Part I

Lets do some farming.

Key Rules
All flatland tiles must be farmed, unless they have a non-farm resource (pigs, bananas, etc). We can never have an army greater than twice the number of our cities. Only cereal mills may be incorporated.

Key Map Details
Monarch difficulty. No barbs. Rainforest. No vassal states.

Scoring
Count of votes cast in my favor for a Diplomatic Victory. As I mentioned in forums, I’m fairly certain we can only select the “Diplomatic Victory” option if our own population accounts for less than what is needed to win (60%). This restriction could make the late game more difficult, and degrades the value of military conquest.

So our board should look something like this by the end, right?



The variant is an interesting one. Growth will not be a problem, but where does production, happiness, and science come from? Early production can largely be powered by slavery, except for building wonders. Normally we could double whip units under monarchy and toss the excess hammers towards a wonder, but with the military restriction this is more difficult. In fact monarchy as a civic will be less valuable than usual. Science can be provided by, umm, scientists (preferably under representation) OR built by researching alphabet and building beakers. Since we are philosophical bulbing should be more than viable as well. May as well begin.

So after moving the warrior I decide to settle in place, since moving any direction risks losing some tiles I want, and possibly giving jungle tiles in the BFC:



Food potential is wonderful, but I would prefer some more hills for production.

Exploration results in a couple scouts (one which had to be deleted), Mysticism, Horseback Riding, and some gold. Not a bad haul!

The surprising thing was that I didn’t meet anyone for a long time, until contact was finally made on the far side of the map. I think I was just unlucky that I didn’t meet some of the others sooner:



After picking up the basic technologies, I made a point of getting Writing early so I could start running some scientists -- I have a plan to generate enough commerce to allow my Ottomans to cover the world in farms. This is unusual in my games:



By burning my first two scientists early on such cheap techs I’m hoping to keep myself afloat technologically by trading and building beakers, while whipping out an army of workers, settles, monuments, and granaries. Immediately after getting Alphabet I switched nearly all my cities to beakers to get Currency, so that some cities could build wealth.

The plan worked quite well as I have 10 cities by 1AD (and one more to settle next turn):



While I did also research Calendar, some trading led to a promising tech screen:



The rapid expansion has killed my ability to research for the moment (I’ll soon have cities building wealth to stay out of the red at 0% science). Early in the game I decided to forgo the Pyramids since I had better things to build (and no stone yet). However, as they were still available in the early ADs, what the heck, I’ll give them a shot. Leading to this embarrassing result:



680 AD for the ‘mids! Silliness! I was actually a little disappointed since I was having fun playing a farm heavy game without Representation. I got over it though

By now I’ve settled my (large) corner and realized that one feature of the Rainforest map script is that many resources are very limited or missing entirely. Because of the heavy cap pressure induced by our variant health and happy resources are especially valuable. I sent a settler on a long and perilous trip (ok, not so perilous since there are no barbarians) to steal a key location:



My only source of wheat and gold! Grains are very valuable since their booster building is the omnipresent granary.

While the years 1-1000ad where mostly devoid of technological advancement, research soon accelerated faster than I had anticipated, leading to Liberalism:



Umm, that is not a choice I usually make. What is going on here? Well the story goes like this. There is a stone resource in the middle of that map that I settled on, leading one of my cities to build Angkor Wat. When combined with the fact that the Apostolic Palace was built under Hinduism (my chosen religion for diplomatic reasons), I been building temples in all my cities. The 2 hammer, 1 gold priests are great, as are the hammers from the AP. So why not add some more gold?



Since I soon will have 30 cities the return on this investment was great. The southern powers (Russia, the Dutch, and the Vikings) were all Hindu in the mid-game (Peter would later switch to Confucianism) I was able to build a nice trading circle:



I even beat Peter to the Taj!

Hammurabi was not included in the list of southern powers for good reason:



Ragnar sacked Babylon, along with a few other cities, which meant I had an opening for my massive army of four units (3 Horse Archers and a Knight):

For this game I came into it figuring if I could pull off the Pyramids/Great Library combo, and manage diplomacy so that I avoided all wars, this game should be pretty easy to win. I would not be declaring war on anyone, and hopefully I would never be declared on. Problem is the capital's production was awful to put it lightly. I would fine out through exploration that stone was nowhere nearby, so I decided that Representation was so important in this game (I've never run so many specialists in a game of Civ before) that I was going to willingly stunt my growth early on in order to get it. I didn't see any other way than just slow-building the thing.

The trait combo was good for this game, though the Imperialistic settler bonus only applies to hammers, and because there just weren't many hammers, it wasn't quite as helpful as I had hoped. I later realized aggressively whipping the settlers would've been smarter, but it was too late by then.

So I started, seeing no reason to not settle in place, so I did so, going worker first and starting on Animal Husbandry. My hut luck was kinda weird in this game, my first two huts were Pottery (a nice break!) and 88 gold, but my next six huts were ALL maps, which was frustrating... I ended up scouting with workers quite a bit becuase they were easy to get (lots of food to build them), didn't count against my unit cap, and there were no barbarians to kill them, so that worked out nicely.

I had one funny/annoying moment early on. As you know there was a hut directly to the southwest of the capital. Well I sent my starting unit east then south, so instead of wasting turns going back for it I figured I'd send my next unit there, resulting in this picture:



Yes I missed the hut 4 tiles away from my capital!

I did get Pyramids in my capital, though it took me somewhere around 50 turns. I was even running citizen specialists just to squeeze out a couple more hammers, and I whipped the last 3-4 turns of it just in case. I doubt I actually needed to, but I wasn't going to chance it.

Early on I noticed the mountain range- is that typical for rainforest? I've never played any other rainforests maps so I'm not sure. Either way, when I started to realize it blocked off all the land to my east, I hurried down and tried to block off all the eastern land so I could settle it whenever I felt like it. I forgot to take a picture at the BC-AD switchover, but here's how things stood at 50AD:



I would have liked to have more than 5 cities but that's what I get for sinking 500 hammers in a high-food low-production city into the Pyramids. I'm 5th in score, though that would change very soon as I continued expanding, started securing more happy resources, and quickly became the tech leader.

In my game, a Hindu bloc formed, and finally in the AD years someone spread Hinduism to me and finally I had things nicely set up. The only non-Hindus were Ragnar and Victoria, which I could deal with. Oddly enough, Peter declared on Hammurabi at +4 relations, which nearly strained things, but I bribed them into peace as soon as I could and they never had another problem. I still can't figure out why he declared as they never shared a border or anything, anyone have any clue what may have caused this??

That war ended fairly quickly, but the one that scared me was Ragnar declaring on Hammurabi. Ragnar had the biggest military by a mile, and Hammurabi was my buffer between myself and Ragnar. My small military would make me vulnerable to attacks, but I quickly got Hammurabi to Friendly, and Victoria (my other neighbor) was almost always in a war with Cyrus or Peter (neither wars actually did anything in terms of cities, but they lasted forever) so she wouldn't attack me either. But if Ragnar managed to take a city of Hammurabi's that was bordering me, my game would probably be over because Ragnar easily had enough to wipe me out. I actually gifted Hammurabi a few units to help, but he was badly outnumbered. Fortunately, this saved me:



Getting overwhelmingly elected allowed me to use this to end the war, which helped. I even used it to give Hammurabi his city back, though Ragnar would later declare and re-take it, but it at least slowed him down. I thought about just ending the game by going for Apostolic Diplo victory, but Victoria didn't have any Hindu cities (and getting OB to spread it would be a bad idea considering Peter, Cyrus, and Willem all hated her and would give me a relations hit. And let me show you how close this was:



I'll try to explain what happened here. You see at the top of the screen the message where the war was ended by the AP. The arrow there isn't actually pointing at anything, but rather is pointing at what's NOT there- cultural defenses. The circle that has the grassland workshop is where Ragnar's stack was, and you see it now in the bottom right-hand corner. As you see, that stack contained 9 *highly* promoted Berserkers, 12 Horse Archers, 10 Catapults, a couple Chariots and a Spear. Nippur contained 6 or 7 defenders at the most, and only 2 of those were longbows if I'm remembering correctly. In short, Hammurabi was very screwed. This wouldn't have bothered me, except this city was touching my borders! If this city fell, that stack was coming at me next, and that stack would easily be enough to completely wipe me out. Thankfully this city never fell, but without the AP it was GOING to fall the next turn. One turn later and I think I would have lost this game honestly- relations with Ragnar were NOT good (I swear he made a demand every 10 turns which I always declined due to his religion).

From here I basically just teched along (I was leading in tech) peacefully and did all I could to boost relations with the Hindu bloc. Ragnar was shaping up to be my UN opponent which was perfect. Along the way I got lucky and popped a Great Engineer and saved him for the UN. I got tons of Great People (This game was definitely my most ever) and I lightbulbed quite a bit but I also settled a lot too for a while when lightbulbing wasn't helpful. I couldn't do much by the way of Golden Ages because I got almost all scientists for most of the game, but they were helpful to settle so it worked out fine. I beelined Biology and traded for everything else pretty much. Health was the MAJOR limiting factor for me- at one point I saw -14 food for health in one city (and this city was STILL growing!) but I did what I've never done in a game of Civ before and adopted Environmentalism, which turned out to be enormously helpful. Late game I was running the luxury slider to grow my cities even bigger to get more votes.

Anyways, I did get the UN in 1785AD, and rather than sandbagging it to get more votes I decided I would just end it if I could. I figured Ragnar would be my opponent (I wasn't paying very good attention, at this point I just wanted the game to end), and disaster strikes! Cyrus turns out to be my opponent, and the result:



Ugh... Willem not voting for me is VERY frustrating, as I'm at a +8 with Willem and Cyrus is at +7, so why did he not vote for me?? I don't understand the Diplo system sometimes, this kinda thing seems to happen to me a lot. Also Ragnar voting for Cyrus is a problem, as that put him over the top, but I started playing with favorite civics, and bribing people to revolt to different civics to try to set myself up better next time. Sure enough:



Now what I did NOT realize at the time was that I couldn't win the game without Cyrus' votes (no way I was getting Ragnar's or Vicky's votes). Now if you noticed Cyrus' votes were 158 and Ragnar's 155. Also, Peter still is voting for Cyrus. I bribed a civics change which made Peter like me better than Cyrus, hoping this would cause him to vote for me, so the next election came in:



At first I was frustrated that Peter abstained. I was literally doing all that was possible to boost relations. I couldn't adopt his favorite Civic because of a dumb civics resolution that Cyrus passed when he was Secretary-General, but I was doing everything else. Then it hit me that Ragnar and Cyrus had the same amount of votes (somehow Cyrus got chosen as the winner of th tie). Ragnar had more land and had gotten Biology more recently (so his cities had more growing to do than Cyrus), so I crossed my fingers and hoped he grew enough to get more votes. Also, at some point Victoria declared on me. I had to scramble my small military, but with far superior troops I could handle it very easily. Lost a few tile improvements but that was it.

1888AD was a very good year. First, Peter decides to dogpile on Victoria on his own (he was WHEOOH for awhile so I couldn't bribe him), giving me mutual struggle points. Second, Ragnar DOES overtake Cyrus in votes, becoming my opponent. So if I can just get Cyrus' vote I'll win, but getting Peter's as well gives me a more competitive score... So the result is in:





Got it! I'm sure many players will top 782 points (I could have done so by sandbagging this thing out a few dozen more turns), but I still am happy with that number. I managed to get my capital up to 38 pop with help from the National Park. My other cities I got quite big with Environmentalism/Luxury tax, though settling them later than I should as well as ending this earlier than I could have hurt me in that regard. I also did a really poor job of expanding early on (got no cities to the southwest), I didn't milk my score nearly as much as I could have, and I feel like I placed my cities poorly, so I don't expect my score to be competitive at all, but it was nice to pull off a win .

Play time was 12 hours, 12 minutes. Also, I have NEVER seen a food graph like this before:



You can probably tell where I got Biology if you look closely.

I checked and I got 22 Great People, 16 of which were scientists. I've never come close to that number before... The 2 units/city limit was never really a problem, because I was able to manage my borders to prevent wars and honestly I was usually 3-4 units below the limit all game (I just didn't have the production to waste shields on military). I built farms everywhere obviously, which I think is adequately proved by the very messed-up looking food graph .

All in all I had fun with the game, though managing workers as the game went on was pretty tedious. I think the map design was perfect, and thanks to Sullla for a fun game .

I was originally going to post my thoughts about officers and invitations and stuff in the other thread, but then more and more issues started showing up and I think there's enough going on now that this diserves its own thread.

While we were discussing officer promotions in game I mentioned that RBGW is mostly its own entity now and that there really weren't many of the people from RBD left. RBGW is its own entity now, with most of the guild coming from people that we've met online. To put it bluntly, the old guard is gone and now the new guard has to figure out what it wants the guild to be, which is why I'm making this an entirely new thread.

In the past, RBGW hasn't really stood for anything, I know we've liked to say we're variant scum, but, really, that hasn't been the focus of the guild. In 4 years, we've had 4 team variants. Some people have done their own thing on their own time, soloing with their own thing, but largely when we get together it's to conquer challenges and use what works.

In the past, we've said that being an officer hasn't had much distinction from being a member, even though there clearly is a difference as recent events have pointed out. In addition, each person has their own ideas as to what being an officer entails and what the requirements for being promoted are.

In the past, some people have wanted to do organized PvP but there weren't enough people around to get it going and keep it going.

That's the past. That's what we've done until now. It's time for a little revolution.

Who are we now?

What do we want RBGW to stand for?

What does being an officer mean in RBGW?

What do we want the recruiting policy to be?

How do we want to handle PvP?

Basically, this can be all be summed up in one question:

What is RBGW?

Now, I know we've tried to bring this up before, but before it's been kinda shoved to the side by people that don't really want things to change. Well, guess what? Not this time. I'm not going to let this drop this time.

RBGW has come to mean a lot to me over the years. I know I've butted heads with people on more than one occassion, and have gotten to the point where I wanted to leave and not deal with them anymore. I'm still here though, and I'm pretty sure just about everyone here has a similar story. We've always relied on unwritten rules to guide us, but we can't even agree on what those rules are. We've called ourselves anarchists, but when people have issues with others being promoted or feeling like second class citizens, then there's obviously something wrong with the way things are going. We call ourselves variant scum, but variants aren't the focus of the guild or even most of the members.

It's about time we write this stuff down. We need to make the policies we've been avoiding. Like it or not, GW works differently from Civ, Diablo, MoO, all the other games we've played. We can't handle it the same way they've been handled, it needs its own way of doing things.

I'm going to keep my own opinions short and simple: I've always had an open door policy, whoever wants in can be in, and if people are generally active, they can be officers. Usually I'll wait a couple weeks before promoting just to see if they're going to stick around, but as for trying them out or whatever, that feels pointless because you never know what people will do in a situation until they're put into it.

I like the idea of doing DoA runs, maxing the faction title, playing high end GvG and HA. I don't see why I have to choose between them all the time. If we actually schedule things out, we can make them work. The thing that just pisses me off more than anything else about RBGW is nobody ever wants to make a commitment of any kind. It's always "well, I dunno what I'll be doing so I don't want to commit." That's probably the most common phrase in the entire guild. So what if you don't know what you'll be doing? If something is important to you then you make the time for it.

As for what I want the guild to stand for, I want it to stand for community. How about you?

With apologies to Bob Dylan…

[Main Riff x 4]

I ain't gonna work on Swissie's farm no more.
No, I ain't gonna work on Swissie's farm no more.

Well, I wake up in the morning,
Wander south & spot some plains.
I got a head full of ideas
That are drivin' me insane.




It's a shame the way he makes me scrub the floor.
I ain't gonna work on Swissie's farm no more.
I ain't gonna work for Swissie's brother no more.
No, I ain't gonna work for Swissie's brother no more.


Well, I try my best
To be just like I am,
But everybody wants you
To be just like them.
They sing while you Slave cos Caste is flawed.
I ain't gonna work on Swissie's farm no more.





Well, he hands you a nickel,
He hands you a dime,
He asks you with a grin
If you're havin' a good time,
Then he fines you every time you slam the door.





I ain't gonna work for Swissie's brother no more.
I ain't gonna work for Raggynar no more.
No, I ain't gonna work for Raggynar no more.

Well, he spreads Hinduism
To your capital for kicks.
His neighbour Ragnar
Will batter him with sticks.
The National Guard are needed there for sure.





Ah, I ain't gonna work for Hammura’ no more.
I ain't gonna work for Hammura’ no more.
No, I ain't gonna work for Hammura’ no more.


Well, I whip me up a Wonder,
That let’s me claim a tech.
Currency’s just the ticket
To let me REX unchecked.

It's a shame the way he makes me beg for more.
I ain't gonna work on Swissie's farm no more.
I ain't gonna work for Swissie's brother no more.
No, I ain't gonna work for Swissie's brother no more.




Well, she talks to all the servants
About man and God and law.
Everybody says
She's the brains behind pa.
She's sixty-eight, but she says she's twenty-four.

I ain't gonna work for Victoria no more.
I ain't gonna work on Swissie's farm no more.
No, I ain't gonna work on Swissie's farm no more.


[Instrumental Break]










Well, I pop me a Merchant
But finding ToA’s a strain
These tiny goddam’ Wonders
Are driving me insane.



It's a shame the way he makes me trade for more.
I ain't gonna work on Swissie's farm no more.
I ain't gonna work for Swissie's ma no more.
No, I ain't gonna work for Swissie's ma no more.


Swissie’s cousin Peter
Is spoiling for a fight.
Vicky is his enemy
So we will be alright





I ain't gonna work on Swissie's farm no more.
I ain't gonna work for Swissie's cus no more.
No, I ain't gonna work for Swissie's cus no more.

So let’s go build some Wonders
To ease our Empire’s state
Twenty per cent research
Really has to grate






I ain't gonna work on Swissie's farm no more.
I ain't gonna work for Swissie's ma no more.
No, I ain't gonna work for Swissie's ma no more.


We snag that Liberalism
One turn before the Dutch
The Scientific Method
Is no idle crutch




I ain't gonna work on Swissie's farm no more.
I ain't gonna work for Swissie's brother no more.
No, I ain't gonna work for Swissie's brother no more.

We like to whip our Grocers
Half a dozen at a time
Stopping all that fighting
Saved Hammy just in time




I ain't gonna work on Swissie's farm no more.
I ain't gonna work for Swissie's ma no more.
No, I ain't gonna work for Swissie's ma no more.

Well Taj is a fine Wonder
With longer Golden Age
Now this game of CIV
Is in its final stage







I ain't gonna work on Swissie's farm no more.
I ain't gonna work for Swissie's ma no more.
No, I ain't gonna work for Swissie's ma no more.

Now Cyrus is my rival
But he can’t get no love
Me n Pete n Ham n Will
Are really hand in glove







I ain't gonna work on Swissie's farm no more.
I ain't gonna work for Swissie's ma no more.
No, I ain't gonna work for Swissie's ma no more.

[Outro]









I ain't gonna work on Swissie's farm no more.
No, I ain't gonna work on Swissie's farm no more.

Here you go.

http://www.dos486.com/civ4/adv38/

(I tried putting the report up in multiple parts, I stuck together multiple screenshots to try and make big maps at various points, and I think they may cause the screen to scroll, so I am trying to isolate them into sections with little/no text to make it easier to read. I can see it all at 1024x768 resolution without scrolling, so I am hoping it successfully worked )

Okay, so we’re only allowed to build Farms (on flatland). We’re limited to 2 units per city and the idea this time is to get Diplomatic votes. Unfortunately I am more of a “Your head would look good at the end of a pole” kind of girl in relation to diplomacy, so I am going to begin with the expectation that I am going to do very badly.

My aim therefore, shall be to produce a report which is more detailed, and less haphazard than the last one.


4000BC

My first thought was to move the Settler onto the Hill E, SE, as the current site looks like it will be a fairly hard site to build anything at. I move the Warrior SW, revealing another Pigs. Hmm. Since I can now see two usable food sources, and only flatland, and attempting to move the Settler east will lose both of them, I decide to just plant the city on the spot.



Okay, so it’s going to be a bit production poor. It does have the Forested Fur, so it has some help with commerce, and there are three pigs, which help, since I can build the infrastructure via worker/settler overflow, as there’s not really any practical way I can whip too much out of this capital.

Plan is Hunting -> Animal Husbandry -> Pottery -> Writing, so I can improve the pigs, the furs, get a Library out and run some Scientists.
City is going to go Worker -> Scout.

Warrior heads SW, planning to double back NE to the capital to act as military police by the time it grows large enough. He picks up Mysticism out of a hut, finds a fairly large looking desert, and an area which is almost exclusively hills. This looks like a very good site for later, as I can cottage all the hills and move the capital to make proper use of Bureaucracy.

Scout is finished and heads slightly east, then far south-east. I begin a Granary to let the Capital grow, and start on Mining. At the maximum current happy size, it looks like this:



So, this calls for a little management planning. This is how I plan to build infrastructure in the capital, as it develops, it works out at roughly the same speed as trying to build it directly, while putting out workers/settlers, turning the excess unusable food into production.




And then I turn around and do something very stupid.

Interlude

“Say, remember what Olodune said about the Catapult?”
“Yes?”
“Well, since the Catapult is almighty, and we need something to inspire our citizens and scare off our enemies…”
“…I don’t like where this is going.”
“And since we can’t get many farmers to take up arms… Let’s build… A REALLY BIG STONE CATAPULT!”
“That’s really not practical. And it’ll never be able to fire anyway.”
“… Oh. Well, how about we build a really big pointed stone platform instead?”
“I suppose that’s better, but…”
“And then, we can put a Catapult on top of it.” :catapult:
“… *Sigh*… *mumble* How are you intending to construct it anyway…”

*Started Masonry research, delaying Iron Working, with ALL the jungle around and no clear land to put another city.* (Well done, me)

Basically, despite doing the Micro planning just before, I think that I’m going to get 20 overflow, per turn, and can finish the Pyramid in 25 turns, so I planned to just let the Capital build it that way on Worker/Settler overflow, while settling cities in the relatively clear areas that have food (and horses) SE, and SW of the capital.



A bad event, I pay to keep the forest using hut gold.

In the meantime, the Scout finds the very big mountain range that runs for a very long distance East to West. He also picks up Mathematics from a hut.

At this point, the first Settler (and Masonry) are completed, and I catch the mistake, that it would actually take -100- turns to build this way, which is in reality no improvement than trying to build it using the mine and the forest fur, and way too slow. I am not quite willing to let go of the big catapult launching platform plan yet, perhaps everyone is as badly choked by jungle as me, so after checking with Sullla about the legality of mining the rice-hill to the east, I decide to instead plant the second city 5 squares East of the capital, where it is going to pop out a monument and a granary while Iron Working comes in, then sit there and work the four hills (occasionally a farm), plus the two elephants, and try to get it out that way.

I whipped out the Capital’s Library and had it run scientists to speed up Iron Working, and used the great scientist for an Academy.

Researched Alphabet to Backfill…

Turn 78:
Animal Husbandry – Archery (Hammurabi)
Mathematics – Polytheism + Fishing (Willem van Oranje)

Turn 79:
Iron Working + Writing – Meditation + Sailing (Peter)
Writing + Fishing – Monotheism (Hammurabi)

Turn 84:
Monotheism – Priesthood (Peter)

Researched Calendar to make use of all the Bananas, next came Code of Laws and Currency.

Adventure Thirty-Eight is now open for reporting. Please post your reports in the Tournament Discussion subforum.

I missed the Monday opening for this one because I was out of town. In any case, enjoy!

Okay, I've e-mailed what I hope will work as a proper results table to Griselda, but in the meantime:

Victories: 2400 Conquest Win for sargon0 (+100), 2428 Extermination Win for RefSteel (+100), 2500 Conquest Win for Timmy827 (+100), 2500 Diplomatic Loss turned into a 2792 Extermination Win for KnTenshi (+100)

First Computer Techs: 2328 DSS for KnTenshi (+6), 2333 DSS for sargon0 (+4), 2341 DSS for RefSteel (+2), 2342 DSS for Timmy827.

First Construction Techs: 2329 RW80 for sargon0 (+6), 2333 RW80 for Timmy827 (+4), 2337 RW80 for RefSteel (+2), 2338 RW80 for KnTenshi.

First Force Fields Techs: 2331 DS2 for KnTenshi (+6), 2339 DS2 for sargon0 (+4), 2349 DS2 for RefSteel AND Timmy827 (+1 each)

First Planetology Tech: 2323 IER for RefSteel (+6), 2327 IER for sargon0 (+4), 2342 IER for KnTenshi (+2), 2343 Barren for Timmy827.

First Propulsion Tech: 2317 R4 for Timmy827 (+6), 2322 R4 for KnTenshi (+4), 2329 R5 for RefSteel (+2), 2332 R5 for sargon0.

First Weapons Tech: 2341 Gats for sargon0 (+6), 2343 Gats for KnTenshi (+4), 2350 Gats for RefSteel (+2), No Weapons Tech Ever Researched for Timmy827!

Additional Techs Researched: Five total for sargon0 (-25), no other techs researched.

Final Scores

KnTenshi: 100 + 6 + 0 + 6 + 2 + 4 + 4 - 0 = 122

RefSteel: 100 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 6 + 2 + 2 - 0 = 115

Timmy827: 100 + 0 + 4 + 1 + 0 + 6 + 0 - 0 = 111

sargon0: 100 + 4 + 6 + 4 + 4 + 0 + 6 - 25 = 99


Sponsor's Comments:
We had close scoring all the way around!

- Every player managed to be fastest in at least one of the six fields.

- KnTenshi sacrificed the most for scoring in this game, both early on and by steadfastly refusing to do research even in final war, and as a result pulled in the highest total score, cemented by his 2792(!) final war victory!

- I was the only player to score at least one point in every tech field. This is a good time to note however that luck played a major role in this scoring system; my IER came in at 2%, probably right around Sargon's percentage in the same time period, so the four year difference for that tech is rather deceptive! Needless to say, the one scoring tie and various 1-year photo finishes were also highly dependant on die rolls.

- Timmy's Range 4, in 2317, was easily the fastest tech overall, and he deserves extra credit for going a step beyond the scoring and never researching a weapons tech at all! He also was on the wrong end of the aforementioned tech luck, missing third place for Computers and Planetology by just one year apiece (and tied for third in Force Fields).

- Sargon's tech speed was the best overall, edging out KnTenshi's by two points. Sargon also pulled in the fastest victory by a healthy margin - the latter supported by just five extra self-researched techs, and (more importantly) Sargon's usual skill and strategic ability!

I hope everyone enjoyed this challenge as much as I did; congratulations to all who participated in the game!

Holiday surprise? But there are no holidays in August. That must be the surprise!

http://www.dos486.com/civ4/adv26/