SGOTM 14 - Xteam

[leif erikson]

When making test maps, please be careful not to use the XTeam name in the save. It may cause the HoF Mod to think your testing was done on the real save.

Please change the name of the test game when you download it to remove the XTeam from the file name before you use it.

 

[The-Hawk]

Whoops, new one on me. I've changed the name on the uploaded file.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Oasis requires no improvement and is therefore arguably more valuable than sheep at this workerless stage of the game. Suggest we move warrior and revisit the question.

 

[leif erikson]

Whoops, new one on me. I've changed the name on the uploaded file.

That should do the trick.

4-days before the saves are available.

 

[DJMGator13]

Settling 2E would make capital coastal, while giving us the corn, crab, oasis, 3 hills and 4 grassland tiles for cottages.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Do we want to swap cows for crabs and lose a turn?

 

[Htadus]

Maybe it is Professor Plum (a GS), in the Garden (a forest tile), with a Barb Tank.

That would be nice since all we need to do is to bring other units near the Tank and he will attack and leave Professor Plum undefended (unless they are grouped)

To make sure I follow, you believe we can win without Astro? I.e. either a galley based Dom or a Diplo win? From the little caviat about winning before killing not counting toward an award seem to imply that early VC's are possible and yes I was thnking about a possbility of Domi. Doesnt the UN path require Astro?
........
I don't play Diplo very often. Does anyone have any ideas how it trades off versus conq/dom? I.e. under what circumstances would it be faster?

Map that favor early rushes to dominate a local continent and Mansa in the other continent surviving amung bunch of war mongers. We build up our continent while teching and building UN. Either mansa or a Warmonger give us the needed 1% vote we are missing. There are others.

"I'm assuming settle 1W (But that loses the oasis. Maybe we want to move the warrior NE to make sure there is no non-coastal seafood that would make a city site on the coast desirable.),I would rather gain more production and food by settling 1W over 2 commerce research BW (Not AH first to pasture cows and sheep and find where the horses are?) , then REX via whip and chop." Yes, and this may be a two worker start.

Humm finally I get to see the 2 worker start. Looking forward to seing the advantages

Oasis requires no improvement and is therefore arguably more valuable than sheep at this workerless stage of the game. Suggest we move warrior and revisit the question.

I would agree if there were no better tiles visible but not over extra food and production we get by settling to west.

Settling 2E would make capital coastal, while giving us the corn, crab, oasis, 3 hills and 4 grassland tiles for cottages.

Find one more seafood(fish) and I am voting with you.

 

[Htadus]

Do we want to swap cows for crabs and lose a turn?

Not without something better.

 

[The-Hawk]

Do we want to swap cows for crabs and lose a turn?

Also looses fresh water...

 

[leif erikson]

Please remember that "Random Personalities" option is active this game. As we meet AI, we need to check who they really are, and make an entry in our play logs.

Hate to lose the fresh water bonus to health.

 

[-Asterix-]

Yes, warrior would see a lot from 1NE and either turn going coastal an interesting option (we have fishing from the beginning) or ease the decision making. But without it, how about settling 1N instead of 1W? I would really hate settling on copper or horses 1W and losing a tile with nice hammers to work from the early stages. Of course there may be something else or even nothing there... Corn and gl sheep will give decent food and the oasis would help getting them earlier.

I'm amazed that they gave us a civ with philo here. Hopefully somebody will now teach me the proper way to use the great people. It also makes going for Oxford & universities an option unless we want to stomp everybody with axes & cats earlier. Being charismatic will be a great help while whipping our asses off.

But how to tech early? AH for sheep, mining+BW for chopping, Myst for monuments... But in what order?

 

[-Asterix-]

Please remember that "Random Personalities" option is active this game. As we meet AI, we need to check who they really are, and make an entry in our play logs.

Is it even possible to check who they really are?

 

[leif erikson]

Is it even possible to check who they really are?

In the diplo screen, place your cursor over the picture of the AI and it will tell you their traits, as well as the Espionage ratio and how they feel about you.

 

[The-Hawk]

...how about settling 1N instead of 1W? I would really hate settling on copper or horses 1W and losing a tile with nice hammers to work from the early stages. Of course there may be something else or even nothing there... Corn and gl sheep will give decent food and the oasis would help getting them earlier.

This might be a good option. Hate walking away from cows, but it does bring Oasis into play. I am a little concerned it limits our coastal settlement options. Maybe we can settle 1N of the crabs to get them.

 

[-Asterix-]

There's at least some land N of crabs so getting them shouldn't be an issue. And there are more coastal places to settle SE. In any case, we should move the warrior and then do some testing on different settling options.

In the diplo screen, place your cursor over the picture of the AI and it will tell you their traits, as well as the Espionage ratio and how they feel about you.

But how can we say from this information that, for example, Gandhi in this game acts as Shaka usually does?

 

[Cactus Pete]

In any case, we should move the warrior and then do some testing on different settling options. Concur.


But how can we say from this information that, for example, Gandhi in this game acts as Shaka usually does?

I'm not clear on this either.

 

[leif erikson]

Went digging around a bit and I do not think we will know?

From GameSpy:
Random Personalities: Computer-controlled leaders have tendencies based on their historical counterparts. For example, Napoleon tends to work on his economy in the beginning, then turns to war in the mid-game to destroy rivals. This option, if checked, makes all leaders have random tendencies; you may see Gandhi firing off salvos of ICBMs!

Found the same quote in a couple of places under game info. Do not see much on the mechanics of this on CFC.

I did find a comment in the HoF that said random personalities can actually weaken the AI because the random leader is not always able to take very good advantage of their UU and unique abilities. The AI isn't very good at many things, so not sure this matters.

 

[Mad Professor]

Random Personalities: Computer-controlled leaders have tendencies based on their historical counterparts. For example, Napoleon tends to work on his economy in the beginning, then turns to war in the mid-game to destroy rivals. This option, if checked, makes all leaders have random tendencies; you may see Gandhi firing off salvos of ICBMs!

Yes, I played a game once which was NOT random personalities and Gandhi when he got powerful in the modern era was a terror - he used nukes with frightening regularity and went to war at the slightest excuse.

There's a spreadsheet around - I have a copy if anyone is interested - which lists all the numbers in the code which control AI leader personalities. I got it from this site somewhere, though I can't remember where. I don't understand all of it. I assume that when there's random personalities, you still have the same columns of numbers, but the leader names at the tops of the columns get shuffled. I think the only thing we can say at this stage about the random personalities thing is that we can't bank on the normal behavior of a certain leader. I think we will have to watch carefully and make a judgement.

One thing we'll be able to spot fairly early upon meeting them I think is the base attitude they have. Each leader has a base attitude towards the human player - that's what makes some leaders easier to get on with than others. That will come up immediately. Also, we'll see that Mansa (for example) might not trade maps at pleased and we'll know he's acting like one of the three or four leaders who will only trade maps at friendly. Or if we notice that Gandhi (for example) refuses to open borders when we first meet him we might suspect he's acting like Tokugawa - but that's about the limit of what we'll be able to decide quickly.

I was going to post that spreadsheet but the site won't let me post a .xls file. I've got some pdf's and picture files of sections of it though, so I'll post them instead:

View attachment Attitude increases.pdf

 

[Mad Professor]

In that last post the .pdf comes out on my screen as a link which you have to download the file while the two picture files come upo as thumbnails and you can view them from within the forum - not sure what they'll look like to you - I'm not an expert at attaching files to posts. It also only allowed me to put three in the one post, so here are the rest:

View attachment Deals.pdf
View attachment Peaceweight.pdf
View attachment Tech trade.pdf

The spreadsheet actually has more info in it that these various .pdf's and pictures but like I said I don't know how to get the site to accept a .xls file...

 

[leif erikson]

Forgot I had that.

The problem will be, with ransom personalities, trying to figure out who is who. I also cannot seem to figure out how much changes, whether it is simply the traits of whether the entire personality is shifted over. Not sure how we are going to tell?

You only need to .zip it. It is attached below.