SGOTM3 Rome - Spoiler 1. Middle ages plus all continental contacts.

[SesnOfWthr]

@AlanH - Yes, they contacted us. As M60 noted, I figured MB would put Greece or Carthage next to us, so we decided the safest place to explore (first warrior) was to the south due to our map position. Greece decided to go straight W apparently, and contacted us about 6 turns after we first saw them on turn 8. We declared immediately in 3300 bc, so to correct my earlier statement it was 500 or so years early.

We tried to explore only enough to plant cities, and were able to delay next contact until turn 54, and it has been pretty regular declarations since. Of course the next contact was Joan who came calling, and she had iron hooked up pretty early, although she didn't send a noticeable force for a while.

BTW - Thanks for the list of dates/turn numbers in the maint. thread, it made things much easier.

 

[rrau]

Team -Oblivion-

vanilla 1.29f

Not playing the varient
-----------------------

move settler and worker SW and settle Rome in 3950bc. Research Pottery 100%.
3250 meet Greece and France - no trades
3200bc learned pottery and trade pottery to greece for bronze working and 3g. Start researching IW
2390bc settle Veii
2350 meet Russia and America, buy CB cheap from France and sell cheap to Greece
2230 meet England
2110bc settle Antium
1790 settle Cumae
1700bc connected wines
1625 settle Neopolis and on the ibt, learn IW (2 iron sources in or near our territory)
1525 contact germany with a warrior - was available to buy contact sooner, but was too expensive and we all passed
1475 trade WM and 120g to Babylon for Wheel and Masonry
1425 connect horses
1375 connect iron
1325 learn writing and start researching lit
1250bc trade wm and 6gpt to England for math, trade math to Russia for HBR+7g, trade HBR to Greece for Mysticism
1225 switch from expansion phase to building mostly military units/raxes
1100 found Ravenna
1050 England dow on us after refusing to give her our map

have debate about whether to try for Great Library, eventually decide no

975 Buy Philosophy for 90g, 1gpt, and WM
900 buy construction for 76g, 20gpt, and 76g
875 buy currency and CoL for construction, 9gpt, WM and 2g
850 English warrior attacked legionary and triggered our GA (in depotism)
825 found Viroconium
buy Lit from French for 9gpt
750bc founded Lungundum (without military)
ibt England builds Pyramids (first wonder completed in the game)
730bc raze Oxford
670bc Greece demanded lit - ok as most of our military is marching north to England
650bc english horse razed lungundum (undefended and couln't pop rush anything)
490 bc Civ we haven't met built Great Lighthouse, we DoW Greece, and France
470 America builds GW, Sign Peace treaty with England getting Polytheism and 17 gold
450bc Paris completed great library as our troops arrive at the gates
430bc capture Corinth and generate first Great leader "Trajan" who is sent to Rome
Capture Paris with Great library and rename the city Paresium
410bc GA ends, and caught up in techs (and I think entered MA - but we never officially put it in our thread anywhere)

 

[smackster]

You think in 3000 years of continuous fighting we didn't have elite wins? I'm not going to go back and count them, but rest assured we had them in abundance.

The point of my comment (hold a leader until 26 elite wins) was to reduce the effect of getting that early leader, as that is so unbalancing, like the SGL in Conquests. In our game the very early Pyramids had a huge benifit. I've also played those games where leaders don't come after 100 plus elite wins, not much we can do about that.

smackster

 

[mad-bax]

The leader discussion is interesting, and a little painful for me to read. I hoped that by using a militaristic civ, and controlling first contact to be on turn 12 +/- a couple of turns that all the variant teams would get at least one leader before 1000BC. I personally played to 1000BC 7 times, and only once did I not get a leader, and that was because I played a completely defensive strategy.
I also tried to compensate for different research strategies by putting a goody hut next to the Greek start, so that there was a good chance that pottery would be an available trade.

One of the reasons that the Xenophobic variant was chosen was because of the number and close proximity of the civs in the north. Almost always they would end up at war with each other very early and their workers would hide in the capital cities. It was regularly possible to buy 8 workers in the first 50 turns, which would give the vanilla players a huge advantage. I did not want to mod the game this time round, and so not being able to trade. Again, on one test all the AI remained at peace for a long time, and I faced far more units from the AI since they had not "exchange" their free starting units.

It is difficult to make everything perfectly fair for competing teams when a random number generator is involved. But I think I will have to come up with something for the next AW type variant. Perhaps I can reduce the power of leaders to only build armies, and not rush improvements/wonders?

I do take it personally that one team can get half a dozen leaders with the same number of elite victories as a team that didn't get any. In a one off game it's just tough, but in a competition it is just silly. I guess I have a lot to learn.

 

[tao]

I do take it personally that one team can get half a dozen leaders with the same number of elite victories as a team that didn't get any.

Don't.

• It is a game, even though a competitive one.
• RNG affects A LOT of aspects: goody hut results, contacts, trades, ....
• If you control them all, it is no longer Civ III!

 

[AlanH]

Hey! We're still playing and enjoying the game. Don't feel bad about it. You didn't invent Civ3, and one of it's attractions is that you keep coming back with the hope that *this* time the RNG will be on your side. Smackster's experience shows it can happen.

There's a strong Las Vegas aspect to this game and that's proved a winning commercial formula. A lot of punters in 'Vegas are convinced they have a system to beat the house, but they also know that they are in the hands of the RNG gods. It's somewhat the same here

 

[Detlef Richter]

We've build everything we have with the sweat of our own Roman brows, with no Leader help from the pesky RNG that has been living in Smackster's pocket for the last two weeks. Hence our score being down by 30% on Smackster - how do you compete with free Pyramids and Great Library? Success at this variant is obviously very dependent on random leader generation, and Smackster drew the long straw

I have some dark infos, that smackster pays for his RNG luck

i think the difference here is while we were collecting MGLs other teams were hunting for some greek and french slave women to use in sweat shops

Thats the only goal who makes sense

 

[SesnOfWthr]

I'll add to the thoughts a bit:

As mentioned, you do not control every aspect of the game, MB. We are all aware of the possibility of the well being dry when we go fishing. It is a game of chances and probabilities. I think I saw you post somewhere that

"this game is very complex, perhaps endlessly so, which is why I'm still addicted"

or, at least, something to that affect. If we knew that we could get an MGL at every twelfth or sixteenth victory, how much would that take away from the complexity?

I do find it somewhat disconcerting that the rng gods can have such a huge impact in the game though. Perhaps it is as simple as removing the "rush large wonder" flag? Perhaps not, I never mess with the editor. :shrug:

Our team is not disheartened, and we are not about to stop playing civ, or even SGOTM due to this lack of luck this time round. One thing I have observed is that over time, these things always even out. Next month, team Sesn is going to get a world record 103 Leaders in the course of a normal game! No, even better, by 10ad.

Perhaps most of all, please do not take it personally, regardless of what outcomes are obtained. You have put together a wonderful competition here, and we all enjoy it immensely. You must be doing something right, how many teams participated the first time round as opposed to round three. I shudder to think how many hours you have invested in this little competition in the past few months. I know you have had help with it all, but there can be no doubt who has been the point man in this thing. We only complain, and dissect the rules, because we care enough to want to win.

[/rant]

 

[AlanH]

I have some dark infos, that smackster pays for his RNG luck

Yeah! Right! Perhaps a Centurion stubbed his toe as he climbed the steps of the Parthenon, or Caesar caught a mild summer cold when heading north to supervise the redecoration of the Reichstag

other teams were hunting for some greek and french slave women to use in sweat shops.

Unfortunately when we captured them we had to kill them. No sweat!

 

[Detlef Richter]

Unfortunately when we captured them we had to kill them. No sweat!

You've choosen a hard way

 

[leif erikson]

You've choosen a hard way

You mean there is another way???

@M-B - We all want to win and sometimes we take the RNG personally. Please keep doing what your doing and help us enjoy and appreciate the game even more. X-Team learned from the start that the RNG is what it is, another aspect of the game that you have to think about at times and live with all the time. Keep up the good work!

 

[Wotan]

Team Smackster
I guess the variant made us do things differently from how we usually use resourses in a game. The Leaderfishing was more intense than usual, as was the number of elites. The fact that if we did not build a GW it was "lost" to us was a major reason for the extensive use of elites in attacks. I normally start an attack by softening the defenses and use elites to kill off wounded enemies. Not so this time, when the attack had a fair chance of success I would go right in with elites hoping for that GL and if the attack failed the attacker would retreat when redlined to fight another day. This of course resulted in more elites being killed than usual though as not everyone retreated... I think that during my second stint in this game I did about half a dozen elite attacks per turn. I was actually rather annoyed by the time the leader finally arrived during my 8th(?) turn. His name: Better late than never... sums it up I guess. So even if we did harvest a whole "legion" of GL's I do not believe we had any real luck factored into this. I believe we have been on par compared to the number of elite attacks/defenses we have had.

 

[dmanakho]

Team Smackster contd.

There was another factor that helped us to get all those leaders...
We played Rome, but we barely used legions at all...
Initially we wanted to postpone our GA until Monarchy, so all the early fighting we did with horses... Extra movement and ability to retreat helped us to generate more elite units than otherwise would be possible.
So we used some what unconventional tactic while playing for Rome when instead of using powerful legion we did almost entire warfare with horsemen...
But outcome is known, I am glad we did it.

 

[AlanH]

Xteam
Your tactics sound very similar to ours. We also used archers and then horses, and we didn't use legions until we were in Monarchy and very near the end of the AA. I certainly attacked healthy units as well as injured ones with elites, losing a few and I probably had a similar number of elite battles per ten turns to yours. Maybe, for interest, we should count up our elite victories and compare real numbers rather than trading hunches ...

 

[smackster]

Xteam
Your tactics sound very similar to ours. We also used archers and then horses, and we didn't use legions until we were in Monarchy and very near the end of the AA. I certainly attacked healthy units as well as injured ones with elites, losing a few and I probably had a similar number of elite battles per ten turns to yours. Maybe, for interest, we should count up our elite victories and compare real numbers rather than trading hunches ...

We didn't count, is there a way to get this from the save? Not sure if it matters, I'm sure you were unlucky and maybe we were a little lucky (although we did have a huge number of elite wins). Maybe we need to introduce the pink laurel for the unluckiest team.

Irregardless of the leader farming, I think our team did play a good game, whether it was better than others remains to be seen. Hopefully within the next few days we'll be reading all the threads to compare

I still think getting France way down on our contact list was a significant tactic, as that gave us more breathing room to grow, as England and Babylon had a long way to send any troops to us. Greece never posed much of a threat, which is partly explained by their landscape.

smackster

 

[mad-bax]

OK I'm going to close the discussion on who was/wasn't lucky now. I'd rather see discussion of strategy and tactics. Research, exploration, GA's, city placement etc.
Let's use this thread to learn something.

 

[tehfreak]

MB does a great job and shouldn't be told 1Leader/12wins isnt a good idea. It has to be taken seriously IMO.

 

[mabellino]

Here's our spoiler post, I kept it brief and didn't include mundane things like units built/improvements..




The early turns:

Settle on the spot, build order is warrior(x4), settler, barracks then spear
Scout W,SW find Athens
Scout W->N Spices cluster
Scout E->SE Silks
Scout E ->N
Meet Greeks in 3500BC and French in 3150BC.
Trade Bronze working to Greeks for Warrior Code+ 36g
Buy a French worker for 26g​

2900BC Found Second city (Mabellonica)

2590BC Meet Liz

Buy Pottery from French for 39g, sell Pottery+10g to Greeks for Ceremonial Burial​

2390BC Meet Babs (no trades)

2150BC Discover Writing

2070BC

Buy contact w/Germans from England for 40g
Writing to France for IW, Contact w/America and 15g.
IW to America for Masonry and 6g.
Writing to Babylon for Mysticism and 4g
Mysticism and 22g to Russia for The Wheel
Writing to Russia for HBR and 22g
Writing to Greece for 82g.​

1910BC Greeks demand 26g, we pay up

1675BC

Buy Philosophy from Germans for 120g
Buy maths from English for Philosophy, 36g +1gpt​

1625BC Found 3rd city (Ivanorium)

1550BC Found 4th city (Alexandreii)

1500BC Found 5th city (Kaiserium)

1400BC

Greeks and Russians are at war
Settle 6th city (Zabus)​

1375BC

Make embassy with Greeks
Greeks give TM+16g+MMking for MA vs Russians WM+2gpt
Americans TM+77g for WM
Embassy in Paris: Oracle (41 turns, 5spt, 3 food pt, 1 spices, 2 spear)
French give RoP+TM for WM
England: 57 g for WM
Greek 1 g for WM,
Babylon WM for TM
England: WM+2 for WM
Greek WM+8 for WM​

1300BC English demand TM+28 gold, we refuse but they don't declare

1150BC Found 7th city (Forpost), Antium also founded around this time (city 8)

1075BC

Make peace with Russians they give PT+WM+14g +Polytheism for PT!
Phony war paid off, we got MM and Poly very cheaply!
Buy Construction from French for Poly, C.o.L, WM +28g​

800BC Germany builds Great Library

775BC Sell construction to Germany for 37g+WM

750BC Build first galley but its mission is spoilered!

650BC

French and English in Middle ages
Trade WM+330g to Liz for Currency
Trade Currency+209g+10gpt to Germany for The Republic
Call a revolution, get a 2 turn Anarchy!​

630BC Roman Republic formed and are now in the Middle ages

 

[Demiurge]

I'd rather see discussion of strategy and tactics. Research, exploration, GA's, city placement etc.

I'm finding it very hard to analyze/compare each individual team's progression given the fact that pics and relevant stats aren't being posted at similar dates/turns. If in the future all team's post relevant pics and stats — a list of military size, workers, number of cities, known techs, GL dates and what they were used for, GA dates — at one or two pre-determined dates/turns in addition to the recap, it would be much easier.

You take two teams like tao and X-team. Chosen because the scoring curves are so similar while employing different strategies.

We chose a loose build at 4 to gain quick access to the initial bonuses and better long-term growth, while X-team chose to go at 3. More of a short-term approach but a good one given the variant. X-team stayed close to home avoiding contact, while team tao actively explored giving us the ability to buy techs faster and set our contact list to some extent. One would think with more cities and a tighter build that X-team is in far better shape at this point, yet our score curves are running almost in parallel.

Why the similar score with two very different approaches? Is it that the RNG was kind and we got a GL for the great libary and X-team apparently didn't? Did we focus more on improving terrain (workers) while they focused on expansion, military? Or, is it just that they are two games employing different strategies but played about equally. Its just very hard for me to tell given the way the information is posted.

 

[mad-bax]

Perhaps, in the future it will be possible to provide the QSC's and 1000BC saves for comparison. For this game though, we just have to exercise a little patience.