General Discussion

[Hot Mustard]

Indeed, it is not tied to ships at all. If you trade for World Maps that reveal a route to you before anyone else - you've circumnavigated the world!

[Krill]

I've done it on a pangaea map using scouts before, in MP...now that was weird...

[Dominae]

Who do we need to "talk to" to get this game started!?

[Arrian]

Well, assuming that the Horde has submitted their list of leader preferences, snoopy369/Aeson, I guess. I don't know if the Horde has indeed done that, given that they are supposed to be presented in PM form.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Before complaining on timing issues, is there anything we can do to speed the game on when it arrives? Is there anything we still need to get fixed before the first turn? It might be better to be a bit prepared, we haven't been exactly lightning fast so far.

DeepO

[RoyAl]

Gents,

I've been reading all the threads in the GS-forum now and must say that I feel confident that Gathering Storm will 'blow away' most of the other teams. (Ahem, as if you guys need some confirmation )
Quite impressive what knowledge and insight are already present within the ranks of GS. And nice to know the word 'democracy' means something here.

But, lurking around, I cannot help myself wondering over and over again:

WHAT ABOUT STRATEGY

You see, I'm a top-down kinda guy. So here's what I was hoping/expecting to see:
1st thing: choose an overall strategy. Like: We will strive for a space race/domination/cultural/other victory, we will remain selfsupporting (not depending on other teams), etc.
2nd thing: decide on tactics: We choose Qin/Saladin/Mansa musa as our civ/leader, go for beeline..., expand asap, prioritize production (hammers), etc
3rd thing: MMing: where do we put that worker now, do we chop forest now and here, what's our answer to that question of The Horde to just spare them 2 more rounds... (well, ok, that could be considered tactical).
Each should have it's own forumthread. Being that Tactical be devided into Economics, Military and Diplomacy. These threads have been mentioned before in others, I know. (I think intell is equally important, but it needs another angle of aproach.)

In other words: I think it's more efficient choosing a path on which to travel, then choose a vehicle to travel in and only then make decisions on whether to go around that bump in the road going to the left or to the right. Every once in a while we can check if we're still on the right path and decide to change route and/or vehicle. But at least we'll know where we are going in the first place.

I'm not trying to demotivate people to discuss at length on certain subjects. On the contrary. I'm merely suggesting a way to focus these discussions, speedup decisionmaking and perhaps help prevent burnout, passiveness etc.

[Aginor]

Reading the most recent threads in general:

Apparently the last stragglers on civ choice have/are submitting their pref lists. snoopy called out those that had not yet put their lists in. Banana's got a pref list for all the world to see (and boy does it have some odd choices), and we can probably safely assume that the other straggler, the Horde, will be running a warmonger.

RoyAl,

I've asked some of those questions as well, and the Diplomacy Nazi thread has that discussion, some of DeepO's thoughts on the matter and a summary of traditional GS organization.

As for setting an overall strategy for the game - this is virtually impossible without seeing the map, civ and our situation. Civ strategy is fairly organic, and our overall strategy for achieving a win condition is likely to be hinted at on our first turn and ultimately determined in the first fifty turns (after we get a chance to explore the area, check out the resources and our neighbors, etc.)

We've submitted a pref list for civs, and chances are pretty good that we'll get one of the three civs you mentioned. Again, without knowing which civ we've got, strategy is pretty much impossible to determine (Qin plays *radically* differently from Saladin, even though both are slanted to the 'builder' end of the spectrum).

DeepO,

Can't think of much GS hasn't already assigned or debated. The initial starting point and civ are probably what we need to know to get discussion moving.

[Arrian]

Based on snoopy's latest comment in the civ choice thread (that all teams but the mercs have a civ, and they're working out what to do with the mercs), I think it's highly likely we got Mansa Musa.

The Horde picked the Mongols, although I don't know which leader...

-Arrian

[Aginor]

Any sane Mongol player would run Genghis, no?

[Arrian]

I'd think so, but you never can tell... some people really like Creative.

-Arrian

[RoyAl]

I've asked some of those questions as well, and the Diplomacy Nazi thread has that discussion, some of DeepO's thoughts on the matter and a summary of traditional GS organization.

I read all of this, but still felt as if an overall strategy is lacking.

As for setting an overall strategy for the game - this is virtually impossible without seeing the map, civ and our situation.

Well, map, civ and situation do have influence, but IMO only on tactical level. Does map make or break strategy? I don't think so. if we do not have the desired resources, we can go hunt for them. (Scout, expand, trade or by other means)
Civs are about chosen now. It took an effort to get to GS's shortlist, but I never saw this being derived from a "greater cause". Maybe that's no problem, cause as I understand GS choose a civ with lots of potential "vehicles".
And since when does a situation change strategy? I would think there's enough potential within GS to make a major impact on (our) situations. "Situations" are IMO just bumps in the road.

Civ strategy is fairly organic, and our overall strategy for achieving a win condition is likely to be hinted at on our first turn and ultimately determined in the first fifty turns

I see what you mean. It's like making a right turn to avoid a bump and keep the new course until you encounter a new bump. Eventually you will get somewhere anyway, that's right. But you may end up having driven many more miles and hours to get there.

We've submitted a pref list for civs, and chances are pretty good that we'll get one of the three civs you mentioned. Again, without knowing which civ we've got, strategy is pretty much impossible to determine (Qin plays *radically* differently from Saladin, even though both are slanted to the 'builder' end of the spectrum).

Can't think of much GS hasn't already assigned or debated. The initial starting point and civ are probably what we need to know to get discussion moving.

Statistically, I would think chances ar very high we get Mansa. We could start discussing strategy in case we would get Mansa. And maybe open another discusion with Saladin as civ/leader. Just in case. I suspect the first 50 odd turn will be subject to lots of discussion as it is. Mayb we could devide the "workload" by setting a strategic guideline now.

[Aginor]

We should have some response on what we've got in the next day or two. And I stand by my comment that civ/start ultimately determines your direction in the game.

Analogy: If I open with a conventional e-pawn defense in a chess match with you (following your moving the e-pawn as White), and you start a Ruy Lopez game...the move sequence dramatically differently from if I move that c-pawn out for a Sicilian game. While the overall objective (kill the king) remains the same, the moves which will achieve this objective vary widely, and the relative importance of different pieces on the board also changes as a consequence of where the differing initial move sequence places things.

It works the same way in Civ4 - if we hit the motherlode with two gold resources in Hills and some floodplains in the starting radius...you can bet we're going to play that quite a bit differently than a game where we find Ivory on a Plains square and turn up Copper in the initial starting radius. We've got radically different tools in our toolbox to start, and our strategy (to be sound) has to be adjusted to reflect the tools we have to work with.

The civ debate broke down to what different players happened to think was the most powerful set of tools with which to manage your civ. A large contingent wanted Spiritual, thinking that the specific subset of players we've got here could exploit the trait to its fullest. The general consensus of players seems to be that Financial is the most powerful trait, and you'll note that three of our top 4 are Financial civs (and the last has a legitimate shot of attempting to make up for its commerce shortcomings early through founding an early religion). Spiritual is a very *flexible* trait that does not lock us into any one direction, and this is reflective of the judgment that Civ strategy is organic.

Personally, I wanted us (given that this is a democracy game) to run something more concrete than Spiritual, given that a MM trait like Spiritual gives us flexibility at the cost of an increased ability to make mistakes by making poor decisions at the group level, or failing to reach a decision when one is indicated by the situation. Many of the other GS players value flexibility over focus to a larger extent, and I suspect that part of your concern over our direction (or lack thereof) is reflective of a similar bent towards focus.

I'm not sure that I agree with your driving analogy - while it's true that if we lack direction throughout the game we are likely to waste time, there's a bit more to the situation than that. If we launch out of the starting gate in our car without a map and don't rectify the situation, chances are that to get to our destination we're going to make a few wrong turns, and this is likely to be more costly than stopping off to get some idea of the route. Scouting out the immediate area around our start point is the equivalent of stopping the car to buy a map. Through scouting find out what we have in our toolbox as well as what roadblocks stand immediately in our way, and we can start working on finding a way to deal with the roadblocks. In addition, we can make a determination on what is likely to be the win condition we can achieve out of the situation that we are faced with. No sense thinking that we're going to conquer the world if we start on a small, hammer poor island. We'd run out of time after finally researching up to Navigation. Rather, we'd be best off attempting to turtle and outresearch the other players, thus sneaking up on a cultural or spacerace victory that the other sides see coming but do not have sufficient time to stop.

[Aginor]

Originally posted by Arrian
I'd think so, but you never can tell... some people really like Creative.

-Arrian

*laughs* Right, but do those players run the Mongols?

Suppose that someone *could* want to make the point that Creative/Kublai is good...but when Genghis has the absolute best possible warmonger traits to go with that nasty UU, one wonders why bother with Creative.

[Arrian]

They went with Kublai, all right. And not only that, THREE OTHER TEAMS picked creative civs. Wow.

Perhaps I've really undervalued that trait.

-Arrian

[Krill]

Oh, they are going to piss other teams off though, when the land starts getting invaded And there are ways around it, but we have got to tread carefully...

Stonehenge is now a lot more useful in gaining culture in one city, as the obelisks are useless against the rest...so if we have alot of forests, we could try to chop stonehenge. Doubt it would work though...