SGOTM 9 - Woody Woodpecker for President

[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.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

And so it shall begin.

Link to current page
Place where we might have a chance winning this one
Place where we've got shots at the (more important) spam and wooden spoon laurels

Let the spam commence, at once, our very spammity academic challenge of a team:

eldar - check
Minute Man - check
Beorn - check
jb1964 - check
Tubby Rower - check
soul_warrior - check

A-K - Deep, deep in the hole.

I randomized the previous roster but made sure the skill that makes the team plays first. AK will play when he speaks up, otherwise and/or unless he says otherwise I won't put him in the roll for now.

I'll leave game discussions for later posts.

Democracy ASAP !!!

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Let the discussions commence, and may the best team win

I believe we can seriously out-dumb anyone out there. Team Bede has a solid roster of 'veteran newcomers' and it has been proven that Tao doesn't weigh enough to outspam us. The Wooden Spoon and the Spammmmmmmmmmm Laurel will be ours !

 

[eldar]

I'm still thinking about how to "win" this game. I did have an elaborate plan involving building the Great Library, keeping Gandhi as an OCC, then letting him capture the city unhindered at an appropriate juncture.

Meanwhile we've gone and crushed everyone else out of sight.

 

[jb1964]

Hiya team!

Man, I'm wide open for suggestions as to how and win this one.

Knowns...
Gandhi wins by space launch. However, an AI at war doesn't do a real good job w/ research.
Additionally, we have to coax him into building the 10 parts.
We have to be at always war so I'm pretty sure participative governments are a bad move.

What's the one or two first order ideas that will make us a top contender? I certainly don't know.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

I believe the TGL option to be very great. We spam his borders with ships so he's out of floating considerations - or we funnel him to exactly one spot where he gets bombarded and killed pronto.

MT comes in and we leave a LOT of VERY good cities unprotected for Gandhi, amidst which TGL. We gift everything tech to one other, low-profile civ and sell him contact to gandhi if he hasn't met.

After that keep Gandhi to his "reserved" space and hope for him to make it.

This is going to be harder than eldar04 IMO because we can't push that other civ to get ahold of half a continent. Gandhi will be too weak too late in the game to be saved, really.

 

[eldar]

The problem is, and of course we won't know 'til the game starts, is that it looks like Gandhi starts on a one-tile island. The big clue is the amount of goodies stacked around his start.

 

[soul_warrior]

howdie doodaa, folks.

TGLib seems like a very smart idea, so we cant use it

how about we take over the world, razing everything, building the UN,
then keeping Ghandi limited to his small parcel of land (using the infamous bikini babe blackade) of about 30-35% of land.

having taken out his UN win, and damaged him so he cant win via culture, he must go to either space oe dom.
since we will have 60% of the land, it would seem his options would be quite limited.

and just so it wont be all content - a nice group picture of some fools dancing about...

 

[eldar]

If we can keep Gandhi so backwards he doesn't have Education by the time we get all the techs needed for the SS (and... er... all the resources - Oil, Al, U, right?)... no, that won't work, will it?

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

It WILL work if he's a despotic 1-tiler with limited contacts. Taking over the world early and pushing our science output to the brink of making our brains explode also sounds good. This is monarch, even us can do that.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

About building the UN:

All victory conditions are switched on except diplomatic

... so nvm that problem, just take advantage of the duo monarchy/monarch to give the world an efficient kick in the butt.

 

[Minute Man]

Checking in. Hi, guys.

No real thoughts on this game yet except the obvious (Republic is probably a bad idea). And we probably will have to smack everybody else around to make sure they don't beat Gandhi to space. But having to let an opponent win by space race without being able to help him directly (since we have to stay at war) is definitely going to be a challenge.

I do agree that Gandhi is probably on a one-tile island, both from the goodies around and the Deity-level unit support (which I suspect is there to keep him from ruining his economy by building settlers and such with nowhere to send them).

I suspect we'll want to move far enough away to not have our capital overlap with Gandhi's. Two spaces NE looks reasonable (though I'd like to know if that's a lake).

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

I too was eager to see if it was sea indeed or a lake. I was waiting a bit to bring the point, after we laid up a big masterplan of doom ... which we have.

So I was thinking along the lines of:
1- we want coastal for the gold bonus
2- we want that cow
3- mountain could be useful for instant exploration but not at the cost of a few early worker turns on the cow if it's got fresh water

So, case 1, lake to the east. Not moving the worker to the mountain but to the BG, discuss about settling the BG, irrigate the cow, conquer the world.

Case 2, sea to the east. Then the plains NE of the mountains become viable for settling. Send worker to the mountaintop to see how viable and discuss from there.

Case 3, both lakes.

 

[soul_warrior]

hey, if we look at the food coming from the water cant we tell if its a lake or sea?
(hint - we can....)
i think we will have to wait till we start to choose.

both of BEFs cases are ok.

 

[soul_warrior]

i WILL NOT consider both being lakes....
IT SHALL NOT HAPPEN!!!!!
let us all join in a prayer to the RNGods and Gyathaar to avert this evil.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

This post is a paid ad from the No Lakes :tm: prayer lines. Visa MasterCard AmEx accepted.

Please help us, lurkers, by calling 1-888-no-lakes to sustain our prayer lines. We are awaiting your call. Shall this be true it would testify in the proof of how true the RNG god is and what concrete power he has on our lives. We all knew it, we can now prove it. Call now.

 

[jb1964]

One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy....

Operator: Hello, No two lakes prayer line. How may I help you?

jb: Umm, hi. I was just calling to offer a prayer for the two lakes.

Operator: You mean a prayer that there are not two lakes? Right?

jb: Ya, that.

Operator: So how much of a prayer would you like to offer?

jb: Wudda ya mean?

Operator: How much would you like to tithe? You know, an offering, donation, scratch, dropping a few Franklins? The RNG god loves a joyful giver!

jb: How about two dollar off coupons for Subway? I think one of 'em not expired?

Operator: Do not mock the RNG god! How would you like two lakes, a vast desert and nice case of rabid, raging barbs! We'll toss in a few aggressive AI's as close neighbors if you're not careful.

jb: Listen you skanky wench! As a proud member of Team Wacken I dare you to bring your worst.

Operator: I'm feeling a plauge coming on. Team Wacken, huh?

jb: Bring it you harpie! <click>

 

[jb1964]

Hey... while we're waiting around for SG9 to start a few words about SG8.

We need to encourage Teams Bede and Obormot to finish as they 're the only ones out there, unless I'm missing something, that have a shot at the spoons.

Team Bede's in deep doo-doo w/ Rome bringing it. Obormot has been nuking the crap out of all that stand before her. Victory is certain but they need to finish to claim the spoons.

Then again, if we really want the spoons maybe we should spam them into an apoplectic state.

 

[eldar]

How are we doing spam-wise with this game? More importantly, how's the spam-to-views ratio? And how come we've had no visitor posts yet?

 

[jb1964]

XTeam is only 4 posts from us on SGoTM8. I think they're trying a 12th hour run at our SPAM laurel, or whatever.