SGOTM6 - Team tao

[mad-bax]

SGOTM6 - Celts. Team tao.

Welcome to your team thread for SGOTM06. I hope you enjoy the game.

Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Celts
World size - 100 wide by 130 high.
Difficulty Emperor (approximately)
Landform Contiguous Pangea

Here are a number of links you might find useful.

The Constitution
GOTM Reference Thread.
Upload a Save.
Download a save.
SGOTM06 Maintenance Thread.

This Months' sponsored variant is Cultural Celtic Communists the rules for which are as follows.

1. The only allowed governments are despotism and communism.
2. You must win by 100K victory condition.

Your save has been uploaded to the server and will become available to you on the 7th February.

 

[Sabre]

Checking in. This is my first SG try but I've followed some threads from the last few games and think I've got a good idea of what's expected.

Some thoughts on the game: 100k without the ability to cash rush will be a fun challenge. Possible initial strategy would be to get Iron ASAP and then turn off research. The Gallic Swordsman is a great early UU and we should try to maximize how long they are effective. If we aren't researching - just taking techs from our victims - then the time it takes for the AI to get pikes increases. If we drag a few others into our wars we can slow this down even more as the AIs won't be trading as much. A nice long AA full of marauding Gallics would give a very nice base to build culture. I'd also say an early Golden Age shouldn't be as much of an issue as a normal game as it will be a long time before we can leave Despotism. As long as we have our core established we should be able to take some advantage from the GA even if it occurs around 1000bc. Of course this all relies on us having Iron. Lots of hills and mountains about though, so it looks likely.

From the map it looks like a 4-turn settler farm can be built 2 tiles NW. Pretty much the only spot we can get both food bonuses in 1 city. The cows look as if irrigating might be a ways off. That site could be a nice worker farm or a supplemental settler city. Getting as many cities out earlier is important. We will want quite a few cities when we go Golden Age and with so much food about we should be able to pack in a nice tight build around the capital. Perhaps RCP 3 or 4? If we can get 5-6 1st ring cities pumping out Gallic Swordsmen at a Golden Age pace our neighbors won't stand a chance!

Also, how early should we start building Temples? Should they come before our military or after we start warring? Getting them built early would be nice, but with 100k these initial Temples will form only a small part of our total culture. I figure our early turns should emphasize expansion and then concentrating on getting our Swords out there. Once the Golden Age has begun we could probably knock off those Temples quickly and get back to military. We would be sacrificing some early culture in getting a jump on collecting more towns. The faster we reach the domination limit the faster we really begin racking up the culture.

Anyone else have ideas? This is just my initial thoughts and I'm open to suggestions.

 

[Tone]

Hi all!

I think you're right about the time it will take to get to and develop the cows, Sabre. Moving the worker NW should give us a better picture though.

I also favour switching off research but my only concern (apart from the prospect of no iron) is that the GS will not have too much of a shelf life at this level. It is also quite expensive so maybe we could have some (non-core) cities not connected to the iron so that there is an area that can produce warriors for upgrade at a reasonably steady rate.

I have to say that I hate despotic GAs! No third shield from bgs, no extra commerce from roaded rivers. This is going to be a shock for me if some of my turns are in our GA! Are there any strategies to plan for this?

This is my first non PTW/C3C game for quite a while. I'll need to do a check on the downloads and brush up on the shortcuts as vanilla is not so user friendly!

 

[Sabre]

I think really the only thing we can do is get a lot of towns going before hitting our GA. What we'll miss with the Despotic limits will have to be made up in volume of worked tiles. There seems to be a lot of food so we'll have to take advantage of that. I like the idea of using Warriors to upgrade to GS and we should perhaps try to set up a system of pillaging and reconnecting the Iron or if that is too expensive do as you suggest and balance GS with Warrior upgrades. I don't know offhand how much it takes to upgrade to GS - 60-80g? If we aren't researching we should be making enough money. As for the shelf life of the GS I think we should try our hardest to slow research down. We should at least have carved out an area for a second core by the Middle Ages and with luck gotten a Forbidden Palace rushed. We would then be able to research at a good clip if we need to if, for instance, we decided we needed to switch to Knights or Cavs.

I've also got to get back into the Vanilla game. Been playing PTW for almost a year now.

 

[Tone]

80g to upgrade so we'll need plenty of cash. Even so it's one of the advantages of non-C3C games as the upgrade is only 2gold/shield as opposed to 3 and even though I think they won't rule for too long, they are better than MDIs and I tend to steer clear of Fued for as long as possible when playing the Celts!

Your comments on RCP and FP build also raise another difference with C3C. We'll need to play to our civ strengths and game mechanics. I think that the vanilla traits for the Celts will help us in this respect. Now, time to fish out CrpRings again!

 

[mad-bax]

Guys, the staff will not be able to field a team for this game. Therefore I have added Renata to your roster for this game. Hope this is OK. I would put her toward the end of the roster as she has just played a long turnset in SGOTM5

 

[Sabre]

The more the merrier.

 

[Renata]

Hi all, hope you don't mind me dropping in at the last minute. Like mad-bax said, I'm braindead, so not much to say now. I'm wondering if it might not be better to settle only one of the food bonuses to begin with, though. If we settle halfway between, we lose the extra food from the wheat *and* the extra shields from the game for the first ten turns. (Or twelve turns, I should say -- mad-bax was cruel with the placement of that mountain and those bonus grasses, wasn't he?) If we choose one or the other, we have either more units or a higher population earlier, and we can get two six-turn warrior/settler pumps out of it, I'm guessing.

My gut feeling would say go to the game, build a settler at size 3 for the wheat after a bunch of exploring units, then a granary in both places. But I haven't thought it through at all, so take that with a grain of salt. I like Sabre's expansion-first proposal for the core.

@ Tone -- do you know where a list of those keyboard shortcuts might be found? I'm also a PTW/C3C refugee.

Off to see if my vanilla installation still works. Nice to meet you all.

Renata

 

[Tone]

Welcome, Renata! As you have already dealt with a stupid question from me recently (cavs, COTM9 ) you now know to double check everything I say or do

I downloaded >>this<< , written by lonewolf, but note that you'll need acrobat reader. If my printer was not out of ink I would have printed out the first page as it looks just what I need. Hopefully it'll do for you as well.

The one thing that I do remember is the frustrating feature in stack movement where any units that have used up their mp (eg attacking a city) will follow the next turn if you move the rest out using stack movement. Very annoying if you didn't want those to move. I either move the rest individually or remember to cancel these move 'orders' before it gets to the auto move part. Watch out if it's your last turn as you caould pass this onto another player!

 

[Renata]

Thanks. Printing it now.

As far as the cav thing go, well let's just say there's a *reason* I knew right away what the problem probably was ....

Renata

 

[Keath]

Hello everybody! This will be my first SG and like Sabre, I have been following some games for quite a while. It looks like fun and I’m really looking forward to learning a lot more about this fascinating game.

 

[Keath]

There is a good Civ3 specific article about the Celts <<here>>. What does the team (or should I say 'clan' ) think about closely placed towns with eventually two warriors as MPs for some additional happiness and a quick upgrade to our UU when necessary?

Despotism isn't the best but the Celts favour it and we could compensate for the AI having better governments by having 2 to 3 times the towns for each one of theirs. And/or do we want 1 or 2 size 12 cities for wonder builds?

 

[Sabre]

Keath - Yeah, I think our best bet would be a tight town placement. An example would be this setup from my GOTM 38:

This is at RCP 3 and I was able to get some pretty good production out of those towns. Takes a litle work to get towns' worked tiles optimized but is worth it IMO as you are working most of the corruption free tiles pretty early. This start area looks like it could support a similar setup. As for developing large cities for Wonders, that may be something we'll want down the road. I don't have a lot of experience with 100k and I'm not sure how much of an impact Wonders have. Should we decide to build up a city it's not hard to trim a few bordering towns by building Workers and joining them to our selected city. This frees up tiles for the city and grows it at the same time.

Renata - I like the idea of 2 settler cities instead of 1 central one. I played around in Excel a bit to try and see which site was better. I chose the forest NE of the game (not sure if settling on the forest is ideal, but I'm not sure what's on the tile north of the game - looks like it might be a hill but for simplicity I just chose the forest) and the grass tile SE of the wheat.

The game tile got us 3 Warriors and then a Settler at turn 21, 1 turn after reaching pop 3. I sent the worker straight to the game and chopped and irrigated it.

The wheat tile got us just 1 Warrior and then a Settler at turn 21, 2 turns after reaching pop 4 or 0 Warriors and a Settler at turn 15, 1 turn after reaching pop 3.

So our choices seem to be:
a) Getting a Settler out ASAP and worrying about immediate exploring and contacts afterwards. The wheat can get us a second city founded at turn 18 and getting our first Warrior out at turn 22.
b) Getting a second city at turn 23 and either 3 Warriors and a pop 1 capital at the game or 1 Warrior and a pop 2 capital at the wheat.

A few other considerations:
Looks like we've got tundra near the cattle. This means we are towards the south and we might want our capital in the northern wheat location. It also looks to me like there might be something on the plains tile NW of the wheat - possibly more wheat? My fog-gazing isn't that great but still it looks like there might be something there. Getting a headstart on the 2nd Settler town would be nice but it does have it's risks. What do you folks think?

 

[Renata]

I only put in four RCP-3 towns in that China game and it was still insanely powerful, so yeah, couldn't agree more on that.

Six turns saved on the first settler by going to the wheat at the price of early explorers, eh? Tempting. And with that tundra to the south, going north does gain a smidge more, doesn't it? It's dangerous to have no military for 20 turns, though, particularly if the barb setting is high.

I suppose we should discuss what our likely research path is to be. If it's something that's likely to need some early contacts, the northern site loses out a bit.

Renata

 

[Furiey]

Wow, a day and a half without power (still don't know why but the whole area was affected) plus working all weekend and the discussion is well underway. Nearly midnight here and just back from work, tomorrow will be similar, but it all has to be done by Tuesday so more time after that.

Anyway, checking in, welcome all to the team, more will have to wait.

 

[Renata]

Nice to meet you, Furiey. And hiya Keath -- missed your posts the first time around somehow.

Renata

 

[Sabre]

Furiey - Yeah, anticipating my first SGOTM timing up with a free weekend and I kinda hit the ground running. Hope your work goes well!

Renata - One thing going for us with the Barbs will be the Emperor AI starting units. They should be pretty aggressive in hunting them down for us. Our research path may be tied to which starting path we choose. If we go for the early Settler we might want to research Pottery first since we may have some trouble contacting other civs in time to peddle our starting techs. If we go for the Warriors first we could probably skip Pottery and go for Bronze/Iron Working. I don't know if we need to get to Iron extremely early as we'll probably want to take time expanding before using that Iron. We shouldn't put it off too long though. I'm not sure if any of the other early techs would be very important unless we find we have no Iron and would Mad-Bax really be that cruel?

 

[Renata]

He would. No question. Just look at the location of those food bonuses and bonus grasses, or at the fact that SGOTM5, a one-built-city variant, stuck us on a remote *island* to start.

All that said, I hope he was kind.

This is more to remind myself than anything else, but with this being 1.29f, we'll have less leeway with any hypothetical barbs than we might in PTW, because they won't wander; they'll come straight at us. So many things to remember.

We're religious and militaristic, by the way; we'll start with bronze-working (and CB).

Renata

 

[Sabre]

Bronze Working is the Scientific starting tech. I think we'll start with Warrior Code and Ceremonial Burial. And yeah, I was following the SGOTM5. I thought that was a pretty clever starting island that required some quick thinking early in the game. I guess we could see something like that here - if we don't have Iron, well we will have Archers to fall back on. I hope it doesn't come to that though.

 

[Renata]

I always get that confused. Thanks.

Renata