Welcome to your BtS SGOTM 16 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 have fun. Remember, it's just a GAME!
Quick is not the word describing our start.
Unlimited ain't either the length of the battle.
Assemble plastic ducks in the middle of the bathtub.
Circle in unison, now we need to dart.
Kidnap Humbaba, rip his kidneys apart!
~soundjata
Plastic Ducks' SGOTM 16 Summary
Sorry if some of these comments aren't on point, as you may find out if you read through the thread, I wasn't active for a large portion of the game due to connectivity issues.
Posts #248-391
This was the longest discussion we had on a turnset. The test games showed a lot of barbarian activity so we got concerned about settling of city #3 and went with 2 Chariots as defense - overkill in the end but we were safe
Post #551
We locate the first island city we'll place.
Posts #552-642
Another long discussion period. At this stage, micro still has a big impact and there are many many possibilities. Debating a 4th worker or 8th city.
Posts 600-699
Spoiler:
Post #643
Up to turn 95. Currency mostly done, converted to Judaism for happiness, OR and to keep Brennus happy. Exploration shows us another good island location.
Posts #644-663
Planning until end of Currency.
Post #664
Building a Chariot proved useful after all, roaming Archer is difficult to slay with warriors.
Posts #665-668
Starting to be concerned about deadline...
Posts #1383-1436
At this stage, game is starting to be difficult and a drain to play. Reports are quite short and you'll often have to refer to saves. There are a few reports in these turns but nothing worth linking to.
Post #1704
Up to turn 214. Assembly Line just completed.
Posts #1705-1813
More extensive planning. The culture:EPP trick is mentioned again, to be used in combination with regular sushi-powered culture. Research becomes critical path as predicted earlier.
For extensive testing, I "updated" the test game in a conservative fashion to better predict beaker output and finish date.
All in all, about 2 weeks of planning and testing to save a few turns and remove all uncertainties.
Post #1819
Taoism spread successful in both LC cities, bringing 5 religions in total. (note: the 3rd Taoist Missionary also spread in Marseilles with success, finally some good RNG )
Post #1820
Bad prediction... I now know T234 would have been possible simply by queuing Rifling ahead of Superconductors.
Post #1821
Up to turn 225... I lose a city to barbarians.
Summarized Team Rules
Read the various Rule threads.
Check your ini files so that autosave is set to every turn.
No reloads from previous point, ever!
No reading of other team threads. The best way to resist temptation is to use the Subscribed threads tool under quick links! Similarily, do not download other team saves.
When looking at the save, do not perform any irreversible action! You can't trade, whip or move units.
If the game crashes, stop and pm AlanH with details of what happened.
Wait for instructions.
Suggested:
Save often manually
Do stop if an opportunity becomes available or something goes wrong.
Pause the game before uploading/examining it.
When testing the game, make sure you're using the test game! Markers will be added here and there to help.
Let us know when you can't make a deadline or RL becomes busy.
A few notes of etiquette:
1. Active participation -- Your contribution to every set is important, even if it's a 'I agree'. Although everyone might have real life issues sometimes, it's courteous to notify the team of you absence.
2. Plan of playing -- The spirit of SG is to play the game following the consensus of the team decision. Therefore the player who is UP should post a clear plan for discussion. Guidelines have been posted for the contents of your plan in the next post. It might be that the team decides to head in a direction you were opposed to, it does not mean you are wrong but rather that the team believes the odds of winning are more likely with the decided approach.
3. Timing -- In the pre-thread we agreed to use the following as upper bounds for discussing, planning and playing the set. Since the game cannot last forever, it is important to respect these in order not to be rushed to finish the game later on.
-24 hours for 'got it' and pre-play-plan [0~24] - Make sure you can open the save before saying 'got it'.
-24 hours for discussion and first plan draft[0~48]
-24 hours for edits [24~72]
-24 hours to play [72~96]
Please keep in mind those are upper bounds, meaning if a consensus is reached before the time is fully elapsed, the set can proceed ahead.
Once again it would be greatly appreciated if you can warn the team, either in this thread or via pm, of your absences so that we do not have to wait for a consensus or skipping. You will be skipped if you cannot meet the time frame.
3a. Please include a report when you submit the save. You may submit your report later but it would be preferable to have it before the discussion on the next set starts.
4. Do not automate workers without first discussing with your team.
5. Do not use city governors without first discussing with your team. Or at least if you do, check cities every turn and remove the governor at the end of your round.
6. Do not leave units on goto orders that extend beyond your set of turns. If for some reason this happens, then be sure to inform your team as to what the unit(s) is/are going.
7. Finish all your discussed turns and upload the game saved at the END of the discussed part.
8. Respect your team mates, and demand their respect. Take care of your writing style, accept that people whose first language is not English will use English in a different way than you are used to. Disagree by all means, but don't make it personal, and don't take it personally.
9. SG's are team games. Be a good team member. Post your ideas, argue your corner and encourage and praise your team mates. Don't be afraid to post in your game thread. That is what it's for.
10. Have fun and QUACK!!!
How a set will be played
There are 7 major parts to every set.
Pre-Play-Plan: see below.
Voting: everyone voices his opinion on the issues raised in 1.
Plan: see below.
Critique of the Plan: once the Plan is posted, players should try/read the plan and look for anything they'd like to change. This is where you must support your arguments!
Final Plan: tries to glue everything together.
Play the Set: see below.
Post the Report: see below
What is the Pre-Play-Plan?
The Pre-Play-Plan is to initiate the discussion on the diverging possibilities at the start of a set. This includes, but not limited to, EP focus, general city micro, general worker micro, general techs. Basically, make an idea of what you want to do with your 10/15 turns.
In the spoiler below are general ideas as to what you can cover with the pre-play-plan. Not everything needs to be discussed, only the obvious decision points.
Spoiler:
1. Technologies
What techs are you aiming for? (One, a beeline ex. Literature, part-research for trading)
What trades will you attempt with who and when? (When to sell for gold ex. first opportunity or wait for more, specify the leader(s), waiting for a wonder to finish so the AI get failure gold)
Are we planning a Great Person bulb?
2. Dealing with AIs
Resource trade negotiations
Espionage assignment
Open borders (cancel or allow)
AI demands (resources, cancel trades, who do we send packing or not, technologies, war, religions, civics)
3. City placement - mostly in the beginning
Where are you planning on sending a settler?
Are you sending a worker along?
Is the land fogbusted/do we have an escort?
Initial city builds (Monument/Granary etc...)
Tile improvements around this city(food, hammers, commerce)
4. General micro
Special tile assignations (starve city for specialists, switch to growth etc.)
Tile swapping with other cities
Whips
Build order (infrastructure/military/settlers/workers/wealth/science)
Dealing with happy/health caps
Worker improvements and moves
5. Civics and Religion
Are you planning on civic switches/do we need to acquire the techs? (Caste for border pops, slavery for prod...)
Are we expecting a religion change?
6.War - if applicable
Refuse/accept AI war demands
Bribing civs to declare war or for stopping war
War plan (who, how many units and how to acquire them , which cities to strike, scouting prior to DoW,...)
7. Bigger picture
Gifts (city, gold, techs,...)
What AI do we try to please
Goals for the future
Diplo manipulation
Extras
What your plan should cover:
The plan must contain 2 detailed parts:
1. What you will check for every turn (EP, trades available, GPT available etc.) [this is easy]
2. Turn-by-turn worker moves, city micromanagement, unit movement and or general guidelines as to what we can't control via test game. [this is the hard part]
The team might at one point decide to slack on #2 once the game becomes well in hand.
How your set should go:
Play according to the plan
If something unexpected (or an opportunity) comes up, STOP AND CHECK WITH THE TEAM.
If you have to adapt, do so!
You can add markers in game during and at the end of your set. It's a lot easier on team members to figure where units are going.
If something unexpected comes up, you can (and possibly should) stop and make a short report to the team so we can decide how to move ahead
~~~~
What your set report should cover:
WHEOOHRN alerts and possible/likely targets
GGs in distant lands and Great Engineers
When to renegotiate trades
What you were planning for the future
How the plan worked out/didn't
Anything unexpected
Another option is to turn on the auto-logging and upload the autolog file.
We probably want Communism early to keep the conquest going while heading into corporations.
Also, I've discussed this in pm a bit with shakabrade but we can more or less ignore the 2 Legendary cities requirements until the very end of the game - and spam GS's and GM's early on + Golden Ages.
1. What's the purpose to pause the game before uploading/examining it?
2. How to turn on the auto-logging? Is it configured in CivilizationIV.ini? Sorry, there's no civilization game on this laptop and I fail to google it in 10 seconds. Can anyone help to save the time? Thanks.
3. When will the game be started? As everyone can only play one day each round, is there any requirments on the turns that have to be finished?
1.
It prevents accidental moves on the real save. Per AlanH's (paraphrased) word, accidental moves while the game is paused do not actually happen - therefore any accident is like it has not happened. Which means everyone can inspect the real save without fear of causing a mistake that makes the whole team suffer
The classic example is OSS in SGOTM12 that gifted their 3rd city accidentally... although it turned out to be a great move in the end!
2.
Open Civ4 with BUFFY mode loaded.
Get into any game.
Press Ctrl+Alt+O.
Select the Logging tab.
I've never used it personally, I keep notes by hand - the autolog is more thorough.
The created file should be in Program Files>...>Civ4>BTS>Mods>BUFFY>Autolog
3.
Check the maintenance/sign up threads. I think it's the 21st. The "team rules" are more guidelines rather than actual enforced rules. Usually, we brainstorm a general plan, then the on-deck player starts testing to propose a Pre-Play-Plan and further issues can be ironed out. Total turns to be played early on are usually based on strategic decisions... i.e. found city X, discover technology Y, etc.
Hello Ducks,
Nice feeling being back into playing.
I wish us good luck and a warm team spirit!
A couple of early questions:
- Would you guys agree that teching to FT1 (future tech 1) is our ultimate limiting factor. I mean every other objective could be obtained quicker without it.
- What would be a typical timeline for reaching FT1 while crushing AIs left and right? 350 turns?
As we know, some of these 10 objectives conflict with each other. Some can be done in parallel and some cannot. The analysis here is try to minimize the conflict and figure out the critical path from the start point to the end point. Once the critical path is identified, we can make further analysis on how to shorten the time to go along with it.
I break down the 10 into 3 major categories and 2 minor categories.
Category A: UN/AP leader/Future Tech 1/One AI eliminated/Humbaba must die.
Spoiler:
The first 3 objectives are purely coupled. To reach Future Tech 1, you need expand as much as you can. When the empire is big enough, it's natual to be the UN leader and have killed one AI. As the difficulty level is Emperor, maybe we need to gift the mass media to somebody so we can save 1000 hammers.
The 4th objective distract you a little bit as it requires you to spend 60 hammers and then 1 trade per turn until Humbaba is found. (The cost fo assasination can be ignored as it can be arranged late in the game) However, to circumnavigate the world is mostly needed since the map is semispheres. (Can any body describe the map type in more detials? Thank you.)
Category B: 2 legendary cities.
Spoiler:
This objective conflicts with Category A. In order to minimize its impact, the trick I know is: prioritizing some wonders/salon(astronomy)/drama/libralism when persuing the first goal. Maybe we have to turn 100% culture in the end, but it's better to have the length as short as possible. Louis can help to couple Category A and B.
Category A1: 3 holy Shrines
Spoiler:
I bet that the AIs will build. I don't prefer to raising GP to meet this objective. I'd rather to capture them when completing category A.
Category A2: 3 Corporate Headquaters
Spoiler:
This target is different from A1 because it is still a question whether it is profitable to build them ourself. If we goes too far on the way of state property, maybe we have to encourage AIs to build and we capture accordingly. This will be discussed further below
Category C Steal Tech
Spoiler:
How can one emperor AI be fast enough to research Astronomy/Physics first? The only way is to gift them Techs. Stealing either tech means loss to us, so we have to choose one that harms the least. I'll prefer Iron working. The loss is 40 hammer + 80 beakers when compared with researching myself. What's your thought?
Analysis on critical path
Spoiler:
As the emporor AI is slow at teching, we cannot rely on them too much. Therefore, if we focus on category A too much, we have to research almost every tech ourself. This means that we may need to slower our pace in Category A and speed up in Category B. It's hard to determine the equlibrium point, but I think the critical path should be a comination of A&B. We'd better get 2 Lengendary cities and Future tech 1 simutaneously.
With this conclusion, we can review the A1 and A2 again. The AIs with holy shrines should be our enemy and others should be our friends. We need our friends to trade the techs and we need our enemies for their cities and shrines.
1. If we don't want everyone to be our enemy, we may have to build some corporation headquarters ourself and try to benefit from it.
2. If we go state property, we may want to capture the head quarters and trade techs with our vassals. This is dangerous because capitulation may limit our city numbers with the 64% upper limit. Note that half the vassal's territory is counted as our land but the beaker output is far more less than the cities managed by ourselves.
If we want to shorten the critical path, we'd better control 60% of the lands and let our friends have the remaining 40%.
Victory Conditions
Spoiler:
OK. Finally we move to the discussion on this. The answer is already obvious. Domination+Culture or Diplomatic. Diplomatic is preferred as we can save the turns to get the third legendary city.
Hello Ducks,
Nice feeling being back into playing.
I wish us good luck and a warm team spirit!
A couple of early questions:
- Would you guys agree that teching to FT1 (future tech 1) is our ultimate limiting factor. I mean every other objective could be obtained quicker without it.
- What would be a typical timeline for reaching FT1 while crushing AIs left and right? 350 turns?
Future Tech 1 is clearly the limiting factor, nothing else even comes close.
350 turns seems quite excessive. In SGOTM11 it took ~240 turns and it was a rough start (fallout everywhere means slow start, etc.) but it was a very nice setup for corporations.
Depending on how rich land is and how feasible corporations/city spam (remember, vassals ON means high upkeep on other continents without Versailles/FP/State Property).
As we know, some of these 10 objectives conflict with each other. Some can be done in parallel and some cannot. The analysis here is try to minimize the conflict and figure out the critical path from the start point to the end point. Once the critical path is identified, we can make further analysis on how to shorten the time to go along with it.
I break down the 10 into 3 major categories and 2 minor categories.
Category A: UN/AP leader/Future Tech 1/One AI eliminated/Humbaba must die.
Spoiler:
The first 3 objectives are purely coupled. To reach Future Tech 1, you need expand as much as you can. When the empire is big enough, it's natual to be the UN leader and have killed one AI. As the difficulty level is Emperor, maybe we need to gift the mass media to somebody so we can save 1000 hammers.
The 4th objective distract you a little bit as it requires you to spend 60 hammers and then 1 trade per turn until Humbaba is found. (The cost fo assasination can be ignored as it can be arranged late in the game) However, to circumnavigate the world is mostly needed since the map is semispheres. (Can any body describe the map type in more detials? Thank you.)
Category B: 2 legendary cities.
Spoiler:
This objective conflicts with Category A. In order to minimize its impact, the trick I know is: prioritizing some wonders/salon(astronomy)/drama/libralism when persuing the first goal. Maybe we have to turn 100% culture in the end, but it's better to have the length as short as possible. Louis can help to couple Category A and B.
Category A1: 3 holy Shrines
Spoiler:
I bet that the AIs will build. I don't prefer to raising GP to meet this objective. I'd rather to capture them when completing category A.
Category A2: 3 Corporate Headquaters
Spoiler:
This target is different from A1 because it is still a question whether it is profitable to build them ourself. If we goes too far on the way of state property, maybe we have to encourage AIs to build and we capture accordingly. This will be discussed further below
Category C Steal Tech
Spoiler:
How can one emperor AI be fast enough to research Astronomy/Physics first? The only way is to gift them Techs. Stealing either tech means loss to us, so we have to choose one that harms the least. I'll prefer Iron working. The loss is 40 hammer + 80 beakers when compared with researching myself. What's your thought?
Analysis on critical path
Spoiler:
As the emporor AI is slow at teching, we cannot rely on them too much. Therefore, if we focus on category A too much, we have to research almost every tech ourself. This means that we may need to slower our pace in Category A and speed up in Category B. It's hard to determine the equlibrium point, but I think the critical path should be a comination of A&B. We'd better get 2 Lengendary cities and Future tech 1 simutaneously.
With this conclusion, we can review the A1 and A2 again. The AIs with holy shrines should be our enemy and others should be our friends. We need our friends to trade the techs and we need our enemies for their cities and shrines.
1. If we don't want everyone to be our enemy, we may have to build some corporation headquarters ourself and try to benefit from it.
2. If we go state property, we may want to capture the head quarters and trade techs with our vassals. This is dangerous because capitulation may limit our city numbers with the 64% upper limit. Note that half the vassal's territory is counted as our land but the beaker output is far more less than the cities managed by ourselves.
If we want to shorten the critical path, we'd better control 60% of the lands and let our friends have the remaining 40%.
Victory Conditions
Spoiler:
OK. Finally we move to the discussion on this. The answer is already obvious. Domination+Culture or Diplomatic. Diplomatic is preferred as we can save the turns to get the third legendary city.
A: Hemispheres
I agree that these are pretty much stuck together. Domination will be reached way earlier than teching is done. Being AP resident is probably better as it saves us 1 tech to research.
B:
I've got a bunny in my hat for this one I'll elaborate tomorrow evening, or allow shakabrade to do it in the meantime - don't have time to do so now.
A1:
Yes, usually the AIs build at least 3 in a game. We can always liberate cities to a vassal to avoid triggering Domination limit early. If not, getting 1~2 GPriests in a game is not uncommon.
A2:
This is quite easy, we might get 2 corporations anyway (Sushi+Mining) and a 3rd is not difficult.
C:
This is the one bugging me the most. I see 2 options.
1- Iron Working: usually the AI gets it relatively early, but it prevents just about any early gambit.
2- Physics: we can have a vassal research it, and then we steal it from him later.
The more I think about it, the more I want to steal Physics, but I don't want to have fewer cities that will slow down our research.
Astronomy is just too powerful on this kind of map (more conquering, intercontinental traderoutes+GLH) to wait on the AI.
Critical path: Future Tech 1, no doubt. This means setting up a big empire fast -> efficient and early warring -> 3~4 chained golden ages after that.
VC: Domination+whatever as I said earlier. Space is too slow, UN/AP are only every X turns, time is out, Conquest can't be it... my guess is cultural could be the fastest
It's nice coming back to this game after quite some time, but since it's been quite a while since I've played the game, you'll have to excuse me if I'm a bit "rusty"!
Here are a few thoughts right off the bat :
- given the map type, one of the few things that we are already sure of is that getting Astronomy ASAP will be a key here. It synergizes well with every possible VC combo + the specific requirements of this game (except maybe the espionage thing)
- Corporations HQ and Shrines are not going to be a major problem. The latter ones *should* be built by the AIs (we'll have to see the personalities of our rivals to be 100% sure though). As for the corporations HQ, I'd rather have us build them ourselves, AIs are much less reliable on those. Besides, it's not even a big trouble, we can keep one city "free" of any corporation to avoid any incompatibilities.
I think we'll all agree on Mining + Sushi, the last one will depend on what kind of GP we have readily available.
- Domination is a sure thing, but one thing to take care of will be not to trigger this victory too soon because of Sushi's culture, especially if we're moving the slider to 100% culture in the last few turns. My last 2 attempts at space ended up like this.....
- I'm looking forward to hearing kos & shaka's "trick" for the Legendaries cities. Actually when I read the game victory conditions, I was already thinking that Sushi + 100% slider should get our first two cities close to Legendary while we're "waiting" for Future Tech, but if you've found out something to hasten the process even more, then good for us.
For this reason, I'd be inclined to think that Cultural may be just as easy for our second VC. The other reason is that Diplomatic seems more of a constraint on our early game (keeping good relations with someone or having to maintain a vassal alive), is more tedious since you have to "work" the game mechanics, and as kossin already pointed out, can only happen every so often.
But anyway, without any knowledge of the map, we have to keep our mind open on this one. Map and AI behaviour may dictate our choice.
- About the tech steal requirement : I don't think I've ever used espionage before Medieval Era, so I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling that waiting for IW until we're able to gather enough EP to steal it would hamper us quite a bit.
OTOH, if there is a good teching AI in the game, we might steal Physics soon enough to keep up with our plan. We'll lose the GS, but I don't think we will be short of those at this time. And if we're still in the middle of some military action by that time, we'd probably want to go for Steel / AL first anyway, so ....
That's all I can think of right now, I'm sure more will come later.
It seems that we quickly got consensus on quite a few points.
Here I just list the ones with arguments for further discussion:
1. Reach Future Tech first, then take care of culture. OR
Control the pace of both so they can be finished at the same time period (being at the same turn is not necessary as it's too risky)
I'm with the latter now just because I want to get more techs traded.
2. State property OR free trade.
I vote for free trade simply because we have to build corporation. However, it is really hard to assess. But remember, the two routes will follow totally different tech path and infra strategies. We'd better be clear which to choose as early as possible.
3. Culture victory or Diplomatic victory (besides Dom)
I agree that Diplo is risky as we don't know what AIs we'll meet and which AIs will build shrines. However, the decision can be made later in the game. Definitely Diplo can save the turns to get the 3rd city lengendary.
4. Steal Iron working or Physics
When stealing Physics, we may loose 1 GS and the % bonus from salon/libarary/university if we turn the slides.
When stealing iron working, we may just spend 200 espionage points which can be accumulated in the first 50 turns. The only loss is the 40 hammers.
Therefore, even taking compound interest into consideration, iron workings seems still less harmful to us.
Checking in. Welcome on board, I expect to see an outstanding performance.
The objectives of this game seems to cover everything in CIV4, in fact, it basically a competition of science or the future tech 1 objective in this game, everything else merely adds a little handicap here or there.
1. VC
1st VC -- Military victory, does not matter domination or conquest, we are going to conquer most AIs and grab the best land tiles to support the research and resources needed for corporation.
2nd VC -- quite tricky and hard to predict from beginning. Culture, UN, and AP all have their pros and cons.
Culture -- With sushi resources and religions gained from conquering, it's not hard to produce ~1.5K or even 2K cpt if we run 100% culture slider (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9697878&postcount=2), so the chosen legendary cities are going to take ~30 turns after they are ready with all multipliers and 100% culture slider. However, this game is a science competition rather than culture race, I don't think we want to run even 10% culture slider. Therefore the actual time needed for legendary cities would be longer than 30 turns, which is probably longer than the time needed to research future tech 1, so some GAs are needed even for 2 legendary cities. However, GPs are quite tense in this game. We need
2~3 GPs for corporations
0~3 GPs for shrine
1 GP for academy
0~1 GP for bulbing Edu
6~10 GPs for 3~4 golden ages
- 4 free GPs (GA + GM + GS + Gspy)
The total is 5~14 + some GAs, does not seem too many at first glance, however, the time is tight since most of the GPs will be produced after the Sushi being spreaded and we are not too far away from Future tech 1 at that time. Therefore, we want to rely on less GPs but not more. IMO the culture victory is less likely a good choice.
AP -- could be the best 2nd VC if the voting time fits.
UN -- Compared with AP, it requires extra beakers and hammers, which is about 2~3 turns delay in my estimation. However, it's controllable. We could estimated the turn to future tech 1 and schedule the UN build.
Therefore, very likely the 2nd VC is either AP or UN, we should pause ~1400AD and do a serious estimation about which VC to go.
2. Expected Victory Date
Depends on the map, if isolated, around 1600AD (T230), otherwise, I'm expecting 1550AD (T220). This date affects when we should launch the GA and how many GAs we should expected.
3. Key techs
Edu for OU as fast as possible, but should yield to REXing
Medicine for Sushi, which helps both research and legendary cities
AL -- 75% more hammer bonus, critical for corporation spread and late stage wonders
Railroad for Mine, corporation that pays back the fastest and also helps the research and late stage wonders
4. Key world wonders in early stage
GLH to support the REXing
Oracle as usual, MC looks like a good choice.
TGL and HG, a little bit of resource dependent, but are good to try even without the resources.
ToA, Mids, and Colossus -- depend on resources
5. The EP objective
The required techs make me wondering whether we are isolated, if so, then Optics becomes an important tech to meet other AIs and urge them to go for Astro. (Since we cannot waiting for emperor AIs to settle to our nose) Otherwise, IW is no brainer.
6. The Opening
How to move the warrior and then how to settle our capital?
Last, I'd volunteer for the opening again, but have no problem to yield if others prefer to do it. Please tell your preferred slot, which makes the team work easy and organized. The time is tight for SSV like victory, we need to keep the pace fast. Late stage turns are important as well.
If you are successful, then you are set for this game. Please take time to quickly read through the administrative blahblah up in this thread, if not already done
If you can't load the game,
Spoiler:
first visit this page. Follow the instructions and paste the results either in this thread, or the Maintenance Thread. I will try to upload the needed files ASAP or maybe the staff can assist you faster.
If you are using Windows7 or Vista, visit this page for suggestions that worked for others.
Finally, if all else fails and you still want to participate, uninstall Civ4, delete all folders (even custom assets, etc.) then reinstall. Install the BUFFY mod again and try to load the save.
If that is still unsuccessful, retrace your steps up to here and be sure to let the game staff know, they are way more knowledgeable than me in this.
Remember to set your autosaves to every turn: My Games>BTS>Civilization4.ini
; The maximum number of autosaves kept in the directory before being deleted.
MaxAutoSaves = 50 Or whatever number you'd like here, just make sure it's larger than the number of turns of your set.
; Specify the number of turns between autoSaves. 0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = 1
Also, no one gets to play before a plan has been accepted by the team. Early on, this might mean every mouse click you will do has been pre-established but by end game it will generally be very broad.
Finally, I'd recommend you save manually every turn as only manual saves are allowed to be loaded, and it can be useful for going back and seeing when an AI goes WHEOOHRN for example.
So, the key is espionage. The spread culture mission in particular.
The cost is typically 1 : 1 but if you manage to get all the discounts, it becomes ~1 : 4.5
The beauty of this is that
1) we need to set up some strong espionage base anyway
2) you get massive passive from a huge empire
3) you can gift any city you own, spread the culture and recapture it right away at Legendary status
4) instead of having 2 cities work hard, you have the whole empire contributing and which you convert to
5) No need to farm Artists, you just spam Scientists and Merchants to race to Future Tech 1
6) it's sneaky
I've provided a few saves below if you want to look - unfortunately PMs don't allow attachments so it's an outside link which hopefully works.
Maybe not quite realistic but it shows the power of the strategy. For 8,387 and ~1600, I generated over 40,000 culture within 33 successful spy missions.
As I'm typing this, I realized I did not add a traderoute to the target city, which makes the ratio ~ 1 : 5.5 and brings the cost down to 7,187
So there you have it. The idea is to make culture a non-issue for most of the game so we can concentrate better on what really matters: fast big empire, fast late tech.
So basically:
-build buildings as the game goes on to get passive
-set up an AI to receive 2-3 cities that have quite a bit of culture, and a good amount of spies at 50% discount
-generate mass quickly and recapture Legendary city at small cost.
Unless there are massive quantities of Sushi resources, there is no way to go faster than this. Plus, intercontinental upkeep will be big with vassals on.
In theory, 25,000~30,000 & ~150 spies will give us a cultural victory.
For 1 city, you can see below approximate total costs.
Legend: [Starting culture of city] - [Number of successful missions required] - [ cost at 1 : 4.5 discount] - [ cost at 1 : 5.5 discount]
The whole process should take 1 full turn for each city where we do not control it:
Turn -4 : spies get in place
Turn 0 : gift city, wait 1 turn for new tile culture
Turn 1 : spread culture up to Legendary
Turn 1 : recapture Legendary city
Great trick. That's absolutely better than the normal ways, though it requires tedious work to build 150 spies. I'm glad to learn something new by joining this team.
Getting the extra spies for Cultural Victory might make research 1~2 turns longer, but it could be better than waiting 3 turns to time Domination with UN/AP.
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to cash.
and capture Thebes 
I'll elaborate tomorrow evening, or allow shakabrade to do it in the meantime - don't have time to do so now.
: 1
but if you manage to get all the discounts, it becomes ~1
and 
