SGOTM 22 - TTfkapr

[AlanH]

Welcome to your BtS SGOTM 22 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 posts of the Maintenance Thread. If any changes occur in the game settings or rules, they will be posted in that thread.

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 with the game, and - Have Fun!

 

[Gumbolt]

Most important rules and tips

We can only look at our thread, and only download our save. Includes lurker threads, not for us.
It's best to bookmark this one, so you avoid misclicks.
If you accidently click on another team's save or thread, we must pm Alan and let him know.

All moves & actions (i.e. units moved, trades with AIs) that cannot be reversed in the live saves are final (and we must live with them if by accident).
Reloading is forbidden.

Our live game should always be paused, and ideally only the current player removes pause.
For example always pause it before uploading, for others.
You can check stuff like city tiles and change them, without saving cos those changes are not final, but it's best to do so only if really needed. Mostly we will use test games for this stuff.

Autosave must be set to each turn in your CivilizationiV.ini file (can be found under user/name/your documents/my games/bts (for me).
In the editor, search for "auto" and find: Specify the number of turns between autoSaves. 0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = 4
Set this to Interval = 1

If your game crashes and you lost not reversible actions, we must pm Alan.
Autosave will often be best to use here (and replay all actions, trying your best to copy them), but saving often can still be helpful on long turns.

If you start playing after we made our plans, but something unusual happens (or you are just not sure, and think it's maybe important)..
stopping and asking for advice is usually best. We are in no hurry.

One mistake i made last game, fortifying an unit and then forgetting the new plan said we need that unit elsewhere.
I would suggest fortifying units like city guards only when we are sure we will not need them for a while, otherwise we can use skip turn each round until we are sure.

Cycling thru all our cities before ending turns is good, who knows what governors will change (darn those spies!).

Probably edit this up later.

 

[Gumbolt]

Game report as it happens. To do. To include turnsets where cities were settled.

T1-12 Shulec TS.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=552098&page=4
PPP for Shuelec T3-12.
We settle in place. Explore with warriors. We met all the AI. Teched AH. Worker in capital.

T13-T18 Packers
We decide on Masonry and continue to explore.

T19-T25 Gumbolt
We tech towards the wheel and build TGW with 1 more warrior first. A bear shows up near our southern warrior but we defeat the monster. At times we forgot the 20% bonus we have against monarchy animals. Rome is now size 3. We meet a bear in th east and run off.

T25-T33
Pottery is in! We also have 3 mines and are well on way to TGW.
2840bc and Oracle is BIADL. Glad we avoided that option!!

Much debate about when barbs will appear. 2520bc! T35!
We debate if it is worth shrinking Rome to build TGW a turn soon. The risk takers prevail here.

T35-42 Gumbolt
The great wall is complete. All barbs near our borders were beaten off or just never really threatened us. We tech towards sailing.

T42-48
We decide on writing and delay completion of sailing. Second city goes west of Rome near the Fish.

T48-51
So we decide to try for mids building stone city. Into the fog we venture hoping no barbs kill our warriors.
Page 24/25/26 has some scary moments after several barb warriors kept spawning. Yyeah and team kept their nerves.
However we reach T60 and the southern stone site is secured. We tech BW to almost completion and switch away.

T60-63 and T63-79 Shulec
Third city settled and we are ready to start mids with help of the stone. We also devise a plan to gift away stone city before all the Ai reach 4 cities. We also discover agriculture. Meanwhile we build roads towards the horse site and a settler in Fish.

So the debate to gift stone city early to ensure the Arabs accept it or complete mids sooner. The risk takers won this debate. The risk was rewarded. T80-82 Shulec
Mids is built and Stone city gifted away.

Beware Persians with Red fists is the moral of the next story

T82-83 Elite
We settle the horse city delaying BW. Then tech BW to see if we have copper! We don't!

T84-T87 Elite
So things start to go wrong! Happily planning our game when Darius stack appears near the fish city. Anybody want to tech Archery??
P36 and we are putting hammers into a wall to whip. Archers being built too. A 2 pop whip for a wall is never good! We literally had no other way to keep the city.

T88-91 Elite- So the battle begins
A blood bath. We lose 4 units but manage to defeat his phalanx. Fortunately his second attack with his wounded units failed and the stack was destroyed. We got lucky here as if his stack had taken any other route fish would be gone by now as we would of never seen it coming. On the unlucky side we were forced to whip units to keep a city. Lucky but unlucky with our game badly set back.

Our exploration with workboats now is going well with many Ai found. Rome size 5 with a library now planned. A second worker in Fish city (Antium) is also on the way.

 

[Gumbolt]

SGOTM 22 - Caput Mundi

[IMG=right]http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/sgotm22civ.jpg[/IMG]

You are Julius Caesar. Your destiny is to construct Caput Mundi, the capital of the world. The Roman people trust you to lead them to greatness and build the eternal city. In a world filled with savages and with the cards stacked against you, it won't be an easy task. You better be prepared for the worst.

Your goals in this scenario:

• Never change or lose your capital.
• Build 7 Wonders of the World in your capital.
• Win the game by space or conquest.

All your actions should be dictated by the main goal of keeping Rome well and protected. Therefore you may only found a city (or keep one you got from another nation) if:

• Your capital has at least twice the number of civilians as your city count (including the new one). So if you own three cities and want to build a fourth one you need a population of at least eight.
• Your capital has at least as many civilian buildings as your city count (including the new one). Your palace is a building, Wonders are buildings and all normal buildings count but barracks, walls, stables and the like do not.
• Your Capital has at least twice the number of military units defending it as your city count (including the new one). Once you discover Bronze Working or Iron Working, warriors and scouts won't count towards this any more.

Clearifications, Examples:

Spoiler :

For all requirements:

All requirements have to be met whenever you get a new city in any way (founding it, conquering it, buying it, etc) after you founded your capital. They have to be met only when you get the city and can be broken afterwards. You wont be disqualified if you move troops out, lose a building or shrink your population after you founded a city.

For the buildings requirement:

"Building" in this context refers to:
-Your palace
-All Wonders (National Wonders and Wonders of the World) and Projects if they show up in the buildings list of your city
-Special buildings (Academy)
-All normal buildings in the game if they are shown in the buildings list of your city

A few buildings are excluded and don't count, namely:
-Barracks
-Bomb Shelters
-Bunker
-Castle
-Drydock
-Stable
-Walls

If wonders grant you a building it will count as long as it's in the list.
If a building is disabled in any way and doesn't work, it still counts as long as it's shown in the list.

This scenario is intentionally more straight forward than previous games. It won't be easy, but less confusing, hopefully. Our goal was to offer an opportunity to players who didn't take part in any SGOTM in the past. All our teams are happy to accept new members of any skill level.

Your starting area
Click for a full size image


The AI-difficulty level is monarch.
Your opponents received some significant starting bonuses including the priesthood technology.
You begin with three warriors and the hunting technology in addition to your normal starting units and techs.

Game Options
Ancient Era Start
Normal Speed
No Vassals
No Goody Huts
No Events
Raging Barbarians
Space or Conquest victory only

Map size Standard
6 Opponents
Map: Modified Pangaea
Difficulty: Monarch
=================================

Timetable

The Pre-game Discussion Thread for this game is now open for business.

The team discussion threads for this game are open.

The team starting saves will be available here on September 12.

The completion deadline will now be January 7th. 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.

Notes

• Versions
  This game will be played in Civilization IV Beyond the Sword, version 3.19, using the standard BUFFY-3.19.003 HoF mod. We do not propose to use a newer version of BUFFY, even if it arrives in time.
  
  If a later BtS patch is released during this game you will NOT be able to use it to play. You will need to complete this game in BtS version 3.19 before updating your copy of BtS, or you should create and update a separate copy. See also the note about Steam updates below.
  
  Macintosh players can only join in if they are able to run the Windows software on their system.
  
• Steam
  If you play BtS using Steam, then your BtS will auto-update to a new version which is incompatible with those playing the DVD version. You will therefore need to install the Steam "beta" version to play this game. You can check whether your copy of BtS is compatible by downloading a SGOTM 21 starting save. If it loads OK in your copy of BtS, then you are ready to play.
  
• 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.
  
  All saved game files uploaded to the server are parsed through software that extracts and archives data about your save, including reload count for each turn set.
  

• 
  
  Here is the rule blurb from main thread.
  
  JC is:
  Imperialist. 100% bonus on great generals emmergence and 50% production bonus on settlers.
  Organised: -50% civic upkeep. Double production on LH, CH and factories.
  
  In this game Romans start with fishing and mining. Plus a bonus tech of hunting.
  
  Our UU is a strength 8 Preatorian and replaces the swordsman. 45 hammers.

 

[shulec]

Checking in. Nice to join you guys. I'll roll with the flow on play style.

 

[BSPollux]

Welcome to SGOTM#22

I'm glad we finally started this game! This scenario has a lower AI-level, but don't be over confident as it won't be easy! There's no fun without threat in Civ, at least that's what I think. So don't be discouraged if you bump your head: It's meant to happen.

As far as I know most admins and mapmakers before me have been quite silent during the game. But I like to stay in touch with the players. I read the threads and I might comment from time to time. If you want to be left alone, just tell me. It's your thread and if you don't want any visitors that's entirely your choice.

It would be nice if you somehow mark the posts (turn reports) in which you got new cities, so that we/I can check if you stick to the rules. And we all love to see screenshots all the time.

OK, that's all. Have fun and good luck with your game!
For the glory of Rome!

 

[yyeah]

Hi all !!!

Lets win it

I got a feeling taht our neighbours are shaka monti and genghis khan hahaha.

But anyway i think that we all agree GW would be nice wonder to have here and conquest vict will be fastest.
What i was thinking here is something like prets rush some1, but they start with Priesthood, that meens close to Feudalism and what we do if our target will hit Longbows? or will have like metal units and walls.

Well we can use GS form GW to support city revolt right ?.

Offcourse we dont know do we have somebody to rush and do we have iron,but that was my 1st thought how 1st war can look like when i saw this map ,speaking generally, tell me what you think about it and tell me yours

Sry for my Eng its not my mature language hope you understood me

 

[elitetroops]

Checking in.

First the bad news, some disturbing news at work yesterday, which means I will not be able to be very active the first 6-8 weeks. I'll follow the thread and comment as much as I can, but do not count me in to play any early turnsets or to do much testing at the moment. Really sorry for having to start this game like this...

Some initial thoughts on the game:

Winning
Conquest is the obvious victory condition. A normal monarch pangaea can easily be beaten with nothing but HAs, praets would be a walk in the park. I don't expect this to be all normal, so we might need some more advanced units, but I do not expect us to need anything past trebs and maces at this point. 7 wonders in the capital is the bottleneck, which of course also will slow down conquest as we cannot build that many troops in capital. And we won't have that many other cities for unit production. Also have to stop other AI from claiming the lands we raze... This might be tough..

Wonders
I was also thinking about GW. Raging barbs can be a nuisance even on monarch, better to send them to our neighbors. Even if we could spawnbust our immediate surroundings, we also need lots of units in capital to be able to expand, so better if we can use all available units for that. Early production kind of sucks though, testing is needed. Then we need 6 more, the cheaper the better. Let's see what resources we find. Mids and HG would be great for GE points.

GP
I think GEs are by far the most valuable here. If we can generate 2-3 to rush wonders in capital, this could remarkably speed up victory date. Shame they are not that easy to get early...

Expansion
Expand to 2 or 3 cities before BW? (After BW we need axes/archers instead of warriors in cap when we found new cities.) If we go for GW, I have a feeling we can't build more than one city before that and we'll need BW for the wonder. But there might be no need to expand more early, we should only grab the very best and most important spots due to the restrictions on expansion.

AI
We'll find out soon enough what other bonuses than PH they've got. Good point that this puts them quite close to feud. However, I'm pretty sure they will backfill most of the ancient and classical techs before they start on feud. Can be tested. If we can choke a few AI and prevent them from expanding/hooking up strategic resources this would be very good. We should steal as many workers as we can as early as possible. I don't think we'll be making many friends anyway in this game, as we will have to be very aggressive, raze holy cities and so on.

I'm abroad the incoming weekend, won't have access to the save when it is released. Probably no time to check thread that day either, but will be back sunday evening to have a look.

 

[Gumbolt]

Initial thoughts.

Raging barbs. We will need to test what year these will enter our borders and decide how to best use our 4 warriors to fog bust. Great wall would add an early building here but give us G spy points. We have 5 hills for production near our capital but no real food. My argument against GW is we appear to be quite close to the southern coast. We may want lots of warriors initially to expand. Without BW we have 4 grass mines.

Happiness. Lots of wine and bananas. Almost seems that the map maker wants us to tech monarchy over military techs. The reality is after the first few cities we will be limited till we get population, units and buildings.

Expansion.
Strategy for new cities regarding wonder/buildings! (Granary/Palace/Library/monuments/wonders.) Not as easy as it looks. Getting 2/3 buildings quickly for cities no 2/3 will require a little thought. Early religion for conf? Opens temples and monst. Oracle opens up shrine too. (AI start with PH ) GW opens up Scotland yard. (The shrines/SY will take a while to come through.)

We will have to look at best way to have x number of units in our capital. BW makes warriors redundant. Which suggests we avoid it or try to find some horse. I remember a previous game where TSR used chariots to keep Ai down to 1 city. Stealing workers too. Keeping Ai at 1 city saves us a lot of work. We have the option of archers too. Pends which way we go here. HA/archers VS Pret.

GPS - Best here will be GS for academy. Ge for quick wonders. Might mean early MC? Of course with no Philosphy or mids it would take forever to get a GE. Unless we mix Gene pools. Gspy gets scotland yard. (An argument for GW.)

Tech strategy if you belive all of the above would be very confused. What is more important? Happiness? Getting more buildings into our capital? Beating down the Ai early on. That or securing our borders. Most teams will undoubtedly try for Oracle and maybe GW. The main issue for city no 2 is we need 4 buildings! Hmmmm. We have no commerce resources in site. Hmm if they all start with PH then GW and stealing techs could be useful.

I think some play testing here would be very useful.

Lots to think about here.

 

[Gumbolt]

Welcome Shulec and Yyeah to the team.

I was trying to get SoundJata to sign up. he is having issues with Buffy working. If anyoen fancies PM'ing him with advice maybe he might join?? Assuming he has viewed no threads.

 

[elitetroops]

The main issue for city no 2 is we need 4 buildings!

Therefore you may only found a city (or keep one you got from another nation) if:

• Your capital has at least twice the number of civilians as your city count (including the new one). So if you own three cities and want to build a fourth one you need a population of at least eight.
• Your capital has at least as many civilian buildings as your city count (including the new one). Your palace is a building, Wonders are buildings and all normal buildings count but barracks, walls, stables and the like do not.
• Your Capital has at least twice the number of military units defending it as your city count (including the new one). Once you discover Bronze Working or Iron Working, warriors and scouts won't count towards this any more.

We need 2 buildings for city no 2, not 4. So palace+granary is enough.

 

[Gumbolt]

Good correction! It's population that has to be twice as much as city count. So size 6 for 3rd city. Which in itself would cause a red face. Good to get our head around these rules now.

 

[shulec]

My initial impression is that we skip the GW. We spam warriors and archers for fog busting and city "defense" requirement. Great Spies suck, especially on lower levels.

I assume city defense is not the same as city garrison. My interpretation would mean troops in BFC.

It should be tested, but getting archery and spamming archers may be better than spamming warriors. However, if we end up in HR, those warriors could translate to happiness.

I think our early game strategy will be driven by surrounding land/city sites and AI proximity.

I think conquest will require late game techs, otherwise, how could Space Colony victories even be competitive?

 

[elitetroops]

I'm pretty sure "military units defending it" means city garrison.

Raging barbs. We will need to test what year these will enter our borders and decide how to best use our 4 warriors to fog bust.

Raging barbs means they can enter our borders as soon as they spawn.

Here's DanF on barb behavior:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7461350&postcount=6

I think figuring out optimal expansion is the most issue important here. How many cities and when. This is a decision all teams face, and no team will have any prior experience on how to deal with the situation, so this might even out the field a bit. I think even top teams can misjudge the scenario, especially without complete map knowledge early on.

What would we reckon is the maximum city count we can achieve? Buildings is no problem for the first 8 or so cities as we will have palace+granary+forge no matter what, most likely library+aqueduct and then a bunch of wonders. Pop 16 is doable with HR, as long as we can handle health. We need to have units around anyway. A 16 unit stack in cap is quite a lot though. Will slow down warfare significantly. But maybe we don't even need 8 cities for conquest, 6 could even be enough. It's monarch AI after all. If we go into late game, then we can probably have over 10 cities if we want.

Not sure about academy in capital. We need a lot of production and growth, will not be much time to work cottages.

 

[Gumbolt]

And that is exactly correct. I thought my reply:

made it clear, but I guess I was wrong about that.

You need to build the buildings in your capital and grow your capitals population and you need to have the units in your capital if you want to found new cities.

So I would rule out BFC idea.

Having looked at a game on S and T section with raging barbs lately I saw they used about 4-5 warriors to fog bust early. This pretty much killed off the barb threat. So GW isn't essential. Useful but not essential. Revent started the game. War is peace link.

City count will be tough. If we wanted cottages it means a smaller capital. So the reality is we would need farms to max out capital size to ensure we can grab 8-9 cities. Of course a size 18 city seems unlikely before 1ad. If we have farmed the capital we then need to think about commerce? Where will the commerce come from? We have no commerce resources. No stone or marble in sight either. Hmmmm. Or do we accept a smaller empire. If we are on a continent you could pretty much roll over the Ai with HA. If sea travel is required then we need a port. Scouting here will be key.

 

[Revent]

Checking in. I just got a job and on top of uni have found myself with less time to play Civ than I had expected. Nonetheless, I will try my best to contribute

 

[shulec]

Enjoy!

P.S. Please make any test games with Buffy so we don't have to switch back and forth from the mod.

EDIT: test game revised and reposted later in the thread.

 

[shulec]

Here are some interesting SIP screenies:

Cottaged (riverside only) and mined (non-riverside only)

Spoiler :

Farmed (pre-biology) and windmilled

Spoiler :

Farmed (post-biology) and windmilled. MAX POPULATION

Spoiler :

Without digging deeper, SIP already looks best to me.

 

[yyeah]

What is this test save ?
I should open it and check doest it working yeah ?

Good point elitetroops with this Great Enginiers but to get couple of them we need Hgs witch will e great wonder to have anyway becouse of rules.
Thing about GW is we dont know do Ais start with Mansonry if they do i dont think we can bulid it, and if we are paying AC probably we can manage to bulid it wihtout BW if we palying JC BW is needed. Withotu GW we will need a lot of units to garnison in cap ( so we can expand ) and for defeding tiles, but maybe fortified warriors can do it i dont know.
Yea i totaly agree that Gw isnt like must have but we allso need to bulid 7 wonders in cap so getting 1 early is preety good, witch one you want to bulid then HGs is like must have .

I allso was thinking about stealing as many workers as possible but we need good escort for them becouse move them to our cap could be hard.

About expansions well to bulid 1st exp ( that would be probably help city) we need to bulid only 1 buliding,fastest is monument.
In this case if we want to get fast exp we would have to go for something like worker,monument ( tech mistycyzm ;/) settler ( at size 4 ),
But is it worth to go for mistycyzm and can we defend ourself ? ( becouse we would have to stop fog busting, garnison all 4 warriors for time putting exp, after exp we can move them out again).

 

[elitetroops]

What is this test save ?
I should open it and check doest it working yeah ?

The test save is supposed to be an exact copy of the real game, according to the info we have at the moment. I assume that at this point it has the lands and units from the given screenshot. This can be used to test different openings and micro. Play around with it as much as you want, try different settling locations, build/tech orders and so on, to find the strongest opening. But keep in mind that any fogged lands might be different in real game.

As the game progresses it should be updated with new info, explored lands and so on. Also, it would be best if the active players plays the exact same moves in the test game and uploads to keep it up to date.