SGOTM 12 - Xteam

Grifftavian · Sep 16, 2010

zamint3 said:
I hope this only happens in the testgame..

In creating the test game, I gave all the AI Civs a Mech. Infantry in their Capitol, since it has been said that non-biological units can survive the fallout, and because the game write-up says Difficulty: Emperor - but be warned. It may play a little higher that this

{@dV - the human crew is inside the Mech. Infantry, which provides enough shielding that they survived the fallout :mischief:

}

If that's too unrealistic, it's easy to change the surviving units. (I considered giving Stalin an ICBM as well :nuke:

) Any suggestions?

FYI, I also went with the assumption that the AI Civs retained the knowledge that allow construction of their UB, so...

Stalin - UB=Research Institute=Superconductors
Churchill - UB=Stock Exchange=Banking
Mao - UB=Pavilion=Drama
Gandhi - UB=Mausoleum=Constitution
Roosevelt - UB=Mall=Refrigeration
DeGualle - UB=Salon=Astronomy

That's why you'll see the early notifications about Churchill & Gandhi changing civics in the test game. Again, it's easy to change the tech knowledge at the start of the game. Any suggestions?

Additional test game note: when the map was generated (I used a Fractal Map with the published settings) Catherine was on the main continent with all the other AI Civs, and Stalin was on this smaller continent by himself. I added the starting location to the eastern side of this smaller continent and moved Catherine there (removing about the same number of land tiles from the western side of the main continent, so that the ratio of land/sea tiles should be about the same). I put Stalin's Capitol where his starting units were generated on the map. As a result, he starts off pretty close to our starting location. I agree with Leif's earlier speculation that Stalin is most likely the AI Civ with which we have a land connection. However, he may be too close on this test map, as it seems we're likely to get boxed in if we don't expand fast enough. Should Stalin's Capitol be moved to the North to allow more room for expansion?

leif erikson · Sep 16, 2010

Curious why the test save is in the modern era? Is it because we have Ecology? :hmm:

I really dislike the modern era music... :cringe:

EDIT - Oh, I should answer your questions...

For the time being, I think we should use the test save to figure out our best options for settlement, build priority, worker priority and tech selections. We can always add, and have done so in the past, specifics of the game we think we need to weigh or check out. imho, our focus should be our start and how to get the most that we can from this start location and terrain. All the other stuff is guess work at this point, nothing we can really count on or expect to influence?

Mad Professor · Sep 16, 2010

We're doing a whole lot of guessing here which might be completely wrong unless one of us has learned to read the mapmaker's mind. I think we need to concentrate testing for now on the starting position and see how various positions and very early strategies optimise results for that. We have to put something in for the other civs, and what you've done Griff seems to me to be as good as any guess I might make, so let's just use what you've done for now, but let's just concentrate on optimising the start! When we have more info about the other civs (like when we've met them in the real game) we can include that info in a test game for future use.

Mad Professor · Sep 16, 2010

leif erikson said:
Curious why the test save is in the modern era? Is it because we have Ecology?

I really dislike the modern era music...

I stick headphones in, but then leave them on the desk instead of on my head when its playing music I don't like...

leif erikson · Sep 16, 2010

Mad Professor said:
We're doing a whole lot of guessing here which might be completely wrong unless one of us has learned to read the mapmaker's mind. I think we need to concentrate testing for now on the starting position and see how various positions and very early strategies optimise results for that. We have to put something in for the other civs, and what you've done Griff seems to me to be as good as any guess I might make, so let's just use what you've done for now, but let's just concentrate on optimising the start! When we have more info about the other civs (like when we've met them in the real game) we can include that info in a test game for future use.

Brilliant post MP. :goodjob:

I love it when great minds think alike... :smug:

zamint3 · Sep 16, 2010

leif erikson said:
I love it when great minds think alike...

OK I tested settling 1SE, and it's definitely worth considering!

Not the best capital site but it's not that bad and it will provide fast initial expansion.
It is on the coast and I do think we should build The Great Lighthouse this time

, didn't Erkon say the map was Fractal with a lot of islands?

Build order:
Moscow: Settler (17 turns) - WB - Settler - Worker , all the time only working the forrested plains hill.
Sct. Peter: WB - warrior - worker, using the whip at some time.

Tech: Fishing - Bronze - AH - Wheel - Pottery, iirc :crazyeye:

(game didn't autolog!?)

Spoiler :

Take a look at the save (T55 1800bc), there's room for improvement. :cool:

zamint3 · Sep 16, 2010

Grifftavian said:
Difficulty: Emperor - but be warned. It may play a little higher that this

I have been wondering about this too.

If the AI starts without units and Ecology and their part of the world is covered with as much fallout as ours, we'll have a huge advantage.

Even if they know Ecology they'll probably not be very good at scrubbing it and their city placing will not be very good either - I guess :confused:

I'm looking foreward to finding out what Erkon has done to balance this... :nuke:

Conquistador 63 · Sep 16, 2010

zamint3 said:
OK I tested settling 1SE, and it's definitely worth considering!

Not the best capital site but it's not that bad and it will provide fast initial expansion.
It is on the coast and I do think we should build The Great Lighthouse this time , didn't Erkon say the map was Fractal with a lot of islands?

Did he? Could you quote the source?
About the GLH, it is maybe my favourite WW in regular games, but here we will struggle to get OB for foreign trade routes: -3 for declaring war plus Aggressive AI (still -2 hidden in BTS?), GLH benefits don't look too thrilling IMO - unless there are really islands for settling.

zamint3 · Sep 16, 2010

Conquistador 63 said:
Did he? Could you quote the source?

Erkon said:
It's not really classified, but the map will be modified to have a suitable amount of tiles. Fractal with a bunch of island will probably be close enough for playtesting.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9552620&postcount=60

Grifftavian · Sep 16, 2010

zamint3 said:
(game didn't autolog!?)

If you don't specify a directory for the autolog files, I believe the default is...

C://Program Files/Firaxis Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 4/Beyond the Sword/Mods/BUFFY_SG12/Autolog/

You might check there, that's where I found my autolog.

Grifftavian · Sep 16, 2010

Just out of curiosity, I started the Test Game, and clicked on Rocketry in the tech tree (i.e., bee-lining Rocketry to build The Apollo Program ASAP). It gave me this rather odd tech path...

Spoiler :

Depending where we settle, we may want to move Fishing to the top of the list, but it looks to me as if this tech path is set up to get to Education early. That may not be a bad idea if it lets us get Oxford University up and running. Our fearless Tsarina has the Creative trait, which gives us double production speed on Libraries. And I would think we will want most of our cities to be Science cities if we're to win the space race.

Of course it delays things like Bronze Working, Construction, Iron Working, Engineering, etc., that we're going to need early on since we're at was with everyone.

Also notable is what is not on this list, things like Archery, Code of Laws, Civil Service, Liberalism, Corporations, etc.

eek: No Bureaucracy if we bee-line Rocketry? :confused:

)

FWIW, I put these techs in a spreadsheet, and sorted it by the beakers required to learn each technology. Attached is a .pdf copy of that spreadsheet. Just food for though to kick off a discussion on what we want/need to research. My fellow GK Mercenaries and I came to the conclusion at the end of SG11 that we strayed from the direct path to Mass Media a few too many times, and that it may have cost us a place or two in the standings. So just trying to learn from that lesson.

leif erikson · Sep 16, 2010

Seems to me that this tech path fits quite well with z3's SE capital city scheme? It is not a strong Bureaucracy city, so we could make the second city, Gold City, both our GP farm and science center? There is a lot of food, gold and commerce, especially if we build Colossus there. Nice place for early Academy and Oxford, combined with science specialists?

Of course, the capital will be even more powerful placed NNE with Bureaucracy... :mischief:

Mad Professor · Sep 16, 2010

leif erikson said:
Of course, the capital will be even more powerful placed NNE with Bureaucracy...

On the other hand, a palace is not that many turns once you get some decent tiles developed (scrubbed first in our case!) If we think it will pay off to put the capital SE early and shift it later for the purposes of bureaucracy then there's no reason why we can't do that.

I hope to have a bit of a play with the test on the weekend sometime - it seems to me that scrubbing fallout and getting tiles developed must be a worker priority. We have some great tiles on our peninsula there and since we already have ecology the only thing different from a normal game is that building an improvement on those tiles takes the extra turns of scrubbing first.

When there are so few good tiles to use, building several workers with the city at low population rather than growing it after the first worker might be worth considering? I'd like to compare build queues in the capital of various numbers of workers in the capital before it grows much. If anyone else tests that before the weekend, that's good, but if not I'd like to play with it a bit. It seems logical to me that a strong worker force early can't go too far astray.

Ronnie1 · Sep 17, 2010

Thanks for the test game(s) Griff. I should get a chance to do some play testing this weekend also.

As for tech path, a semi-standard beeline to CS>EDU>LIB(held for best value) seems like the logical path, or am I missing something or over simplifying it???

Seafood early to get our worker army up and running seems like the way to go also.

I never seem to end up with as many workers as I want/need. Since we are already at war, we should consider worker stealing also IMO, we can make peace after they have donated to the cause.

Grifftavian · Sep 17, 2010

Played the test save again for 70 turns, settled 1NE of start. Loses the Fish, but gains the Rice, but also lose the trees we settled on. Built St. Pete 2NW + 2W, near the Fish and the small inland lake. It only had a Warrior defending, and Stalin had an Archer show up on the adjacent hill about 2 turns after founding St. Pete, so I figured that was a good stopping point for this scenario :rolleyes:

Overall, I think I like N+NE better than 1NE. If I get a chance tomorrow, I'll try settling in place.

Edited Autolog...

Spoiler :

Cactus Pete · Sep 17, 2010

RL has left me little time, and I am leaving for the weekend tomorrow morning, so I at least had a look at the save and read over the thread. Some thoughts:

Is there any reason to think that barbs (and animals) will be more or less prevalent in this scenario?

Like Fred's post suggesting Fishing>BW, building worker until Fishing, then WKBT, then grow (Does it make sense to build a scout as we do so?), whip worker, grow, and continue toward a second worker whipped or chopped. Given Mining as a starting tech, it's usually smart to get BW early, and knowing where the copper is (or isn't) should be helpful; moreover, if its available in the cross that would suggest that we better build an axe quickly. Be nice to have AH and knowledge of horses too before we found our second city.

Think we have to take the gamble that the AI will not attack early. With no advanced weapon, we could not defend in any event, so doubt that the map maker would set up that scenario.

Can we settle on the hill 2E? If so, think that should also be tested.

Working a gold mine early will about double our research rate, which is likely to be critical in this game. On the other hand, a capital working two plains hill mines (they are both on plains, aren't they -- I have a hard time telling) is constrained in its growth and whipping (even operating one mine makes chopping relatively more useful in this game), so we could be better off with our second city working the second gold mine. That consideration should enter into our choice of capital site.

Be back in a few days. Expect to find that an elegant solution has resolved all issues.

zamint3 · Sep 17, 2010

Ronnie1 said:
Since we are already at war, we should consider worker stealing also

Worker stealing is not so easy when we're all ready at war.

Cactus Pete said:
Is there any reason to think that barbs (and animals) will be more or less prevalent in this scenario?.

There are no barbarians, don't know about animals? :confused:

Cactus Pete said:
Can we settle on the hill 2E?

No!

Cactus Pete said:
Be back in a few days. Expect to find that an elegant solution has resolved all issues.

Frederiksberg · Sep 17, 2010

Leif, if you have time, could you redo your test but researching AH after BW? Pasture the cows ASAP to improve health. And think about whipping a settler fairly early. You probably need to grow Moscow to size 4 for that purpose. Perhaps even AH before BW to get that health up.

leif erikson · Sep 17, 2010

Frederiksberg said:
Leif, if you have time, could you redo your test but researching AH after BW? Pasture the cows ASAP to improve health. And think about whipping a settler fairly early. You probably need to grow Moscow to size 4 for that purpose. Perhaps even AH before BW to get that health up.

Ok, I should have some time this evening.

I'd have to go back and look but I think the health issue wasn't too bad. Perhaps a Cow should come before the second Gold? And you are right, I should have whipped a Settler earlier.

Once we can get the Fish, Clams and Cows up and running, whipping Workers and a Settler or two should go fairly quickly.

Also, the game save is out and I want to check it to make sure the test start area is correct. I had trouble figuring out which tiles were which under the fallout. We'll see how good Hawk is... :mischief:

EDIT - Please read Alan's warning concerning the game save! Please be careful now that it is out. :scan:

Grifftavian · Sep 17, 2010

I downloaded the competition save and was able to start it without problems.

I didn't give it a real close inspection, but from a quick look, it appears Hawk's eyes are better than my eyes, even with my external bifocal vision enhancement device on. :scan:

FWIW, I created two new folders under

.../Documents/My Games/Beyond the Sword/Saves/Single/

one named SGOTM 12 for the competition saves, and one named TEST SG12 for the test saves. It helps an :old:

guy like me from getting :confused:

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