SGOTM8 - Peanut

[AlanH]

Welcome to your game thread. Please use it and subscribe to it. 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 August 5, midnight, server local time.

Thanks go to Gyathaar for coming up with the variant and developing the map.

The variant is Hydrophobic Conquest. You are America, your goal is to conquer your archipelago world, and you are afraid of water.

The rules are simple:

1. You will build no boats. Seaborne units are all disabled for America.
3. You must win by Conquest. America must be the only civ standing at the end of your game.
4. Red and Gold Laurels will be awarded respectively to the members of the C3C and Classic teams achieving the fastest conquests.
5. 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 - America
Opponents - Six, preselected
World size - 80 wide by 80 high. (Small)
Difficulty - Emperor
Landform - Archipelago
Barbarians - Raging

The map is handbuilt, and therefore may not have a standard configuration.

Game mods:
- America can't build boats. The AI can.
- All victory conditions are available except Diplomatic and Spaceship.
- Settlers, workers, scouts, explorers, leaders, cruise missiles and tactical nukes can be loaded into helicopters.
- A side effect is AIs can load tactical nukes into any boat with transport capacity ... so beware
- Bombers have lethal sea bombard only (lethal land bombard removed)
- Cruise missiles, stealth bombers and F-15 have both lethal sea and land bombard.

Additional change:
- C3C will use the same contact and map trading rules as Classic. Contacts can be traded between two civs when one of them knows Writing. Maps can be traded between two civs when one of them knows MapMaking.

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. Vanilla players in particular should understand the late-game equalisation modifications that we don't often have to worry about.

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.

 

[Mathilda]

Aaalllrriiiiiiiiiiiigghhhtttt!
Here we are again.
An award last time, second for team Peanut, if I'm not mistaken.
Let's make this a third

Settle between the hill and the lake?
Genaral plan suggestions:
Fill the island asap, spend all available resources on research, save money for buying troops later and techs when ever possible.
Position lookouts at peninsula points and wait to see some passing traffic.
Minimum military, just to deal with the barbs initially, a small rapid response force there after in case of any unwelcomed visitors.
We don't need any wars going on anywhere, so no pseudowars, that will only slow down AI research.
Wonders? Colossus. Smiths. Newton's. Copernicus. Any others? That's a lot allready, but I think we can do it as we don't have a lot of military to build early on.

That's my initial thoughts on this one.

 

[civ_steve]

We're up! civ_steve checking in. And I can see Mathilda is ready to go!! Geez, Team Cutlery is already up to 33 posts!

Yes, Team Peanut now has a second award, to go with winning SGOTM2! Way to go! I can sense a third award on its way.

Initial issue is to expand rapidly. There is plenty of food available; Shields are pretty poor - I think the best we can do is 5 turns for Settlers at the capital.

It would be nice to keep the hill for shields. However, we should see if the coast bends around just East of our starting location; if it does we may not have enough space to the East to form additional cities there. From what I can see now, I think we settle on the hill or the plains space between hill and lake.

The level is still open. If it is Emperor, the AI will help us in research. If Monarch, they wont be too helpful. Either way, research is king in this game. We have to keep the Tech race going as quickly as possible. Minimal military (unless we're not alone). Libraries and Marketplaces as quickly as possible. Definitely like the idea of posting lookouts at peninsula points; any AI moving by or sailing by we want to contact. Hopefully we can see at least one or two across small straits; otherwise, it could be a long time before we see anybody.

If we get contacts, leave Writing to the AI. We are Expansionistic and Industrial; besides Pottery we need Alphabet, then Mathmatics. If we trade Math for Writing, the AI will be on the path to Construction and Currency that much faster. We go for Literature, and Libraries. Look for Phil and CoL to trade, and go for Republic. With a small military, we can revolt at earliest opportunity and the Republic will be a good trade item for any free 1st tier Medieval Techs the AI get.

If we don't get contacts, we'll probably have to research Writing, on to Lit, Phil, CoL and Republic ourselves. It would probably take too long to wait for them to research Map-Making and contact us. The commerce boost of Republic along with Libraries is something we want as soon as possible.

Can't wait until F-15 to get a GA, so we will need Wonders. Hoover's Dam would time us just about right to have a GA as we're getting ready to start invading. However, Atomic Theory and Electronics aren't necessary to do Air-drops, so I'd just as soon leave those to the AI and delay entering the Modern Era just that much later. I think a GA anytime in the early to mid-Industrial is just about right. So, Wonder building is definitely a go (Colossus would be really helpful!), just keeping in mind a plan to start the GA at a good time.

City-sizes; I like large cities for late Game action. Size 16 and up; production is really focused and we can churn out lots of costly units. This would indicate a spread out inner ring of distance 4 or 5. Problem is this takes a while to set up, and we're not as efficient as we'd like during the Middle Ages. So the question is, go for closer size 12 cities, or farther spread but later fully developed size 13+ cities, and use this as a guide for our placement.

Other then getting a city as part of a peace deal, I can't think of any way to cross water without boats earlier then late Industrial Age. It would be possible to jump the Palace to such a city, but that would be kind of costly as well. And we'd probably have to do it for each civ, since they're likely on different continents. I think the way to proceed is stay as peaceful as possible, research as rapidly as possible, help the AI research things you want them to learn, and race to the late Ind Age. I think a well-timed Theory of Evolution to get us to Advanced Flight would be just enough lead time to really take off on the AI at that time.

 

[civ_steve]

More information is coming out.

The level will be Emperor (good for Research, bad for combat).

Only empty cities may be gifted to the AI (No teleportation of units allowed by city gifting!)

Units that may be loaded onto Helicopter: those listed above, and 'foot' units. The discussion seemed to indicate that 'fast' units (movement of 2 or higher) and artillery (of any type, except those listed above) can not be loaded into a helicopter. This makes things a lot tougher! I was thinking we'd at least get to drop a bunch of Arty, Infantry and Cavalry in, or wait until MotorTransp and drop a stack of Tanks in. Neither option appears to be available. We'd have to establish a new core, and build from there, which would seem too slow. Cruise Missiles and Tac Nukes can now be loaded; I was hoping not to go that far in the Tech tree.

 

[Crazy Eskimo]

Woot! Crazy E checking in. This looks like it'll be a long haul.

One question to begin: Do we know how much land there is? I'm currently playing an archipelago map on C3C with 70% water and there are a couple islands that host 2 or 3 civs. So we might not be as alone as we think.

I agree with CS and Queen M - with so many floodplains immediately available, we want the hills for their shields. The spot between the hills and the lake also gives us a forest, so at size four we should have a decent number of shields and food coming in.

Opening moves - Move the worker to the sheep. That way, we might be able to see whether the land bends or not. Besides, we probably want to work that sheep soon anyway. Combine that with moving the scout S-SE. The two together should let us know if the coast is dangerously close on that side.

Do we want to have our first player check that out, then report back before proceeding?

Short term - Build a decent sized force quickly. We might not be alone and even if we are, there are the barbs. Once we've ascertained that the island is ours, we can always use those units for defense, MP, and sentries as Queen M said.

Longer term - I agree, we need to keep the AI as much as peace as possible. We're sort of a hermetic broker, in that we want to trade techs but can seek out contact. It might even be advantageous to trade techs even if we don't get full price for them (or even half price). That way, we a) speed up the tech race and b) keep the civs on an even footing, so that we don't have to deal with one runaway civ later. Granted, we should only do this if we discern that we won't likely be able to get a benefit from trading this tech to the civ in the future, but there are some times when you're just not going to get much for a tech. Better to keep the game going fast.

Overall: I racked my brain, but couldn't think of anyway to invade prior to flight. The AI generally won't give you cities unless you've already taken some of theirs. Unless we want to let the AI land on our island, I don't see anyway to buy/demand their cities. I didn't even think of gifting cities.

So, it looks like we're in for the long haul. Builder strategy to make sure we have some high production cities and lots of gold for when flight rolls around. Keep the AI at peace and keep the tech race rolling. I'm more for bigger cities and looser placement, if we can manage it. However, our island will probably dictate if it's feasible. All things equal, though, I think having bigger/better cities late game outweighs a little inefficiency in the early game.

The wonders Queen M and CS suggest sound good (60/40 for Hoovers if we can). Any desire for Leo's? It could help keep our defense force up to date via gold for most of the game. I'm 50/50 on it. Unless we're on a big island, the "every city" ones like Sun Tzu's or Pyramids just don't have enough umph (easier to build the actual structure in every city) and since we're going to be playing a major tech broker, the Great Lib is probably not worth it. Of course, no expectation of GLs to help speed things along.

Lastly, I have orientation from the 8th through the 19th (they expanded it to a full two weeks). I probably won't be around much during that time, and if so, it'll probably be during the second week. If you don't hear from me, skip me.

 

[civ_steve]

Orientation? Where at?

My mistake, Advanced Flight requires Flight, Motorized Transport and Radio, so we pretty much have to research everything to get to Advanced Flight. It makes sense then to build Hoover's Dam, and kick off our GA just before we go into major combat mode. We have to avoid Pyramids, Hanging Gardens and the Great Wall, if we want to go for the late Industrial Age GA.

I just loaded up one of our late game SGOTM2 saves, and researched Adv Flight. Helicopters can indeed carry only foot soldiers, no Cav, no Tanks, no Artillery and no Mech Inf. Infantry are the strongest units they can carry. They can airdrop the unit to any space within 6 moves of the city the helicopter is in. Helicopters rebase like Fighters or Bombers.

Paratroops need to be in a city with an Airport to do an airdrop. Again, it can be dropped anywhere within 6 moves of the Airport. They have a 6 Attack, just like Infantry.

Just tested both of them; Neither one can attack directly to an enemy unit from the Sky; the units have to be landed, and can attack the following turn. Both Helicopters and Paratroops need Oil and Rubber, so I'd say those resources will (most likely) be present on our land mass.

Leo's will not be too useful for a long time. I don't think we'll have hardly any forces, assuming we are alone and control our starting landmass. We'll want to hold our gold as much as possible, while keeping Research at full tilt. This also means that Great Library is not really useful either; we can't afford to sit back and use it. Colossus sounds good. Maybe Sistine chapel if we go for big cities; also have to see what Luxuries are available.

 

[MailMan]

Checking in

congratulations to all on winning an award. (do we actually deserve it? I thought that PTW and Vanilla play for the same award)

For this game we should realy consider taking cities in peace deal.
Originally I thought about having landing zone for the AI to form a city, but if we want to be really nasty we can form a city, probably let it grow a bit, gift it, declare and take it back on the same turn (hopfully with fast units to avoid more rep hit)

but first things first, We should first scout the land.
for the visable tiles I agree on settling SE as captain Mathilda suggested
initial builds should focus on growth - workers and settlers.
I was thinking about getting a worker before the settler and have him chop some wood to help building settler wagon. the first worker should irrigate the lamb than road it.
I would send the scout W,W to the mountain. I do not think we need another scout.

I do not see any note about huts changes, so make sure to switch out settlers builds before poping any huts.

Roster: I think the roster should continue from the previous game:

The Roster
civ_steve
Peanut
Mathilda
Kaiser_Berger
MailMan
Crazy Eskimo

Since I took it to the end last game, I suggest that CE will start this one.

On the personal side, I am getting married in the next month, therefore I will have less time to play while we arrange the wedding, fill free to skip me if I am missing.

 

[AlanH]

I do not see any note about huts changes, so make sure to switch out settlers builds before poping any huts.

Please read the SGOTM Reference Thread:

3. It is not possible to pop a settler from a hut in SGOTM. You may however be lucky enough to find an eqworker within one of these establishments.

 

[MailMan]

thanks AlanH.

Before I read to full post I thought that the problem in my post was the gifting exploit. I do see it in the banned exploits but I wasn't sure.

 

[Mathilda]

Congratulations MailMan
and good luck for the wedding.

I like the city gifting idea, it's got to be worth a try.

 

[civ_steve]

Congratulations, MailMan! Looks like several members of Team Peanut will have RL happenings to take care of, but it's all good stuff.

I have to balance the 'getting AI cities as part of peace deal' with 'getting the AI to help us in research'. Unless all the islands of the archipelago are really close to us, this tactic will only work for one or two civs. Even then, the free city has to be pretty close to our palace or FP to be of much use. We can't Palace Jump to it unless there are roughly 6 cities of ours in the area. And that's the only way I can see to make this new city of much use (unless it happens to be right across a strait from our Palace or FP, in which it could be useful.) We can't gift a city to teleport units to a distant Palace, so any units it can use have to be locally produced. I don't see us getting ahead of an Emperor level AI with only one or two remote, corrupt cities.

Perhaps I'm not fully understanding the case where a city is gifted first. That guarantees that one of the AI cities will be captured, perhaps making it more likely that they will give us cities in peace. Again, they have to be productive to be useful for quick conquest.

In either case, I don't see us concluding this game until Advanced Flight. The proper tactic then is to have several cities with pre-builds ready to finish helicopters as soon as Adv Flight is learned. Then, or shortly after, land a whole lot of Infantry with a Settler, form city, rush Airport, then use Airlift to land lots of other units, including tanks. Take civ. Repeat for next.

Once we've done some scouting, and later when we get WM's from whatever civs we contact, we'll have a better idea. But anything that reduces research capability is probably going to slow us down; that includes making any of the AI's use their commerce to support war instead of research.

 

[MailMan]

Thanks,

Regading the offshore corrupted city, It can be use to rush units.
We first need to rush barracks and harbor (harbor allowed in this varient) and then rush units.
Once we have enough units, use them wisely to gain more cities.

 

[Crazy Eskimo]

It's orientation for Business School. I'm goin' to learn me to become "The Man".

The converse of having orientation on the 8th is that I'm still in vacation mode up till that point. If no one else objects, I'd be happy to start off as MM suggests. If so, I'll play a quick half-turn as soon as the file is released, then post the additional map info to see if that changes where we want to start.

W-W scout movement will only get us to the forest. I, too, saw that mountain as delicious terrain revealing surveyance site, but I don't see how we could get to it on the first turn. I am loathe to delay founding of our initial city the necessary turn to get to it, so that's why I suggested the double pronged exploration that I did, as I think it should give us a good view of whether the coast is nearby or not.

However, if folks don't feel we sacrifice too much by waiting a turn to found our capital, then I agree with you, we should have the scout make for the mountain and go from there.

As for city gifting/conquest/peace talks for getting cities overseas, I leave that discussion to you guys as I don't know too much about the mechanics of it. It seems iffy to me, since the AI usually only wants to give inferior cities, but again, I haven't had much experience with it, so whatever you guys decide I'm happy to try. Part of me feels like this game has been set up to ensure late tech gameplay, and part of me feels like the team that figures out how to get off the island first will win. We shall see.

As for the two awards, if you check the discussion at the end of our GOTM 7 thread, you'll see we found that Tao faced far fewer units during invasion than we did. At first I thought it was because they happened into the beautiful spiral shape the map provides, but some sleuthing on CS's part revealed from definitely diverging AI build choices between PTW and vanilla.

Congrats on the wedding! I plan to take the plunge myself in a year, so any planning tips you can impart would be most appreciated.

 

[civ_steve]

My wife and I are coming up on our 11th Anniversary; in fact, we'll be gone for 2 weeks in mid-September, going to Hawaii. (I should be able to check in, but will have to be passed or trade at that time.) Best advice I can give you is this: memorize these two phrases so they are the first thing you say - 'Yes Dear' and 'Its my fault'

I think the turn order was and is just fine. Crazy_Eskimo is at the plate.

BTW, moving Scout W-W, will take it to the Mountain top to see what lies beyond; going E-E will take it to the forest, which will show if that is the corner of the land mass. W-W makes more sense.

Worker E to Lambs is most logical; this space is quite powerful. Needs Irrigation and roading, of course.

My only concern with moving off the hills, is that if we found on the hills, we can put 2 cities adjacent to the lake at distance 3 (from hills, SE-SE-E and SE-SE-S). I guess we could still place 2 cities at distance 2 in these spaces, and just have a larger ring to the NW, W and SW as well. Original location is pretty shield poor; OK I'm convinced. Settler SE to Plains.

I believe we definitely earned the Award. However, the Team Tao result is quite remarkable, especially in relation to the other 2 Vanilla teams.

 

[Crazy Eskimo]

::smacks forehead:: okay, I feel dumb. I was fixated on the east coast of our island and didn't think. I'm cool with Scout W-W and Worker to sheep as the opening moves.

I'm leary of the ring 3 placement in this type of game. I think it would stifle the growth of our core cities. The only advantage would be if that east coast were REALLY close. But it sounds as if we're all on board with the SE movement before founding. I'll still post first, just in case.

Happy Anniversary, CS! And thanks for the advice. I've already mastered the first bit when it comes to planning the wedding.

 

[Crazy Eskimo]

Stupid question time: Does the file become available at midnight when it BECOMES August 5th or at midnight AT THE END OF August 5th?

 

[Gyathaar]

midnight between 4th and 5th

 

[MailMan]

Congrats on the wedding! I plan to take the plunge myself in a year, so any planning tips you can impart would be most appreciated.

congratulation to you as well (to CS as well).
In here It is customary to have a large party (mine is about 350 ppl).
The wedding buisness is very commercialized. In order to have all the guest happy you need to buy/hire a good place, catering, DJ, bar, video and stills photographers, rabbi, dress, rings, invetations and few other things I forgot.

So basically my advise is - try to have a small party. The wedding is only one day, the marriage itself is the part that last.

Now the obvious question of why I am not listening to my own advise - you will have to look at CS post ('Yes Dear').

 

[civ_steve]

We had 150 people. Since we paid for it ourselves, we made some attempts to be careful with the budget. It was a great day.

I've gotten myself synced with the idea of gaining an AI city. Under Republic (for instance) we can cash rush whatever we need (in theory; we'll need a lot of cash against Emperor level civs) and potentially take on the civ in their own neighborhood. Ideally we would get a city, on the coast for harbor and resource access, that's also relatively close to our territory; that way we can place our Palace nearby, allowing it some productivity as well.

We might want to plan for a pretty fluid Palace situation, build a strong core with FP, and plan on multiple Palace Jumps, first to the nearby location on our island, then onto the next island once we get a few cities (6 appears to be the magical number). Repeat for the next civ.

Pursuing this strategy actively will require huge gold expenditures, which means little research. We might have to choose between this strategy and one that is research speed focused.

Even if we don't pursue this strategy actively, it could be very useful to get cities on the remote island(s). This would allow us to Airlift lots of units to the island once we have Flight, allowing full invasions prior to Advanced Flight.

CE - the save should be available somewhere between 10 and 11 pm tonight, our time (West Coast, USA). We have Pottery already, so I was thinking the next important Tech is Alphabet and as fast as possible. Does that sound good?

 

[Mathilda]

Choice between the two strategies - I guess we'll know more after we've seen the map.
I'd try to go for in between though. I'm very doubtful whether we'd be able to do the whole game with the gift a city stratagy, but it would surely build things up if we could do it at least once. My dream setting would be one slightly larger island with two AIs, pick on the smaller one, try to get one of their cities. Then take over their territory from their. Might be slow and expensive, but possible. Then jump the palace and take on the bigger AI on that island.
This way we'd well on the way by the time actually hit the full speed attack mode.
Of course if it works once, I'm sure it will tempting to try it agian, but what's the chances of it working every time?
I'd still start with a full speed research as a first option.