[BTS] SGOTM 26 - The Indecisive

[shulec]

Hey guys! Hope I can contribute! I see some heavyweights on the roster! I haven't used this "newer" forum much and haven't touched photo software in ages...
Anyway, I hope this group is not so motivated that there are 3-5 pages on new content every day. That will knock me off in a heartbeat!

 

[shulec]

I love this game concept. I am a builder at heart! All of those settlers are sure to bring the economy crashing down without proper support.


I think four things will drive this game. 1. VC 2. Choosing wonders 3. Diplomacy/AI personality 4. Beakers

Victory condition will drive this game. With No Vassals, I think the only real options are Diplo or AP victory. Conquest may actually be the next best option. Espionage and Cultural rely to heavily on generating a pure GP stream. They require a major diversion of commerce as well and this is certainly not a commerce heavy map. Espionage requires city gifting... its just a "patch" to over come an exploit (WT, was that you??) Domination probably isn't doable with seven cities. Space Colony takes too long.

VC wonders
AP - Prophet
UN - Merchant

Must have wonder
MoM - Artist

Other wonders
GL - Scientist
Kremlin - Spy (GW or Pentagon)
Pyramids/HG/Hagia Sofia - Engineer

Lost Wonders
Oracle - we'll take their tech in trade
Parthenon - Could use GP points, but...
Great Lighthouse - Ouch! This wonder could be huge.
Stonehenge - meh, we are charismatic, but won't be spamming cites. GProphet contamination.
Colossus - doesn't last long enough anyway
Versailles - too many hammers, too small empire
ToA, ChixPizza, Spiral Min, Univ Sankore, Angkor Wat, Shwadegon Paya, Notre Dame, Statue of Zues - meh
Late wonders - meh

I think it would be ballsy to go all in on AP, especially since we can't gift cities to spread religion. But controlling the AP is very important. If we are going to go for a UN victory, we can't be having our diplomacy jerked around by the AP. It would be nice to build TGLighthouse, but I think we need to keep UN option open.

Diplomacy/AI
Unless we go for conquest, we are going to have to tiptoe around everybody. I would imagine the mapmaker will have included personalities that will surely put us in the middle or outside diplomatically.
This make worker stealing more challenging. (As well does no barbs and settlers as scouts)
Controlling the AP in a minor religion will make this easier.

Beakers
Wonder fail gold (Settle stone/marble as priority)
GS bulbing
Mids/rep/CasteSys/settled non-scientist
City and improvement pillaging
Trade routes (No TGL)

Warrior whip overflow
Cottages (Hahahahaha!!)

Random tidbit. We need level 4 unit, so war or fascism needed. No brainer. War.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Welcome Shulec!

Nice analysis. I would consider SH though. It will be easy to build (our settlers are done), pays for itself since will have more than 4 cities, and synergies well with charismatic.
Though you are right we might prefer the AP. (we are allowed 6 wonders, one of each type)

Cheers

 

[Cactus Pete]

I think strike economy gets research done while having a strike, I do not remember from where you get your research.

You keep the strike going by whipping/building warriors which are disbanded every turn. It allows for extremely high scores with running food corps on massive maps.

Suppose we settle 7 cities before we build any units. What damage would the strike do us?

 

[shulec]

Suppose we settle 7 cities before we build any units. What damage would the strike do us?

We would be only working base tiles without improvements. Maintenance would be very heavy. I suspect we wouldn't get out of the strike. From what I know of what abusing strikes to get ahead, it has be linked to mass warrior whip hammer overflow converted to gold. This is best leveraged in massive empires on marathon with aggressive early war. Its a way to keep your empire afloat until cottages grow and more +2 gold lake/ocean tiles can be worked via growth. I suspect this is what is referred to by a strike economy, but I could be totally wrong. It would have to be supported by a lot of happy resources, which I suspect this map will be quite low on.

I would send probably SIP, find a 2nd city for the pyramids and use the other settlers find settling sites prioritizing food and stone/marble. I can't imagine they would deprive us of metals, but a settler needs to be held back for Iron. Testing will go along way to see how fast we can settle and support our empire. As RRR points out, we can get right to wonder production since we have setters. Alternating worker/wonder builds will likely be our opening.

 

[Cactus Pete]

"We would be only working base tiles without improvements. Understood, but we would be growing and building in 7 cities. Maintenance would be very heavy Indeed, could well be prohibitive. I suspect we wouldn't get out of the strike. " Perhaps not.

 

[Folket]

I think we need a trial map of the right size. Nothing is obvious for me. but I think we need to find food tiles for all our settlers. Just dropping them as fast as possible I do not see them contribute very much.

 

[Cactus Pete]

I think we need a trial map of the right size. Nothing is obvious for me. but I think we need to find food tiles for all our settlers. Just dropping them as fast as possible I do not see them contribute very much.

Agree with all that. There could be considerable seafood available nearby.

 

[pigswill]

I'm not sure we can rely too much on Wastin Time's showcase games, the reason he ran them on 3.17 was to abuse whip overflow into gold, it got edited out in 3.19.

Something more constructive to throw into the discussion is espionage economy, the bottleneck is likely to be research and pinching techs can be much more efficient than building them.

 

[Folket]

I thought the HoF mod let overflow gold still exist.

 

[AlanH]

I understand that you prefer 'The Indecisive' as your team name. I have therefore rebuilt your starting save and changed all the database entries ... and the name of this thread. As far as I can tell no one had downloaded the previous starting save before I did this, so you should be good to go.

 

[shulec]

Can't download the start file. Anybody else?

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Can't download the start file. Anybody else?

"Sorry, file Indecisive_SG026_BC4000_01.CivBeyondSwordSave is not available."



I will try to provide us with a test save by tomorow evening, so we can start siming

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I've flagged this up to AlanH.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Something more constructive to throw into the discussion is espionage economy, the bottleneck is likely to be research and pinching techs can be much more efficient than building them.

Yes but this is emperor in ice age map so AI tech pace is likely to be slow. That's without poundering the "we caught your spie" diplo penalty in. Not saying we won't be stealing tech, but I wouldn't count on it early in the game.

@Noble Zarkon: tx

 

[AlanH]

Apologies for the error when I changed your team name. Your file should now be available

 

[Folket]

This is exciting. I have not gotten HoF to work on my new machine yet. Also does anyone have experience with getting it to run on unix?

 

[pigswill]

I installed the mod successfully but can't open the start save either.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

This is exciting. I have not gotten HoF to work on my new machine yet. Also does anyone have experience with getting it to run on unix?

Nope. But you can PM ruff_hi or any other member of BUG still around. They may be able to help.
Couldn't work on the save today. But tmr for sure. I may submit a wonder list to get the discussion rolling!

Looking forward to this.

Cheers,
Ras

 

[Folket]

Nope. But you can PM ruff_hi or any other member of BUG still around. They may be able to help.
Couldn't work on the save today. But tmr for sure. I may submit a wonder list to get the discussion rolling!

Looking forward to this.

Cheers,
Ras

Is BUG related to the HoF mod? Or do they just have experience for unix?