It's Clobberin' Time! Raging Barbs Highlands Tokugawa on Monarch

[Zalson]

As discussed here: http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=9257

We're running a succession game to introduce RFS-81 to the finer points of Civ4 combat.

Our settings:


Sea level is randomized. Lol at the awesomeness of having tropical, low sea level on a highlands map. Forgot to turn off diplo victory. 

Our leader:


What a stud.

Our opponents:
Willem of Netherlands
Mansa Musa of Mali
Huyana Capac of Inca
Julius Caesar of Rome
Shaka of Zulu
Random of Random?

Variant Rules
We can pay tribute demands but we cannot ask for technology or propose tech trades.

Must win by conquest. (I forgot to turn off diplo)

I've generated 5 starts. Let us choose the most funnest.

Start 1



Start 2



Start 3


Start 4


Start 5


Then I will play the first 40 tomorrow night. We'll go 35, 20, 15, 15, 15, then 10 a piece afterward.

Our roster:

Zalson (Up)
RFS-81 (on deck)
haphazard1 (in the dugout)
Brian Shanahan
shallow_thought

What we need:

Some excellent microplans to let us get out city #1 by turn 33
A naming scheme for cities
A naming scheme for workers
A naming scheme for units
Some great reporting

[Zalson]

Oh and it is flat.

Beaker costs.
Sailing 149 beakers (1 pre req)
Pottery 119 beakers (1 pre req)
Agg 89 beakers
Animal Husbandry 149 beakers
Hunting 59 beakers
Achery 79 beakers
Mysticism 74 beakers
Mining 74 beakers

I think the most interesting game is start 2. I think we just throw out start 1. Starts 3, 4, 5 are varying levels of easier.

If we don't play start 2 I might give it a try on my own. Adventure 2: The Second: Tokugawa strikes back!

[haphazard1]

A frozen wasteland of a start. Well, I am up for some punishment.

Move the warrior to reveal what we can close to the deer -- northeast? With raging barbs we very much want a hill start for defense if at all possible.

Hunting to improve the deer tiles seems like the obvious tech -- we will need food. We had better hope for something nearby where we can generate some commerce, or this may be a very short game.

Edit: Hmmm, more thoughts: would the marble tile give us an extra hammer in the city center?

Tech path...we will need multiple warriors to keep our city safe, and to protect any tiles we improve, so time to research other things before Hunting. Depends on what is revealed by the warrior, I guess.

[Brian Shanahan]

5 is easiest start. 3&4 are middling but not great. 1&2 are equally hard IMO deer on a tundra hill are 3-1-0 in Civ 4 IIRC.

Not making a choice, I'll take what's given.

[RFS-81]

Naming scheme: Nintendo and Sega games?

Also, you name individual units in civ 4? There are tons of them!

As for starts, I'll go with whatever you decide. I don't want it to be too easy for you, but keep in mind that I might mess things up on my turns.

[haphazard1]

Naming scheme: Nintendo and Sega games?

Never really done much with console gaming, so someone might have to feed me some names.

Also, you name individual units in civ 4? There are tons of them!

You can name individual units if you want to; also there are mods that automatically name all units according to a template, such as "Warrior (number) (city name)" or the like. For SGs it can be useful so that it is easier to discuss plans: "Move worker Able to the sheep, and axe Big Bad Bill to fight the barb." In personal games I often name units that survive a big fight, just for flavor and to remember a nice victory.

As for starts, I'll go with whatever you decide. I don't want it to be too easy for you, but keep in mind that I might mess things up on my turns.

That is part of the fun of an SG! Getting the save and wondering what the previous player was thinking...or drinking!

[Zalson]

Naming scheme: Nintendo and Sega games?

I think the naming scheme is an excellent suggestion, RFS-81. We'll go with that.

For SGs it can be useful so that it is easier to discuss plans: "Move worker Able to the sheep, and axe Big Bad Bill to fight the barb." In personal games I often name units that survive a big fight, just for flavor and to remember a nice victory.

This is why we'll name units. We can give feedback a bit easier and remind other players of what we want them to do.

As for the starts (votes are in parentheses):

• Start 1
  
• Start 2 (haphazard1, Zalson)
  
• Start 3 
  
• Start 4 (Zalson)
  
• Start 5
  

I see one sadistic vote via haphazard1 for the Adventure 2 start. And then the vote for the eventual winner from RFS-81 and Brian.

I think we don't play the dud start. That's got a "just win" feel to it.

Start 1 feels like the kind of thing I would just reroll: it's very slow: here's only a +3 food surplus at size 1, going to +4 with a farm at size 2. So let's not play that one.

Start 2 is brutally hard. That's a city that's only getting to size 8, size 10 with Biology.

Starts 3 to 5 are remarkably similar

Start 3 I think we go settler 1 NW for the riversize plains hill plant. Corn and pigs is an +8 food surplus at size 2, with 3 hammers output. +9 beakers per turn. We go agriculture, AH to start.

Start 4 Is a little weaker but not by much (the weakness comes with civil service, where Start 3 gets +1 food). +8 food surplus at size 2 with the same hammer output. Hunting + Agg is a little faster (Agg turn 10, Worker turn 13, hunting turn 17) plus it puts us at archery on turn 27 which we'll want after hunting.

Start 5 is the strongest long term, with wet corn and the cows (and all that flatland grassland). It's not a plains hill start and not on a river, though. Also, the search time is much higher on this one: we won't be able to improve the cows (and pigs) until turn 25. That's a lot of doing nothing for our worker.

So I vote start 4. We get out 1 worker, 3 warriors and 1 archer, plus  1/2 through BW and 1/2 way through a settler by turn 35.

Bring on the barbs 

[shallow_thought]

At a quick glance I preferred 5, but was forgetting how bad our starting techs are (although they could be worse). So I'm happy with 3.

I've never played highlands or raging barbs (might start a side game to get a feel for it...), so was initially surprised by the suggested build order and tech choice, but it does make sense with a bit of thought.

As for the  naming scheme, I'll probably run short on Nintendo and Sega games quite quickly, but I've got a few somewhere in my memory.

I guess we can name combat units after the protagonists in said games, maybe workers after the villians? If instead we want to be sensible with worker names the alphabetical tools (Axe/Adze, Bradawl, Chainsaw etc.) can be easier to track.

[RFS-81]

Naming scheme: Nintendo and Sega games?

I think the naming scheme is an excellent suggestion, RFS-81. We'll go with that.

Or maybe just generally Japanese pop-culture, in case that's easier for haphazard1?

[Fluffball]

Lurker comment: I might look at a barracks over that volume of military, especially with Toku's traits and the very defensible terrain of HLs map. You should be winning most/all of your barbs combats until axes show up, and at that point you'll want shock axes. Just a thought.