War Without Swords - Civ 4 Succession Game 2
 

She always told the best of stories. Stories of the lost hardships of landown, of the brilliant lands beneath the waves, of the clever adventures of Two-Head Crow, and Silver Sky who molded our land. She could be a tilt toward crazy, but her stories always had a purpose. They showed us the follies of our past and gave us guidance in life. She was the lore keeper of our people, and that task has now fallen to me - to carry on our tale.

Civ 4 Succession Game 2

Due to the success of its first iteration, and our victories over the peoples of Earth that was, I'm putting forward the idea of a second game of Civ 4.

Game Configuration

Game: Civ 4 + Warlords + Beyond the Sword

NOTE: Non dual-booting Mac folks, Aspyr literally just released BtS for MAC OS X.

Patch Version: 3.19 Firaxis Download

Difficulty: Noble
Scenario: Not Yet Chosen
Size: Standard (normal enemy slots)
Victory Conditions: All Except Timeout
Turn Times: 1 day to post "Got It" and 2 days to submit turn report and post game file for download.

From the prior thread for orientation:

Basic Concept
For those who haven't tried succession games:
Basically, we rotate doing 10 turns a piece, then posting pictures and descriptions of what happened during our turns. Roleplay as the leader, bare bones info, stream of consciousness. Whatever you like, as long as the game progresses.

Turn Progression
From a lower post, the general turn order is:
Current Players
Shin
Hawkeye
Araes
Pang
Turbo

Anybody who's interested just post as such. I'm open to suggestions on race, leader, and scenario selection. I was personally thinking one of the new race / leader combos from BtS, since I haven't tried them much, and a normal start so we could experience all the new stuff.

To avoid sadness all around, I'm proposing every victory condition except Timeouts so we can have even more chaos and disarray in our strategy.

As shown by our game last time, it was pretty free-form about posts per turn, and no requirements on length or craftsmanship if its a concern. Appreciate notices if you're going to be absent, although we'll likely skip after a few days if nothing is forthcoming.

As much as I would like to jump in, it'll have to wait until I can get my hands Beyond the Sword. It seems it's just been released for OSX so that may be very soon. I'll post again to join in if I happen upon it.

As an interim, it is already running loose in the wilds of the internet, which might do until you happen upon it by other means.

Well, I should have specified that by getting my hands on it, I did mean my ehands more than my physical hands. Haven't had any luck finding it yet, but then again I'm pretty lazy right now so I'll surely stumble upon it in the coming days.

I'm up for this certainly. Noob question - When I downloaded a highly illegal copy of Civ 4, it installed seperate desktop shortcuts for Civ4, Warlords, Beyond the Sword and Colonization. Which shortcut would I load from to play BtS and Warlords? Also, is there an in-game screencap option or do you just PrintScreen then Alt-Tab out and paste it somewhere?

Just run the BTS shortcut, BTS also contains all the gameplay additions of Warlords so Warlords itself is kind of redundant and worthless.

(Just press PrintScreen in game and it'll dump .jpg screenshots somewhere in your Documents/My Games folder.

I guess I'm up for another one of these. As far as Civ/Leader goes I'm in favor of just going Random with the option to have historically incorrect leaders turned on.

I'm up for it.

I'm sorry about the last game, two reasons... I kind of lost my free time, and I have this problem with end game civ.. It becomes to technical for me and I screw up more then help >_>

Turbo: Figured something of the kind had come up. Don't worry too much about the end game skill, as we were discussing plans quite a bit near the end, particularly when it was looking dicey as to whether we'd be able to pull out a win.

Pang: Random seems like a reasonable suggestion. I'll turn on the odd combinations so we can have Ghandi running the Holy Roman Empire.

Then count me in :)

Since we've got a good number of people interested, I'll plan on starting the game Thursday, barring any unforseen events. People can feel free to join in as interested throughout and we'll just have reserves after five for if we get drops.

Current turn order is reflected in first post.

On a long forgotten world, orbiting through the mazed, turbulent bath of multiple stars, a lone figure raises his head from the nets of piker fish he works, and glimpses the future of his people - Elephants. And boats. Great mammoths of lumber and grey skin, ravaging the coasts of the world over.

http://www.forsako.com/GFF_Civ4_Game..._t1_Leader.jpg

Whether sun-dazed or truly prophetic, his idea seems to strike a chord with his people, as he spreads his message of mutant, naval terror, and within a few years his people have gifted him with the guidance of their small hamlet by the waves. Perhaps they're all sun addled.

Ensconced within the new hut of his position, and finally freed from his toil by the water, he has time to think upon his vision, and comes to a harsh realization - while his imagery, and power, draws upon the natural beautry and grace of the elephant, his people don't actually own a single one.

Needing to rectify this immediately, he gathers up the local boys from the tribe and instructs them that whatever fate guides their people has demanded grey titans to further their good works. They must search the land far and wide to gather as many of these fine beasts as possible.

Not more than a year out from the village they sight their first earth shaker, and the faithful of the village work themselves into a frenzy at the news.

http://www.forsako.com/GFF_Civ4_Game...t1_Mystics.jpg

Drawn ever onward by the dark tendrils of his mind, the next step upon the quest towards fleshen behemoths of the waves is the ability to actually sail. Fortunately, the ways of the world smile yet again our fresh people, and as they crest a hill within the curve of a vast plain to the North, they see a small group of workers attempting to erect a wooden skeleton amidst the grass.

Fortunately, the boys which were sent abroad are a slight bit brighter than these folks, and with a deft bit of trading, give them some colored pebbles and a promise of future aid for access to look at their interesting construction.

http://www.forsako.com/GFF_Civ4_Game...eOceanBlue.jpg

Now, it is but a matter of time until the whole world shares the vision.

http://www.forsako.com/GFF_Civ4_Game...t1_EndTurn.jpg

OOC: Strategy wise, since we ended up with yet another Financial character, and are fairly near the ocean, I've once again been trying to get some religions. Seems probable we'll get to be the first one, as I haven't seen any messages yet.

http://www.forsako.com/GFF_Civ4_Game...1_Research.jpg

Build-wise, Sailing gave us access to the Maoi Heads Wonder (+1 Hammer in all water squares. Awesome) and we've also got Stonehenge. However, I was thinking we could be somewhat more expansionistic this game, as not having enough cities ended up biting us last game. Maybe a couple warriors and then a settler?

The save game can be found at: GFF_Game2%20BC-3560.CivBeyondSwordSave

What are we doing with the spy % thing, are we going to be playing with that at all since this is Beyond the sword and all.

I assume we'll probably use it at the very least. Whether we focus on it is a different matter. While its useful to have intel and be able to do secret ops on our foes, it also does tend to screw your relations over time and make people go to war with you. If we're going pretty aggressive, then it would be good, but if we're tanking, then it would be less so.

My personal preference is to get some as it comes naturally, but not devote lots of resources to specializing in it unless a need presents itself.

Why would you want to go found some religions? I remember you guys founding two or three last game, but didn't really do anything (missionaries or whatever) with them :)

I haven't been around for a while, good to hear we managed to pull off the victory first game. Maybe if this survives until a game three i'll get back into it, but right now I'm not on GFF enough to make it worth trying to jump into this game.

Religions are always worth having even if you don't pursue the strategy aggressively, since the presence of religions in a city boosts its culture and a city's culture improves its level of defense. So if you can found 2-3 religions and spread them all to each of your cities they're all much safer than they would be without.

Finished up the Warrior and started work on a new Settler immediately. Explored a little to both the north and the south; unfortunately the Warrior that was northwest-bound had an unfortunate accident involving some wildlife. Villagers provided us with Sailing and some cash. Finished up Meditation and converted us to Confucianism (why the hell not). Grabbed Mining and started on Priesthood so we can get some use out of our new faith.

The Known World, circa 3160 BC:

http://www.saxypunch.com/miscimg/Civ...nShot00013.JPG

GFF_Game2 BC-3160.CivBeyondSwordSave

Got the save. Didn't know there was an update to the game, downloading the patch. Erhm, since what I have is 'illegal' is there a crack somewhere?

Edit: Oh wow.. Because Im using a cracked version already.. It wont let me update. I gotta reinstall the whole thing -.- It might take a while.. I have civ and warlords on disk, but I'll need to redownload Beyond the Sword.

Double edit: I can't seem to find a no-cd patch for 3.19. I'll keep looking though.

Got it working. Will take my 10 turns soon.

Additional Spam:
Most boring turns ever. Turn 5 discovered priesthood, going for Polytheism, maybe we can nab another religion.

Turn 7, found a tribal village. They gave us an extra warrior. Also some gems nearby.

Got the save, I'll see about taking my turns a little bit later today. Be surprised if we actually win the race to Polytheism this late, but maybe it'll happen. Going to need to survey a Settler location soon too.

Additional Spam:
Turbo, I'm thinking you screwed up on the save file linkage, as this is a Gods of Old savegame, and the people are currently tooling around with Scientific Method. Not quite what I was expecting.

Well crap. Here's the proper save Sorry >.<

Actually not quite as far along on the Settler as I thought, so it will end up being Pang's turn when that finally comes around.

http://www.forsako.com/GFF_Civ4_Game...Start_Turn.jpg

Starting off, we've got a roadblock of warriors hanging our around our town, so I work to spread them out and get them exploring back where our first one died, and down to the South. Thankfully, find a sneaky passage through the hills, and we're quickly off to the villages and Panther infested woods of the Southwest.

Also, Stop with the bears! I see no less than three bears within a five square area, not to mention a number of lions and panthers. The wilds of the Northwest are a scary place...

While all this is going on, we have a burst of research (which unfortunately doesn't lead to a new religion), and the villages we liberate from Panthers are also happy to kick in and help us learn how to throw spears. Everyone feels so much safer with this knowledge that their discovery of Masonry and wall building near the end is almost an afterthought.

http://www.forsako.com/GFF_Civ4_Game...NoReligion.jpg

http://www.forsako.com/GFF_Civ4_Game...h2_Hunting.jpg

http://www.forsako.com/GFF_Civ4_Game...ch3Masonry.jpg

At the end, I've got our warriors out pretty far to the West, heading in multiple directions, we'll be putting out a Settler in Pang's turn, and we're on the road to Monotheism.

http://www.forsako.com/GFF_Civ4_Game...t2_EndTurn.jpg

Your go Pang. Save file can be found at: GFF_Civ4_Game2/GFF_Game2%20BC-2360.CivBeyondSwordSave

I'm not sure anyone can help you with that if your description of the problem is limited to "won't work". Won't work in what way, exactly?

Additional Spam:
For a long time, nothing happens. Our exploring warriors continue to, y'know, explore, but find nothing of interest beyond a crapload of angry bears. After bear casualties are assessed, the survivors coalesce into one party.

New discoveries in the study of the sublime lead us to the discovery of Islam, and we convert to Organized Religion so that we may more easily spread our knowledge to the new city we intend to found. I begin researching the Wheel, so that we can build a road to the new city once we actually establish one.

At last the settlers are ready to move out. I direct Rotterdam to produce more warriors for city defense, since it seems increasingly unlikely that our exploring parties will make it back alive. Unwilling to delay our expansion any longer, I send the settlers out without accompaniment. Hopefully our explorers are doing an adequate job of distracting the bears.

GFF_Game2 BC-1960.CivBeyondSwordSave

Who's turn is it? If it's mine, I'll only be able to play them later tonight as I have a full day's of errands to do

Since Big & Gay is still having computer gremlin issues, it's your turn Turbo.

I've split out all my tech support posts so as not to interupt the flow of the game. I'll let you all know when I've sorted it and can join in.