Dr kossin #33

Welcome to Dr kossin #33.

Dr is an acronym for Daily Round. Yes, I mean to get in an update every day to the games I will be playing. Of course there might be some days where I can only play a little or not at all, but I will make up for it those other days when I do have extra time on my hands.

Since the 21st edition of this series, the difficulty level has been cranked all the way up to Deity. I'm not at the point where I can win every game thrown at me on Deity level... I probably can't even win every game thrown at me on Immortal but it is getting a bit boring. My goal is now to achieve competitive skills on this level which should hopefully help me improve more.

You, the reader, can help me achieve this goal by pointing out where I got astray, give suggestions on how to proceed, use complex abstract mathematical analysis to argue, curse at me or anything that you may like. Please note that you must respect the Terms of Service of CFC in any case

You may shadow this game and post it here if you please, but I kindly request that you put it in spoiler tags and that anyone reading the report abstain from using information found there to help me out.

Should you want more clarification about something I've done, just ask for it and I will try to answer as best as I can.

Enough talk, on to the game.

Dr kossin #33​

Round 1 Pretty straightforward
Round 2 REX and Liberalism
Round 3 Further expansion
Round 4 Here comes the Cavalry
Bonus Round!

Game settings
Deity
Normal Speed
Fractal
No Events
No Huts
BTS 3.19 with BUG 4.3 in CustomAssets and BULL 1.1 mods - >>>Get Them Here<<<
Everything else is normal.

The leader, this time, is:


Please refer to the Mongolia Civ IV wiki for more information on this leader/nation.

The start:


I was planning to use one of the maps provided by Moroktonos but I got Daggered and dogpiled early in both of them.

Instead of just quitting though I went ahead and generated a new map to play this leader out. Hopefully I don't get killed by barbarians or Daggered again because then I'll move on to the next leader.

Anyway, there is at least 1 flood plain to the south but I'm not too convinced that moving to grab it is going to be worth it. I'll send the scout to investigate the area first and then it can be decided what to do.

As for tech path, we start with TW (good) and Hunting (perhaps a quick stop to Archery and use HBR as trading chip instead of Aesthetics?) we'll need Agriculture and Animal Husbandry to get started and then either a source of commerce/science or Mining>BW.

Lots of forests to chop things out and with Imperialistic, this makes cheap settlers so granted enough land I should be able to secure a nice enough piece of land.

Your starting techs don't match very well with the start here. Agriculture--AH seems reasonable but after that, your worker's probably just going to be building roads for a while because of all those forests.

shyuhe said:

Your starting techs don't match very well with the start here. Agriculture--AH seems reasonable but after that, your worker's probably just going to be building roads for a while because of all those forests.

Click to expand...

The Wheel is almost always a useful starting tech, in my experience. Even though you're slow in getting Bronze Working, the focus should be on using the Worker to get a head start toward developing the tiles in the 2nd city.

Looks like you have an "all-forest" start. This means that any non-forest tiles are resources, and there ought to be four resources. It is hard for me to see for sure, but it appears that only one of the out-of-sight tiles in the starting BFC is unforested. (The one 2E1S.) Since it appears to be a plains, there is a good chance it is marble. (It is marble if plains and if the startsite routine put it there.) That would be nice. The fourth resource would be uranium, which can be under trees.

It appears the site has been created from a rather nasty plain, perhaps with nicer grasslands to the north. So moving south would tend to make your site into a production site, rather than commerce. Unless there is more floodplain than just one...

Personally I would SIP hoping that the hidden resource is either marble or horses. But scouting S would definitely help to clarify things.

Sorry about the tough break. I certainly can see how you got daggered on one of the maps (Shaka / Napoleon -- shudder. I probably should have realized, but, knowing your skills, I thought your land might just be nice enough to see you through) but I'm a little surprised about the other one (Willem can sometimes be a bit aggressive, but usually not. I assume off-shore Hannibal jumped in too.). I guess I just don't have enough experience judging early potential AI DOWs on Deity.

Oh well. Thanks for trying them out! I followed your FDR win and was (as always) very impressed, particularly with your masterful diplomatic skills evidenced by your ability to engineer all of those wars (seriously, you could give Bismark lessons)! Good luck with this attempt, and I'll be following along!

Wreck said:

Looks like you have an "all-forest" start. This means that any non-forest tiles are resources, and there ought to be four resources. It is hard for me to see for sure, but it appears that only one of the out-of-sight tiles in the starting BFC is unforested. (The one 2E1S.) Since it appears to be a plains, there is a good chance it is marble. (It is marble if plains and if the startsite routine put it there.) That would be nice. The fourth resource would be uranium, which can be under trees.

Click to expand...

Seems to me 2E1N is a unforested grass hill, so that would most likely be, what copper/iron/coal/uranium? Not really sure about how the script works on grass hills...

Also if that plains 2E1S isn't marble (so its a hidden resource) then it could be either iron or horse?

In any case only more reasons to SIP in my opinion.

shyuhe said:

Your starting techs don't match very well with the start here. Agriculture--AH seems reasonable but after that, your worker's probably just going to be building roads for a while because of all those forests.

Click to expand...

The starting techs suggest only 1 worker before the settler. Additional workers are likely not going to be required before BW but I could be wrong.

Artichoker said:

The Wheel is almost always a useful starting tech, in my experience. Even though you're slow in getting Bronze Working, the focus should be on using the Worker to get a head start toward developing the tiles in the 2nd city.

Click to expand...

Agree completely.

Wreck said:

Looks like you have an "all-forest" start. This means that any non-forest tiles are resources, and there ought to be four resources. It is hard for me to see for sure, but it appears that only one of the out-of-sight tiles in the starting BFC is unforested. (The one 2E1S.) Since it appears to be a plains, there is a good chance it is marble. (It is marble if plains and if the startsite routine put it there.) That would be nice. The fourth resource would be uranium, which can be under trees.

It appears the site has been created from a rather nasty plain, perhaps with nicer grasslands to the north. So moving south would tend to make your site into a production site, rather than commerce. Unless there is more floodplain than just one...

Personally I would SIP hoping that the hidden resource is either marble or horses. But scouting S would definitely help to clarify things.

Click to expand...

That's a pretty nice analysis!
Thanks for the heads up, saves me some trouble when I'll start the round.

Moroktonos said:

Sorry about the tough break. I certainly can see how you got daggered on one of the maps (Shaka / Napoleon -- shudder. I probably should have realized, but, knowing your skills, I thought your land might just be nice enough to see you through) but I'm a little surprised about the other one (Willem can sometimes be a bit aggressive, but usually not. I assume off-shore Hannibal jumped in too.). I guess I just don't have enough experience judging early potential AI DOWs on Deity.

Oh well. Thanks for trying them out! I followed your FDR win and was (as always) very impressed, particularly with your masterful diplomatic skills evidenced by your ability to engineer all of those wars (seriously, you could give Bismark lessons)! Good luck with this attempt, and I'll be following along!

Click to expand...

Dagger strategy can happen really anytime. For example, DR31 with Hammurabi Grashopa got Daggered by Hatty with War Chariots. It's pretty hard to handle as most of the time you don't even see it coming, and you sure as hell aren't expecting it.

Round 1

This was a short round, I played through the barb wave.

First off, I sent the scout south and it got my mouth watery.


So I settle in place...


The scout (whom from now on I'll refer to as 'Scotty') looked around the double-gold site to find more food but discovered the western part looked like a compact peninsula, so I sent him east instead. Karakorum's border pop further proved this as I could decipher some coast to the north.

Coming from the north east was the first neighbor, on t11.


Scotty met a zealot to the southeast a while later...


And also Bismarck.


Upon completing Animal Husbandry it was revealed that the double-gold spot had horses, so I started on a settler after growing to size 3 (worker>warrior>warrior>settler).
After improving the cows, my worker didn't have much to do so I had him put roads towards the second city site and I roaded the horses and gold tiles.


Scotty finished his scouting circle and was then posted Southeast of Karakorum in hopes of reducing barbarian spawns. Whenever a barbarian would move within range, I'd move him 1 tile and skip his turn. He's still alive by round's end which earned him his name.

I sent a warrior to the northeast a bit. There was a barbarian city north, so barbarians could only spawn from west and beyond Scotty's range... good thing too.


Since Chariots cost 30, I didn't have time to wait for one to be produced and instead micro'd Karakorum to get another warrior out in time for the onslaught.


That certainly was a wise decision!


I stopped once the immediate menace seems over. I'll have a chariot out in 3 turns from Beshbalik so I don't expect much more trouble.

Scotty will be able to resume his scouting 1 tile at a time and I will push out settlers to claim all the nice land.
NON-RESIZED overview


While I still need to find the AIs, I'd be quite satisfied by claiming the land I see. No doubt there are some good sites in the fog as well but I think my chances of claiming those won't be so good.

Techs so far


Finally, diplo standing.

Wow I'm amazed how you find the time to churn through all these!

That is some nice land you have over there. I can see several very strong cities. And I am expecting iron to show up in the BFC. To bad there is not an AI close. I guess you wouldn't mind a keshik conquered capital The barb city in the NE corner is a nice substitute for that though

Keep it coming. Great work. Love the series.

Sweet looking Niles all over the place. Hope you can secure some of that.

That's some nice land! And lots of happy resources. Looks like easy diplo too once you get Isabella's religion.

Looking forward to updates

@ Kossin looking forward to this one. Decided to give it a go as I have finished the Just game. I'm up to 1200ish AD.

Did settle my second city where you did. Not a bad site is it. Certainly helped the early tech rate.

-1200AD

I don't play deity. I'm just finished my first Warlord and am working on another, but these are always interesting to watch and learn.

So generally, the first tech you research should depend on your start? I see you started with Ag to get the corn and then AH for the cows, those horses were a nice bonus too, being right next to those 2 Golds. I probably would have done the same thing if I were you, settling in place, although I might have gone with AH first, and then done Ag, or I might have gone opposite. Definitely BW was a must with all those forests. Are you thinking of going for Stonehenge? Or not? Anyway, best of luck!

DrumStudent said:

I don't play deity. I'm just finished my first Warlord and am working on another, but these are always interesting to watch and learn.

So generally, the first tech you research should depend on your start? I see you started with Ag to get the corn and then AH for the cows, those horses were a nice bonus too, being right next to those 2 Golds. I probably would have done the same thing if I were you, settling in place, although I might have gone with AH first, and then done Ag, or I might have gone opposite. Definitely BW was a must with all those forests. Are you thinking of going for Stonehenge? Or not? Anyway, best of luck!

Click to expand...

If you look at the tech tree, you'll notice white arrows going from technologies to technologies. They show pre-requisites but also a less-known fact: for each tech you know with a white arrow leading to the tech you're learning, you get 20% more research towards that tech.

Given that this is a commerce poor start until the gold is online, going Agriculture first grants an additional 20% research towards Animal Husbandry. Overall this saved about 1 or 2 turns of research compared to AH>Ag.

Stonehenge went already I think, turn 27 or something like that.

DrumStudent said:

I don't play deity. I'm just finished my first Warlord and am working on another, but these are always interesting to watch and learn.

So generally, the first tech you research should depend on your start? I see you started with Ag to get the corn and then AH for the cows, those horses were a nice bonus too, being right next to those 2 Golds. I probably would have done the same thing if I were you, settling in place, although I might have gone with AH first, and then done Ag, or I might have gone opposite. Definitely BW was a must with all those forests. Are you thinking of going for Stonehenge? Or not? Anyway, best of luck!

Click to expand...

I can field this.

Yes the research here was dependent on the immediate resources.

AH was researched after agriculture because agriculture is a cheaper tech and provides a research bonus to AH if it is researched first.

My guess is Kossin delayed BW in order to improve local resources better. Idle worker turns are the last thing you want at the beginning of a game.


On Deity Stonehenge is usually a laugh. Myself have NEVER EVEN ONCE tried for it on Deity. Course I think it is a silly thing to work on anyways.

edit Beaten to my punch.

Thanks.

I am incredibly confused by all avatar changes. Thankfully, mine ain't gonna change for a looong time.

As for the game- I have turned off barbs in my game (to me they are an unfun annoyance, and I get plenty of war from the AIs) , and I occasionally try deity. Seems I have been playing 1/2 deity.

CHEESE! said:

I am incredibly confused by all avatar changes. Thankfully, mine ain't gonna change for a looong time.

As for the game- I have turned off barbs in my game (to me they are an unfun annoyance, and I get plenty of war from the AIs) , and I occasionally try deity. Seems I have been playing 1/2 deity.

Click to expand...

Avatar: it seemed fitting now that SGOTM 11 is only a week away! Also the last time I played Hatty is Daily Round 1 :S

~~~

EDIT: I'm pretty burned down tonight from yard work, spamming Emperor games and just now a SG game (that was supposed to be more casual... grumble....) so round 2 is pushed back to tomorrow.

Retired 1868AD so didn't really lose.