You will play as
Mehmed the Defender of Faiths.
You are Mehmed II and you are in charge of what's left of the Ottoman Empire.
Just a few years ago your glorious capital was flourishing under your King's rulership and you and your men were proud to protect its borders against all foes. Your people engaged in trade and cultural exchange with various foreign tribes and the future seemed bright.
But it all changed when all the different preachers arrived. When the foreigners brought their beliefs to your city, the King tried to prevent them from spreading and caused great unrest. And now, you find yourself at the height of a devastating civil war. Your King is dead and the capital is burning.
You took your loyal guard with you as well as a small group of your subjects. They have followed you to the northern border of your nation to rebuild your empire.
Your starting situation
Click for a full size image
Your guard is well trained: The warrior and the archer both have the city garrison promotion and your scout is an experienced medic.
The people that will settle your new city know about The Wheel, Fishing and Agriculture, but they lack any higher education.
Your former capitol lays to the south. The last time you saw it it was burning and the people were fighting in the streets. It might be dangerous to go back anytime soon.
Your goals
You have sworn to rebuild your empire and to ensure such madness will never be repeated, by encouraging and not suppressing faith. To do so...
Take control of the Religions! - Only you (or your vassals) may own a Holy City.
Bring them together! - Each of your cities has at least two religions. There are at least seventy temples in your cities.
Promote Equality! - You must adopt and stay in Free Religion upon learning Liberalism.
End the madness! - You will be told how to do that after you capture three Holy Cities or when you have met every other civilization.
Prove that you are a worthy ruler! - You win the game in any way but conquest.
Game Options
Ancient Era Start
Normal Speed
No Goody Huts
No Events
All Victory Conditions Enabled
Map size Large
9 Opponents
Normal Barbs
Map: Custom made Pangaea
Difficulty: Immortal
==================================
Timetable
The
Pre-game Discussion Thread for this game is now open for business.
The team discussion threads for this game will open on or before
July 1
The team starting saves will be available
here on
July 7.
The completion deadline will be
October 31. Plan your game, and please avoid a last minute struggle to meet the deadline.
Please be warned, except in the event of cosmic catastrophes. THERE WILL BE NO DEADLINE EXTENSIONS.
[*]
Rules and Procedures
Please visit the
Civ4 SGOTM reference thread to check out the rules and procedures to ensure that you are adequately prepared for this game.
Note, the usual GOTM restrictions apply: no replaying, no liberating cities to a civ you are at war with (except in peace deal), no subsidizing resource trades with AI, no goto mapping or flying camera, only 1 tech from Oracle/Liberalism.
Team Rules*
Required
- Read the various rule threads posted by AlanH.
- Before playing every single turnset, verify that your ini file has the autosave interval set to 1.
- Before playing every single turnset, verify that the BUFFY log is enabled.
- After uploading your save file, post BOTH the CivFanatics log (displayed on the upload confirmation web page) and the BUFFY log.
- No reloads! We get one shot, no replays, period!
- No reading other team threads. The easiest way to do this is to use the thread tools to subscribe to this thread. You could also bookmark the thread.
- When looking at the save, do not perform any irreversible action. Do not move units, whip, or trade.
- The flying camera exploit is banned.
- If the game crashes, stop and PM AlanH with the details of what happened. Wait for instructions from AlanH before proceeding.
- Do not open auto saves except to recover from a crash.
- Stop and ask the team for advice if a new opportunity presents itself.
- Stop and ask the team if anything goes wrong.
- Have fun!
Strongly Recommended
- Make manual saves often, preferably every turn, in case we need to review diplomacy screens or other metrics.
- Pause the game before uploading or examining it.
- Put TEST flags on the map on test games, and name test games so it's obvious they aren't the real game.
- Let us know if you are unable to make a deadline, get too busy in real life, or are going offline for vacation.
- Do not automate workers.
- Do not use city governors.
- Do not leave units on goto orders.
- Have fun!
Etiquette
- Active participation -- Your contribution to every set is important, even if it's an 'I agree.' Although everyone might have real life issues sometimes, it's courteous to notify the team of your absence.
- Pre-Play Plan -- The spirit of succession games 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.
- Timing -- We will stick to a schedule in order to complete this game within the 3 month ironcast deadline. It is still important to reach consensus and ensure quality of play.
-An "Initial PPP" should be posted within 24 hours of the previous submission. After 24 hours, ANY player is open to posting an Initial PPP for team debate. Getting the debate going is sometimes the biggest delay as everyone may be waiting for a specific person to post the Initial PPP.
-Game must be played within 48 hours of team consensus, otherwise ANY available player can post a "SUB" and immediately play the set
-A "WILL PLAY" must be announced by the next rostered player, after the team consensus to 24 hours after a save is submitted. Otherwise YOU WILL BE SKIPPED.
-Some sets will take much longer than others. If the UP player cannot play within 48 hrs of consensus due to RL issues, please inform the team early.
- Please, please, please include a report when you submit the save, complete with the CivFanatics log AND the BUFFY log. You may submit your report later but it would be preferable to have it before the discussion on the next set starts.
- Finish all your discussed turns and upload the game saved at the END of the discussed part.
- Don’t be afraid to post things that may appear stupid or evident. Each player has strengths and weaknesses. There are numerous examples in the earlier SGOTM threads when the most simple rule has been unknown to players (such as the difference between peace treaty and cease fire). Don’t be afraid that other members will think you are stupid.
- Don’t play intoxicated (from alcohol, drugs or smoke). Don’t play when you are too tired. Don't play when your kids or spouse are talking to you.
- 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.
- Use smilies and emoticons in your posts. Jokes, humor, sarcasm, and offensive language can be misinterpreted, except when I am making them, when I will expect everyone to laugh!!
- Remember that a lot of players read what we post. Don't be rude or disrespectful to any player not on our team.
- SG's are team games. Be a good team member. Post your ideas, argue your case, and encourage and praise your team mates. Don't be afraid to post in our game thread. That is what it's for.
- Have fun!
Turn Sets
There are 7 major parts to every set.
- Initial Pre-Play Plan: see below.
- Voting: everyone voices his or her 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 Initial 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.
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. If others feel that other missing issues should be raised, then the debate after the Initial PPP is the time to do it!
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 and builds -
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 assignments (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 whip...)
- 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:
- What you will check for every turn (EP, trades available, GPT available, etc.) [this is easy].
- 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 will almost certainly decide to slack on #2 once the game becomes well in hand, but for the first 100 turns this is expected.
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.
What your set report should cover:
- WHEOOHRN alerts and possible/likely targets
- Great Generals and Great Engineers in distant lands
- Religions founded
- Wonders built
- When to renegotiate trades
- What you were planning for the future
- How the plan worked out/didn't
- Anything unexpected
- Remember to post BOTH the CivFanatics log (found on the upload confirmation screen) and the BUFFY log.
*Copied from
neilmeister, Apostrophes SGOTM 19, which was itself liberally copied from various team threads in previous SGOTM games.
References and useful links:
Test Games, Dot Maps, and Spreadsheets
We have 8 cities and go into builder mode trying to get a library, several forges, and Colossus. We discover the Hindu and Christian Holy Cities. Confucian island is seen up north. Louis is in war mode for almost all of the turnset. We met the last AI on T76. We trade for Alphabet on T76. 
