SGOTM 14 - Team TNT

[AlanH]

Welcome to your BtS SGOTM 14 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.

You can find the Game Details in the first post of the Maintenance Thread. If any changes occur in the game settings or rules, I shall post them in that thread, and edit that post.

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

Good luck, and remember rule #1 - ENJOY THE GAME!

 

[Keath]

reserved.....

 

[Keath]

also reserved....

 

[Keath]

and reserved again, all for future use, summaries and anything we need to access on our first page.

 

[justjohn]

Signing in.

And I cannot believe I'm first to post a non-reserved post. Do I get a medal or something?

 

[Keath]

Hello everyone and welcome back! It is great that so many of our SGOTM_13 participants are back for another game. I hope your summer's are all going well.

And a special welcome to our new players, mbkkbm and sempiris!

I know we're all anxious to start analyzing the starting position and I see no reason not to get on with it but I'd also like to talk a bit about how we want to go about this, things like turnset length and how badly do we want to win, or at least do better than our last game.

So, what might we do to improve our play and make it more fun for everyone?

Two things I'd consider are turnset length and turnset plans. I'd consider a turnset of about 8 turns. In this way, we can each play more often, plan more carefully and the dedicated player could follow the plan closely. I think everyone should participate in each turnset plan, presenting and altering it to agree with our goals.

If someone who knows World Builder could build a test game from the starting screenshot, that would be super! Maybe also explain how you put the rivers in place. (a bit tricky after my attempts)

You should subscribe to this thread and the Maintenance Thread. You do this by using the Thread Tools at the top of the page on the right. Just click the small triangle and 'subscribe to this thread'.

The game file will be available Aug 10. Let's have fun!

And welcome back, jj! Your medal is in the mail.

 

[fizbankovi]

turnset of about 8 turns

yes

plan more carefully and the dedicated player could follow the plan closely

yes, and more involvment even if its not ur turnset.

following some thoughts on thje starting position

 

[justjohn]

Position 5 gives a 2 food 2 gold city center.

My personal choice would probably be 1W of current position, gaining access too sheep, cow and corn.

 

[enKage]

I take 1 W:
a) even resource on it, huge production (i suppose plainhill on the other side of a lake)) supported by lots of food
b) fresh water
c) we keep place for fish+oasis city
d) we can skip agriculture in research for a while and take Ah, mining+BW before as we have 2 solid animal resources in BFC

EDIT
(oh, americans start with agri)
But still i cannot see better place within 2 turns - maybe spice or ... 1SE,1S - we lose one turn, but we are more flexible in research (not forced into mining-BW)

We are Philosophical & Charismatic, so what about quick writing, library, and bulb maths with scientist, and then BW and chopping? If we find horses after AH, I think it's worth risking :] We take lakeside plain with hidden resource after 2 borderpop, so rather quick as we will have palace+library)

Anyone eager to take a trial game, how quick it is possible? (i did it only once with Pericles, but he has cheaper libraries)

 

[justjohn]

I made a random game and altered the position to match ours. If anyone want to play some opening sequences, they may use this map.

Upon making this I realized that we see more of our starting position than we should. F.ex. why do our Warrior see over the forests to locate the crabs? It might be that our starting position has been modified by including more forests or similar.

-jj-

 

[dima42]

Checking in.
8 turn turnsets sound good after 50 turns or so. The beginning depends on how quicly we meet AI.
I am never against more planning .
Each AI meeting will be important since we will be trying to figure out whose personality they follow.
jj, we see more position because neilmeister intentionally revealed it. He said this in a thread somewhere.

I am on vacation, so don't have access to civ. As such, my opening micro analysis will have to wait until next week. Cheers.

 

[dima42]

Oh, and after a quick glance seems like a pretty obvious 1W initial settle. If anyone disagrees I will go into actual reasoning .

 

[sempiris]

Hi all!

This is my first time doing a SGOTM, and I'd like to say thanks for having me! I'm Dima42's little brother and I look forward to lurking and learning.

I also like 1W for settle, but would like to send warrior 1 SE first to see if we find anything on interest

 

[Keath]

Welcome to the team, sempiris! Nice to see it's getting to be a family affair.

dima, welcome back and I hope you are having a great vacation.

jj, thanks for the test game. Maybe you could explain how you handle getting the rivers in the right places. I also generated random maps but the rivers are a bit of trouble to get right.

About test games, do we want to have a few different ones on the go? In our last game we rather gave up on using them fairly early, but I think testing should be part of our repertoire. How important is it to have the test games updated to reflect the real game? In this game, with random personalities, we won't have to worry quite so much about ensuring we have the right AI in the test game but it should be possible to have an edited map as the surroundings are revealed.

It sure looks like 1w is the best build site. As the first few moves are of paramount importance, we should make sure we don't miss out if there is something better. What would make us choose another site, rather than settle 1w on the first turn?

 

[sempiris]

Thanks for the welcome!

What would make us choose another site, rather than settle 1w on the first turn?

I think 1 W is the best option. alternatives would be, send warrior 1 SE to explore 1 grass square and 1 coast square. if there's something good in either, we could consider settling 2E of settler, get a coastal city and an oasis to boot (americans start with fishing).

Another alternative is we might get some flood plains if we go 1N (I say this because of the oasis), but I don't know if it's worth risking a turn to explore

 

[dima42]

Maybe we should think about what victory we want to pursue before thinking where we want to settle. I sort of assume that it will be a conquest victory, although if neilmeister is a genius, he has made a game where a diplomatic victory and a conquest victory are competitive in dates. (I don't think the game is possible to make so that the other victories are comparable, but I'll need to look up and/or play some games as Americans to see what's possible).

In any case, I think what we will learn from this is that a very early rush (axes or earlier) is paramount to our success. (This is probably the case for all victories except for religious, cultural and space). So in thinking about capital placement, I would encourage you to think about which capital site would most easily facilitate an early rush.

It is this thinking that leads me to believe that 1W is the correct settle even if we see a wet corn or a fish when warrior goes 1SE. But that will certainly open up the settling debate. And who knows, maybe something unconventional like settling on the dry corn if we reveal a nice resource 2s3e is worth considering. I sort of doubt it, but we'll of course test that.

 

[justjohn]

jj, thanks for the test game. Maybe you could explain how you handle getting the rivers in the right places. I also generated random maps but the rivers are a bit of trouble to get right.

Yeah, rivers are difficult to get right in WB. There might be ways to always get them right, but if so, I don't know them. So what I did was regenerate until I found a river that matched the one we see, removed the one river tile which is missing, and edited the rest of the surrounding terrain.

About early rushes and other things. Since our mapmakier has called our map type "Mystery", we really have no idea what to expect. This means early scouting is even more important than normal, to make sure we don't have an isolated start etc. We should also try to find an opening strategy that is relatively flexible whatever we might discover.

 

[Keath]

Discussion banning certain 'fog gazing' techniques in the Maintenance Thread.

Following extensive discussions in various threads, and a review by the GOTM Staff, I have been persuaded that two methods for gaining prior map knowledge are contrary to the spirit of the GOTM/SGOTM competitions. The use of these techniques will therefore be banned during this game.

- Players are NOT permitted to use the 'Flying Camera' to look for details under the fog.

- Players are NOT permitted to map invisible terrain using the Go To facility.

I have added these constraints to the rules section of the first post in the Maintenance thread.

 

[justjohn]

Yeah, I noticed. Hence I'll not make a map this time, which is the way I normally play anyways.

 

[2metraninja]

Here is the ninja too.

Hi Guys!