SGOTM 12 - T'dr'duzk b'hazg t't

[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

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Part the first:​

Well herein lies a tale which should be studied by those who wish to follow the path of greatness, for it contains many things which will be of value to such a student. The Leader of the Mighty Russian empire, that German harlot Catherine in a fit of pique decided to invade the land of all the other peoples of the globe. She first threw her army of warriors against the mighty modern armours of India, England, France, China, the USA and the USSR, when they were predictably trodden into the dust of history, she immediately launced Mother Russia's precious store of nuclear devices. This predictably failed as Catherine had no troops to enter the now ruined shells of her mortal enemies, and unfortunately the largest warhead had failed to ignite it's rockets and utterly destroyed the Russian motherland. Woe are us, woe utterly, for we are destroyed.


But all is not lost as in the chaos Catherine was deposed and replaced by our current leader B'hrian Bloodaxe who had bravely saved a setller companion from certain death. He proclaimed to the people: "Russia is dead, let the word go out we are now the Empire of Ankh-Morkork and we can rule you wholesale"

The first lessons a student must learn include, how to train up a work gang, how to marry cows, how to find horsies, how to get others to dig for gold, and last but not least: How to stare wistfully at beautiful young women, while arthritically burning their city.
The studies can be found here and here.

Part the Second
Well the good rule of Brian was cut short by a certain "Old Stoneface" for getting a bit too royal. From now on our fair and beautiful land will be ruled by despotic tyrants known as Patricians, first one being drlake.
Our fair capital Ankh-Morpork continued improving with the advent of the Bronze Age, and our policy of peace through bribery continued apace, with the following done to Gandhi. An overview can be found here for students of our path (The Way of Ms Marietta Cosmopolite, 3 Quirm Way, Ankh-Morpork. Always travel long ways for wisdom).

Part the Third
After drlake hurriedly departed from this mortal coil (in circumstances similar to Homicidal Lord Winder) Trystero was placed in his stead. He got off to a great start discovering many techs and founding our daughter city Sto-Lat. We learned much from his rule, but beind disturbed by Stalin's psychotic visage. Lesson no. 3 to be found here

Part the Fourth(A)
After Trystero unfortunately met a sad end during an altercation with the Seamstresses Guild (heh, heh, heh) our next fearless leader was due to be ChrisShaffer, but unfortunately he turned out to be a mime and was unavailable for play due to being hung upside down over a pit of snakes. But fortunately for us Neilmeister was on had to rule with an iron fist.
Nothing exciting happened this turn except the discovery of Alphabet (allowing us to offer techs for peace), but some instructional lessons can be found here.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Reserved for Saga.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

I put up a list of cities here. It's not exhaustive and in no particular order, so I provided a list of additional places.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Saying hi!

I'll try not to play the wrong turnset in this game.

 

[drlake]

Heh, that happened?

Hello, everyone.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Yeah I replayed 15 turns by mistake in my first SG (not a SGOTM).

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Saying hi!

I'll try not to play the wrong turnset in this game.

That will be hard. We'll be playing through here. Rules re saves For Everyone!:
1) Play to the end of turn (i.e. make all moves or sleeps) before submitting.
2) If it's not your turn don't upload a save you've downloaded.
3) No testing from a game save. All tests done with a WB save.
4) We'll try for a full discussion before playing the save. Sometimes the choices will be obvious, e.g. if we're in a tight Lib race, we won't research Chemistry first, but proper discussion is best.
5) Check the buffy mod, it's not the normal it's a special. AlanH has provided a link.

And finally don't do what I did and try to submit using the team name. You'll only look stupid.

Wow I'm turning into a right little dictator, amn't I?

 

[drlake]

Someone's got to be.

 

[Trystero]

Hi! Checking in. I'm one of the new guys. Thanks to Brian for the invitation.

I am normally a Monarch(-ish) level SP. I'm currently playing in the BTS Multi-team Demo game, and really enjoyed team play, so I thought a would give SGOTM a try.

I've never read Terry Pratchett, but I've ordered The Color of Magic from Amazon to get into the spirit of things.

 

[drlake]

I would be another new guy. I reliably win at Monarch, sometimes at Emperor, and have been doing the Early Start and Immortal Cookbook games lately to try to bring my game up.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Ok I'll give my thoughts on the game.

Personally I think we'll be on a war tech hybrid. We've to destroy Stalin, and if we can, stop any other AI from dieing. All this while scrubbing fallout from every workable tile.

Why war do I think? If we keep AIs down to size they'll be less trouble and we can tech better. On tech we need to get to the SS parts asap. I've not won a space race outside Noble in SP but the war academy will help me out there. PS I see a post from you there.

Catherine:
We're creative, good for early defence, can ignore monuments, and early on temples.
And Imperialistic, try and leverage that into large early empire with quick settlers.
UU: Cossack, a fairly top (IIRC) UU, good middle game era Unit though the bonus is strictly in field. KoS5 is showcasing an example of a Cossack/Bomber hybrid attack.
UB: RI usually to late to come in handy, but it has the virtue of being a Space Elevator in one city, while helping science a nice bit. It is also a neccessary tech.

My guess is that if we can swing the Oracle and get Lib, while keeping our military relevant, we'll be in a strong position. None of the AIs particularly scare me too much, though I may be wrong there.
Hopefully I was coherent enough with this post.

 

[Trystero]

A couple random thoughts I had on this scenario:

1. Fallout will greatly limit our (and the AI's) settling options. Maybe moreso than war initially? If we have Ecology and the AI doesn't, this will even further limit their expansion.

2. On the OTOH, we could use Ecology to buy peace (when we get Alphabet), and at the same time, let the AI scrub fallout for us.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

A couple random thoughts I had on this scenario:

1. Fallout will greatly limit our (and the AI's) settling options. Maybe moreso than war initially? If we have Ecology and the AI doesn't, this will even further limit their expansion.

2. On the OTOH, we could use Ecology to buy peace (when we get Alphabet), and at the same time, let the AI scrub fallout for us.

Everybody I think has Ecology, and the AIs may have nuclear techs

 

[Trystero]

I've never played this sort of variant, so if you start with Ecology (or any other advanced tech), must you also have all of it's pre-reqs?

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Checking in. It will be interesting to see if any wonders are already built. And what techs the various AI know when we meet them.

I have played three of the last four SGOTM with Smurkz, but team interest has been dropping and Xc and I didn't even finish the last game, though we made a somewhat valiant two player effort. I've been playing Civ since it came out in, oh, let's say somewhere around 1992, and of course I pre-ordered Civ V. I'm a builder and playing builder-oriented games I can usually win on Emperor. Drop that down a notch for warmonger games. I'm also a Discworld fan, having read most of the books. I live in Portland, Oregon, USA where I work as a librarian. I'm TheCat on most other sites, including BoardGameGeek, but some camper snuck in and grabbed that username here, even though they haven't logged in for years now.

Glad to be part of the team. Hope it's great fun for all involved.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I've never played this sort of variant, so if you start with Ecology (or any other advanced tech), must you also have all of it's pre-reqs?

Nope. You can be granted individual techs by the mapmaker. This sometimes open up other future techs, but it does not unlock prerequisites.

 

[neilmeister]

^^

Yes, but this means that we can't trade it to the AI.

Checking in. Space is by far my favourite victory condition, so I'm pleased about that.

The fallout will be such a big change ffrom normal, I think a test map would be very useful, at least to help us with the first 50-100 turns. I will create one today!

 

[Brian Shanahan]

I second neils idea on the test map. If possible we should all do the same and compare notes. I'll start mine in the morning, it's nearly midnight here in Ireland.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Yeah I like space race wins.

At Emperor we may need to build the internet, maybe not though.

Keeping all the other AIs alive except Stalin might be tricky.