Deity Challenge - Pangea

Thx, i'll take it that once SB hits 100 culture he's also pouring 20 culture into this tile (gold in your empire) or do you have to own the tile to get the extra 20 culture? But i get the message, if you hit 100 culture 3 turns before SB you'll have a headstart of 60 culture on this tile meaning SB'd have to build quite alot of cultural buildings to catch up. Important indeed.

Nothing shocking is happening between 1 AD - 1000 AD:

100 AD medition is discovered, Lou vassalizes peacefully to SB.
150 AD Taoism bulbed in Nurembergb
200 AD CS in

Somewhere around this time Ham builds a great work in Bactrian raising the cultural pressure on my empire, i lose the marble and the ivory to Ham, i also lose the pigs but get them back some 300 years later to lose them again some 600 years later.I had never noticed this cultural percentages on the tiles , if i had i could have been more precise in building culture.

225 AD Go pacificm for extra GPP and Buro for extra commerce/hammers, no caste as i just don't have the food in capital and need slavery bad.
300 AD drama researched, Monty declares on Bismarck, there'll be lot of fighting involving Monty in the regio the next 700 years.
425 Paper in
560 Education researched, 1/2 bulbed
620 compass in
660 Lib bulbed to one turn, get machinery via trade subsequently.

Since Nationalism has been researched by Louis already there's no use to get this from lib, since no one has edu as of yet i'm going to try for the steel gambit.

700 AD gunpowder needs 4 turns

At this point i haven't build a single Rathouse, i should have but was distracted by the fact that i'm still at 100% science at this time.Not totally a mistake, since i lost the pigs to Ham building cultural buildings was even more important than the Rathouses imo.The other high maintanance city circassian didn't grow fast at first since a lot of jungle had to be cleared, also here i valued the multi functional library and granary more than rathouse. i get 32 gpt from resource deals with AI.

760 Gunpowder researched
820-840 construction/engineering feudalism and PP in, i don't remember if i traded for PP also, in hindsight i think i traded to much at this point again.

900 Chemistry researched
920 Lib researched, take steel
1000 researched banking.

Overview:

WFYABTA has hit with everyone except Ham and Lou.There's still lots of fighting going involving Monty.I have steel and a small lead in tech now but otherwise the situation looks a bit bleak, i've lost a good deal of my resources (also the pigs again) to the AI, if i had known about culture then what i know now i might have been able to prevent it, OTH i built alot of culture in these cities in favour of for instance Rathouses intuitively so maybe not. This all means that the cities i built farther away from the capital don't reach full potential and the cities near my capital are still developing. At least Saxon and Circassian have Rathouses now.Actually situation's not as bad as it seems,GT is ready for abuse, a lot of shops have been built already
so i can start building up my army around now while getting RP and Rifles, research is not that good but i'll need some 20-25 turns for building up anyway. Hannibal looks strong at the moment but stomping Ham should be possible adding his lands to mine should at least keep me in the game..

some screenshots:

Short update until 1520 AD. research Rfiles and take some time to draft some. Declare on Ham 1280 AD. Stack is not really big, 10 rifles some 15 cannons iirc but i'm producing more at a decent rate right now.



Moreover my power rating is equal to Ham's now so the time must be right. He doesn't have rifles and basically puts up no resistance, 1515 AD i take his last city. War's pretty standard and doesn't need much comment. He got to steel in the end but it was too late by then.

I probably have the best land in the game now but i'm significantly behind the others in tech and i'll have to research everything myself since WFYBTA has hit with everyone.

Overview of tech and relations:





I hoped to wrap up from this position but as it turns out this is only the beginning of the game....

Research after BW > Wheel > Writing > Aes got it in turn 76 > then backfilling
I guess that was a bit too early. Only Bismark and Louis had Alpha so far. I could trade it Alpha to other AIs as well. But that was not that usefull, since the only techs worth trading are Alpha, IW and Math. So I did those trades but then run out of good trades since the AIs were not ready to trade construction, calendar, MC, or currency that early.

-Built the GL in Aachen
-Got a GS and founded an Academy
-Got the library quest, nice since I have the GL also
-Conquered 3 barb cities (and unlocked the HE) but kept only one (at the river with the dyes). The others could have killed me due to maintenance...
Maybe that was a mistake, I am pretty much squeezed in. Han is a pretty good REXer..
I guess I have room for 3 more cities at the coast of my backlands
- Converted to Hinduism which is nice, since my direct neighbours han and ham also are hindu. If Monte dows me I could negotiate bribe them to close borders with him and he would not get through to me.
- Got about 200 gold from a gold mine event had also some nasty events 2x slave revolt in Aachen IIRC, thats pretty bad in the beginning of a game.

Plan
- not get dowed
- CoL then backfill land
- Lib

I looked at your 1 AD saves and your empires look good, big and the economy is in good shape too
So I have some questions

Both of you did not research archery. How do you make sure that your settlers arive save before you can hook up bronze? 2 warrior one settler or fogbusting?
The 7 turns for archery really hurt in the beginning, but so far I have no good strategy against archers expept own archers

I think we settled pretty similarly, but both of you managed to get one great spot more than I did I got in economic (maintenance) trouble with my few cities only, probably because I lost my first gold pretty early to Han, how did you manage to keep your research running. (Pillaged gold from barb cities was a main contributor to my economy )

Rusten, how did you defend the gold against Han? Or had it Han for a while and you got it back after your second border pop, due to the additional 20 culture rule?

My second city was 3 tiles from capital and i didn't need a border pop to connect the copper. Sure there were some archers but i had the south west side of the empire reasonably fogbusted and i didn't expect much danger from northwest where Han was.
This meant i would always have some 5 turns to react and also 2 warriors to stop an eventual intial assault. I could build warriors in ~ 2 turns in capital at that point. Once my second city was up i needed only ~ 8 turns to connect the copper so there wasn't much risk involved imo.

I would probably have gone archery btw if my worker 'd have something to do but here i felt it was imperative to go for bw after ah before anything else.

There were a few things that kept my economy afloat pre currency.

- 2* money from barb cities
- GL chopped around 300 BC
- after alpha converting production to science. I used this trick only after early rushes
in the past but i'm getting to like it more and more. It's really powerful if you want to
get to a key tech (currency in my case). Just make sure to revert to normal
production once you have your key tech, it's tempting to keep converting but in the
end it hurts obviously. After currency i had good economy also because i could trade
for calender etc.

I lost the gold later on--the cultural pressure from Hannibal's wonders was just too much, but at the time it didn't matter much, it had played its part in fueling further expansion (guessing it was ~300-400 AD).

Regarding archery--I don't think it's necessary on this map. For starters there's a lot of water around thus the capital fogbusts "everything" to the north, south and east after the first border pop. Secondly imperialistic+chopped forest meant that I got chariots out very quickly (~2200-2300 BC). After fogbusting to the direct west barbs could only spawn and be a threat from the southern tundra and north of the sugar choke point and chances were that they'd walk other paths due to lakes blocking. All I had to do was to station some warriors on forested hills and what little barbs arrived were handled easily.

I also produced research a couple of turns after alphabet in my size 2 gold cities to speed up currency.

thanks for the quick replies.
Did you also research Aest first and trade for Alpha ?
I also though about skipping archery but I saw so many barb archers wandering around and killing my scouting warrior that I did not dare

Science production is a fine move, always forget to do it. Producing something useless instead

Yeah. I had marble so teching aesthetics was the better move this game; I'd want it soon-ish either way for the GL/NE.

Researched aest and poly, could then trade for alpha after researching one turn into it.
From what i have seen sofar researching aest after the worker techs and writing seems to be fairly standard on deity even without marble, it's the only tech you can trade around with a fair degree of certainty.

So I gave it a second shot, using the same strat, (moving inland, settling 47 from the cows to keep the cost for later settling... ...but this time things went even worse... ...Hanni took the Gold/Horses spot from me, no chance getting a settler there first... ...the spot was settled even before I started building my first settler, around 2800 BC

Without another chance left, I then went into bersek-mode and did nothing but axe-spamming (and 2 spears off course), without even founding a second city, because there was bronze near the spot I settled the first city. It would become a pretty uphill fight, because Hanni apparently had already reseached IronW and had Iron (+the horses he stole from me), because he was already running around with swords + axes + charriots

Before I declared (I had seen Hanni passing with 7 units towards the jungle up north, so I deemed the timing good):
View attachment 183594

And it was... ...just when hanni moved his army back, I had my first GG ready and, instead of making him a healer, I created a ramboaxe to help defeating the hoast of hanni´s army... ...which worked

And after having lost his army and his capital (instead of defending his capital hanni tried to take back the horse/gold city... ...big mistake), hanni was prepared to accept a cease arms treaty without any conditions:
View attachment 183595

View attachment 183596

Muahaha... ...take this hanni... ...that´s the price for backstabbing... ...muahaha

Hanni decided to send some workers and scouts towards our new border... ...ZONK... ...mistake
View attachment 183600

Declare again, move towards the souther city (imagine picture with army marching towards the direction, Hannis archer is standing)

imagine picture here

Then I decide to secure the stones and get a hanni out of the south:

View attachment 183601

Which partly worked, because hanni has another city down there... ...which I decide to ignore because it´s supercrap... ...let hanni stick with this city, he founded it after all

And finally, peace again, this time for longer (hopefully)

View attachment 183602

One turn to go on Aest, 2 AI´s are already having Alpha. I was running a highly deficit research so far, fuelled by bounty, but when I tune done the research a little (like... ...to 0%), then I´m in the green again gaining 2 gold/turn

Marble will be inside my culture within 17 turns, so I might have still a decent chance on the GLib... ...when I find a way to bring up economy fast enough, to be able to reseach Lit, that is...

That´s what our land looks like now:
View attachment 183603

You're in good position,i thought i'd had to axe Han around turn 30 too because i hadn't scouted the passage to the north at that moment. Reversed this decision around turn 40. Seems that rushing would have been an ok move at least.

Turn 1: Settle in place. Research AH.
Turn 6: Discover Mining from hut.
Turn 13: Discover AH, research BW.
Turn 28: Discover BW, research wheel
Turn 31: Herbalist Random Event, I choose to forget the tests.
Turn 35: Second City Founded.
Turn 37: Discover Wheel, research writing.
Turn 49: Discover writing, research Aesthetics.
Turn 71: Discover Aesthetics, research Drama
Turn 77: Convert to Hinduism
Turn 79: About half way to drama, switching to Alpha for a few turns.
Turn 82: GS spawn. Saving for Philosophy.
Turn 83: Aesthetics for Alpha, Aesthetics for IW/Masonry, Aesthetics for Poly/Fishing/Agriculture. Research Literature.