RB Pitboss #1 SPOILER - Mali

[dsplaisted]

Greetings!

This thread is for Fenton Denton Smith and me to record our progress in the first RB Civilization IV pitboss game. If you are playing (on another team) in this game, kindly do not read this thread

Important!

Please make every effort to avoid spoilers. Interaction from non-team-members is welcome and encouraged, but be sure that you do not give away information that Fenton and I shouldn't know. For example, asking us what turn we expect to complete a wonder or settle a city might tip us off that another team is trying to do the same thing.

Also, we have two games going on at once now (the PBEM and the Pitboss). Players from the PBEM game may read this thread, so please avoid posting spoilers about the PBEM game here.

Likewise, I will still be reading the PBEM threads, so don't post any spoilers about this game in those threads.

Finally, if you are not playing in this game, you may want to consider being a backup for one of the teams. This would mean you would not be able to read the spoilers for any of the other teams, and that if the team wasn't able to play the turn (due to vacation or other issues), you might be able to. Fenton and I would be more than happy to have a backup, although it might be more fair to choose a 1-player team to serve as the backup for.

Thanks, and enjoy!
Daniel

[dsplaisted]

This post is reserved in case I want to make a table of contents or something later.

[dsplaisted]

So here's the picture of our start that Sullla sent:



Flood plains, pigs, ivory, and 13 (!) forests to chop in the big fat cross. And I can't quite tell through the tile bleeding, but it looks like I may actually have two flood plains tiles. I am quite happy with this start.

Our leader is Suryavarman II, who is creative and expansive. Our civilization is the Malinese Empire, which starts with Mining and The Wheel. Our unique unit is the Skirmisher which replaces the Archer but has 4 strength. Our unique building is the mint, which replaces the forge and adds +10% gold.

Now what do I want to do starting out? RUSH! Now whether that's a rush to spam settlers and claim as much territory as possible, or a rush to capture another civilization's capital with an offensive force of skirmishers, I'm not sure yet. I've created a sandbox game matching the start as best as I can see from the screenshot Sullla sent, and I can get 5 skirmishers out (with 3XP each) on turn 38. Whether they can be successful in an attack depends on how prepared the opponent is, which depends a lot on how long it takes them to get from our capital to his. If the opponent hasn't researched Archery by the time they get there he is probably doomed (unless of course he's managed to hook up a metal).

I won't have to decide whether I want to go for the Skirmisher rush until turn 19, when I have to decide whether to research Archery or Animal Husbandry first. (This assumes that the map size was Large. If it is Huge the techs will be more expensive.) Hopefully by then I will have found an opponent's capital.

I've attached the sandbox save to this post in case anyone wants to try it out.

[Fenton Denton Smith]

Checking in for the first time! I am a touch anxious!

Spoiler tags don't work here but then no one should be reading here in the actual game now whould they??

The sandbox test works well but may need adjusting due to map size. The only suggestion is to maybe get a scout out early to go and find a victim! We only have a warrior to use to start with and if some sees a group of 5+ skirmishers marauding about the place they may become suspicious...

I like the idea of becoming mercanaries! We could buddy up to a peaceful techer and get techs in return for braun! Don't know if that would work in the long run though. Quite a strange agreement but how many times does it go on in SP?? I do it with Alex all the time - give him rifles and tell him to bash my nearest rival!

[dsplaisted]

So the game started, I founded our capital (naming it Sullla), and we do have two floodplains tiles. It turns out that the map size is huge, which means research will be a little slower than it was in my sandbox game. This means my detailed plan to get 5 skirmishers on turn 38 probably won't work exactly right. I will have to create another sandbox and redo my simulation.

The opening moves are the same however. On turn 0, I set research to Bronze Working and started work on a Warrior, while working the floodplains tile. When the capital grows to size 2 (in 8 turns), we will switch to a worker, and work the flood plains and plains hill. The plains hill gives 3 hammers, and combined with the 1 hammer from the city, we will be able to get the 25% bonus from our expansive trait (it doesn't apply to food). Once there are at least 24 hammers invested in the worker, we will switch back to the warrior, work both floodplains, and then whip the worker when Bronzeworking finishes and we revolt to slavery.

I moved the warrior NW on turn 0, and NW again on turn 1. That revealed a lake blocking any further NW movement, so on turn 2 I had to move south to go around the lake. This wasted 1 turn of movement and I am rather annoyed with myself that I didn't scrutinize the edge of the map more. If I had I probably could have realized that I should move west on turn 2 and avoided the waste.

[Fenton Denton Smith]

Looking at our capital here we have a LOT of hammers at our disposal. We can work those tiles and not lose too much commerce too - this city has the potential to be awesome!

Just from the naked eye on the first screenshot there I can see that at size 6 we could be working pigs, 2x plains hills on river mined, 1 x plains hill mined, 1 x Ivory with camp plus an other tile depending on needs... We also get 1 extra happy (not sure if we need a road though for that...

Thats 15 hammers already plus whatever else we choose to work. It is 75 hammers for 3 skirmishers - 5 turns without whipping! Axemen are 35 hammers so thats 3 in 7 turns without whipping.

The other option is to farm the 2 FP's for 4f each, work the pigs for a further 6f and farm some grassland spices and then whip away - have to watch the happy here though...

There are option is the general synopsis of this presentation... :aar:

[dsplaisted]

Here is what we know of the world as of turn 5:



It sure would be nice to have some more map info. How far away the other civs are will have a big effect on our early strategy. Well, I'm happy to report that this screenshot does indeed contain lots of valuable map information. Direct your eyes to the lower left, where the score composition is shown.

We currently have 1 point from population and 0 from land. The score for each category is calculated by (actual / max) * FACTOR. The factor comes from GlobalDefines.xml and is 5000 for population and 2000 for land. But the important bit of information is that the game shows us what the max value is. The value of 2774 for land indicates that there are 2774 total land tiles on the map. The value for population is based on an approximation of the amount of food on the map, calculated by adding up the unimproved food production of all land tiles and all water tiles adjacent to land, which is then divided by 2 (because each population consumes 2 food).

Together, these numbers form somewhat of a fingerprint for the map. Since the average food for a land tile is pretty much constant, the ratio of the max population to the max land score is related to the ratio of coast to land. On a continents map, the max land will generally be significantly higher than the max population. On an archipelago map, the max population will probably be higher.

So after generating a bunch of maps using different settings and recording the max land and pop numbers, I am pretty sure that the map script is one of the following:

• Hub (Land Shape: natural, Neutral Territory: Islands, Isthmus Width: 3)
  
• Wheel (Land Shape: Natural, Ring Width: 2, Spoke Width: 2)
  
• Big and Small (Continents: Snaky, Islands: Tiny Islands)
  

What we can see so far of the map looks like a Hub or Wheel start. As we explore more of the map we should be able to determine which it is.

A hub start would mean that everyone is fairly isolated from each other at the start. It would probably take 40 or so turns for 1-move units to walk from one capital to the other, which rules out an early attack. If this is the map, then I think I want to go for the Great Lighthouse and probably the Colossus.

If the map is a wheel start, then we won't be so isolated, and there will be good land between each civ. In this case I would probably want to settle extremely aggressively to claim that land for us. We might also launch an early attack but it seems unlikely we would be able to finish it before the target got their metal hooked up and/or archery researched.

[haphazard1]

Very interesting analysis of the max land and max pop from the score. I have never done much more with this info than check the max land for an idea about the domination limit. Comparing the max land and max pop for an idea of the map type and proportions is something I will have to try in future games.

Thanks! I love reading these game threads -- learn lots of stuff to improve my own efforts.

[Sullla]

While I'm flattered, why exactly did you name your capital city after me?

[dsplaisted]

While I'm flattered, why exactly did you name your capital city after me?

I wanted to use interesting city names, and since you created the map I thought it was appropriate to name the capital after you.

It might be amusing to name the rest of the cities after other players in this game. At a minimum, it would probably cause them to wonder why we're naming the cities after our opponents.