[BTS] SGOTM 25 - Unusual Suspects

I'm on my phone at the moment. But I was thinking everyone could go back and open up some of their saves for games they've played at reasonable turns to get a vague idea of points they have based on this scoring system and point progression throughout the games to see if some pattern can be noted.


Because there's so many ways to score points, pinpointing one specific way to win is probably the wrong way to do things without samples.

I'm unfortunately starting to get busy with life again just as the sgotm is starting but I will try to play an emperor and immortal game aiming to fulfill the multiple criteria in an attempt to maximise points.

Wonders and culture go hand in hand and are (more likely) to be independent of mapmaker shenanigans than conquest which is the 'easy' solution. Lower difficulty allows us to focus on culture and wonders too whilst maintaining a conquest worthy army.
 
The maximum points which can be scored by each member is 100 points.

He said this in the 1st post - I'm thinking that the rules in the 1st post are consistently updated as needed.

But I was thinking everyone could go back and open up some of their saves for games they've played at reasonable turns to get a vague idea of points they have based on this scoring system and point progression throughout the games to see if some pattern can be noted.

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Game 1:
I was play-testing the 3.19.005 mod (playing fast), and going for Space Colony on Chieftan, and it was 1300 AD, and I had 172 / 700 points, mostly civil and military. I actually had almost no science points, because I side-stepped Drama, and Divine Right, and Democracy, which would get 42 more points for 3 techs. I also didn't completely kill many AI's nor focus on capturing wonders I didn't need. Culture was basically zero, as was Diplo since AP and UN weren't built. I was going for State Property, so I didn't go for Corps.
</updated>

I also think we should all run some experimental games to see how we do on the different settings. Immortal seemed to be the best of both to me as well. On Emperor, I'm concerned that the AI's won't build wonders fast enough. On Deity, it'll be more work to conquer them, but that bomber sure might help. Early conquest for instance, will be slow if we need ASTRO, but I haven't thought through whether that'll still be the fastest option.
 
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...from the initial save, it looks like we have marble, stone, ivory, pigs, horses, wheat, rice, and wine. ....maybe we trade away the stone to someone with IND nearby, and they built some stuff that we quickly capture. Roosevelt maybe? should be able to get some wonders quick that way.

no metals. will need Iron before we can build Cho-Ku-Nu's.

is it just me or is 'Tsingtao' a city of Bismark? that has copper very close.

...i think the emperor start is out, simply because Immortal isn't that much harder, and we get all these free techs:

'Mathematics, Code of Laws, Drama, Metal Casting, Machinery, Iron Working, Philosophy and Communism.' that's a lot of beakers - especially communism, and instantly able to build forges, and starting with Math means we can research Construction ASAP, which we'll probably want if we want since we don't have metals, and we'll want to Elepult for offense. (but elepult with BOMBER, would you really need to build catapults?)

...did some experimentation. bomber + elephants vs protective archers in a hill city with 20% culture had 1 elephant lost, and 3 archers killed. so the bomber is very effective against archers, and probably also longbowmen. ...and it looks like there are several cities within range at the start.
 
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Pretty certain deity is the way to go here. We get all the espionage points we need for culture.

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.

We have a great spy that will give us like 9k espionage points. It should be enough to generate 150k culture. Also classic starts are not that fast. We start without a good economy with more expensive techs. It will take a while for the AI to gets it's economy up and start teching fast. I doubt we will need to ever use units more advanced then knights.

I'm not worried about the AI expanding. Have you looked at the starting picture. Most land is already settled. We would go 100% war production and get workers/cities from the AI.
 
Does someone have a list of wonders that are disabled in classical starts?
 
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.
I'm pretty sure Decjhand was going to make evryone play deity... he said so in the maint thread, but was unable to edit the first post.

EDIT: Maybe I only dreamt it... or saw it in the staff thread. I can't find it no more, so we may still have to choose.
 
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I read through the entire maintenance thread and I don't recall there being a compulsory level.

Also just an update. Life has unexpectedly become a lot busier than I had anticipated and will be the case for a while. Nonetheless, I'll try my best to contribute to the team.

Disabled wonders may not necessarily be true. If we have the great wall, someone else could have the others. We'll find this one out pretty quickly though.
 
That is true. As far as I can tell only I have put forward a plan for victory. If someone want a different save then deity, could they make a suggested path to victory so that we can compare?
 
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.

I think the fastest road to corporation is the golden laurel here. Spreading the Corp is usually fast once one get there.

I think conquest is a nobrainer.

So far we have 3 basic ideas.
We have 3 options on the table.

  • Zhary - > Corps -> (Domination?)
  • kcd -> AP with some capturing of wonders (I think preferring deity, since the GSpy was mentioned).
  • Folket -> Conquest.
I like Folket's idea... it seems like we should assume conquest, and only back off if the points seem to need to be tweaked. I think that timing who we attack in what order will be important. I like the idea of letting a few nearby industrious non-military civs build a few wonders, and we can go after them last.

I also think Deity is the way to go, especially since the GSpy gives us a good avenue to the cultural points.
I like Conquest because that covers Civil and Military, and should be fast. (But, you know map makers may screw us there and put a bunch of opponents on another continent and we'll have to tech Astro).

We have the great wall, so we'll be generating GSpy points right at the start - can't assume a pure G Scientist bulb right away.

...since we have stone and marble, fail gold should be readily available if we expand to a lot of cities.
 
Hi. I've released the Maintenance Thread and edited the link to it in the first post here.
 
So far we have 3 basic ideas.
We have 3 options on the table.

  • Zhary - > Corps -> (Domination?)
  • kcd -> AP with some capturing of wonders (I think preferring deity, since the GSpy was mentioned).
  • Folket -> Conquest.

I think we all make plans here trying to guess the map, which is nearly impossible before. Even if we gets a lot of extra the ai could have get a lot of bonuses so that the game would feel like deity game anyway. However early military expansions is almost everytime a good startegy.

...since we have stone and marble, fail gold should be readily available if we expand to a lot of cities.

Good idea:thumbsup:

A question to everybody which timezone are you in?
 
I think we all make plans here trying to guess the map, which is nearly impossible before. Even if we gets a lot of extra the ai could have get a lot of bonuses so that the game would feel like deity game anyway. However early military expansions is almost everytime a good startegy.



Good idea:thumbsup:

A question to everybody which timezone are you in?
GMT+1 (Stockholm, Paris etc)
 
Maintenance Thread is open. Looks like all will play at Deity, though that may not be completely settled until the team saves are posted.
 
I don't see workers... we should figure out if changing civics at the start or waiting until we have our first workers built is the way to go... but pretty sure the fastest would be to go into Slavery from the start and whip the worker(s).

I think SOSSOS was our test-map maker previously (before graduating to the real thing)... but are any of you guys up for making a test map to match the conditions in the game description? It would really help with our opening moves and builds. Of course, it might be easiest to first scout with the bomber because that should expose a lot of new tiles... just a thought.
 
Time Zones: (will keep updated)

  • kcd_swede: GMT + 1
  • Zhary: GMT +1
  • sittinDown: GMT - 5
  • folket: ?
  • revent: GMT + 0
 
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Pacific Coast
Spoiler :
temporarily in US Eastern Time zone
 
Game save is available.. BE CAREFUL with oficial saves. DO NOT OPEN or even download any other team's save. If you open the official Unusual Suspects SGOTM25 save (as I have done) do NOT move any units or make any other ireversible action.

China has 3 cities, an archer in each. One has a GPro, one has a GSpy, and one has a bomber+ Great Wall. No workers. Visible is an Otoman Jannisary and a Roman Praet. Diplo status neutral with all - only 1 unknown civ as many cities are visible. No Alphabet so no techs visible yet. The only religion not founded yet is Christianity, though it is present as the main religion (13%) - and the GPro could either found Christianity or make the Shrine for Taoism which we already have in our cap. A heck... too much to describe... I post screnshots for our player who can't open the save and for posterity. You'll ned to examine details for self before we can discus all the ramifications.
rel adv0000.JPG
dip10000.JPG
victories0000.JPG
demogr0000.JPG
civics0000.JPG
 
I pity the ones who get tasked with building a test-map for this one. :cringe:
 
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