[Deity] Stairway to Heaven #3: Hatshepsut of Egypt (Pangaea)

Why not get gunpowder through education thus avoiding feud and guilds? On the other hand as soon as you get machinery and paper PP comes in before chemistry.

You can avoid those if you don't bulb chem, but not if you do.

PP requires Machinery and Alphabet. Paper is on the tech path anyway, you can't get there without it. I suppose you could skip Alpha to bulb Chemistry, but that would be a very early commitment and probably a bad choice unless you're expecting all AIs to somehow get Alpha pretty early.

You don't need PP for anything, it's just another tech that gets in the way of a chem bulb if you have paper.

Oh boy... this has not run smoothly

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Grand strategy:


But here's how it went:


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(see next post for current situation)

(end of previous post)

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So here's our situation:

Why don't you lib Nationalism to at least finally go to a real / full war via drafting with Nationhood?

Also, wtf did you do there. 700 AD is the time for a Cuirrassiers war, but you're waging war with Elephants + Maces, those usually come at least 1000y earlier!

And seriously, I just looked at the save:

Capital not working the wet Corn!
Memphis size 8 working completely useless tiles like Grassland Farms or even a Plains Hill Mine!
Same at Heliopolis.
Giza working a Plains Farm! OMG!
Byblos not working the Copper... :suicide:

Really. How in hell, do you want to win a war against Deity AIs without whipping? How do you seriously think that your cities are getting tired of the whip? Most got at least 2 Happiness and 3 population that could already be units!

You can be very very lucky, that Deity-AIs are so amazingly dumb that they suicide their units, if this would have been a match against a human, you'd have been dead long ago already!

Remember my writeup in which you always comment? 1000 AD, 50 cities, no city (except for GP-Farm and Capital) bigger than size 6 (minimum size for drafting) ! Not working 1 Farm, a long post why working Plains-Hills is costing onesself hammers, and Lib Rifling hundreds of years ago already!

Really, this is ment to be good, I know that you don't have that Deity-experience yet, but you really should be able to see and replicate something, like you also should be able to listen to advice like when I tell you that that Plains-Cottage is no good, and worst of all:

I just looked at your GP-Generation, you created exactly 2 GSs up 'til now! How is that even possible, first GS comes at around 1000 - 500 BC, 2nd GS can be created simultaniously with waging no wars, you built tons of Libraries, ARGH!

And still additional things, that are ment to help:

You're SPI (no beginner friendly trait, I know) , and you've got Hindu cities and most of the world is Hindu (hint) .
Blowing up that Iron with a Spy was an absolute waste, you have no possibility to prevent the workers from rebuilding that mine in like 2 turns.
You're trading for Ivory when you got Maces and when you want to go for Cannon-warfare (good idea) to help you overcome AIs numbers.
And again, as help: Spy-revolts are super super super expensive. Why are you using them when there would be a possibility to steal unbelievable amounts of techs from Gandhi.

A way out of this I could see would be to Lib -> Nationalism, build the TM as fast as possible, switch to Nationalism, whip Trebs and draft Maces (later Muskets) and you somehow must find a way to get someone into war against Gandhi, or he'll be in Space before you find an opportunity to attack him.

My cities are still full on military pumpage, but are getting tired from the

Click to expand...

pro-tip: whip more

You have a nice option here, that's switching to Hindu.
Will get Joao friendly, and unlike Freddy he has techs you will want.
If you Lib Nationalism now (and you should, 2 guys can tech Lib too now), and do that switch, you can trade for Printing Press

Because of your Neighbors being very safe, you can try continuing against Darius.
But i would most likely limit whipping units and stuffs for now, there are AP hammer buildings available here, and you should try reaching Rifles instead (esp. since you can trade for PP).

In particular i would get Hindu Mona + Temple in Thebes (which should keep growing with it's corn, maybe even use some growth as pop gets "too much" for an University whip). Cities with no commerce could keep getting out an army against Darius, if you want to continue

Oh i wanted to mention that but forgot..stay in Bur. at all cost, Thebes is all you have for beakers. No Nationhood nonsense.

LOL it seems I'm getting very sloppy on the micro (I'm not surprised, my focus has been ). But of course I ignore advice if I'm not convinced lol, I think it's rather a good sign to challenge what is fed to me A lot of advice I have not ignored but not all situations are comparable (how can I compare this to a Marathon/Huge game??)

Hmm I really didn't have the impression I was being leniant on the whip. My rules here were no 1-pop whips and maximizing whip-OF each time, so I guess you're telling me not to max OF? While I wait for max OF my cities grow obviously... and until next whip they work weak tiles a plains Farm is still better than a coastal tile! I have 3 to 4 angry faces in each of my production cities and I'm still whipping so... didn't seem that bad but I can accept that I just need to chain whip more. Room for more whips that's sure.

Also I refuse to heavily whip commerce cities especially those with weak food.

My GP generation has been bad, I don't know how I managed that...

About Hinduism: FYI until 1 turn ago there was only 1 Hindu Civ except useless Toku and it was Darius so for you guys it's easy to barge in and play Mr Obvious and make me look stupid

Lib Nationalism? Yeah... it's not monopoly (yeah well like all my Lib targets basically) and the Taj is long gone. If I'm not going to switch to Nationhood (draft Maces? bleh right?) Nationalism is just for trading in which case I'd rather steal Optics and Lib Astro.

The key to whipping an army is speed, not optimizing hammer overflow.

Nationhood can be worthwhile as you get 3 Maces/Muskets each turn and your cities can focus on whipping Trebuchets instead.

GP generation could let you catch up after the bloody war with Darius. Biology for instance...

kossin said:

The key to whipping an army is speed, not optimizing hammer overflow.

Click to expand...

So does this mean I have to whip as soon as I can 2-pop whip?

Sure thing, even 3-pop is justifiable if you want to get the whipping cycle started. You could easily have had 10 extra troops for that war and captured Ecbatana a few turns faster. etc.

I definitely agree with Nationhood for 5-10t. Bureaucracy may be appealling, but you seem to need killing units ASAP more than commerce. Getting three macemen/musketmen per turn via drafting will net you 15 to 30. Since you are spiritual, it will cost nothing more than 5-10t of Bureaucratic commerce and 15 - 30 population. Be sure to grow your population to 6 or more to enable the draft in each target city the times you expect. Do not whip in a city until all drafting is done, unless it has sufficient population to do both in the same time frame. Drafting in cities multiple times will stack 3 unhappiness per draft or a net of two unhappiness per draft. Barracks will add +2 happiness while in nationhood. You will may need more happiness; Notre Dame is one possibility; try trading for happiness resources. However, it may be better to deal with some net unhappiness from drafting rather than not drafting enough.

Remember that drafting is an extremely efficient unit production method prior to factories and power plants. One population is converted into a 70H maceman, 80H musketman or even a 110H rifleman (when you get rifling of course). With slavery, one will at best have a forge and police state which will convert 1 population from 30 raw hammers to 45 hammers or a conversion ratio of 1.5. Drafting conversion ratios: maceman = 70 / 30 = 2.34, musketman = 80 / 30 = 2.67, and rifleman 110 / 30 = 3.67. Keep in mind that drafting is only possible in cities that have 10% or more of your people and 5 population _after_ the draft.

Sun Tzu Wu

The game was / is not Huge Marathon, it's Huge Epic. That's a Huge difference, because Epic has the same scaling, and it means that I had to move greater distances compared to your game, so you should actually have the advantage right now.

And of course it's good if you can resist in general, but you have to see that resisting the advice I gave to you over and over already again (I mentioned that you should whip more, harder and stop doing those fancy things and therefor focus on what's important) severely hurts your game.

It seems to me that you are playing way too few games and those games too slowly. I've made that mistake myself earlier, it's when one really wants that Deity win but is actually not ready yet.

A good way is to play more games to see in what situation one gets. In this game, your situation i. e. is that you have superflous population, you didn't focus on GP-generation, and because of that you're having difficulties in war and are behind in tech.

What is currently happening is, that you're (assumption) not seeing the important advice. Like STW tells you cities have to be size 6, I told you no city of mine (with 2 exceptions) were greater than 6, this is the important. Kossin tells you you can get 3 Maces / Muskets via Nationhood. That is the advice you have to listen too, otherwise you'll continue doing things which someone has written that are "optimal" or "efficient" or "best" , but simply don't use the momentum to win!

Seraiel said:

It seems to me that you are playing way too few games and those games too slowly. I've made that mistake myself earlier, it's when one really wants that Deity win but is actually not ready yet.

Click to expand...

Clearly. But what can I do?

The real problem is that I play Deity just for these very slow STH games (that I "abandon" from time to time), while learning lots of other stuff elsewhere and playing Imm- games that don't challenge me enough. I'm going to play more Deity now.

But I'm not worried about listening to advice: it's by listening to advice that got me to win consistently at Imm in the first place. It's also because I'm following advice that I make big mistakes such as focusing on whip-OF when the priority is to get troops ASAP Now I've learned something new and will make more balanced decisions next time. That's the learning process, I'm fine with it It's been barely a year since I started and I'm happy with my experience so far.

This is what's so good about the game: balancing all the math, rules, techniques and common sense!

Asking yourself questions, the right questions is the key.

Like i. e. when I decide about something in CIV, I ask myself "what does this do" , and then I find that i. e. the Goldmine gets me more Commerce, but the stupid Oasis gets me more Food, and the situation is that I'm already away in tech but desperately need production, so then the Oasis is better than the Goldmine.

I learned things like that from playing with Team Kakumeika, when we worked an unimproved Floodplain to grow to size 3 in half the time and then fast-produced a Settler. If it had only been me, I'd have worked the Goldmine continously thinking "Gold is always best" , but that's the mistake.

One learns either from comparing the same game, or from comparing different games. Like play 5 games with 2 cities and Chariot rush someone. Then play 5 games with 3 cities and you'll learn something. In this specific case, i. e. that 2 cities are best for Chariots, and that 3 are already too much. Horse-Archers want 3 cities though because the tech is a lot further away. Rex to 8 cities, you'll know that you've just wasted your rush-opportunities up until Cuirrassiers.

a.s.o.

What I'm trying to say, is, that experience is really valuable and that it's needed.

I'd like to advise you to keep all the saves of your CIV rounds on your harddrive, so that you can always go back and see what you did in that game. Such games can also be very good for testing something out quick, and they really help to learn to know where one stands with a game currently.

Knowing what one did or did not to get into a situation also really helps. Having insights that last for longer than 3 games tells one that those insights actually most likely really were true, so those are the ones to keep.

Seraiel is making some really great points above. Always reevaluate the game situation and never blindly follow strategy guidelines like building x cities before doing y rush. We still need benchmarks and one's own past games really serve that purpose, since one has easy access to every single turn. The HoF tables also provides a lot of information about all turns in its player an game logs; not as good as having a save for every turn in game, but it does allow some information about games that might be better than your own. Strategy and Tips games have the potential of providing better information, but that is dependent on how much time other players are willing to spend looking at others' game saves and/or offering advice (one might get more of the latter). I also agree with Seraiel that being a participant in a SGOTM, especially on a team with top three potential is absolutely the best possible way to improve. Try to use all available resources, especially the ones mentioned above, when trying to improve one's game.

Sun Tzu Wu

Duplicate post.