SGOTM 9 - Wacken

[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.

 

[Xevious]

Checking in with some thoughts.

So, the way I see it, we can't gift anything to India, so it's going to take a LONG time for India to get off that rock. In the mean time I think we should work on conquering the world (preventing any other winners) and at the same time work on a nice land area for India to conveniently "conquer", i.e. once the cities are ready for them, leave them empty for them to take. We obviously need to avoid domination and maintain a big enough army to keep them from conquering us, maybe it would be enough to line the edges of our territory with units to keep them from ever fighting us. Aside from all that, how do you ENCOURAGE a civ to go for space?

 

[gozpel]

That was my thought too, to give them a nice area of land when they finally get galleys. If we get rid of the other civs and then keep India within reasonable limits, landsize and culture, then they will go for space.

All victory conditions are switched on except diplomatic

But first we need to get our own civilization going.

Later on we need to figure out how to keep the techpace up too, if we kill off other civs too early it will slow things down. I was thinking of gifting/cheap trading so everyone knows stuff as early as possible. Gandhi can buy techs for peanuts.

Tricky variant

 

[Wotan]

Checking in.
Yes, I agree on the idea to develop our starting area for India to "conquer". We need to make sure no other civ is in position to take on india and if they do intervene to shield India from harm. A game with most civs still in the game would probably help the tech race, taking out one or two might be needed for us to create a new "homeland" when we let India take our starting area.

The startup pic. What about founding Trondheim on the BG east? That would also give India a very productive city after they take it from us.

Tech: Straight to Philosophy, grab MM. Then head for monarchy? We are going to remain at war for the whole game. Another key is to get to contacts trading ASAP so we can gift contacts with India to the rest of the world to speed up their tech trading.

This was our roster in SGOTM8:
Wotan (started the game)
Dman
Offa
Grahamiam(Gozpel)
Wacken
Xevious

Gozpel has taken G-mans spot so the easiest way would be to just put him in G-mans slot. Who wants to start this game?

 

[Offa]

Hello everyone.

I agree that to start with this game should be a fairly standard fast science effort. Encouraging india will be tough. Initially we could at least try to encourage Gandhi to meet some others. Or we could keep him backward and arrange for him to capture the Great Library.

As an aside:
I just got my civ4 disc yesterday. Superficially I was pretty stunned by the lame graphics, a bit of a throw back to civ1; I didn't like civ 3 much to start either though, so hopefully it will grow on me.

 

[dmanakho]

Hello mates...

Wednesday morning i am terribly sick and spending it at home....

So.... well... i can't say i like this variant much. Some teams will probably take until easter to finish this one

Agreed with what you guys said above. Fast tech pace while preparing some land for indian invasion.
Just as Xevious said - build cities for them in good rich locations, improve tiles around and then leave them undefended for india to capture. We can't gift them cities but nobody said we can't just leave them for India to take.
I wouldn't trust Ghandi otherwise to build his cities in the right spots and then optimize tile improvements.


as for Civ4. I finally got a computer that can play that game and i got my disk yesterday. I did not like the game much. Graphic is lame and great at the same time and even if my PC fits into the recommended configuration it crashes with blue screen every 5-10 minutes if i use high graphics details. So i had to switch to low to play. Game feels and looks different and I so far i didn't like it much. But as Offa said it might grow on me.

 

[Xevious]

Hello everyone.

Or we could keep him backward and arrange for him to capture the Great Library.

Actually, I like this idea a LOT. Just have to make sure we build the GL on our island and gift it to Ghandi before he gets Education. This would be easiest if we DON'T give India contact away, use superior naval and land forces to steer Ghandi to the GL city, and then gift the other civ(s) left just before Ghandi takes the GL. If we do it right we could probably be well into Industrial or even Modern ages by then. Even if other civs make contact with Ghandi, if we keep him penned in, he won't be able to afford buying techs to keep up.

As for CivIV, it's growing on me. It still seems to drag on compared to Civ3, though that may be because I haven't had enough time to learn how to speed things up yet. I actually kind of like the new graphics, but they are taxing my computer and that also makes the game take longer.

 

[Wotan]

Keeping India too backwards might make their rampup from that position difficult when they finally take the GL. The GL is a good idea but maybe we need to balance their progress so they can gear up quickly when they take the GL. Since the game is Monarch it shouldn't be too difficult to build a healthy tech lead so they still gain a lot of techs when capturing the GL.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Oh it's up

What i thought about the strategy:
We have the following goals in this game:

-Get the highest possible global tech race, India may not remain behind on it.
-Make sure India gets an empire.
-Stop anyone from reaching victory and stop india from reaching another victory condition.

The size and power of our own empire is of secondary importance, we just need to have enough power to keep control of the game so that noone will get another victory type. And, we need the power to increase global tech rate.

It will indeed take a while before India gets off of that island. When can we trade contacts? I don't remember even after all these sgotms. If we can trade contacts early in sgotm, we must sell everyone contact to India (provided we are able to find everyone)

When India has map making, we should imeadiately be ready to provide them cities to conquer.
Not only that, we must make sure that they will conquer a good empire. We must prepare a complete empire for them, possibly our own core. We must also prepare a capital for them in the middle of that core. This must be the biggest city. After they captured this empire, we must capture their capital so that it flips to the centre of their new empire.

After providing them an empire, we must also still have one for ourselves. Therefore, our first goal is to setup 2 future empires with one city assigned to become capital in the centre. Wether we give them our core or the secondary empire we can probably decide later. If we have a choise, we must give them ground with the most possible commerce.

When this is done, Inia is "In the game" and will hopefully be able to keep up and compete in the tech race.

We then build up again and get some control over the world. Just control though, we do not want the world. we want those AI's to research. Maybe it would be good to also provide any scientific civ's with extra ground that we conquer from non scientifics. It is better to have 3 strong researchers in the game than 7 weak ones. Of course, we should be strongest ourself and hapilly sell away all our techs to everyone. It is prefered that we make India second strongest.

In the end game, we must have the power to destroy any city on the map at will. We must be able to destroy any city that builds the UN, spaceship, or 20k culture. Can helicopters or paratroopers be loaded on carriers ? That in combination with ICBM's or tactical nukes should do the job then. If this is not possible, we maybe should prepare to get outposts on different strategical places on the map.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

That GL idea sounds like a damn good idea. (Silly me made last post before reading yours)

I will let it go trough my head for a while and see if i come up with any details or problems

The funny thing is, this may change the game in a standerd world conquest game again
We leave india on 1 tile all game, conquer the world except for another 1 city. Let them conquer the GL and enough good cities to build the space ship, destroy the other one and then wait........
Them ramping up quickly shouldnt be too difficult i imagine. We can prepare a fully improved empire for them, complete with factories and hoover dam.

I actually think it is the key to keep them in AA all the way until we are in modern age. We should probably avoid contact with any civ and them by placing a circle of vessels around their island. If they get to education too early, they will have a very difficult time to get further up in the tech tree. If they have no good empire and nothing to offer, the other civ's will not provide them with new technology.

I think we must first make a clear choise, help them all the way allong or deny them any contacts.
I for vote to deny them all contacts unless someone comes up with new information or ideas that i didn't think off.

Sounds good

 

[Wotan]

Taking Dehli will not be possible until after Marines are avalable.

Diplo victory is switched off so UN is not an issue.

We leave india on 1 tile all game, conquer the world except for another 1 city. Let them conquer the GL and enough good cities to build the space ship, destroy the other one and then wait........
Them ramping up quickly shouldnt be too difficult i imagine. We can prepare a fully improved empire for them, complete with factories and hoover dam.

It might be unwise to do it in this extreme way. Conquered cities lose a lot of facilities so we are not guaranteed they will immediately build spaceship parts.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Was it not so that they lose all cultural buildings but not the other buildings?

I would At least like to give them hoover dam with factories. That will be a huge boost. They will build libraries in 1 or 2 turns, universities in another 4 or 5 turns. All they want should be done quickly if we can provide them hugely powerfull cities.

We should in fact even provide them size 20 cities. In this scenario, we can perfectly use captured cities from another civ and keep our own core for ourselves.

I think we should do it that extreme way at least until late industrial when they need only few more techs.

Doing it like this instead of trying to keep them up i think can easilly be 50 or more turns faster to modern age. And then, it will also provide them better cities. The AI itself is not so quick in building factories and they work their tiles poorly. We can do all that for them.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Oh and, on another issue, we are not gonna let happen what happened last sgotm.

We are not at all in a hurry, our good communication should become even better and we should not do things before we have completely thought it out and agree that they are the best things. We do not want to be ahead of the competition.

I think we can take a few more days now to think about the complete long term game strategy first. Even though it does not affect the first turnsets, i think it is good to first focus on only this and not get messy discussions mixing multiple topics. If we had done this last game, we would have probably come to the ideas to obtain oversea cities and might have won that game.

To better guide the discussions, i will regularly summarize the things we have discussed on certain topics. This might seem like a lot of extra and double information, but i want us to do things properly now. In the past our discussions were long, messy and people often missed parts of it.

 

[Wotan]

Was it not so that they lose all cultural buildings but not the other buildings?

AFAIK, all "culture" buildings are lost without any exceptions. Other buildings have a "chance" of being retained. How high I have no idea but I guess we all have experienced a location changing hands back and forth and the number of buildings remaining getting fewer and fewer.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Yeah, but i think the amount remaining is at least very high.

I also thought many of them are lost, but last game i played (cotm 20k) i did some late game conquering. I noticed that most cities i conquered contained very many buidings. Banks in almost all of them, buch of stock exchanges, and much more. I think at least more than half the factories we give them will remain.

maybe we could do some research to find it out exactly. I have no time for that now though.

 

[gozpel]

Taking Dehli will not be possible until after Marines are avalable.

Won't our zerks do the job?

I'm a bit unsure which way is going to be the fastest, blocking India sounds very tempting, especially if we give them a maxed out empire later.

On the other hand, if we give them that land earlier, it can cause lots of problems. Like them getting themselves in to silly wars and such, which we would have to fix. We don't know what civs there are around and if Gandhi lose a few cities, a fair bit of our job is undone. One other thing that will make a difference AI vs AI, is "The AI races have Deity level unit support"

If we let India muck things up, he might be eaten alive, due to the other civs advantages.

So I think I like the containing scenario, that way we will have control of India.

And UN is no risk (repeating myself)

All victory conditions are switched on except diplomatic

 

[Wotan]

Won't our zerks do the job?

Of course they will. I forgot about those guys...

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Global tech speed
This is a pretty low level game. We will research much faster than the AI and we can expect very little help from the AI.
If we contain them, we have our full potential for research since we do not need to lose any cities early. If we would help them trough the game instead, our own research and with that, the global research will be severly hampered. (I think several dozens of turns).

India building the spaceship
If we help India trough the game, they will be building up gradually and when they reach MA, they can be ready to start building the space ship.
If we contain India and gift them a complete empire later in the game, they will have rioting cities, no culture and little units. They will probably solve those issues before starting a space ship. This will take time.

On the other hand, if we give them an empire late in the game, they will have a much stronger empire, with properly worked and railroaded tiles and at least a bunch of factories remaining. This will speed up their build considerably.

Risks with containment
-India gets contact with another civ and obtains technology beyond education.
-India is so slow, they don't even reach map making by the time we reach modern age.

Risk with helping them
-India fails to trade technology from AI civ's and ends up being a backward civ.
-We do not manage to both provide them a decent empire and keep a decent one for ourselves as well.
-We have our hands full keeping India from getting destroyed by others.


With this information, i think we should contain them, but not until we have all needed technology. Instead, contain them until late Industrial. At that point, we will have for them a fully railroaded empire with factories. And while we continue to do the Modern age research with the remainder of our empire, (probably loads of ICS) they have the time to complete their empire with an army and culture before starting the space ship.
The risk of this plan is that they must be able to get those modern age techs from another civ. We should keep 3 or so civ's around at least and make sure India has something to offer, like resources and luxuries.

We might also provide them a full empire but let them take the GL a little bit later. This will make sure they get a bit more technology from it. Meanwhile, in the period of having an empire without GL, they can start building some cheap units and solving the resistance matters more efficiently. If we do this, they cannot be alowed to have any contacts even when they have that empire or they might get education early. This would be difficult and dangerous i think.

We can also make sure that we have tons and tons of money in the boxes when we let them conquer us. This way, they will get part of that money, providing them some opportunity to speed things up.

Post any additional issues, risks or ideas you can think of.

 

[dmanakho]

This is a monarch level game. AIs will only help us to get those earli-mid AA technologies. They will be absolutely useless for tech research later. Monarch AIs are too weak to help with research. We just need to expand as much as we can build science buildings in core and iCS towns on captured land with scientists to get 4turn research as early as possible.

As what to do with india... Generally, I agree with Wacken, but those are purely theoretical speculations. We never played such a peculiar variant before so it is hard to say what is really going to happen.
This variant is more about luck rather than skills. We can take a general strategic plan of action, but it might surely have to be adjusted later in the game.

 

[Wotan]

I agree with Wacken about issues as discussed in post#18. I suggest we use this as a starting point for our continued discussion and expand on it.

A few questions to answer so we can move ahead. Yes or no to them will decide the details of future plans.

#1a. Do we contain India and build towards having two "extra" cores? One with a FP and one with a sizeable city to have the palace jump to when we finally "gift" our starting capital.

#1b. If no to 1a. when do we want India to gain our staring area? MA or IA?

#2. Do we build GL in our starting core for India to capture before they reach education? Could be a real nailbiter to keep them backwards until we have built factories in the cities we intend for them to capture.

#3a. 6 civs to go after. How many do we want to keep in the game and how strong do we allow them to become?

#3b. Should we eliminate the closest neighbours or the most convenient ones?

#4a. Loads of gold could help us with sabotage in the endgame if we have several civs building SS parts.

#4b. Or we go after the remaining civs when India is close to gaining the final tech needed to build SS parts.