Challenge-VI-05

While the general Hall of Fame is an ongoing competition, we are running a series of ten games called the Hall of Fame Challenge Series. Standard Hall of Fame rules (*) still apply, but any games meeting the settings of one of the games will be counted towards the Challenge.


Settings:

• Victory Condition: Cultural (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Deity
• Starting Era: Ancient
• Map Size: Standard
• Map Type: Inland Sea
• Speed: Normal
• Required: No Tribal Villages, No Random Events
• Must Not Be Checked: No Barbarians
• Civ: Any
• Opponents: Any
• Version: 3.19.003
• Date: 6th October 2011 to 6th February 2012

Must not play as Inca.
The earliest finish date wins, with score as a tiebreaker.

I have a pending submission for this one. I made several attempts to "learn" the best way to go about this one. I played a peaceful game and it will certainly not be competitive. Hopefully some of you that think this game is too difficult will give it a try.

Key to the game: Diplomacy!

Leader: Justinian
Justinian is definitely not a great cultural leader, but he's also not that bad.

Traits: Spiritual, Imperialistic
On deity, the imperialistic trait's 1/2 cost settlers really help with the land grab. I whipped out several quickly to "hold" blocking positions. I got 9-10 cities in most attempts.
Spiritual's half priced temples and lack of anarchy are great.

UB The Hippodrome is absolutely awful. I believe it to be a BUG, but when this unique theater is built, it does not allow you to hire any artists. Going into mid-game slavery pollutes the gp pool.

UU Not used.

Start techs: Wheel, Mysticism
The wheel obviously helps getting copper hooked up more quickly and getting a trade route in the early cities.
A "no barbs" setting might warrant a shot at Hinduism, but with no quick military techs, I skipped this.

Barbs
I fog busted with warriors and did well. I went for Agr=>Min=>BW. Most maps had copper near capitol. I didn't go for archery or AH since hunting was required. I wanted to beeline CoL or Aesthetics after BW and didn't want to waste research on two more techs.

Map settings
I felt it was important to be able to block your opponents. I chose high seas to make less available land, and smaller corridors for easier blocking. It also made fog busting easier too. Obviously, you can get more land on low sea level if you can rex well. I did scrap starts in which I met AIs from both directions by turn 6. With seven civs on the inland sea, it is reasonable to get a setup with some space in one direction or the other. I didn't consider the rocky setting, which may have put up some mountains to help with blocking, because I wanted more luscious, flat, green cottage land.

Opponents
When playing deity, I like a mix of cream puffs and jerks (no psychos) to keep teching at a reasonable pace. I tried a few games including Gandhi and Napoleon. Gandhi often ran off with a culture lead and Napoleon often attacked. I finally chose a new set including Frederick, Sitting Bull, Churchill, Kublai Kahn, Darius and Lincoln. I like Kublai Kahn for his Bureaucracy love. He is usually despised and techs fairly slow.

Permanent Alliances
I really wanted to do this without the PA cheese, but it fell into my lap and I couldn't pass it up. I think I still would have won without it, but it would have been dicey.

Diplomacy
This was huge. Early on, you can make relatively fair trades with worst enemies and get away with it. If you haven't met everyone quickly, you may get -4 diplo hits from those you haven't met, but those fade pretty quickly. Befriend your neighbors. With anyone that is someone's worst enemy, watch them closely. If someone improves their standing to where they are not a worst enemy, use this opportunity to give them some tech for free to raise the fair trade bonus. Dogpile war on distant AI pariahs if possible for mutual war benefits.

No state religion. Don't use it until you are sure you can get away with it. I never managed to get neighbors in the same religion. If you can beat the AI to CoL and Phil, you may limit the AI going out on their own with religion. No state religion hurts in three places: No OR, no Pacificism, and no cathedral bonus for state religion. This slowed me a lot, but I lived to tell about it!

Since I had to run Free Religion, I was able to get a defensive pact with Darius. I had no tech to get him to friendly, but did 3 turns of max gold and gave a gift of about 700 gold to get him to friendly for my permanent alliance. Money well spent. PA helped with biology, US cathedral purchasing, Radio tower production, allowing the slider to go to 100% and allowing secondary cities to make GA's, not wealth.

I did engage in one war. Darius bordered Kublai Kahn who was getting a smackdown from Freddy. KK had mostly longbows, Daruis had cavalry so I declared to give Darius some more cities. Everyone else dogpiled too.

GA production was pathetic. I had about 9, only seven turned out to be useful.

Research
It is important to get liberalism fast, even if you lose the race (I lost by two turns). The sooner to free speech, the better. You can usually trade for Nationalism and PP then. I did not build an academy (until very late, with extra GS pollution) I did bulb Phil (missed Taoism by one turn), and one bulb for education.

Wonders
I didn't even try. Since I had space for +9 cities, I didn't worry about the Sistine Chapel I actually may have had a shot at it, but chopped my forests for other things. The Parthenon went very quickly. With barbs, the Oracle was a no. The GW would not be awful. It would help with expansion and Great spys are a great way to catch up. If you go for a 6 city nation, you should have hammers to try for the Sistine Chapel or Parthenon that would have gone to settlers/workers/monuments...

Clearly, the best times will go to a Gandhi/Pericles/Elizabeth or similar. Ramesses, and a WC rush might work well to, especially of you can snag some of the second wave Wonders.

Urgh... was in click through mode, estimated finish was ~1500. Only risk was Fred. He was cautious and in another religion. At one point, he was even in WHEOOH mode and by the diplo situation I seemed to be the target. However, I gifted him a resource and a tech and that seemed to work. Still was very nervous about him, so went looking for a protector or two. My two best pals were Mansa and Liz. They were also friendly with each other. So I decided to take defensive pacts with both to protect me from Fred.

Next thing you know, Mansa catches an English spy. Even though he is still pleased with Liz, he DOWs on her. My defensive pact with Liz still applies even though my pact with Mansa is invalided by his DOW. Liz pulls me into war with recent protector Mansa . Ironically, Mansa takes two of my non-legendary border cities and then seems to lose interest. At this point, I still have a shot. However, now Fred decides to dogpile. He finally DOWs and comes in from the other side. In 1420, maybe 7-8 turns before I will finish, he captures one of my legendary cities.

Total PITA. Sometimes this game just sux.

@The-Hawk:

My condolences for your rather unfair loss.

We all have a few games that are going extremely well, maybe even heading for a #1 position, only to have some RNG driven part of the game kill all our well laid out plans.

Sun Tzu Wu

Rolling games for this at moment, Gandhi vs Mansa, Asoka, Lincoln, Fredrick, Lizzie, Washington. Low Seas, with this crowd i can usually get away with being in a religion and not getting a DoW from civs in another religion. Hardest part will be barbs until everywhere is spawn-busted

Hoping to find a Plains Hill settler with 3 gems and Marble (remember jesusin saying that was his perfect start ) but will try anything down to 2 mining/marble+1mining for resources.

Habitus said:

Hardest part will be barbs until everywhere is spawn-busted

Click to expand...

Yes, I think an important factor is vicinity of the AIs. Too close and you get boxed in. Too far, and barb prevention sucks up early hammers.

I'm going to try the side starts first since you normally get an ai N and S that's close enough to help for barbs. But more chance of getting boxed in of course

I've now made two attempts playing as Gandhi and picking the opponents Habitus listed. It works like a charm; I've been able to run a religion and there's been only one or two civs that got cautious. While my attempts were not ruined by war, I lost to spaceship and the UN. As an inexperienced deity player, there are a couple of questions that came to my mind as I played:

- Is archery a sensible tech after fundamental worker techs? I chose it in both games because I had a lot of trouble dealing with barbs using just warriors.

- The AIs founded their 5th or 6th cities by the time I founded my second one. Should I actually try to keep up with their pace or would I just drown in maintenance costs?

- Should you try to use your great scientists as soon as possible or is it worth it to keep them in store for the bulbs on the lib path?

Edit: Woo, 100th post!

I often only have a single Scientist for an Academy in culture games (if low on religions i sometimes bulb phil then get a 2nd for academy and even then I've skipped academy before as it will come too late to have a big enough effect after getting phil)

I skip archery, axes/chariots for barbs if possible or warriors and willing to lose afew improvements early on till everything is spawn busted.

Getting monopoly techs to trade with > winning Lib, as your not trying to get a military advantage, 1 free tech doesn't add up to all the beakers you get from trades

To beat the AI you often have to win culture in 1600s, if their slow 1700s, aim to get 18 great people produced, normally its 1 scientist + 17 artist + free one from Music if everything goes well. If you don't get The Parthenon try for 1 less great person, and if not Philosophical try for 3 less great people.

Read some of the game links of deity culture games in hof (not all games have a write up link) to help see what is happening, and check out their saves

Mhh, i was of the opinion that the human player is always player 1 and therefore wins "before" the AI if they reach a victory condition on the same turn.
I just played a game, went legendary on the same turn as ghandi (and lincoln would have landed his spaceship) and lost.
I guess i was wrong? Or is this different with culture victories?
Anybody can clarify that, so i don't have to play the last turns the next time around^^

I must admit I thought if the human player won the same turn as the AI, you were given the win (same as building a wonder or researching Liberalism) but maybe that isn't right.

not sure with culture x SS, but I remember seeing in S&T thread were people discussed SS x SS on same turn and I think I remember that they said that it's matter of coin toss.

Another thing that comes to mind is that some things are reported by 1T later (typically when you race for wonder and AI gets it T70 it gets reported at yours T71, but you can see the wonder completed in wonders screen, but that is another issue).

Seems like its really a coin toss. So my chances were only 33% to win and i can't even blame bad luck :-D
Well was a bad game anyways.

Thanks for your help vranasm.

I finally finished this game after a couple close losses with a PA-opportunity that fell into my lap. Wasn't going for it for the most part of the game but i take it.
This was the first time playing on deity and it was quite an experience to say the least.
I don't want to write that much about the actual game, but rather share some of my observations and hopefully it will help other players who are in the same position as i was.
Because these observations are only based on my several attempts at this game so feel free to correct me, if these are not representative for deity/cultural.

As an introduction to the topic i read jesusin's guide and the nice summary from shulec.

My biggest problem in the beginning was getting used to the barbs and the expansionrate of the AI. My first few maps with ghandi were complete fails either resulting in a defeat or being boxed with only desert to settle.
Because i got tired of losing nice starts i decided to go with an less optimal but also lower variance approach.

Therefore i chose mansa musa and went to skirmishers after the first two worker techs.
I feel this is the best leader for "deity-noobs" like myself, because not only are barbs a non-issue, inland sea also has a good amount of commerce potential which helps the financial trait.
The ability to scout, secure good city sites and protect your empire with minimal troops is worth a lot.

The tech- and wonderpace is insane, i was considering to try for oracle as soon as i got used to deity but in my very first test it went around turn 35-40 and i abandoned the idea ever since.

Like Habitus mentioned, getting monopoly techs is key (e.g. aesthetics>alphabet). I made the wrong decision in my first attempts in the case of CS vs Philo. I tend to tech CS especially if taoism was already founded.
But Philo is a much better choice even if your a couple turns late, because the AI seems to skip it if another one got it first and the AI that got it first is very stingy with trading it away.
Basically backfilling CS with philo is way better/easier than the other way round.

I also found out that begging money from the AI isn't as easy as i was used to. I don't know if i begged to much (mostly 50 gold or less) or if my backwardness/ low power rating had something to do with it.

Marble/Copper should be near for NE,Hermitage,Sistine (although its not the end of the world if you lose it) and most cathedrals.

At my skill level, there is still a considerable amount of luck involved. Besides from getting a PA which could be trick, religionspread and the kindness of the AI when it comes to tech gifting can swing the outcome in your favor.
In the submitted game i got another religion by flipping a rival city and got tech gifts all the way to democracy.

All in all i really enjoyed my first deity game. After switching to mansa musa and not losing anymore starts, it provided challenge and entertainment even after several attempts.
It's still a long way for me to play and win regularly on deity but now i know what to expect. Off to Game 10 i guess.

vranasm said:

Another thing that comes to mind is that some things are reported by 1T later (typically when you race for wonder and AI gets it T70 it gets reported at yours T71, but you can see the wonder completed in wonders screen, but that is another issue).

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that msg would have been reported on T70 if you waited for it. Maybe you clicked End Turn too fast and it seemed like the msg came out on 71. I've never lost a wonder the way you described.

Key to the game: Diplomacy!

Click to expand...

I think on this one, I failed hard! I couldn't resist to provoke wars here and there...considering I crammed the map with 10 AI's. I am Ramesses.

Look at that start, nice quarry type one: I didn't have any chance to build any wonder.


I even lost the Sistine Chapel at 175 AD to Mansa Musa with which I am at war after bribing.
I had to DoW Gandhi to even snatch the Mids, well-spread Buddist cradle (without shrine though) along the GW and Shwedagon Paya. Another side city to reach a third city with Parthenon inside. Just in time before his SoD was about to crush me...and Gandhi was enough idiotic to accept peace with a small tribute.
Never before I would have gone that far to get those wonders, but after Duckweed's demonstration, I now have enough guts to be as stupidly agressive as Monty.



Anyways, since I lost the Sistine Chapel and I don't possess the required military power to progress further, I wonder what to do with such non serious attempt...given I gave up the competition.

Any tips and counseling? Just like ol' times. If more info needed, just ask.

Hmm 6 days left, lots of maps rolled, now i just need to get time to play them before deadline lol

Ahh Tachy, your inner Warmonger is strong!!!

Habitus said:

Ahh Tachy, your inner Warmonger is strong!!!

Click to expand...

Perhaps too sickly; my game is a fail after all. Stupid as*hole Izzy helps Gandhi helps to take back peacefully his city bombay where the GW, Mids, Shwedagon and my recently built ~40 shrine are resting. I have accumulated 10 and another motion will definitely kill my economy.

BTW, I hope you will get a good result; please be careful this time! You don't wish to see your game excluded once again. Especially in cases where you got first place like you did in challenger serie #5 where the immortal cultural game was yours instead of me.

Good luck with your spreadsheet; I am too primitive for such things.