Deity Cookbook restitution #1

Nice save Pollina, no granary yet in cap, but there is doublewhip of worker coming this turn to finish granary. Noone managed to settle 3 cities yet

Just as a laugh test....

Big picture


Highlights


map


Note: You still have a worker turn in that save, as his options are plenty.....

View attachment GamGuy BC-2000.CivBeyondSwordSave

gamboy

My turnset

enKage said:

Some comments on submitted games (use spoilers if you comment before deadline

Spoiler :

PattonTwo - I like yor savegame, as it ghas the 2nd city the same place as mine, so it has already secured the most land for France. I think this is the most important factor.
You have far less improved land than me, and no granary in capitol, but already has a 3rd settler online. I am not sure what I value more this moment. 2 axe - I think 1 would be enough, but the save looks very promising as your save has no barb city north, so open trades with Hammi too
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Basically I am really affraid of being blocked by Sury by on cows/stone. Even if settlers are ready, AIs are always 1 turn before as it comes from my experience xD

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I'll try to use spoilers but can't seem to figure out how.

I agree with the 2nd city location (obviously) to both grab the stone and some territory. I guess I'll take the settler right now over the granary but perhaps the reverse will prove better? With deity (which I've never won) I'm just trying to get those cities out ASAP and skipping everything else at first. When there's no decent location left or if there is a nice quick whip/chop combo for granary/settler I'll try to squeeze it in. Would like to have before trying for a war asap but we'll see. Many times I think the early granary isn't as critical on the high levels because I'll just go over the happy cap faster and the extra pop won't be as valuable.

Anyway for me goal to get that 3rd city settled then probably start on war units and figure out who I can try to attack.

I tried this a few times.

Attempts 1 and 2:Attempt 3:

Hello everyone and thanks to enKage for starting this thread.
[Disclaimer]I'm not a deity player but thought I'd give this a shot. I wanted to attempt this start 'fresh' so made myself not look at other players saves/summaries prior to playing mine.

Summary of situation at end of T50:


Screenies
Paris

Orleans

Culture View

Wendesday has finished, so it is the time for voting

I would never expect there would be so many submits!
You have 9 savegames to choose, I listed them here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13567649&postcount=2

I thought most saves would look the same, but suprisingly 50 turns are enough to make a big differense. Though techs are more or less the same, use of forest, tile improvements and city placement has no so much in common.

Now it is time for discussion and voting, advertise your save game - or other saves. Write which one is worth playing further.

As for voting:
1) Choose only 1 save game you like the most and reward it with 3 points
2) If you want, you can spend 3 more points on other save (but do not have to!). It can be 2 points for 2nd save and 1 for third, but also you can give 1 piont to 3 different games. Also if you want, a total of 3 points can be given to your runner-up.
3) We do NOT vote on own save games

4) If you have not submitted the game, you have only 1 vote, but this vote can change a lot, so use it wisely

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Some advice from experienced deity player about choosing the best game is very appreciated

My vote:

3 Points: Pollina
1 Points: Benginal, Pepnponcho00, Fippy

I had to look at the saves for far longer than I thought I would, and I'm still not seeing a clear first, second or third, but the rules require a 3-point vote so I'm going with Pollina's save, largely on a gut feeling.

At this point, I suppose, I should explain why I think that my save is the best, but I won't waste my breath.

@enKage: I trust next set will be 50 turns again? This one was barely long enough.

Zholef said:

My vote:

3 Points: Pollina
1 Points: Benginal, Pepnponcho00, Fippy

I had to look at the saves for far longer than I thought I would, and I'm still not seeing a clear first, second or third, but the rules require a 3-point vote so I'm going with Pollina's save, largely on a gut feeling.

At this point, I suppose, I should explain why I think that my save is the best, but I won't waste my breath.

@enKage: I trust next set will be 50 turns again? This one was barely long enough.

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Yep, till 350 BC = 50 turns

I will wait with my votes till tomorrow, maybe someone will make me change my current ranking.

It is a pity you wrote so little what are the strongest sides of your SG's and what chances it gives.

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Mine for example has all forest still in place and relatively a lot of improved tiles near BOTH cities, allowing settling 3rd with shared tiles too. RNG was so nice it gave me a barb city north blocking AIs. Unexpectedly there are some saves without granaray - I have it in my cap. It compensates the fact IMO I have 2 cities only and no 3rd settler ready yet.

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As for now I have 1 SG chosen for 3 or 2 points, still not decided. Will I change my mind? Dont know :]

I suppose we're all at a level were these differences are pretty much obvious to us and rather philosophical. Players good enough to have a shot at beating a deity game tend to have the basics down. I think it'll get more interesting after the next set. Although I have to admit, I'm much more interested in comparing my play with that of other players than trying to convince anyone of doing things my way.

Anyway, granaries, along with slavery and workers, are typically underestimated on the lower levels, then overestimated on the mid levels. Sixty hammers is no small change before 2000 BC. If anything, I'm surprised at how many granaries I've seen in the SGs, especially in rather food poor cities (dry corn plus gold = food poor).

Stonehenge. Stonehenge is a really attractive play with this leader and civ. But what do we delay for Mysticism? Pottery is a good tech to skip since we have enough gold and riverside that cottages aren't necessary to support the early six cities. And since the bulk of our mid-game beakers will likely come from Rep-fueled scientists getting down some early cottages isn't necessary. The other reasonable option to skip is AH since the cows aren't necessary, especially since we've got copper and the surrounding territory is easy to fogbust. I think these are the two reasonable options. Also sacrificed by building Stonehenge is a third city. It is technically possible but requires a lot of chopping and unimproved tiles and is almost definitely not worth it. The early Great Prophet is also super useful. Overall I think Stonehenge is a good play if accompanied by an early war.

Second City Location. Gold+clams to the east of Paris. It's got a gold and flood plains in its first ring and can work the already improved gold from Paris. The clams are useless for a long time. And it needs to be connected with roads for trade routes. Alternatively, having fishing enables trade along the coast, but that route is being blocked by a barb city.

Over by the Stone I quite like. There were a few different possibilities here. On the stone is one option. I think this was chosen in some cases because of the barb city location. 1W of the stone gets the rice, cows, and stone. 1NW of the stone makes less sense to me. It also needs to be connected by roads. I put my second city here because with a border pop it will block off the southern peninsula.

Up to the north on the grassland hill or directly on the silk. Very close to Paris and can work the cows right away. It doesn't block any land, but is easy to add to the trade routes. And conditional on getting the peninsulas blocked, it gives us an extra city.

Northeast near the dye and spices. I spent a long time trying to figure out where to put the city. In the end I decided getting bananas isn't that important and keeping them might be hard. I also considered settling coastal so that we could build a lighthouse and make the lake tiles decent early game. I didn't really want to settle on the forest since I like chopping them and settling on them is a shame.

Military Units. A level 4 axe unit is super nice. It fits well with an early Horse Archer war against Sury. I went early fogbusting and built a ton of warriors, none of whom have much XP.

Benginal said:

Stonehenge. Stonehenge is a really attractive play with this leader and civ. But what do we delay for Mysticism? Pottery is a good tech to skip since we have enough gold and riverside that cottages aren't necessary to support the early six cities. And since the bulk of our mid-game beakers will likely come from Rep-fueled scientists getting down some early cottages isn't necessary. The other reasonable option to skip is AH since the cows aren't necessary, especially since we've got copper and the surrounding territory is easy to fogbust. I think these are the two reasonable options. Also sacrificed by building Stonehenge is a third city. It is technically possible but requires a lot of chopping and unimproved tiles and is almost definitely not worth it. The early Great Prophet is also super useful. Overall I think Stonehenge is a good play if accompanied by an early war.

Click to expand...

An echo of recent discussion "is stonehenge ever worth to build?". I am a fan of Stonehenge when playing DeGaulle, but up to Emp level. I have never taken this risk on higher difficulties. To choose the savegame with stonehenge is to prove Stonehenge can be worth on deity.
We have only 1 savegame with SH, it costed quite some forest and AH. Lack of AH forced settling east instead of west and it brings fishing to be forced soon. I really consider this save game to give some points, but I am not sure if the 2nd city east will not cost us a game, just because it doesnt block Sury, probably the best expanding leader among all nonimperialistic.

As for skipping Pottery - I dont think it is a good move. If we dont get mids, we need cotttages already developed to at least hamlets.

Second City Location. Gold+clams to the east of Paris. It's got a gold and flood plains in its first ring and can work the already improved gold from Paris. The clams are useless for a long time. And it needs to be connected with roads for trade routes. Alternatively, having fishing enables trade along the coast, but that route is being blocked by a barb city.

Click to expand...

We had also an option inland, to grow more cottages for capitol. Coastal city can share only hills with Paris, so is useless as cottage grower. Claim still can be used by other city.
I also think this sity is not the top priority, blocking AIs seems more urgent.

Over by the Stone I quite like. There were a few different possibilities here. On the stone is one option. I think this was chosen in some cases because of the barb city location. 1W of the stone gets the rice, cows, and stone. 1NW of the stone makes less sense to me. It also needs to be connected by roads. I put my second city here because with a border pop it will block off the southern peninsula.

Click to expand...

The biggest advantage (and the only one, but really big) of the city directly on stone is not building desert quarry, what saves a lot of turns if we take a shot on Mids. It has floodplain as a source of food early.
I dont know why you dont like 1NW from stone. It has cows in first ring what is strong, but also allows riverside cottage for commerce and less roading to Sury, as we need only 1 tile road to connect to river. It loses rice, but allows another rice city south[/QUOTE]

Up to the north on the grassland hill or directly on the silk. Very close to Paris and can work the cows right away. It doesn't block any land, but is easy to add to the trade routes. And conditional on getting the peninsulas blocked, it gives us an extra city.

Northeast near the dye and spices. I spent a long time trying to figure out where to put the city. In the end I decided getting bananas isn't that important and keeping them might be hard. I also considered settling coastal so that we could build a lighthouse and make the lake tiles decent early game. I didn't really want to settle on the forest since I like chopping them and settling on them is a shame.

Military Units. A level 4 axe unit is super nice. It fits well with an early Horse Archer war against Sury. I went early fogbusting and built a ton of warriors, none of whom have much XP.[/QUOTE]

Okay, now I'm surprised how seriously my SH SG is being considered. Perhaps I should have followed that recent SH thread after all. But anyway, a few things in defense of the play:

1. Going worker-worker allowed me to build SH using four chops in five turns. So the most I stood to lose in case of somebody beating me to it were 40 base hammers, which would have turned into 60 gold.
2. I'm totally not married to building the 'mids as well. Paris works perfectly fine as a bureau capital and the two gold mines make up for the delay in cottage development.
3. Our neighbors aren't actually that close, which I already knew by the time I committed to SH. I also already had copper, saw the safe-to-grab second gold and had a bunch of forests left. Then keeping in mind that an AI that REXes is building less military, that meant I had all the prerequisites to performing an axe counter (as opposed to an axe rush) in the unlikely event that all of my (at that point still unknown number of) neighbors should decide to settle five steps from my capital.

As for settling 1NW of the stone, that move bothered me too in the SGs that did it, especially because of the location of Sury's third city. There's a decent river-side spot there that gets blocked for which the possibility of a rice-coast city doesn't make up.

Chosing a save was harder than I expected. Here is my vote:

Fippy (3 points): T61 Mids should be possible. I like the location of that barb city, which keeps Sury from expanding in our direction. No turn wasted for switch into Slavery (assuming Mids are ours). Some danger of getting boxed in, but 6+ cities should be possible.

Benginal (2): Mids around T61 or T62 possible. Cities #2 and #3 block off a nice chunk of land. I would have given this one 3 points, too, if Ben hadn’t commited the unforgivable crime of whipping away a gold mine (for 10 turns!).

Zholef (1): One point this save, because it’s different and opens up some alternate strategies that aren’t really viable with most of the other saves. Could try to grab a late Oracle or go for an early rush. Stonehenge is definitely a nice-to-have, though I would probably rate the Mids higher. Too bad the copper mine was pillaged. Cost us some valuable worker turns.

This has been fun so far. Thanks for setting it up, enKage!

Edit:
As for my save, it's probably not one I would pick if I planning for an early rush. Played it with more of a long term strategy in mind (Lib race or Engineering rush). I like that the Mids don't have to be built in Paris, which would delay a library and further expansion. Orleans could build them by T66 with 5 chops and a 2pop axe whip. Certainly not as safe as T61, but it would also ensure that Orleans doesn't get overwhelmed by Sury's culture.

I feel like time for voting should be a little longer, as only 2 votes are in. Let's make a new deadline - Tuesday Dec 2nd

Poll (3 points): I like the city locations and the general strategy is in line with what I was thinking.

Zholef (1 point): I like Stonehenge and wouldn't mind playing this one to see what happens.

Finally my votes

3 points for Pollina.
At the beginning I didnt like stone city location, but after some calculation (=9 turns to improve the desert stone! it is nearly 3 chopped forest) I found out it is the best option and opens Mids quickly.
2 points = Zholef
trying another approach, would like to check if deity stonehenge works
1 point - Fippy - cottage grower and Sury blocked by Barbs

I want to also add another rule for voting: minimum palyers that voted is half of number of savegames (rounding down), but never less then 3. In case not enough voting players: a) add half a week for voting b) continue with any savegame

Still we have 1 more day of extended voting stage