SGOTM3 Rome - Team akots

[mad-bax]

SGOTM3 Rome - Game Thread.

Hi everyone, and welcome to your game thread.

Here is the start position.


Here are a couple of links you might find useful.

The Original GOTM16 Announcement.
The Draft Constitution

This Months' sponsored variant is Xenophobic NOW
The rules are as follows.
1. Non-Oscillating War variant. You keep a list of opponents and the order in which you meet them.
2. You must declare war on the first Civ you meet before leaving the diplomacy screen for the first time.
3. You must stay at war with that Civ until one of you have been eliminated.
4. You must declare war on the second Civ you met on the same turn that the first Civ was eliminated or 20 turns has elapsed (whichever happens sooner). This is to prevent sandbagging.
5. After each opponent is eliminated or 20 turns elapse you must declare war on the next civ in the list.
6. If you run out of opponents because you haven't met them yet and 20 turns have elapsed, you must declare war on the next opponent you meet before leaving the diplomacy screen for the first time with them

The Xenophobic part of the variant runs as follows.
7. You may never own a foreign worker. You must never buy or sell one, and if you capture them they must be disbanded on the tile on which they were captured.
8. All deals must be at face value. No haggling.
9. You will not establish embassies.
10. You will never retain a town that contains foreign citizens. Such towns must be razed and any workers spawned disbanded.

Also there is a puzzle involving some non-standard Barbarian Units. The puzzle is framed in the same way as it was for the original GOTM16, but the solution is different.

The save will be available from >>HERE<< when the timelock is released. All of your teams save files will eventually be available from this link.

When you finish your turn, you may upload your save to >>THIS<< link

Have fun, and good luck everyone!

 

[akots]

Hi, team. I'm not going to pm anyone like mad-bax suggested. Just little time to show up for everyone.

We are playing the variant in PTW version 1.27. If someone cannot play in this version, please tell so. If someone has signed up to play the variant by mistake and does not want to, please also say so and we may try to seek a replacement then.

The following team members would be playing with this team in the following order:

1. Samildanach
2. Cuivienen
3. jhigham
4. akots
5. Sir_Ortin

Please speak up something to confirm your participation and if there are objections against the order of play. We have the following topics to discuss:

1. How we get the award.
2. What are the strategy for the starting moves.
3. Do we all understand the variant rules correctly.
4. I personally have not played this GOTM and have no idea of the map. So, if somebody has played and has some hint, please post them. However, we should not discuss this extensively. Just post that "I have played the game and have a certain knowledge of the surroundings" (which are edited by mad-bax IIRC) or something like this.

Obvious strategy would be similar to Always War IMHO. However, there is a great UU (needs iron) and a possibility of early Golden Age. Don't know how it would work, but I hope to win by Domination or Conquest prior to 1000AD.

Lets start the discussion!

 

[Sir_Ortin]

Hi akots. I don't remember if i played that gotm. Anyway, even if i played it, I do not remember anything about it.
As to discussion about starting moves - it seems a good starting location. I vote for immediatelly settlement.

 

[samildanach]

Hi Guys!
I'm going to be out of town for the next two days, although I will try to make it back for the evening of the 14th. I guess we will still be deciding on what we are going to do for the next few days. I haven't had any thoughts on how we should approach this game as yet - I'll hopefully have had some ideas by the time I get back. Cheers

 

[akots]

OK, three players are here, waiting for the other two to show up and start the discussion.

 

[mad-bax]

I can only reiterate my earlier advice. PM them. I know it's a chore...

In any case - you don't have to wait. you can start without them if you want to.

 

[jhigham]

I'm going on vacation thursday afternoon, not back until 7/26. You may want to get a replacement :-/ There is a good chance that I'll be able to play on turn around 7/22 or 7/23 but other than that I'll be in the woods.

As for strategy, heck if I know. I'm a builder, and have only tried early wars a couple of times, with fairly mixed results.

I'm not 100% clear on where the 20 turns applies. Does this mean that 20 turns after meeting civ #2 we must declare war on them, or 20 turns after meeting civ #1 (immediately if we meet after 20 turns)? In other words, we'll be pretty quickly at war with most of the world... correct?

 

[akots]

OK, still Cuivienen has to show up.

@jhigham: Is there anything else unclear to you? I'd prefer to answer all questions at once. Are you sure you want to play the variant? The difficutly is fairly close to Deity game IMHO, unless the map is really cheesy. So, you may still re-consider. We cannot play with 3 players in the team but with 4 it would be possible for a couple of weeks. Later on you may join but you'll miss most of the fun.

We have to declare war on the first civ we meet as a last step in the first diplo screen. Then, we can stay in peace with other civilization but only for 20 turns after the war was declared to the first. Basically, we have spotted a Greek warrior on turn 10 but have not initiated the diplo. On turn 15 Alexander comes to us and we can then buy something from him or sell something to him without gpt deals and haggling. Then, we must declare war. On turn 25 we meet some other civ, for example Egypt. We can stay at peace with Egypt for 10 turns till turn 35 when we have to declare war (and never make peace). Untill this, we can trade but cannot haggle.

Anybody else is going to skip in the near future?

IMO, we should try to follow the AW build with RCP3, 6, and 9. No improvements, only occasional rax but mostly units including settlers, workers and warriors with few spears. No undefended cities and settlers early in the game. We have to hook-unhook iron a few times and upgrade warriors to legions. With legions we can win the game early on with some occasional horsemen support. Horsemen are then upgraded to knights and very soon there would be cavalry running around. Then, winning would be not a big deal if we can survive and expand to this point. I would suggest going for Conquest victory condition since we would not be able to settle huge areas required by Domination victory condition.

Getting TGL would be top priority. We'll research Literature and go fishing for a leader then. Being militaristic means should be no problem with that.

If it goes really bad, we can try to build some cats but in this case we cannot count on getting the award because the game can be won without a singe cat. Hence, we can build cats only if really-really desperate.

Starting position has only a single food bonus in despotism which is game. We need another food bonus to create a settler factory. But may be it is OK. I'm not sure.

I also assume that all team members have previously played AW game and are familiar with basic principles of the strategy. If my assumption is wrong, please lets discuss more general issues.

 

[akots]

... my earlier advice. ...

First, please stop lurking. Second, I thought you are too busy playing your turns with the staff team. We'll get this going somehow. If not, I'll pm you. No offense please.

 

[mad-bax]

None taken. I was just trying to help.

 

[jhigham]

I have no problems playing the game, as long as you guys are cool with the fact that I'll be your handicap. My biggest downsides are that I always want to build improvements, and I don't like overlap space, which keeps my personal games in the monarch-emporer range.

I understand how this affects my game, and have no probem playing differently if needed, as in this situation. Having sessions limited to 10 turns will also help a bunch, as I can't get stuck going down the wrong path, and answering to other people will help, since I'll pay more attention to detail.

One question that I've never figured out, is how to make a beeline for certain techs (literature and iron working in our case) and also have money for upgrades. Do we go 100% (or whatever non-deficit), then go 0%, or just research at slightly under top rate with +2/t or whatever surplus. I never end up with remotely enough money to do significant upgrading, but I may be limiting my upgrade window too quickly. I tend to want technological superiority, not numerical superiority.

What's the story with cats and the bonus?

 

[Cuivienen]

Checking in.

 

[akots]

Wellcome, Cuiveinen! Good to see you on the team!

@jhigham:
Don't know about research. It might depend on the number of goody huts on the map. Quite possible that when we meet some other civ, they already know Iron Working. So, we may want to trade for that with cash and our starting techs. We also don't need to hurry too much with Literature and may try to trade for Writing then going at minimal science. But to tell the truth, it is very hard to know in advance.

Bonus you mean food bonus or something else? We need +5 food/turn to create settler factory. We desperately need it because we have to raze all enemy cities and hence need huge number of settlers to cover the empty areas of the map.

I'd like to see some more discussion on how to proceed with the first moves. Sam would apparently show up soon. Let's hear what he says.

 

[samildanach]

Yes. Like AW we shouldn't be rushing out to make other civs aquaintance. I agree with the 3,6,9 RCP build. As far Armies and leaders are concerned depending on the map we may be able to get to chivalry/education with trading. If we are on a panagaea I suggest legion army first, heroic epic second and forget about the TGL. If we are on islands/continents we will probably need to go for the TGL first. If we are on islands what is going to be our strategy for armies? Do we build any? Given that we won't be able to move them off island until we get galleons. Having a third of our legions tied up in armies would really bite if we attempt to invade another continent early.

 

[samildanach]

Since I've just become aware that when you extort a town from a rival civ the citizens are immediately naturalised can we extort towns from a rival civs on the turn before we wipe them out. That is we park our legions outside the enemy capital and extort their remaining towns in return for peace then immediatley break the peace treaty and wipe out their capital. If we can do this this should help our score against the competeing teams especially if they're not doing it I personally think its within the spirit of this variants rules what do you guys think?
I also agree that we should go for conquest producing the settlers for domination will just slow us down.

 

[akots]

Yes, you are certainly right. But if it is continents, we still would need at least one army. Just to get Heroic Epic and even more leaders. After all, it is Emperor level. Certainly, we can try a 20K game rushing wonders with leaders?

 

[Sir_Ortin]

Hi guys! (sorry my terrible english)
As I can see, the saves are ready for downloading and playing.
Let's go!

To Samildanach:

I personally think its within the spirit of this variants rules what do you guys think?

I'm not sure, but it looks like some trick. According to rules:

3. You must stay at war with that Civ until one of you have been eliminated.

To me, if we plan to use such strategy, we should ask SGOTM staff if it is possible to make a peace treaty and break it during the same turn. I think, the answer will be NO.
But the idea is, mmm..., a candy! (as we say in belarus&russia = perfect).

 

[mad-bax]

Sir_Ortin is Correct.

In my experience this tactic is not permitted in AW or standard NOW either.

The difficulty I have with this, apart from being technically at peace with a civ you should be at war with (even for a nano-second) is that the AI does not handle it properly. If you do it to one Civ, fine. But the next Civ will also agree to part with towns too.

It is an exploit.

 

[Sir_Ortin]

As to initial moves, IMHO the next: settle on start position, worker E, road, mine, worker w,w, road, mine.
After that worker make improvements according with the explorations.
I think that we need to connect luxuary resource as soon as possible.

 

[Cuivienen]

Worker east first seems a bit of a waste, as it will take a long time to build a road and mine on the hill. I think the Worker should go west first, road and mine, then head east. We can afford to have Lux at 10% for a while, and this way is more shield-efficient (we'll have the extra shield earlier).