The SG Compendium

[Speaker]

It has been a year and a half since I first started playing Succession Games and while my interest in Civ3 has risen and fallen over these past 18 months, I know that without the SG community here at CFC, I would have abandoned Civ3 for some other game a long time ago. As my life enters a transitional phase, having graduated college in May, now moving to a new city to start a new job, I don't know how much more time I'll have for Civ3, so I wanted to create this thread where I could collect my thoughts about Succession Games and the community here at CFC. I'm hoping that some of the other long-standing members will join me here to post their thoughts about the community; they need not be as organized or collected as mine, but if they are, all the better. I'm glad I stumbled upon this place a year and a half ago, and thanks to all of those who have made (and continue to make) my experience here great.*

*In case I was a bit vague, I am not leaving the community, but have scaled back my involvement to a single SG at a time, and have been a lot less active in posting than I once was.

So without further ado, I give you the SG (and SP Story) Compendium:
Work in Progress
Nominator in Parenthesis

Realms Beyond Epic 12 - The Gauntlet (Coffee)
No worker purchases, no unit upgrades, no scroll-ahead, no trading away last resources, no prebuilds, with a hemmed in, resourceless, tundra start. Only Urugharakh is able to achieve victory in a very strong field of competitors.

 

[Speaker]

Games
CF1, LK38, RBD19, SP5, RBP9, EG1 – Team 1, EG2, RBP11, ST1, TH5, LotR10, RBC2, RBC3c, RBC4c, RBC5, RBC6, RBC8, RBC12b, RBC13a, RBC14a, LotR14

Top 5 Favorite Games
In which I played

5) RBD19
An interesting concept where we helped our "little brother" X-Man to fly, even though at times it seemed like he didn't appreciate our aid.

4) CF1
I'll always look back fondly at my first SG, originally titled "How About a Deity SG for a Newbie or 2?" I learned a lot about how to play at Deity and how to be a good team player, and had a blast breaking into the next level with Voodoocat and Skyfish.

3) EG1
Took a team of neophytes and transformed them into Emperor level savants. Running this Training Game took a ton of my time and effort, but it was easily worth it, and an experience I'm glad I had.

2) LotR10
Faced an early full-world dogpile on Sid, came back from a gigantic tech hole, and captured the UN by way of two ICBMs, for the first recorded victory at that level. We likely would have pulled out a space victory if necessary.

1) EG2
Combines two of my loves: Civ3 and creative writing. Sullla showed extraordinary writing talent and the game, against Deity, as the little-played Mongols was one of the more exciting and interesting I've ever been a part of. It is a pity that we never got to finish this game.

Teammate History
9 Games
T-Hawk

6 Games
Charis

5 Games
Arathorn
Reagan

4 Games
Jabah

3 Games
JMB, LKendter, Skyfish, Sullla

2 Games
6thGenTexan, Bam-Bam, Coffee, Gothmog, Grimjack, Griselda, Kylearan, Sirian, Sirp, Voodoocat

1 Game
Aggie, Amirsan, Arizona Steve, Belisar, Chieftess, ControlFreak, Dark Savant, Hotrod, Meldor, Orbit, q33555, Ridgelake, Rubberjello, SHard, T McC, ToddMarshall

Favorite Teammates
(In no particular order)

Voodoocat
No longer really active in the Civ community. Remains the only member of CFC with whom I exchanged IM names.

T-Hawk
The player I most love to follow. I know that I won't even have to check our cities because they will be perfectly micromanaged. I think I once found what I considered to be a micromanagement blip, but he had a reason for it. Beware of his "highly-detailed wrath."

Charis
The player I most love to hand off to. He needs nothing more than two horsemen and a warrior to take on a golden age Deity foe.

Arathorn
Runs crazy games I love and has a taste for bombardment blood that I share.

Reagan
A solid, classy player. Didn't want to play as the French a while back, for political reasons, a sentiment I shared. For some reason I didn't think of his name like our former president, but rather like "Reegan" until I figured it out just recently.

Sullla
The first player who really inspired me to improve at Civ3 and I held my training game, EG1 as a way of giving back to the community like he did.

Former Teammates I Miss
Voodoocat
Sullla
Sirian
Skyfish
Gothmog
Sirp
I know that interest in games ebbs and flows, and I don't enjoy Civ3 as much as I once did, but I sincerely hope these great players will come back for Civ4.

Playing Position
1-- II
2-- VII
3-- IV
4-- III
5-- IV

Top 5 (+1) Memorable SG Turns
First) CF1 - 3000BC-2590BC
My first SG turn. Started with a bang, vetoing Voodoocat's early worker moves.

5) ST1 - 150BC
Broker 9 techs for the cost of 1, gaining a full world map in the process.

4) Sp5 - 1505AD-1575AD
Hand off to Sirp with 131 tanks upgraded to Modern Armor and no per turn trade deals.

3) RBC6 - 260AD-350AD
Following Griselda's great setup, I create the Blood-Spilling Zone (TM) where five dozen Iroquois medieval units meet their maker, securing our subcontinent and paving the way for Charis to steamroll through the Iroquois core.

2) TH5 - 460AD-550AD
"From Cities" increase of 24%, while acquiring 8 techs, building the FP by hand from scratch, building our military, and leaving Dark Savant with a tough economic hole to dig out of (remember the Cutthroat Capitalists?). Thought of it as my best set of turns until.....

1) LotR10 - 1530AD-1575AD
Following Arathorn's great setup, I double nuke the UN city of Uskudar, capture it, and pass off a handful of turns before the first recorded Sid win, while at the same time stealing 7 modern techs to get us to the brink of space.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

 

[barbslinger]

This here is some beautiful reading. I remember reading, actually following quite a few of these games and I for one have appreciatedevery moment. thanks for the memories Speaker and great luck with your impending career opportunities.
I found this site through a regular search after buying the game coming off of Monopoly Tycoon. Let me tell you, I was so impressed. the players here, for a while, I felt HAD to be fictional because the game was so damn hard. I read and read and learned and learned. Quite a few times I would dowload a save and try to imitate what the greats would do. Speaking of greats. I miss Charis a LOT. I felt he was the best battle hardened and tech swapping dude around. T-Hawk is fantastic too. Due to him I feel I made great strides playing the Numisatic Numidians, or something like that. I followed his log and replayed the opening many times. One of my most memorable moments of Civ life seeing the curtain pulled back.
Times have changed since the "good ol days Speaker" mentions with names that I know and admire. I wish they were all still here and I hope someday Sid Meier comes up with a game that will captivate them for a longer period than they stayed. They are incredible.
I currently appreciate the work of T_McC, Gozpel and others and have really enjoyed the blooming of scoutsout. It is a new, can I say generation, of players coming into their own. I am really enjoying this site and it's new SGOTM. One of my most memorable moments was being a part of the first 3 team effort, unofficial SGOTM Redux 24.
I loved the first Greebley sposored Monarch Shermans War Game. In fact I just reread the thread where he was "checking for interest" Who would have known the Grumpy Old Men would come of that, and now it is A Sid attempt. As an aside, I think the Grumpy Old Men have become the Delerious Old Men_zz. My favorite story is Charis' Celtic Christmas and have read it many times and if Charis has the screenshots still I would love to paste them into the text I have saved. Why did THAT get deleted. It is truly one of the best ever.
I hate to continue, but Bamspeedys diety AW win was inspiration and instruction.

To conclude, I look to this site when I wake up and before I sleep. The SG's have brought people tgether and theur level of play up to levels I don't think even SID himself anticipated. Thanks everyone for participating.

 

[Speaker]

Thanks for the reply Barbslinger. I have thoroughly enjoyed your AW adventures with Greebley, T_McC, Handy, et al. I think the Sherman's War game was my favorite because of the role playing, but you guys have improved so much, and I picked up many helpful tips on warmaking.

And I agree, Scoutsout's growth in the Training Day Experiment has been amazing. I read the whole thread in two sittings eek: I know) and he got sharper and sharper with each page (and there were a lot of pages!).

 

[Coffee]

Perhaps someday someone somewhere will put together a short list of the most inspirational games for others to read. For me it was The Gauntlet. A Realms Beyond game which had only one winner and was not expected to have any.

 

[Tomoyo]

Perhaps someday someone somewhere will put together a short list of the most inspirational games for others to read. For me it was The Gauntlet. A Realms Beyond game which had only one winner and was not expected to have any.

I think we should put that to a vote, but first we need to determine which games should be put on the ballot, perhaps by having a vote? We can determine that in this thread if Speaker lets us.

 

[Speaker]

I had intended for this thread to be a place where members of the CFC SG community could reminisce about their experiences here. So if you guys would like to talk about the games you most enjoyed lurking, feel free. I will edit my first post to include links to the "Epic" games and stories as nominated here, though I don't feel any sort of vote for the "best" game is necessary.

Have fun!

 

[Bam-Bam]

Glad that I could share in one of your memorable games, Speaker. LoTR10 was my last SG, and I couldn't have planned a better way to end it. How I remember climbing out of that dogpile, and watching the AI suicide a rifle against a swissmerc to start the GA...that was just two consecutive turns, where we went from full dogpile to golden age. Then the capper--Arathorn and you setting me up to cross the finish line...what a memorable game. Thanks for the reminder.

 

[Arathorn]

It’s a good time to sit back and reminisce. For me, at least, C3C is on its last legs, and no patch means I’m probably about done playing. Plus, the SAW game took a lot out of me. That's not to say I won't be back in a couple weeks with a new variant I just have to try or something.

Looking back, I found my very first SG turns were January 11, 2002 in LK6, an open game with the Iroquois. I only played three turns, late in the Industrial Age. My second game didn’t finish (hosted by Lovro). After that, though, things started looking up .

Games I’ve played in (in no particular order): RBD23c, RBP5, RBD13, LotR1, LotR2, LotR3, LotR4, RBP11b, LotR5, LotR6, RBE5, LotR7, CB01, LotR8a, LotR8b, RBP4, LotR9, RBC2, LotR10, RBC3d, LotR11, LotR12, RBC13m, RBC13b, LotR13, LotR14, RBC14a, LotR15, RBC12a, RBC12j, LK6, Russia/Small/Monarch (hosted by Lovro), and there might well be more that I missed

Favorite Games (in approximate chronological order):

LotR1 Daring Deity – the first deity SG and my first run SG
LotR2 Zealous Zulu – the first ever “always war” game and a HUGE blast to boot
RBD13 Cretans – great write-ups made up for mediocre difficulty and dropping players
LotR6 Progressive Paranoia – the battle for Bunker Hill and the Bunker Hunker should never be forgotten, not to mention the early dogpile
LotR8b Irrational Iroquois – the speed and interest in this open SG baffled me and it was tons of fun to read and play
LotR10 Scouting Sid – the first recorded Sid win anywhere, to my knowledge, SG or otherwise

Players:

Too many to list. If I listed some, I’m sure I would some out. With that said, here’s my list. This is not just from games I’ve played but from games I’ve read, too.

Charis – mathematical mind, great discusser, only game I know who uses even less troops than I do
T-hawk – brilliant tactician and a great explainer
Zed-F – RBD23C taught us both so much, I think – also ran probably my favorite training SG
Meldor – RBD13 bonds here, along with a great disposition and enduringly solid play
LKendter – the undisputed king of SG hosting and a nice patient guy to boot

More: Speaker, Architect, Toecheese3, Jaffa Tamarin, Cartouche Bee, Gothmog (Dread Enforcer), Skyfish, snaproll, Justus_II, Bam-Bam, etc. etc. etc.

Best/favorite SG Turns:
4. LotR6 – Deity dogpile - Dogpiled by many deity foes and made progress forward. Felt really grim at the time, but in retrospect was very good. Fun, too.

3. RBD23C – Finish - Took a powerful nation over the top, completing a very early conquest victory in the first-ever SG competition (which my team won, BTW).

2. LotR1 – Unprepared war - Started with 13 ancient age and 4 medieval age units against a foe on the cusp of the Industrial Age. Captured 4 cities, razed a 5th, and gained 8 techs. Knights vs. rifles and perhaps an exploit but a great set of turns nonetheless.

1. LotR10 – Uber-bombers - Stole Flight on the inherited turn and did little else until turn 6. Final 5 turns saw 5 cities razed and 8 techs acquired, on Sid, across water. And had cash on hand for the next player (Speaker) to get 3 techs on the inherited turn.

Arathorn

P.S. Thanks to Speaker for starting this thread. Triggered a lot of good memories.

 

[Speaker]

To Arathorn,

Sorry for the latent response here but in the craziness of the last two weeks of my life it got lost in the shuffle.

LotR6: Progressive Paranoia was one of my favorite games of all-time to lurk. It was one of the first real "variant" games I paid close attention to and looking back, it's amazing how "naive" I was. I'm not sure if "naive" is the right word, but having only played SP, I never played anything other than straight up.

And this game had it all. A tough start. An early dogpile. The first real beachhead landing I ever saw. Some serious carnage ( ) and AI nuclear fall out. 100 or so Civ3 games in 3 years, and I still find Conquest to be the most enjoyable of victory types, and this one had it.

I have to echo your thoughts on both Charis and T-Hawk. Rare is a player so ingenious and creative as they. Rarer still the player with enough patience to type long explanations of the game's inner workings, which these two have done time and time again to the benefit of the dozens of SGers. I have never submitted a GotM or HoF game, but players like SirPleb, Bamspeedy, Moonsinger, Alexman, et al have been gone to incredible lengths on this great site to share their secrets and help everyone improve. Imagine if people in "real life" were so thoughtful and considerate!?!

To All,

Having looked back at a bunch of old school games many months ago, one that particularly stood out in my mind was RBD7 - Cuban Isolationists. It picked up major cool points (pun may or may not have been intended) for the black minimap and the two-man repartee between Sirian and Charis was an inspiration to me which I attempted to emulate with Sullla in EG2 - Xenocide and the Speakers for the Dead.

So........What games inspired you?

 

[barbslinger]

The Cuban Isolationists was one of my favorites also. I replayed that start in particular and really enjoyed it. Remembering not to give up the map was tough at times. T-hawks game on RBCiv Numismatic Numidians was replayed a number of times until I got the start correct. Using T-hawks notes provided ample instruction. It was my first intro into really micromanaging. I miss those days when you guys were here. I hope Civ4 will bring you all back. I especially miss Charis, but I know he is enjoying himself in Space somewhere.
On a personal note Narcissistic Nehru inspired me to never quit. Quite a few times a few of the Grumpy old men felt it was close to being over. Coming back to win that one was a personal high.

 

[Speaker]

Replaying the games of others is something I never did, although I can see how beneficial it could be. Who couldn't learn something by following the moves of the master himself, T-Hawk? I find that I learn the best, however, by reading descriptions of a certain tactic (ie. 4-turn settler factory) and then attempting to figure it out on my own on a different map. This way I can understand the logic of the idea in itself, not tied to any particular map or situation.

BUT this is not to say that the detailed descriptions that have been the norm in SGs are not hugely beneficial to (me and) the community. It is amazing to me just how many players here feel comfortable playing Emperor and above. When I started there were less than 20 players active in this forum who had qualified for the "Realms Beyond Deity" games. I felt a lot of pride when I won my first Deity game and was able to join that exclusive club. I would bet that in the SG forum alone, there are now 30-40 players who could beat Deity with little overlap between the two lists. As Sirian recently pointed out in the RBC thread, the bar has continued to be raised and those doing the raising have been nice enough to share in detail how they strengthened their muscles.

I find it interesting, however, that as the games become more and more high-level, a certain expertise has come to be assumed, and reports have included less and less reasoning. I don't know if it was a lack of new blood, or a sudden elevation in the quality of play, but for a while there was stagnation. But soon enough there was a rebirth and a new generation of SGers has begun to take over. The growth of players like Scoutsout and the Demi-Gods in Training has been refreshing and the new "Sid" level has brought back the need for discussion. There is more early-game discussion in RBC15a - France -Sid than I've seen in one of my games for a long time. Facing an AI unit-per-turn-per-city will do that.

I hope that the detailed turnlogs will continue and with it, the quality of play. I think we can all agree that GK2 - The Training Day Experiment was a huge success, and it was so because of its attention to detail.

By the way, ControlFreak wrote the most thorough turnlogs I ever saw. See EG1 - Team1 for an example.

 

[Sirian]

I still remember my earliest games. There is something about getting in on the ground floor... Like the way culture in Civ3 has to come early. Getting that 1000year bonus...

The number of things that survive in the culture from the very first RB SG is kind of cool. There's the pungent weed, dotmapping, what happened to the Zulus, the swap to ten turns per player as the standard, and the nickname X-man for old Xerxes.

Farmer's Gambit is something I named the strat I used to open the second game, as there were wheat lying around. That seems to have stuck.

One of the funnest games for me was RBD5. The map was large (huge by today's standard, as map sizes got nerfed later), and we had all that open space, and we TRIED (bless our souls) to play with the original communism on it, before finally giving up. The huge stacks of infantry and the banter with Charis. That was also (I think) the last SG Cyrene played. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

Cuban Isolationists was of course a gem. So was LotR2.

My favorite SG has to be RBE2. Closest game I've ever played, and came back from one of the the worst looking starts and the worst early-war bad luck I've ever had. We should have lost, frankly, but the AI was dillydallying in the end game, research Genetics and stuff, instead of getting to The Laser.

RBE2 sated my "cutting edge" drive. That was the peak experience, and after that, nothing could be harder. Even if the SETUP was harder, in a technical sense, the actual challenge could not be worse and still be won. So shortly after that, I faded out of the Civ SG scene except for the occasional odd variant, and I dilligently avoided any further cutting edge scenarios. Like playing Ember and Wussie in Diablo II, there's just nothing I could do to top RBE2 AS AN EXPERIENCE. So it was time to move on.


Those of you who miss my contributions on the SG front could find something of value when I sponsor variant Epics. The Epics have been quiet lately while the SG scene is still hopping. LOTS of faces here I don't recognize, and I'm glad to see things so lively. The current Epic, "Ports Your Goal", is a scenario I've had on ice for nearly a year, waiting for a final patch on C3C. It's the first Epic I've sponsored this year. It's a bit of a special, rather like Epic 12 was in that it just won't come along a second time. We still haven't gotten a final patch, but the patching did come far enough along to let this game be played. If you are capable of playing Emperor and you never tried an Epic, I promise this one would be memorable. There's a link in my sig for anybody who doesn't already know their way to the RB website. One caution: if you are new to the Epics, the primary rule is NO SPOILERS. Please observe this dilligently if you post about the event. Thanks!


Some of my other fond memories are of games that either petered out or did not get finished. RBD15, RBD18, FRFR, and my Training Game. I also fondly remember the Infantry variant games, especially the Always War infantry game.

As far as teammates, virtually everybody I played with was cool. I would not want to make a list for fear of forgetting someone I shouldn't. Everyone who played with me knows who they are and what kind of times we had together. Plus half of my good memories are of the Epics, as tourney play always was complimentary with SG play, I thought, and many Epics were actually more memorable for playing the entire game through instead of spectating most of the way and living vicariously through my team.


- Sirian

 

[T-hawk]

Thanks for the good words, Speaker, barbslinger, and Arathorn. I must say that I've stood on the shoulders of giants as well. I owe the most to Sirian, starting with his early-early reports ("you can mine grasslands now"), from there to the PROD game where I followed along, to the RBCiv Epics of course, and to the RBE games.

And my play wouldn't be worth much without Alexman's corruption explanations, Urugharakh's micromanagement advice (I didn't understand the +5 food threshold until I saw his opening plays in RBE4), Sulla's training games as well, and Charis and Arathorn leading the way on exploring variants.

I'll second (or third) the thought of RBE2 being the apogee of my SGs. I think Sirian covered that one. Other memorable games...

RBC14A, the Sid-level Conquest game for the Middle Ages. We jumped on an AI civ on the 8th turn of the game, then got dogpiled and lost a war to AI invisible units. We made peace and recovered, but then Charis's exhortation rang out: "get going on victory points or we're going to lose!" The last turns of the game featured us breaking alliances left and right to grab whatever cities we could for VP to outrace the other civs. We won by a score of something like 30,000 to 28,500. This was the one game that really recaptured the on-the-edge feeling of RBE2 with a spectacular endgame race. And like RBE2, it had a serious danger of military loss during the entire game, unlike regular games where that usually vanishes around the knight era. That's a chief reason why Sid is so popular now: the breakpoint for being safe from military loss comes very late or never.

LotR6, which others have also covered. Early Deity dogpile from every civ on the planet. That beachhead with over 200 enemy units... We would have lost that city (though not the game) if the AI had had any kind of competence; it never attacked with half its units.

LotR5 (Tactless Darius) was also quite memorable. We lost, and might not even have won straight-up without the variant restrictions, but the game was eye-opening. We learned how critical brokering really is to survive on Deity. And if we'd won this game, LotR6 never would have happened as it did.

LK27 - China, pangaea, Emperor. This was memorable not because of the finish, but because of how we got there. A team with LKendter, Sirian, and myself just dominated this game from the get-go, so much so that Sirian retired from the game halfway through as a done deal. This was the game that really drove me to push to higher difficulties, leaving Emperor to be a variant playground.

TH5 - the Capitalist Competitors. Not really a grand game in SG history - an Emperor game that reached a bog-standard domination win - but it was definitely unique for each of us that played.

There were also several games that ended with a foregone finish that came after some awesome early fights for survival. RBE4 (the first Beyond Deity game), RBE6 (Naked Vikings), LotR6 of course, LotR13 and 14 (AW games), and RBC13A (Fall of Rome Sid). The second RBD19 Big Brother game also could've gone this way, if Xerxes hadn't loved us so much.

 

[Sullla]

Hi all. It's been a while since I even so much as lurked in the Succession Game forum, but Speaker IMed me yesterday and mentioned this thread, so I was moved enough to come by and offer some of my thoughts. I hope that some more long-timers will be interested enough to add their sentiments to those of some of the fine players who have already spoken above.

Games: (in chronological order)
Japanese Succession Game (my first)
SUL1 - The Zulu Navy
SUL2 - IamSPARTACUS' Boatless Journey
RBD23b: The Competitors
SUL3: Sullla's Training Day Game
RBD12 v2.0 - Roman Conquest
SUL4: Training Day for Emperors
LK25 - Emperor, Babylon
RBE DSG1 - The Uncanny X-Men
RBE3 - This Space Available for Rent
SUL5a - Competing Succession Game Teams (and the "b" team is STILL GOING!)
RBE DSG4 - Beyond Deity
RBP4 - The Roman Menagerie
RBE6 - The Naked Vikings
RBD19 - The Return of Big Brother
RBP9 - Old School Deity
EG2 - Xenocide and the Speakers for the Dead

Some not-so brief thoughts on these games... My first ever succession game was a Regent one, with the Japanese on a completely dry continent (no fresh water at all!) It was abandoned out of lack of interest about halfway through the game in a fairly strong position. By coincidence, this was also the first ever game at CivFanatics that longtime moderator Chieftess played in, so it should give you an indication of how long ago that was.

RBD23b gets notice as the first game I played with what could be considered the "Realms Beyond" crew, and I had the fortune to wind up on the same team as Sirian, who pointed out some of my more egregious mistakes in kind fashion. I throughly enjoyed my two training games, but they took so much effort that I wouldn't be anxious to repeat them. I specifically recall working for 8 hours at my summer job and then coming home and spending 2-3 hours analyzing and writing the commentary for each 10 turns of the SUL4 game. The RBE games were good times as well, rubbing shoulders with lots of excellent and truly talented individuals. RBE1 and RBE6 stand out for me in particular, with the first game showing just how well a human can expand even on Deity with a food-rich start and good planning, and the second being a rather exhausting win from a difficult starting position with a civ stripped of both civ traits and its UU.

Then there were some of the variant SGs, like the Roman Menagerie where every civ had access to every UU. I wonder what that would be like with the additional units in Conquests... The Big Brother game was fun too, except we had the "misfortune" to get a powerhouse civ instead of a weak one as our buddy. Cranking the tech pace back up with the Old School Deity game was also a trip back into earlier times. And both Speaker and myself sunk unbelievable amounts of time into the Xenocide game; playing the turns on that large map took time in and of itself, but then writing 1000-2000 words about it afterwards was almost too much. (In the end, it probably WAS too much).

Favorite Games:
In terms of just succession games, it would have to go as follows:

Honorable Mention: RBP4, the Menagerie game, because the concept was way too much fun not to get a spot here.

5) RBE6: I didn't come up with the "naked" idea, but I did organize the game and helped carry it out to a successful conclusion from rather difficult straights. This was also the game where in 10 turns I irrgated every single tile around our big cities to grow their population after they got hospitals, and then re-mined them after they topped out in size. We had about 100 workers at the time, I think *winces at the thought of doing that again*.

4) RBD23b: First game with a lot of the players I spent years interacting with. The map was a poor one to run a competition on, but we still had fun anyway. And finally getting to read the "A" and "C" threads when we finished before the other teams was a real joy.

3) RBE1: First game of the series that really moved the playing level upwards here in the SG forum. Playing on Deity is not considered a big deal now for a lot of the people here, but that was not always the case. See, if you're new here, you have to understand that a lot of the strategies which are taken for granted now had to be worked out through painful experimentation in the early days. In fact, when I first started lurking in this forum in January and February of 2002, almost no one could even beat Emperor. RBD4: Introduction to Emperor was I believe the first SG here to win at that level, and I recall reading that thread constantly when it was going on. Deity was even worse. When Firaxis released Civ3 in late 2001, they said that no one in their company could beat Deity. Wins at that difficulty level were few and far between for about a year afterwards. In the first GOTM at Deity level, fewer than 1/4 of the players managed a win. I believe that the RBE series went a long way towards dispelling the aura of invulnerability surrounding Deity, and I am proud to be able to say that I was part of the first game in it. Of course, playing with Sirian, Sirp, and Jaffa meant that I didn't have to do anything more than get out of the way and avoid screwing up on my turns.

2) EG2: Inspired by detailed turn reports from other games, Speaker and I did our best to turn this game into something approaching a novel. The concept was tough but not impossible; conquest-only Deity game with the Mongols. It's unfortunate that we didn't finish, but after all of the testing that I did for the Conquests expansion, I was pretty much burned out on Civ3. Speaker, I understand, felt pretty much the same way at the time. I still know how the story ends, so perhaps one day we will get around to finishing it off. You never know...

1) SUL4: I still feel that this training day game was probably my finest hour in terms of succession games. I put so much effort into teaching the other team members, and explaining WHY I was doing what I was doing, that I think I even learned a lot of new things myself! Furthermore, the game was an almost textbook-perfect demonstration of how to win convincingly on high difficulty, going through very neat phases of settling/military buildup/war/consolidation. I couldn't have scripted the game better if I had tried. Even the starting position, on a river with floodplains, allowed for ample micromanagement of food versus shields in the early game. Anyone starting out at Civ3 can still learn a lot from reading that thread, even if the version of the game is very much out of date.

I don't want to single out individuals that I played with for special recognition, since everyone who was on the team contributed something of value. Through this forum and then later through the Realms Beyond competitions, I came to know a number of truly remarkable individuals who live not only all over the world but also have a broad range of interests and philosophical beliefs. I can't say I always agreed with everyone, but it was wonderful to be able to come together and share a love of competitive (but friendly!) gaming. I have found the individuals who frequent this succession game forum on the whole to be well-educated and almost always polite to one another, with little to none of the flaming problems encountered only all too often on the Internet. I would like to think that we all have helped teach one another through shared games here. I do feel sorry for those who were "late to the party" though; Civ3 is just well-covered ground these days. There's not that much to discover anymore. If you were here from the start, when we were ALL equally inexperienced and trying to learn our 4-turn settlers apart from our irrigating the desert, you'll know about the excitement that I mean. Sorry if you missed it; it was a wild time!

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Sullla

 

[scoutsout]

Wow - I'm feeling... humbled... or something. Getting mentioned in this thread before posting here is not something I expected.

@Speaker: GK2 in two sittings?

@Barbslinger: Always fun to be with you in a good slugfest.

My list of SGs is a lot shorter than most lists of memorable ones here... it looks like I've got quite a bit more surfing and playing to do...

@Sirian: I gave your last 2 Epics a shot, and thoroughly enjoyed the attempts (though unsuccessful). I was having a heckuva good time in that Carribean game until I got RoP sneak attacked by Greek Cav. I had been playing fast and sloppy trying to get the game finished before the deadline, and didn't have enough time left to play the kind of focused game I needed to play to dig myself out of that one. Never could get peace (let alone spices) from the spice trader in the other one... so I felt I couldn't abide by part of the variant... But don't be surprised if a new face or two delurks in that corner of the community from time to time. Sir Bugsy is a big fan of the RBCiv epics, and there are many players learning from him in GK2. We're just not quite to that level yet...but we're working on it.

Some of you in this thread are among the giants on whose shoulders I have stood... and you're so strong, you didn't even know I was there.

But the view is awesome from up there.