Adventure Nineteen - Mao's Muse - Opening Next Week (4/23)

[Sullla]

Adventure Nineteen will open next week; the basic premise is that you may choose any ONE technology to begin the game with. Due to this unusual setup, we're going to have to email the starting files out individually, so go to the Adventure Nineteen page for more information.

Special congratulations to darrelljs for sponsoring this variant!

[T-hawk]

A beautiful idea!

So my first reaction was "oh no, report day will be another round of wailing about Civil Service". Bureaucracy from day one?

Then I thought, maybe not.

Fiber Optics, to build the Internet sometime in the classical age and permanently handle all your technology?

Or Mass Media to do the same with the United Nations and just win?

Liberalism for day one Free Speech for a cultural victory?

Mercantilism from day one for some super early GPs? (Mao is Philosophical!)

Communism from day one for the State Property food bonuses? (Oracle for Metal Casting for workshops)

Emancipation / Universal Suffrage from day one for double cottage growth, extra hammers, and eternal happiness penalty for rivals? And even cash rush that first worker.

Environmentalism for some huge cities early? That happy bonus, so useless in the late game after clear-cutting, might not be so maligned on day one.

Biology?

Or Artillery, which is the most powerful unit that requires only a single tech and no resource?

Rifling, since riflemen are cheaper and will beat ancient units just as easily?

Satellites to reveal the world map? (Would you get that effect, or does the map reveal only happen on tech discovery?)

This might just be interesting enough to pull me in from across the chasm of burnout...

[sunrise089]

From the Adventure description page:

"*DO NOT* discuss your choice of starting technology with other players until the Adventure closes!"

Does that meen we can do as T-Hawk is doing, and talk through what might be good ideas and why, so long as we don't discuss which we have actually picked?

Fiber Optics, to build the Internet sometime in the classical age and permanently handle all your technology?

Emancipation / Universal Suffrage from day one for double cottage growth, extra hammers, and eternal happiness penalty for rivals? And even cash rush that first worker.

Rifling, since riflemen are cheaper and will beat ancient units just as easily?

These three seem really strong.....though I don't have the game open, so I don't know if the Riflemen idea is good or not - do Rifles provide more strength per hammer invested than Axes? Otherwise you could just use the resources to make many conventional units.

The second option seems the best for long-term growth vs a penatly for the AIs.

The first one seems perhaps best of all - think REALLY early cultural victory maybe with that, since you could turn off all research super-early.

[sunrise089]

EDIT: Oops, double-post. Feel free to delete.

[LKendter]

TECHNICAL QUESTION:
If our one free tech is a religion giving tech such as divine right will be found that religion? Same for code of laws for instant 1/2 price court houses along with Confucianism.


I predict at least some games will have anarchy the first turn.


I may need a week just to decide...

[darrelljs]

Guys,

I'm really happy to see everyone approaching this game in the spirit I hoped for 8). That said, let's hold off on any more discussions involving technology selection until reporting day.

TECHNICAL QUESTION:
If our one free tech is a religion giving tech such as divine right will be found that religion? Same for code of laws for instant 1/2 price court houses along with Confucianism.

Nope, religion founding would fall under the "first to" bonus NOT granted. I have not tested it yet, but I believe that picking a religion tech, great person tech, or Liberalism might block out the "first to" bonus for the game.

Thanks,
Darrell

[sooooo]

You should probably test that religions thing. It may turn out to be like in later starts, where the early religions are distributed randomly on the seventh turn. I don't think the game will let a religion simply not be discovered.

Very nice idea BTW. I'll have to have a think about what tech I want.

I'll play a bit more of epic 10 and decide at the end of the week.

[T-hawk]

Yeah, I'm just throwing out some ideas to help drum up excitement. Any indication of what I might actually pick would be a spoiler. Also, I deliberately threw in a couple red herrings, where I'm pretty sure the apparent bonus won't really pan out.

BTW, if I could ask a question: what are the resources in the teaser screenshot? There's a food bonus SW of the settler which looks like corn? And there's one NW past the lake which looks like pigs or sheep? Some might be able to squint it out, but I can't, and best to have everyone on common footing with that, since the knowledge might make a difference in the tech choice.

[Dreylin]

NW looks like Cows to my eyes, and I agree Corn to the SW.

Would there be any merit to pre-popping that Hut, to reduce the variance of results from it? Probably not I'd guess since we're all going to be pursuing different paths anyway.

Hmmm, but what are the limits on Tech-pops from huts? If I have a late-game tech - say Railroad, which is the only pre-req for Combustion - is it possible for a hut to give that additional tech? Would that be considered "further guidance from the Muse", or a situation that should be avoided?

[T-hawk]

Hmmm, but what are the limits on Tech-pops from huts? If I have a late-game tech - say Railroad, which is the only pre-req for Combustion - is it possible for a hut to give that additional tech?

No. Each tech in CIV4TechInfos.xml has a flag named bGoodyTech that indicates whether it can come from huts. Generally this is only set for Classic and earlier technologies, and any tech with a first-discoverer bonus (religions, GPs) is excluded. So you can't get Combustion.

The latest techs you can get from goody huts are Music, Currency, Monarchy, Calendar, plus Astronomy as a weird outlier.