[BTS] SGOTM 25 - Unusual Suspects

[AlanH]

Welcome to your BtS SGOTM 25 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.

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Good luck with the game. Enjoy!

 

[kcd_swede]

Signing in! Anybody have a clue how to approach this game?

 

[kcd_swede]

The game will start from Classic age, and the Difficulty level will be Deity. You will start with Ancient Techs and More.

Mao, the Chinese leader, will be rated by 7 ministry members in the Political Bureau when the victory comes. The maximum points which can be scored by each member is 100 points.
The faster team winning the game with 420 points will be awarded the laurel. If two team wins at the same turn, the team with higher points wins.

• Culture Ministry: 100 points * the total culture of the top 3 cities/150,000
• Diplomatic Ministry: 25 points for being AP leader, 25 points for being UN leader, 50 points for diplomatic victory votes: 25 points * AP victory votes % / 75%+ 25 points* UN victory votes % / 67%
• Civil Ministry: 100 points* (81-the sum of 9 ranks) /72
• Military Ministry: 30 points * population% / 35% + 30 points * Land area % / 60% + 40 points * (destroyed civilization + vassal civilization )/ 8
• Science Ministry: 100 points * eras of all techs learned / 7
• Economy Ministry: 100 points * cities with corporation / total cities (except barbarians)
• Construction Ministry: 100 points * wonders owned/25. (All wonders(world+national) count.)

(points will be rounded down for each member before being summed up)

Your starting area
Click for a full size image [subject to change]


Game Options
Rivals: 8 AIs
Difficulty: Deity
Starting Era: Classical
Bonus Techs: All Ancient Techs; Mathematics, Code of Laws, Drama, Metal Casting, Machinery, Iron Working, Philosophy and Communism
Bonus Units: a bomber, a great spy and a great prophet.
Bonus Wonders: Great Wall
Speed: Normal
Options: No Events, No Goody Huts
Victory Conditions: All enabled

Map settings
Map: Custom
Mapsize: Standard

Mao is Expansive and Protective
Unique Unit: Cho-Ku-Nu
Unique Building: Pavilion

Timetable

The team discussion threads are open.

The team saves should be available here by January 20th

In order to give you plenty of time to complete this game, the completion deadline will be April 30th. 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.

 

[kcd_swede]

Batting order:
kcd_swede ... ts1 (2000bc- 1800bc) t0-t5
Zhary --- ts2 (1800bc-xxx) t5-t10
SittinDown --- ts3 (?) t10-t15
Folket ts4 (t15-20)
(jatamixx- soundjata) - not playing but making PPP
Revent
Deckhand

 

[kcd_swede]

Reserved

 

[Zhary]

Signin in!

 

[SittinDown]

Here

 

[SittinDown]

i experimented with a somewhat similar game with the deity bonuses. the bomber was very nice for early scouting, and i *think* it was helping me a lot with barbs. weakens them a lot, so you can rack up some promotions. the bomber itself was not as great as I hoped for early conquest. I was on fractal, and it took me a while to build a city in range of anther AI city. i still needed a non-trivial sized stack to take over one of their cities, but the bomber was really nice for weakening their retaliation stack.

i settled the great spy, and i didn't really do much with the great prophet, because mostly I wanted to see what I could accomplish with the bomber. i ran SP pretty quickly - i think i swapped into slavery and SP.

...as far as running the numbers on how to get the 420 points, I didn't get too far with that. wondering if espionage for culture is the right way to go for cultural points, esp with starting with a great spy.

 

[kcd_swede]

I'm looking at the 7 ministries, and thinking that winning the game gets you 100pts in almost any category except AP win. The rest will give you some points... I think 420 should be easy for us... we win as fast as we can and our usual over-building should get us the points. The points only will slow down the fastest teams, I think.

I'd scout as much as possible with the GSpy before using her. Scouting well is always at a premium in the early game, and deity barbs make that hard by any other means. But the bomber doesn't hurt either. I guess we'll have to see once our landmass is visible how to use it.

Left to my own devices, AP is the only type of victory I get at Deity level, but we can do better as a team. World Wonders are almost impossible to build withot a GE, so hopefully we have some neighbors that build some for us.

 

[kcd_swede]

Is that Stalin or Toku in the start pic? If Toku, he has to be destroyed sooner.

 

[Zhary]

A short analysis of the points and vc:
Space/un: This should be second options we can do better than this unless something goes wrong.
Cultural:Generating a lot of cultural point usually means taking economic from science so I don't think it's the way here.
Ap:Great for a fast win but squeezin in all points will be hard. Might work with wonders and corporations.
Dom/conq:
Here we get almost a full 200 points from domestic and military so I think this is the way to go. The rest of the points we first get from having half full science and wonder. After that corporation is the key to get the victory.
I think the fastest road to corporation is the golden laurel here. Spreading the Corp is usually fast once one get there.

BTW I didn't read Al the preface discussion was it clear that it will be the deity save?

 

[kcd_swede]

BTW I didn't read Al the preface discussion was it clear that it will be the deity save?

Yes, Deckhand stated so in the Maint thread, but he couldn't edit the start page himself. But Deity it is (unless they change their minds... again).

I agree that a fast Dom is good for everything. Always is. Easiest to time for when 420 points are acheived, too. Bomber helps, and we may want to start in Police State (Communism at start). Kremlin is a bit to expensive early on, but if we get a GE that's a good one to take, as I expect much whipping.

 

[Folket]

Reporting in. I have made a short analysis of the game.

 

[Folket]

I think conquest is a nobrainer. Let us avoid domination since it will loose us Civil score. I also think we should start with the deity save. The bomber is nice. Sin ce the cities looks to be presettled the difference between immortal and deity is not to bad. The great spy can be used to get 100 culture score at the end of the game. Before that we can use him for scouting.

So score targets.
Culture Ministry: 100 points, trivial with a great spy. Just gift away the city closest to our capital and use our great spy to get enough espionage.
Diplomatic Ministry: 50 points, AP leader and all AP votes.
Civil Ministry: 100 points, trivial at conquest victory
Military Ministry: 100 points, trivial at conqeust victory
Science Ministry: 14 points, what we start with.
Economy Ministry: 0 points, we would not want to play that long
Construction Ministry: 56, which is 14 wonders.
We will need to see what wonders are available at a classic start. We can lower it to 11 wonders if we get all classic era techs.

I think the game is winnable in 50-100 turns.

 

[Zhary]

Great, someone with a dufferrnt opinion I love discussions.
Would agree with you folet if this was an ancient start on noble but here we have a classic start with extra techs on deity with 8 Ai that we are allowed to vassalise.
Before we even blink the wars will be fought with tanks. Bur to have some numbers to move around, say that we can accomplish conquest by cavalry only. The extra tech we need then for corps would be Eco, corp, chemistry and depending on the corp/gp: steam power, steel and rr or pp, sm and bio.
For culture I assume that we are still 100k points from victory and even with the esp victory near city bonus I can't see the numbers add upp compare to the economy put in espionage competition to put in science.

 

[kcd_swede]

• Military Ministry: 30 points * population% / 35% + 30 points * Land area % / 60% + 40 points * (destroyed civilization + vassal civilization )/ 8

Maybe I am reading that wrong...
In a conquest victory, pop% is 100% (assuming no vassals). Land area can well be more than 60%, and the last item gives 40 points. Thus, it would be possible to get 120-150 points here, which is probably not the intention of the mapmaker, but it is what it is. Of course, a vassal cascade greatly reduces the number of turns on Deity, so we should look for points elsewhere.

WW are probably not possible/worth the bother to build ourselves, so I suspect a great random element in what the different teams are able to capture.

I have zero doubt the winners will have concentrated on military victories, even if they manage another condition on the same turn.

 

[Zhary]

I think it's stated that 100 points is max to avail any accudental overcounting. Also as it written now it wouls be possible to have more than 100 from culture to.

 

[kcd_swede]

I think it's stated that 100 points is max to avail any accudental overcounting. Also as it written now it wouls be possible to have more than 100 from culture to.

Yeah, ok, that makes sense. Hard to know the final details without scrolling through the threads... hopefully they get it sorted before long.

We ought to be able to do some worker steals and protect with bombs, so we'll probably want to start in war prep mode. Also, our first earned GPerson will likely be a GSpy from the Great Wall, so we can definitely start to think about good uses for them. Early scouting is my favorite for the first one until we need it for something else.

Also, will we start in State Property or need to anarchy? (Or am I cinfused with Police State?) Those darn Commies had both irl.

 

[jatamixx]

Hello Team, Soundjata signing in

My role usually consists in digressions and a little song here and there

I have some empathy towards Sossos because China but it might not be useful

Happy to be a part of this game

 

[Revent]

What difficulty will we be picking? Emperor might be the easiest to get points in every aspect of the game.

Immortal balances it out and I am personally leaning towards Immortal. I could consider Emperor but I think advantages are significant. I'm not too keen on deity as I wouldn't quite call myself a deity player.

I'm not sure how much more useful the deity free units being given will be compared to how fast deity AI expand and how much maintenance kills us in the beginning.