as believed. The survivors managed to reach pockets of relative low radiation to re-found their capitals. And guess what? They have not forgotten. Furthermore, rumors are that Stalin survived as well, and who knows what technology he has access to?...

The good news is that you have managed to retain the knowledge of Ecology. The bad news is that the opponents have most certainly retained advanced knowledge as well, perhaps even nuclear technology.

You are Catherine, the leader of the new Russian civilization. You have to start all over again. The earth is covered in pollution, and all other civilizations are at war with you. You must make Atonement by clearing up ALL fallout, getting rid of Stalin, making peace with ALL other civilizations, and evacuating the earth.

Thanks for this scenario go to Erkon.

Timetable
In order to avoid clashing with the release of Civ5, the game will start on September 17.

The completion deadline will be December 20.

Game Settings

The Start:


Click for a bigger image.

• Speed: Normal
• Difficulty: Emperor - but be warned. It may play a little higher that this
• Map: Standard, cylindrical, cold, low water
• Opponents: The six civilizations from SGOTM10 (Churchill, De Gaulle, Mao Zedong, Roosevelt, Gandhi, Stalin)
• Victory condition: Only space victory
• Game Options: no random events, no barbarians, no city flipping from culture, no vassal states, no goody huts. Aggressive AI and rising seas are enabled.

Starting Conditions
Almost all of earth is covered by fallout. You are in contact with all opponents, you are at war with them, and they are upset that you have nuked them. The map is not the same as in SGOTM10. You are land connected to at least one of the AIs. The AI capitals are pre-settled. All biological units have died from exposure to radiation, except your settler. The fallout will not disappear by itself, and it is not possible to settle on fallout (due to a modified BUFFY)

Goals
To win the game:

• All fallout must be cleared
• Stalin must be defeated (dead)
• All other AIs must survive and be at peace with the player when space victory is achieved.
• Teams will not be penalized for events outside the team's control, such as:
  • one AI killing the other before the team has the opportunity to prevent it
  • one AI declares war on team after the launch
  • one AI launch a nuke after the launch ....etc.
  • any fallout that may appear on unreachable terrain does NOT need to be cleaned up.

The teams are trusted to fulfill the objectives to the best of their ability, and any AI related events that prevent the fulfillment of the criteria for winning shall be described and forwarded in a PM to Erkon or me for analysis.

Awards
Laurels will be awarded to up to three teams who accomplish the winning goals fastest (Ie by the earliest in-game dates).
Wooden spoons will go to the team who finishes the game (win or lose) with the lowest score.

Notes

• Versions
  This game will be played in Civilization IV Beyond the Sword, version 3.19, using a customized HoF Mod 'BUFFY_SG12'. The installer for this special mod is available here. Unzip the downloaded file and run it to install BUFFY_SG12 into your ...\Beyond the Sword\Mods\ folder.
  
  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 BtS 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 software on their system.
  
• Rules and Procedures
  Please visit the Civ4 SGOTM reference thread to check out the rules and procedures to ensure that you are adequately prepared for this game.
  
  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.
  

Please wait until your team leader/administrator/scribe has reserved a couple of top posts for game admin information. Then post here to let your team know you have arrived.

Good luck .... You might need it

 

[Norvin_Green]

Current Roster:

nocho (up)
sturick
Sengir
Norvin_Green
Cam_H (just played)


on hiatus:

DwarfSleepy
Whosit

 

[Norvin_Green]

<on hold>

 

[Norvin_Green]

What your plan should cover:

1. Technologies • What techs are you aiming for? (One, a beeline ex. Literature, part-research for trading)
• What trades will you attempt with who and when? (When to sell for gold ex. first opportunity or wait for more, specify the leader(s), waiting for a wonder to finish so the AI get failure gold)
• Are we planning a Great Person bulb?

2. Dealing with AIs
• Resource trade negotiations
• Espionage assignment
• Open borders (cancel or allow)
• AI demands (resources, cancel trades, who do we send packing or not, technologies, war, religions, civics)

3. City placement - mostly in the beginning
• Where are you planning on sending a settler?
• Are you sending a worker along?
• Is the land fogbusted/do we have an escort?
• Initial city builds (Monument/Granary etc...)
• Tile improvements around this city(food, hammers, commerce)

4. General micro • Special tile assignations (starve city for specialists, switch to growth etc.)
• Tile swapping with other cities
• Whips
• Build order (infrastructure/military/settlers/workers/wealth/science)
• Dealing with happy/health caps
• Worker improvements and moves

5. Civics and Religion
• Are you planning on civic switches/do we need to acquire the techs? (Caste for border pops, slavery for prod...)
• Are we expecting a religion change?

6.War - if applicable • Refuse/accept AI war demands
• Bribing civs to declare war or for stopping war
• War plan (who, how many units and how to acquire them , which cities to strike, scouting prior to DoW,...)

7. Bigger picture • Gifts (city, gold, techs,...)
• What AI do we try to please
• Goals for the future
• Diplo manipulation
• Extras

To facilitate and clarify plans, you can copy the draft in the spoiler below and fill in the blanks.

Spoiler :

1. Technologies


2. Dealing with AIs


3. City placement - mostly in the beginning


4. General micro


5. Civics and Religion


6.War - if applicable


7. Bigger picture

Thanks to kossin and the other Plastic Ducks for supplying a great organizational tool.

 

[Norvin_Green]

<and the last one>

 

[Norvin_Green]

Welcome back everyone and please give a big hello to our new teammate Cam_H.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so I was going to "liberate" some of the Plastic Ducks early posting styles from last round. It's not just because they won but it does seem very organized. I will get those together, make it our own and post them above so that they are easy to find before playing a turnset.

I would like to volunteer to be the "map" guy for this game. I'll provide the test map (kind of have already in our SGOTM11 Spork thread) but also provide updated test maps as we move along. If someone else would volunteer to summarize each set as we go along that would be awesome too.

Just one more note - you need to download the special BUFFY for this so please see post #1 from AlanH.

Let's have some fun!

 

[Iagoc]

Welcome and welcome back fellow Sporkians. Checking in for another round!

Lets see if we can change our near miss on the spork last round to something more worthwile

 

[nocho]

Reporting for duty. So we're getting all serious with test maps and all, huh? Sounds good!

I might be able to help out with the summaries. I'll reserve a post for that.

 

[nocho]

Reserved...

 

[Norvin_Green]

I hope my post didn't come across like that nocho. I briefly looked through the beginning of the Ducks posts and everything they planned to do was summarized in the first few posts. Speaking for myself I know I often find a turnset were I have no clue what to do with workers (for example) so I haphazardly might build a road. If in my PPP it was clear that I didn't have enough worker tasks then someone can chime in. I was thinking that it would be a good tool for us to be focused slightly better. We were so anxious last time to play that I think we rushed through some early turnsets without a clear picture of where we were headed. Most of all I just hope we have fun. As I have stated before that it is very enjoyable playing with this team because everyone has a good attitude.

 

[Iagoc]

Our workers should have plenty to do with cleaning up all the pollution. Perhaps we should estimate the number of worker turn needed to clear the whole map of polution, seeing as it takes 6 turns to clean a tile. As its a low water map, that will likely mean loads of ground to be polluted. We may have to/want to run more workers than we normally would.

As for settling, that can only be done on the forests right now, due to the fallout. We will likely want access to some seafood to get out those workers a bit faster so we can start cleaning up the land, to support more cities. We should also test the amount of sickness the polution brings to our cities hampering growth (and worker production) in early game. Likely settling spots are NE or NE,N. Unfortunately its only possible to walk 1 tile/turn in that direction, so NE,N would take 2 additional turns.

Also, does anyone know if having ecology early unlocks any interesting techpath shortcuts?

 

[nocho]

(xpost)

So we're Cathy. We are a creative and imperialistic lot, while we start with hunting and mining. That is, I assume we start with the standard starting techs, right? And we have ecology of course.

We'll have to do some testing how long it takes to scrub fallout from the various tiles, if there's any difference between them (hills, flatland). Any takers?

Norvin, you will make a test map with this specific mod? I assume it is possible to create a map with this mod?? At least I hope so. Thing is, I played some turns with the test map you posted in the sgotm11 thread, but by the time my first worker was out, all fallout already had disappeared from the BFC! IIRC one of the purposes of this mod was that fallout does not disappear automatically at normal rates, if at all.

I'll casually open the settling discussion by saying that to me either 1NE or 2N1E stand out for now as the best options. Luckily with the not-settle-on-fallout rule there are less options to discuss! Initially I thought 2N1E was really the obvious choice, but now I think I like 1NE better. It has rice instead of fish, but likely the fish will be used anyway by another city 1N or 1E of the lake. 1NE also has more land tile of course, specifically an extra hill. With 2 grass cows, rice and clams we have enough food to feed the 4 hills (2 golden). It does waste a possibly precious forest though by settling on top.

Random thoughts on tech: assuming we settle on the coast, fishing first. Likely we want AH soon as presumably the cow tiles are the first ones to be cleaned. BW as ever. And I think a case could be made for archery (!) soon. Defense, but also for choking the AI(s) that we have guaranteed on our landmass.

Oh, and does anybody know about the no-units always war bug, or something? It was discussed at the end of OSS sgotm11 thread. Could be a smokescreen though.

 

[Iagoc]

We are at war with all AI and no AI should have any units (other than settler) according to starting conditions. I'd say rush out some worker stealing units, so we can clean up the fallout faster, and harass the AI settlers and workers where we can.

Having said that the VC requires us not to keep the AI too backwards. We need their research to get into the spacerace faster.

I'd like to promote the 2N1E settling option because:
- It leaves the rice for a city in close down south, which had decent production potential with all the hills, and we will need production with the early warfare.
- It saves a forest.
- It grabs fish, a second seafood, which is easier to hook up early on (no fallout to scrub, only needs fishing, which is our first tech to research anyway)

Unfortunately it also requires 1 extra turn to settle, and it loses the fish to a later city out west.

I think that 2N1E allows for faster early expansion and faster workers, which should be a big bonus in this game.

Perhaps someone can do a test game for some 30 turns on the test map and see where we can get the best results (early workers, units, commerce, ?)

 

[nocho]

Why would 2N1E cost an extra turn to settle? It's a normal plains tile without fallout, so settler could settle the same turn as it would move to it, right? That said, I don't know whether I find the arguments for 2N1E compelling enough, yet. I do agree though that all this could (should) be tested extensively with a test map.

While stealing workers would be great, it will be difficult as we are already at war. Workers and settlers will simply move away when we approach them, unless we manage to do a coup with 2-movers like chariots or woody2 units.

 

[Iagoc]

Why would 2N1E cost an extra turn to settle? It's a normal plains tile without fallout, so settler could settle the same turn as it would move to it, right? That said, I don't know whether I find the arguments for 2N1E compelling enough, yet. I do agree though that all this could (should) be tested extensively with a test map.

While stealing workers would be great, it will be difficult as we are already at war. Workers and settlers will simply move away when we approach them, unless we manage to do a coup with 2-movers like chariots or woody2 units.

Ack thought it was a plains hill for some obscure reason But im not saying that 2N1E is the better choise, I'm just not sure it isnt

Perhaps we should prioritise chariots for harassing the AI early on?

Edit: The double gold does allow for pretty fast early research... one wonders why the mapmakers think we need that... Could be some scary AI out there...

 

[Norvin_Green]

First - on the test map I made - did I get all the tiles correct? Should I post the test save here? Not sure if it would make things too confusing. If you dl the special BUFFY mod and open the test save the fallout hangs around. I made the initial save using BUFFY so I think that's why it's ok.

How soon do we want to get the gold online? If we settle 2N1E it will make for a good early commerce city but one we don't want to whip (at least not below size 4). If we do this we could settle our 2nd city (decent production) 1SE of the settler which can borrow the cow when cap is not using it and has several hills. We'd be able to chop the forest on that tile into the cap so it's not wasted.

 

[nocho]

Ah, so we can use that save but opening it with the correct mod? Will try that this evening and try to run some "scenarios" regarding settling spot and opening techs. Can't remember whether all tiles were correct, though might not have noticed any errors. In case you want to check, check this post.

Gold online soon is a plus, but higher food/hammer tiles have preference in the beginning. If we settle 2N1E working cows and seafood (if improved ofc) has preference over the gold. We'll want to churn out lots and lots of workers soon, presumably. An advantage of 2N1E is that the city SE of current settler position could work gold while cap is on other stuff. What I don't like about 2N1E is the amount of water. OTOH, there could be more seafood hidden in the sea (obviously, that's where seafood usually is. I mean as opposed to coast.). That also applies to the southern tip of the island BTW.

 

[Iagoc]

Fallout also gives +0.5 to nearby cities. At emperor you start with 1 health per city. Worst case you have 20 fallout tiles nearby and that would give you 10 unhealtyness. Losing you 9 food.

1N1E gives 9 fallout, resulting in 4.5
2N1E gives 6 fallout, resulting in 3

Fish and clam give an early +1 health each.

Settling 2N1E gets rid of unhealthyness early, allowing us to build more workers faster.

note: rice and cow give +1 health each too, but they take longer to hook up. They should be prioretised though after initial city settlement to provide early health to our civ.

Edit: Settling 1N1E gives 4.5, we have 1 health initially, does that mean it will lose 3 food per turn, making it either stagnate or starve from the start?

 

[Iagoc]

First - on the test map I made - did I get all the tiles correct? Should I post the test save here? Not sure if it would make things too confusing. If you dl the special BUFFY mod and open the test save the fallout hangs around. I made the initial save using BUFFY so I think that's why it's ok.

How about keeping an updated test save in one of your reserved posts above?

 

[nocho]

I made a new test save with the BUFFY_SG12 mod. I tried to open Norvin's save with this mod but it just asked me to confirm loading BUFFY 3.19.003 which it subsequently did. So I tried my best with worldbuilder, which I'm not very experienced with. Beware!

Iagoc hits the nail on the head regarding fallout, 1NE seems to give an immediate -2 on health/sickness (3/5). 2N1E gives -1 still (3/4), however, it is now clearly the best spot. If worker first, 2N1E gets it in 20 turns, 1NE in 30...

Preliminary findings are that the best order is worker first while teching BW-Fishing. BW comes in after 16 turns, the worker after 20. Switch to something for 2 turns (warrior or worker) then workboat when fishing comes in at turn 22 and chop the forest into the workboat (there are 3 forests in the BFC so chopping 1 does not affect health). Worker can actually start chopping immediately when he comes online, when the chop finishes fishing is just in. Then I guess it would be clearing up fallout from the cows while teching to AH. Maybe after workboat another worker (!!) is best, as the WB removes unhealth from our size 1 city but at size 2 we'll be unhealthy again. Well, that will get better when cow comes online and as we scrub the fallout.

I suggest you do play around a bit with different build and tech orders though... And if something is wrong with the map, let us know.