SGOTM 12 - Team Zoe

[AlanH]

Welcome to your 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 here, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest. I hope you enjoy the game.

The starting saves will become available on the SGOTM Progress and Results page on February 9th, at midnight, server local time.

This time we have an archipelago on a standard size map with 30 rivals (yes, that's every Civ in the book, so you know who they are), and everyone is destined to remain feudal for the entire game. You start with a settler and a worker as usual, and the AI all start with two settlers a lots of Deity units .... also as usual. But since there's not a lot of room for expansion, no one can build any more settlers.

Seafaring and Scientific Theodora finds herself in a world with 30 other civilizations. She and her Dromons are on a mission to bring civilized diplomacy to the masses ... whether they like it or not. The winners of this game will be the succession team that reaches a Diplomatic Victory by the earliest game date. All victory conditions are enabled, but only a UN vote in your favour will bring the laurels. Thanks once more to Gyathaar for the concept and map.

Here's the start.

Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Byzantine
Difficulty - Deity
Opponents - 30
World - Standard, Archipelago, 70% water, 4 billion years old, warm and wet
Barbarians - Roaming

The map is handbuilt, and therefore may not have a standard configuration.

Knowing Gyathaar as we do, the map may have been tweaked

Game mods:
We shall use the default rules as defined in the SGOTM Reference Thread, with the following changes specific to this game:

- All Civs start in Feudalism, and cannot adopt another form of government.
- No Civ can build Settlers.
- As city counts are limited, all Civs get ten extra free units in Feudalism.

The SGOTM Mediterranean resources are included. If you have played previous C3C SGOTMs then you will be ready. Other players will need to download and unzip this small graphics mod pack. Details are provided in the SGOTM Reference Thread..

Please ensure that you have included the line: NoAIPatrol=0 in your conquests.ini text file:

A 'fix' for the Barbarians!:
As many of you know, the barbarians in C3C are 'broken'. This can be fixed by going to your \Conquest\ folder, and opening your Conquests.ini file, and adding a line noaipatrol=0 to the file. Whilst we cannot force people to do this, it will make the game a bit more interesting if you do. If you are not comfortable editing your .ini file, you can download a utility here to do it automatically.

Players running Civ3 Complete for Macintosh should contact me if they have any problems with the mod. If they are not running the Rev A version they will need to use FileValet to compress their saves for upload, and they may also need to use it to 'clean' downloaded saves before playing.

Please visit the following links to ensure that you are adequately prepared, skipping references to PtW or Vanilla versions of Civ3.

The GOTM Reference Thread.
The SGOTM Reference Thread.

Notes:

A. ONLY Conquests version 1.22 (C3C) is supported for this SGOTM. All teams will compete for a single award set.

B. All teams must play the sponsored variant - the laurels will be awarded for the fastest Diplomatic victory. The wooden spoons will go to the team with the lowest final Jason score, having completed the game one way or another.

C. 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

 

[Whomp]

Hi everyone! Here it is. Let's start off by talking about short, intermediate and long term goals for this game.

The first thing that strikes me is SoZ is huge. With tight quarters and likely no resources in sight the march towards AC's is big.

We may be able to get a curragh out for long distance meet ups which will be more important than the nearby meetups since they'll find us fast.

Housekeeping item:
Our roster is big. Let's keep a tight and I mean tight 24 hour "got it" and 48 "play it" with lots of discussion in the process. There's nothing wrong with asking for a skip or extension but we should not tolerate slow play. I also think it is imperative that we stop the game as significant things develop.

Here's my thoughts on roster.


Beorn
ThERat
Smart
Sanabas
Zerksees
Bucephalus
Whomp

 

[zerksees]

Opening thoughts:

1) Maybe the settler could go 1 SE - I should hope an AI isn't right there
2) I hope there are at least some AI on our landmass so we can build some momentum before projecting might over the seas
3) Since we can only control where our capital goes, do we dare consider finding another city before planting ours so we can get better distance corruption numbers?
4) Does it go without saying that we have to acquire some cities to win this game? How many AI can we wipe out and still win the game? It'll be hard to bribe a mess of AI to get the vote. I'm guessing 20 will have to go

Whomp - SoZ seems like a nice prize - but this map is tweaked. My guess is someone else will also be building it. We'll just have to factor that in.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

I have heard ThERat say several times that he was more comfortable outside of the very starting turns, so I'd volunteer a roll-over of him down to last and myself up first.

1SE was the first thing that struck me. Preserves all visible ressources + lake, gains 2 land tiles. It is a long-term move, but well worth it. I'll work a spreadsheet of several scenarios about the worker move, but SE is downright obvious to me, given the modern-age nature of the game and the grassland cow it grants (E-SE). This is without factoring in the fast first growth and the food shortage before border expansions without moving.

Capture is a must, probably early rather than late. SoZ will also be in the equation, and we'll have to wait a bit before assessing this one fully. We should start with one or two curraghs imho, 3 moves is that much better than one only.

I don't think dragging the time before we found can be beneficial in any way though.

On research: early in the game, the AIs' ability to research will be much more hampered than ours. We all know how bunny-fast deity settlers pop from our friends, so I'd consider the tech race on this map to be more low-DG-ish. This does mean I'm advocating philo, and depending on how things are when we finish writing, maybe a full slinger. A lot of factors will play in this though.

About massively multiplayer trades, I remember Khan_Asparuh's Bulgarian SG on standard sized Europe map with 30 civs. A huge lot of trades happened for low amounts of cash, and this can give us a big edge. An exploitive but worthwhile approach, for instance, is mass trading of our WM. We can almost positively say we gain 30gpt this way alone.

More to come whjen a spreadsheet is worked up.

Last, I won't have the time constraints I was fearing for myself. I'm taking a break from studying, started looking for a teaching job next year - so I will finish classes I have but will not push into my masters' research project. That means a lot more time for myself on the short run.

 

[ThERat]

my strength being MM and warfare, I am wll with BeF change in Roster...


My first thoughts:
settle 1 SE as it will give us all resources. Churn out 2 curraghs at least. We need contacts and the more and faster, the better the tech race will be. As this is a race against time, we will want to trade plenty. With space restriction, the AI's research won't be that fast either.

Alphabet will be worth trading quite a bit. I suggest to go on a writing min run as anything else would be a waste of time.

 

[zerksees]

Culture: No doubt the AI will build every building possible, but since they won't have so many cities, one or the other won't be able to run away with it - this may help with flips compared to a normal deity game.

Tech: Beorn your point on tech is good. But you think we can beat 30 AI to philo on a loaded map? Every blessed AI we play against is out there. We can't stack the deck and be the only one with alphabet. All the alphabet-bearing AI are out there (are there 6?), and they will have 2 cities by turn 5 researching something. Some will no doubt go for writing. And they get techs at a discount. What am I missing?

I expect alot of AI to finish the same techs on the same turn, since so many of them will be researching.

I say build up gold and buy techs cheap. If 20 AI know a tech, what does that do to the price?

The trading is going to be insane.

Early builds:
Agree that curraghs will be huge in establishing early contact and getting the trading going.

Play order:
Looks good Whomp - Beorn suggestion fine too.

I presume this will be 10 turn sets.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

If we make enough contacts, fast enough, trading techs in is probably going to be that much easier, good point. Writing at min is probably wiser indeed.

I do think we should try our shot at philo, full throttle, though. It is a relatively cheap tech, so we wouldn't lose that much gold running for it - we should have plenty by then anywho - and it will give huge benefits should we succeed in getting it.

Trying out spreadsheets, got nothing totally convincing right now, but it's coming up. Both worthwhile scenarios I have right now put us at size 7 by turn 23 with 2 curraghs and a worker. I'll need to know what are the fogged tiles from our 20 to be totally certain though.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

First attempt, with spreadsheet attached. By the time we hit size 8 or 9 we'll have to revert down to 3 turns a growth. We shouldn't have to pull out non-roading worker plans to keep up with 7 food a turn.

 

[gmaharriet]

Since the conventional wisdom is that the AI begins to attack after they run out of room to expand and there IS no room, and since they start with 10 additional units, I wonder if that means ultra early attacks on us. Let's hope Gayathaar was kind enough to put iron for us on that visible hill.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

I just noticed I made quite an amateur job at that spreadsheet, forgot to take into account how we can optimize shields and coins by working around the tiles with surplus food before we reach the 10 fpt critical point.

Also, I opened the save and saw that the bottom left cow is a cow BG. I haven't played the actual turn of yet.

 

[ThERat]

Boern, in your spreadsheet you are mentioning a granary. Maybe it is there for another reason, but do we really need that since we don't churn settlers

 

[gmaharriet]

the bottom left cow is a cow BG.

Just recently I re-read Cracker's Opening Moves in the War Academy and noticed he showed "cow on bonus grass" as being a high power tile, but I'd never actually seen one before. Now I have.

 

[Smart]

Good job with spreadsheet, don't know what else to add
Since it's like OCC till we will find our rivals, which units are we going to build? If we are alone on that island, it may be a long time for us...

 

[Bucephalus]

Checking in.

Nothing much to add, except I share gma Harriet's concern about an early attack.

 

[sanabas]

On research: early in the game, the AIs' ability to research will be much more hampered than ours. We all know how bunny-fast deity settlers pop from our friends, so I'd consider the tech race on this map to be more low-DG-ish. This does mean I'm advocating philo, and depending on how things are when we finish writing, maybe a full slinger. A lot of factors will play in this though.

No need for full slingshot, as Republic is entirely useless in this game. I'd say min writing, max philo, with a view to taking maths, or construction if we're lucky. I'd be tempted to go for the great library, but with 30 civs out there, we should be able to trade our way to education without much hassle. Especially as we're scientific.

We need to get at least 2, preferably 3 or 4 curraghs out ASAP, early contacts will be especially powerful in this game.

Definitely settle 1 SE.

A granary is not as important as normal in the early builds, because we're not going to be building settlers to drop the population back down.

One thing to remember for later: A unit can capture a worker directly from a dromon, even if it isn't amphibious.

 

[ThERat]

Sanabas spelled the strategy out excellent

 

[zerksees]

as Republic is entirely useless in this game.

Is it possible it would be good trade bait - as the AI will still pay a pretty penny for a govt tech, even though it can't switch to it?

I will be impressed if we can pull off getting to philosphy first.

One thing to remember for later: A unit can capture a worker directly from a dromon, even if it isn't amphibious.

This morning on the ride in I was contemplating small early wars with the AI to get their workers. I was thinking we would be limited to workers on the border but this brings it to a new level. Put warrior on dromon, warrior gets off and takes worker, worker gets in boat, warrior takes wrath of AI that is not on our island, we get free worker. This makes it so any tile on the coast can do the same thing.

As far as defense against AI: A good portion of the 10 free units will attack at 1, and not all 10 will appear at once. I still say the curraghs are #1 priority, then maybe some ground military units.

 

[Bucephalus]

Are we allowed to download the save or is it restricted to the one who is 'up'?

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Yeah with the speed at which we'll be growing, a granary doesn't save that many shields, and it won't increase the rate of a min research run to writing. I guess I'm just addicted to granaries. This also means I could try and find another spot to build my worker on, maybe a turn or two later.

About TGL and literature: while MoM would be awfully nice, TGL would certainly be more powerful. We can always look over our shoulder and try getting both techs, but literature is almost in the bag as is.

Since the one constant in all these scenarios is starting with a curragh, I guess I'll do that and post screenies/saves and stuff from turn 5 ish.

Re: trade bait: the AI will not value it at all since the tech doesn't even contain the government, with the mods.

re: save: you can download it all you want, but playing is restricted as it gives spoiler info.

 

[AlanH]

Are we allowed to download the save or is it restricted to the one who is 'up'?

Look But Don't Touch!!!

You can download the current save to look at it, but you MUST NOT make any moves or changes if you are not the current active player.