Stairway to Heaven: my first Deity game

Hey guys.

Well this is it: I'm going to try my 1st Deity game.

And so as to possibly not die miserably and (why not) try to improve my game, I decided to roll it on the S&T subforum. Going to take it really slow, playing only a few turns at a time and posting regularly (famous last post words... oh well I'll try).

You can go ahead and shadow play if you feel like it, just try to put spoilers on if it reveals info that I haven't posted yet. I'll try to bold important comments so that those who don't want to read can not do so

The game is Pangea, Normal speed, No Huts, No Events and our leader is:



Not very original but I actually have almost never played with him. Which is weird because I love his traits, his starting techs are very nice, and his uniques are kinda cool. A very good leader indeed, which I think is nice for a first Deity game...

Our start:



Hum. Ok. Lots of river tiles but a bit too much brown. We can guess 2 or more FPs to the West (maybe also South-East). Settling on the hilled Wine could be cool but I don't want to lose too many FPs (question: by the way does a Financial leader keep the extra bonus of a tile if he settles on it?).

And the demographics:



I don't read those too well but I think 28000 in Soldiers means Monty...

So what are your thoughts??

Hope you enjoy this!

Cheers

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Turnsets:

> question: by the way does a Financial leader keep the extra bonus of a tile if he settles on it?

YES! Yay!

My first instinct would also be to settle on the wine but the problem with that is losing the accessible food. You don't start with hunting so you can't easily go for AH so the pigs are kinda trashy unless we side-line the tech for a bit D:.

The hills that the warrior is on would be a nice spot for a beauro cap due to the vast amount of river tiles but the food problem is a problem. My first instinct would be to prod both left and right and look for a farmable food source so you can go directly to pottery.
I personally don't play much Deity myself so idk how many turns you can really stall for at the start, on Immortal I'd burn a couple of turns looking for a more suitable spot. The other option is +2 +3 city and go hunting => AH. Hopefully the +3 and the +3 from working the camped elephants will make up for the side-track.

Wow that is one hell of a tough decision. At least there are elephants, so Hunting -> AH wouldn't be a total waste on the Hunting part.

To bad the Warrior won't give us any additional information. Settling on the wine i would almost think one is bound to go elepult rush early. SIP would be conservative imo, since we can expect something else foodwise to be in the BFC and we see a 2 Floodplains(there shouldn't be desert in the BFC isn't that right?). 1 NW would also be kind of a gamble for a better buero capitol.

Wasting several turns to scout with the settler is not something i would do, i would rather gamble and stick with my decision.

I think i SIP, a mine on the wine is not to bad and no wasted turn is solid stuff.

When I say waste, I mean letting those bothersome AI's outpace us on tech/expansion (not directly going Pottery or BW). However the existence of the elephants on the river mean we get 3 so that's quite nice.

Why would you SIP as opposed to the wine? Is it cause of the exciting flood plains? I'd go for the wine because of the possibility of +6 off working just 1 tile (the 'phants) which is pretty nice considering the effects of the whip (i.e. your cap will become low population a lot at the start of the game).

(asking questions because I want to learn too!)

Risking the pigs to be the only food is a problem in my opinion, although that hill looks so nice. If we just have the pigs 3 pop whip a settler is pretty much out of the question.

Also there is always that 1 turn saved by SIP, even if it would have been nice to settle the wine we haven't made a crucial mistake.

Settling the wine might be viable anyway, don#t wanne say it's a no go!


€: To bad it's not a nobles club map, where we have to enter WB to give the barbs their techs, trolololol

> 3 pop whip a settler

For the first settler???? I don't think I've ever done such a whip or are you talking about future settlers? The whips are part of the reason I want to sit on the wine. When the cap is 2 pop it can work the pigs and the 'phants still and still give us +6

Yes you are right when we settle on the hill we gain tile yield even when whipping away population. But if we by chance would waste additional food and just end up with that pigs we can't really whip anyway.

Hmmm hard decision, but start with no agriculture and with pasture resources.

I will take a risk and settle wines for 2F2H3C start. Floodplains would not be workable for quite time so I will leave them for future expansion.

Techpath Hunting-AH-Archery-BW(Agri) ?

After playing some turns on emperor

Quibblesome said:

> 3 pop whip a settler

For the first settler????

Click to expand...

Not for the first, no! The loss in commerce & the delay in completion time would both be too large. It would also delay considerably the next cities (regrowth time = lost production).
If you end up wanting 3 or 4 fast cities, then the last settler for this sequence might be whipped!


Sometimes the first settler is whipped but I think that's typically a 2 pop whip at size 4. A 3 pop whip would require extraordinary food. Seems unlikely to me. Even with 4 corn tiles: first settler should (= my guess) be slow-built at size 4, then 2nd settler could be whipped at size 6..


@settling location:
Losing floodplains for 2H3C city tile is a good deal. Losing an additional food special (2S1W? 2W1N?) would be bad. Considering we can already see 3 specials + floodplains, the risk taken by moving 1E might not be too bad. (2 floodplains = 1 resource ; resource normalizer = 4 resources in BFC... normalizer doesn't remove resources, it adds them! caution).

enKage said:

Techpath Hunting-AH-Archery-BW(Agri) ?

After playing some turns on emperor

Spoiler :

is this map is winnable on deity? There is nooooooo food at all!

Click to expand...

Archery, not that early, unless you want to declare war on a neighbour (in which case it's a strong choice).

Could you settle 1NW and use the floodplains for food?

I'd be thinking settle on wine, send warrior west to check out ?FPs, maybe tech hunting (for ivory) then AH (you'll need a pig pasture for food). On the other hand I'm not a deity level player.

Strickl3r said:

I think i SIP, a mine on the wine is not to bad and no wasted turn is solid stuff.

Click to expand...

Seriously, I never understood the hardcore arguments about losing a turn!
Yes, I know one saved turn may lead to beat the AI to a city location by one turn.
Yes, I know that can mean Oracle done versus lost.
Yes, etc.

But the idea is just go onto that juicy hill while moving your warrior south and before committing settling, you can see if you lost any other high food resource while climbing that hilly pig.
If you lose another good food like corn, move back and take that lost turn with dignity.
It's not like highly competitive game where you get too much of a drawback by such waste of turn. Sometimes, it is impossible to make a clear decision due to lack of info. That's the sad part of early game, but we have to deal with it.

About demographics, only Mansa and Hammy can be deduced. No other leader with 100% certainty.

Besides taking a turn to move to a plains hill to settle is not a turn loss but a turn gain due to faster worker. From what we can see, you are giving up on 1 FP on the west.

With the currently available information clearly wine is the best spot. (2F2H3C city tile is great! Nice boost to early hammers and research.) I really like Tachy's idea of checking out the surroundings with warrior S- >SW so you can move accordingly if you reveal soemthing.

Hey guys thanks for the input!

Ok I really like the Wine settle idea (and most of the comments seem to concur) and I find Tachy's suggestion pretty slick so I'm going to try that.

On tech path, a Hunting > AH opening seems pretty obvious. And even though it's tempting to unlock the Skirmishers right from the start, I think I want to go Agri > Pottery just after because early Pottery is a good way to exploit the FIN trait as soon as possible (I don't see any real reason to rush to BW now). What d'ya think?

I'll probably play and post tonight (Europe time ).

Strickl3r said:

€: To bad it's not a nobles club map, where we have to enter WB to give the barbs their techs, trolololol

Click to expand...

lol

Murky said:

Could you settle 1NW and use the floodplains for food?

Click to expand...

Well if I want to go that route, why not just SIP?

Tachywaxon said:

About demographics, only Mansa and Hammy can be deduced. No other leader with 100% certainty.

Click to expand...

Oh ok. Shameful of my ignorance I dug up a thread that explains the inner mechanisms of the Demo screen. Will study for next time

Hunting->AH definitely, agriculture->Pottery is likely, but I'd let the map decide. You will know much more aftr hunting and AH is in. (Eg if you spot a nice fish city close buy then fishing->pottery could be better.)

BTW I'm no deity player either, so be critical about things I say

The only thing I'd be cautious about is spreading our tech so wide, that's partly why the start disappointed me because we had to go AH. A personal opinion would be to forgo attempting the Oracle if we're going BW and Pottery because then we've self-teched all the worker techs. To then start self-teching religious techs on top of that reduces our ability to trade later.
The downside of doing that is that we'd get Monarchy quite late. The 'phants will help with that but keep your eyes peeled for any other + resource.

So I'd suggest sticking with Hunting, AH and scout a bit more before deciding on the next techs. For example if we're lucky enough to find fur/gold/silver/gems next to food then we can consider skipping Pottery.

pomthom said:

On tech path, a Hunting > AH opening seems pretty obvious. And even though it's tempting to unlock the Skirmishers right from the start, I think I want to go Agri > Pottery just after because early Pottery is a good way to exploit the FIN trait as soon as possible (I don't see any real reason to rush to BW now). What d'ya think?

Click to expand...

If a couple of Agriculture resources are uncovered within the first 5 turns (don't select your tech on t0, unselect it at each end of turn until t5, so as to store beakers and gain the ability to make a more "enlightened" choice), then Hunting-AH-Agri would be a waste.
Hunting-AH is the fastest way to AH. But Agriculture is a VIP... that gives a discount to research AH. Animal Husbandry into Agriculture is awkward (but maybe necessary!?).

Seeing how there may be additional food 2S of the settler... tech path can't be determined on t0.

Settling on the wine, the worker will take 12 turns to complete. During that time, you'll be researching at 11-12bpt. So you'll have invested about 140 beakers, by the time your worker is out.
12 turns worker = faster than even Hunting into AH.
So you may have to road/farm/mine, initially, with the worker, in waiting for AH.

...

Not sure. I'd settle, first, before deciding anything else. Sending the warrior 2S1W is, indeed, a good idea to check the tiles you might lose. (pray for corn 2S1E.)

But Agriculture is a VIP... that gives a discount to research AH.

Click to expand...

You're thinking of hunting aren't you? I didn't think Agri sped up AH unless I've been completely blind all these years.....

Well I actually had a bit of time so I played up to turn 19 (3240 BC).

Followed Tachy's advice and moved my warrior South to reveal more terrain before settling on the Wine. And what we discover... is unimpressive.



So it's time to settle!



We have 7 food-neutral tiles that we can cottage (4 of them riverside) and 2 plains hills. Not the best long term Bureau cap but still a nice spot (plus the 2, 2, 3 city tile). Don't know what we'll do with these numerous brown tiles... (10 of them! )

Having no farming resources, I go Hunting > AH as discussed while my Warrior sets off to explore. I also start with a 12-turn Worker.

We meet 3 Civs:

Could be worse...

Turn 12: I queue a Warrior after my Worker, who goes straight to the Elephants (stopping to put 1 turn of Road on the grassland tile on the way).

Turn 18: 1 turn before reaching AH, I finish my Warrior and I start another one (still size 1...).

Turn 19: we reach AH, and now we have to decide what to tech next. Many possibilities:
I guess the real question is what do I want to do: Oracle? Defend and spawnbust? Skip Oracle and build-up my reasearch (Cottages, Library...)?

The surrounding land is kinda poor... What is interesting is the western flood plains, the jungled Gems to the North and maybe the Stone down below. Overview:



I need to explore more... Your thoughts?

IMO you went way too far west with the scout unless that was a hut map pop. You wanted to turn back when the river ended and circle south (jungle sucks) to then check out east. Still, meeting 3 civs is good info.