SGOTM 9 - tao

[AlanH]

Welcome to your game thread. Please use it and subscribe to it, 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 here, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest. I hope you enjoy the game.

The starting saves will become available on the SGOTM Progress and Results page on November 11th, at midnight, server local time.

Thanks again to Gyathaar for coming up with the variant and developing the map.

You are the Viking leader, Ragnar Lodbrok*. You have met the Indian leader, Gandhi, and you have signed a pact in blood. The Vikings agree to teach india the art of war, and make them strong through conflict. In return India will take the Vikings to the stars.

* Vanilla players play as Einar Ragnarson, but he had the same craving for space travel as his father.

You start the game as a near neighbour of India. Following the pact you are at permanent war with Gandhi, and must remain so for the rest of the game. You are allowed no peace treaties with India. And India must win by space victory. All victory conditions are switched on except diplomatic, but the winning team will be the one that gets India to Alpha Centauri, and does it fastest.

PTW and Vanilla teams are not permitted to leader rush Great Wonders before 1000 BC in this game

Here's the start.

Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Scandinavia / Vikings
Opponents - Seven, preselected, including India
World size - 100 wide by 100 high. (Standard)
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Continents
Barbarians - Roaming

The map is handbuilt, and therefore may not have a standard configuration.

Game mods:
The AI races have Deity level unit support.
Otherwise, this game uses the default rules as defined in the SGOTM Reference Thread.

The SGOTM Mediterranean resources are included in this game. If you have played SGOTM 7 then you will be ready. If not you may need to download and unzip a small graphics mod pack. Vanilla/Mac players need to install the GOTM mods. The best way to achieve this is to use the relevant All-in-one GOTM Installer for your OS, linked in my signature.

Please visit the following links to ensure that you are adequately prepared for this game.

The GOTM Reference Thread.
SGOTM Reference Thread.

Notes:

A. The Classic (Play the World and vanilla 1.29) versions of Civ3 AND Conquests version 1.22 (C3C) are all supported in this game. Because of the different game play, Classic and C3C teams will play for separate awards.
B. All teams must play the sponsored variant.
C. You MUST play from the start file assigned to your team. 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.

Gyathaar's SGOTM 8 created some new challenges for everyone. I hope you will enjoy this one as much. Good luck in your efforts to lose with style and honour.

 

[Tone]

Hi everyone. Just checking in

 

[Furiey]

Excellent, the thread is up, something to distract me from failing to get Civ 4 to recognise that the DVD is in the drive....

This one's going to be interesting!

And welcome to AdrianE!

 

[Keath]

Hi everyone,

This should be a very interesting game if not a bit on the wierd side. Someone must have eaten a bad bowl of vegetarian curry.

Anyone have any great insights?

 

[Furiey]

Good question, however the only insights I'm having are the inside of my eyelids. Anything more will have to wait until I've had some sleep. Looking forward to getting back on with a game though.

Hi everyone!

 

[tao]

Just quick hello to everybody before going to work. Do we have any new team members? My quick look did not reveal any roster post.

Initial thoughts:

1. Because of the perpetual war, monarchy will be our government of choice.
2. Starting as a combined tech/conquest race, leaving only us as superpower, India as weaker second.
3. Once we know the map, we may want to "relocate" India.
4. Since we can't donate techs directly to India, we should keep a number of small vasalls alive as intermediaries.
5. Since we can't donate conquered cities to India, we just have to leave them undefended for Gandhi to capture.
6. We should prevent Gandhi from getting uranium.

 

[Tone]

I agree with points 1-5 but point 6 has confused me...

We should prevent Gandhi from getting uranium.

Won't they need it for their SS?

I imagine this will be another interesting game. Trying to get the AI to do fast research on Monarch level can be very frustrating so I suspect that much of the IA onwards will involve gifting the surviving civs and waiting for this knowledge to be passed onto India. The more civs that we have around to do this, this better our chances are of a quick launch as we may find ourselves at war with some of our 'vasalls' if India drags them into our conflict. This means that we may find ourselves having to prune some other rivals from time to time but not actually wiping any out .

I'm looking forward to doing plenty of sea raiding in the Middle Ages. C3C teams have the advantage of the seafaring trait but we can benefit from cheaper upgrades I guess. I nice stack of archers for a staedy stream of upgrades during our GA would be handy, although that would be a long process as the cost is pretty high for each unit (120g?)

Fiist question, where do we settle? It looks like our capital is going to be squeezed a little.

Oh yes, and welcome to AdrianE

 

[tao]

Do we have any new team members?

Found it:

Team tao: AdrianE, Furiey, Keath, Renata, Sabre, tao, Tone. Playing Vanilla.

Welcome AdrianE. I hope you will enjoy the team experience with us.

 

[Sabre]

Welcome to Team tao AdrianE!

I've been pondering the situatation and came to much the same conclusions as tao. India seems to be trapped on a 1-tile island (though it's about as good as a 1-tile island gets!) which will be a blessing and a curse. India won't be eliminated before Amphibious Warfare, but by the time they get off that rock they will be behind in tech and until we help them get a decent chunk of good land they will stay that way - making it very hard for our techs to reach them via trade. If they have nothing to give, the other civs won't trade with them. I think we may have a greater influence militarily than technologically - at least in the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the game.

This should definitely be a thought provoking game.

 

[Furiey]

Letting them "capture" the Great Library may be a possibility, but won't take them all the way.

 

[Tone]

The saves will be up very soon. Are we keeeping the same playing order as before with tao kicking off and AdrianE after Renata? (Should we PM AdrianE to let him know about the game as he hasn't signed in?)

Alan's post in the maintenance thread about palace jumping was thought provoking. However I would like to see a little more of our territory before thinking aloud about going down those lines.

I presume that we will settle 1E of the starting position. Early strategy will not be affected by war until the Indians get close to MM unless we share an island in which case we need to watch out for the Indians getting Writing a forming an alliance against us (or am I missing something).

 

[tao]

I sent a pm to AdrianE, but his profile says he hasn't been online since November 4. Let's hope for him reporting soon.

I suggest we stick with our order (unless somebody wants change), putting AdrianE in once he has shown up.

 

[Tone]

I sent a pm to AdrianE, but his profile says he hasn't been online since November 4. Let's hope for him reporting soon.

Maybe he'll have his notification of PMs by e-mail set.

 

[Furiey]

Current order is fine by me, I don't appear to be getting notifications about posts here though, despite having subscribed to this thread. Same for the maintenance thread come to that. I'll try resubcribing.

Saves are Up!

 

[Sabre]

I agree, the current order has worked well. I guess initially we'll have to start it out standard and then discuss further once we have a better idea of what we are working with.

 

[AdrianE]

I'm here. I was travelling on business.

We will need to let India develop a decent core in order to build the spaceship. So we will have to plot out some good land for them. We might consider building a core for them and stocking it with marketplaces, granaries, banks, factories etc and letting them take it when the time comes.

In order to keep the science rate up we will need to keep some AI's alive and big and healthy.

 

[Furiey]

Resubscribing did the trick.

Building a high production core for them sounds good. We may not wish to donate these cities early enough to use it as a means to jump our own Palace though.

If we're only moving 1 tile, E looks the place to go, but what about moving 2? I don't usually move that far, but everyone does have to move this time. 2NE has possibilities, but obviously we'll see more when we move.

 

[tao]

Ideal Scenario (TM)

We will complete research before Gandhi learns education. We build The Great Library in some unimportant town and let him conquer it after we donate all techs to some 1 town civ. We develop a second core and let him conquer the key high pop city. We destroy Delhi and his capital moves.

We just have to conquer most of the world and put a lot of galleys on all coastal/sea tiles workable by Delhi to keep it really weak, maybe even prevent him to make any contacts.

Can we do it?

I think we may at least try, because we can switch tactics later. Thus IMHO all out expansionist researching war seems to be the best start, until proven otherwise.

 

[Tone]

Thus IMHO all out expansionist researching war seems to be the best start, until proven otherwise.

I'm in total agreement. We cannot rely on the AI for fast research at Monarch level; they are simply hopeless. To get fast research we need a large base and if we can get a second core ASAP, well so much the better. Warmongering will give us a greater chance of a GL which we could use for a FP or we can look to jump palaces again.

I like the Ideal Scenario but it's unlikely to come off completely and once they have Theology we'll be wondering whether to let them capture the GLib or just go for 'just one more tech'. However if we can get them a fair way up the tree with this technique and then effectively gift them a core by letting them capture a number of cities we could be on our way.

One thing I'm in two minds about: Reducing the number of civs reduces the tech cost-correct? If so, how many civs do we leave around? Too few and we may not be able to gift techs via third parties so is it worth knocking out some civs to speed up the tech pace or can we hit 4 turn research quickly by going all out for an early second core?

 

[Keath]

Ideal Scenario (TM)

We will complete research before Gandhi learns education........We just have to conquer most of the world and put a lot of galleys on all coastal/sea tiles workable by Delhi to keep it really weak, maybe even prevent him to make any contacts.

Can we do it?

So we have to get to MM, then build 8+ galleys to isolate India and prevent any other civ from meeting Gandhi. Meanwhile we conquer the world, build a second core for Gandhi, at the same time out-researching all the other civs who have now been militarily reduced to wimps. We'll need all the Modern Age techs necessary for the space ship build, then and only then allow Gandhi to capture our GL town and let him become the space ship leader. Sounds like a 'rags to riches' story for Gandhi.

We have beserkers to capture Delhi which is good, no marines necessary. The tricky part will be isolating India. Once India knows anyone else, they could trade up to Education and that would foul up our plan. We may need more than 8 galleys just to keep other civ galleys away, assuming contact is 2 tiles distance, then we'll need more like 11 galleys once anyone else knows MM. And of course we have to hope that there are at least 2 squares of ocean surrounding Gandhi's island to the west. Our scout can check that out.

As far as where to put our capitol goes, a move of 2 tiles might be an advantage so do we move the scout E, N to see what that location might bring? Then we can decide. If we settle due E then our worker will have to waste a move to get to the cow. Maybe someone has a spreadsheet that would compare those two choices?

I like the Ideal Scenario. It gives us a plan which can be altered if necessary.

@Tone - If we can keep Gandhi isolated and with only a minimum amount of ocean squares to work, we could keep him so weak that he won't get to Theology for a very long time. At war with us, won't he concentrate on building an army?

We will also have to worry about MM and Indian galley builds. I guess the question is: "How much research can a one town India do?"

Hi AdrianE and welcome to the team.