DDD IV: Joao

Hello All,

This is the fourth map in what (I hope) will be a series of high level games for those of us who, some seven years after Civ IV’s initial release, are still coming to terms with the dark arts required to emerge victorious on the game’s toughest difficulty settings.

In general, I will try to post a series of fairly short updates on a fairly frequent basis. But, since real life has a habit of intervening, I may have to take the occasional break.

Players of all levels and abilities are welcome to shadow, ask questions, challenge my logic, and prove me wrong. I am a so-so player at this level. Don’t be surprised if I lose here and in future games.

If you should wish to shadow, you are welcome to post your own game in this thread. However, I would ask that you use spoiler tags to hide any details that relate to your particular game. Questions of an exceedingly general nature (e.g. “When should I build the Oracle?&#8221 are fine.

In case you were wondering, DDD stands for "Doshin's Deity Den." I'm a simple guy, so alliteration appeals to me.

DDD IV

Deity; Continents; No Huts, No Events; Normal speed/opponents/settings. Medium sea level. Random leader.

Our leader is...



Joao!

Joao has the two traits best suited to early game REXing:

Expansive. +2 health per city. Double production speed of Granary and Harbor. 25% faster production of Workers.
Imperialistic. Great General emergence increased 100 percent. 50% faster production of Settlers.

The UU:



A Caravel, with room for one more passenger. It can also hold armed units.

The UB:



A Customs House that gives +1 to all water tiles. Not the best UB in the game. (Who builds Custom Houses anyway?) But the watery map type might redeem it here.

The start:



And if I move the Warrior 1NE:



I'll post the first round later tomorrow. I've no idea what to tech right now... Agriculture, I guess? I might wait a few turns before committing.

Finally, a good start...

Ewww. Hope there's some magic in the fog--that looks yucky. Curious to know what you'd do here since my immediate inclination is to tech BW and work toward getting an early Settler out with Joaodipus REX.

The Oz-Man said:

Ewww. Hope there's some magic in the fog--that looks yucky. Curious to know what you'd do here since my immediate inclination is to tech BW and work toward getting an early Settler out with Joaodipus REX.

Click to expand...

Good idea The Oz-Man. I'm also curious to see what Doshin thinks. Excited to see another game and hopefully learn some new techniques. Go Go Doshin

After SIPing, it could be worse:

The Oz-Man said:

Joaodipus REX.

Click to expand...

Like.

Well, shoot, that's not bad at all.

SiP, tech BW, and build a settler.

Just hurts that you cannot get a faster worker, omg so painful with exp every time

AH is not so crucial imo

Edit: Yep I would mine the sheep for 8H into Jaosaurus Rex settlers and workers.
Off to try

Well I am a noob but this map is a devil @_@

I kinda think that medium sea level will really really hurt you. will watch with interest ;-)

start is reasonable.. I agree ag->bw and maybe even early pottery with all that riverside grass

Very interesting map. I am kinda sorry I played it very sloppy. Thought it would be much easier with that silver.

SIP was right choice. "Don't move unless there's a firm reason to" is the logic I try to stick to and it works pretty well, you were bound to reveal something else which you might've lost by moving. You could even have a strategic resource on one of your grassland squares.

Mylene said:

Just hurts that you cannot get a faster worker, omg so painful with exp every time

Click to expand...

Yep. Such a huge difference. For anyone who hasn't thought about this before, an Expansive leader settling on an ordinary tile:



And settling on a Plains Hill (or some special tile):

Round 1

I played the opening fairly conservatively: Agri. ---> AH ---> TW ---> BW . Maybe I should have listened to you all and gone straight for BW, but I played too eagerly and too fast to heed your advice (like CivNoobie, I must feed the addiction ).

I agree with soundjata that AH is not crucial. But while teching Agriculture, my Warrior found a Grassland Cow in an obvious second city site. So that, coupled with the chance of revealing Horses, swung it for me.

When this game is over, I'm going to play around with the opening a few times to take a look at what would have worked best. Needless to say, my second city was founded in T40 whereas a quick replay shows that a straight double chop could have gotten this out ~10 turns earlier.

Anyway, enough about that. When I was building my first Worker and then growing to size 3, I met the neighbors:


Ragnar is very close, towards the North, and founded Hinduism. Asoka is further away in the West and founded Buddhism. I bet you can all guess how that's gonna work out

WelshGandalf was right about a strategic resource popping up in one of the capital's grassland squares:


Good stuff. All the same, barbs were a total non-issue on the map. I met one Archer in total. ONE. He immediately died trying to take out my Warrior who had fortified on a forest covered hill.

Cities #2 and #3 were founded towards Ragnar in the NE:



I switched into Hinduism as soon as it had auto-spread. With Ragnar so close, I didn't see the point in delaying. More cities were then settled towards the West:


The good news: I have 6 cities, and Ragnar is at Pleased. His favorite civic is Hereditary Rule, so we should be on Friendly terms soon enough.

The bad news: Cyrus declared war on Asoka, and eight turns later Ragnar joined in. Ragnar took a city on the first turn of war

The meh news: the other continent(s) lacked a religion until Confucianism was founded. Ragnar got to Monotheism first. It is also, I think, a little behind our own. No-one here has CoLs, but every wonder (excepting TGW) has been built on our landmass. It does, however, seem that they are at peace. No messages about Great Generals have been popping up.

Hinduism has spread to 18% of the world, and Confucianism is also at 18% . This suggests to me that there are three AIs sharing the other landmass. The T0 demographic screen also said that my top rival had 25,000 troops. I *think* this means that I won't be facing Hammurabi or, thankfully, Mansa Musa.

The tech situation:


I went to Alphabet before Aesthetics, since this isn't Pangaea and I noticed that, when I teched Writing, I was the first Civ to open borders with anyone else.

There are a few pressing issues:

(1) I can't let Ragnar take any more cities. He's much too dangerous. I need to bribe him off with Alpha and (probably) Aesthetics.
(2) I need to decide on my short-term tech path. Do I go for Music?
(3) I need to decide on a long-term plan. I would like to try for a Cuirassier rush, but it's unclear to me whether or not I have Iron (the fact that Ragnar has mysteriously mined a desert tile suggests that I lost at least one potential source).

I also have room for two more cities behind my capital. They won't be great, but can contribute trade routes and grow cottages.

Is it too late for a Horse Archer back-stab on Ragnar? Even if you bribe him off, there is a very good chance he will just take your techs, build up more troops for ten turns and get right back to beating up on Asoka. (They will not switch out of their religions and the war with Cyrus will keep Ragnar in the mood to dog-pile.)

Smilingrogue said:

Is it too late for a Horse Archer back-stab on Ragnar? Even if you bribe him off, there is a very good chance he will just take your techs, build up more troops for ten turns and get right back to beating up on Asoka. (They will not switch out of their religions and the war with Cyrus will keep Ragnar in the mood to dog-pile.)

Click to expand...

Confession time: I've never actually Horse Archer rushed on Deity

It might have been a very good idea here, and I'd be interested to see if anyone else went that route. I've not got the time for a write-up now, but I'm in a bit of a hole. Ragnar wouldn't make peace with Asoka... even for Alpha and Aesthetics. So now he has a vassal, twelve cities, two holy cities, and just switched into Free Religion

It's a difficult game (for me at least ), but interesting nonetheless.

Round 2

Heeeere comes Ragnar:


After taking Vijayanagara, Ragnar then decided to make peace. I'm not sure why, since he started plotting on the following turn. Cue panic on my end . But on the turn after that:


An offer:


How about in return...


I was sure that would be enough... A few turns later, Asoka capitulated.

Now I needed to reassess. There were a number of things to balance: Ragnar needed to be kept at Friendly; I needed to Lib a good military tech; build enough units to be upgraded; have enough money to upgrade said units; acquire a source of Iron; and stir up some bad blood between Cyrus and Ragnar.

In short, there was no way that I could win the game with just eight (mediocre) cities. Ragnar was my only land-target, and I couldn't take him out on my own.

To have any sort of fighting chance I was going to need Great People. So I broke a personal rule and built TGL without Marble:


Ragnar, delightful fellow that he is, decided to switch into Free Religion via the Shwedagon Pagoda. This dropped him down to Pleased, so I had to send some Spies to flip him back:


Around about this time Cyrus had switched into Buddhism. Thank you, friend With Ragnar brought back into the Hindu fold, the pair were no longer on Friendly terms, but simply Pleased. This could mean only one thing:


That'll do it.

In 980AD I Lib Military Tradition:


I'm not going to win any awards for that date. Still, now that I've upgraded five HAs to Cuirassiers the game is virtually in the bag... right? And I just whipped out another six Cuirassiers. Trading for Iron is only costing me 3 resources and 60 GPT. Also, Ragnar has Grenadiers. So like I said, it's definitely in the bag

More seriously: Ragnar's southern cities are fairly exposed. I can capture a source of Iron on the turn I declare, and, after that, I'll try and take out his core. As long as Cyrus ties his stack down, I have a fighting chance.

A Carrack has just been built, so with any luck the other Continent will have techs they're willing to trade. I'm lacking some pretty basic stuff, like Drama.

How about a chariot rush? Its ~1300BC and my Rags doesn't have metal. No AI has writing either!!

Grashopa said:

How about a chariot rush? Its ~1300BC and my Rags doesn't have metal. No AI has writing either!!

Click to expand...

Fun idea, but would that work against a high unit spammer? It might be possible with prior map knowledge, but by 1300BC Ragnar...