Dirk's deity game pt II

You can always use a dud email (ex. dodgeit) to set up a new account.

Ok, i need to move the pictures too. I don't have the jpg's on my hard disk anymore, can i mass move from one photobucket account to another?

Unless you have a Pro account, you have to download them manually.

There's also another option with Firefox and an add-on. You'll find it by googling "download photobucket album"

There's also an option in photobucket to download the album. I tried this option and a trick with "download them all" add on for firefox. Both option worked but it seems the quality of the pictures is diminished. This puts me in a dilemma, i can upload these pictures and have lesser quality or i can wait until 5 December when the current pictures will be reestablished. Of course uploading again and fixing pictures in this thread and also for instance in SG's and obsolete's Liz thread is a lot of work.

So i think i leave it as it is, definitely not happy with Photobucket, i'll find a better upload site for new pictures, read flickr has unlimited bandwidth. Suggestions are welcome.

Edit: i see pictures are back ftm, very puzzling as the Photobucket site says bandwith will be reset 5 December in my case. They're probably blocked only part of the day.

Apologies for the lack of pictures this month. Doubt it's me that should be apologizing though, i know not everything is free but if you're going to shutdown pictures like sh*tty bucket did here i think you should clearly emphasize this on your site instead of hiding it somewhere in your terms of service. It's not like i'm reporting about the US presidents elections, soccer world championships or something like that, this is just a report about a game that'd be obscure for most people. If that already exceeds bandwidth there's not much you can do with sh*tty bucket. No way that i'm going to upgrade to pro!

Well i switched to imageshack as this site at least has mass upload utilities. I had to do some research to work with this site conveniently as mass resizing in combination with tag code is a bit harder but if i understood them correctly they go a lot easier on the bandwidth.

Anyway let's continue,

Helped by Artichoker's and JammerUno's posts i did some thinking on the current situation. It seems to me that with philo already in , paper to be researched after cs i would ideally need 3 scientists to bulb edu/lib. A GA burning the one GS i'll get won't get me those 3 GS's before i have done significant research into Edu already.So i will have to do with 2 GS's.And if i don't burn the GS i'll get first i'll have a second GS in time easily if i switch paci and build ne in capital.

So there's only one reason to do this GA with the first GS we'll get now and that's to ease civic switches. I agree with Artichoker that those 2 turns of anarchy for doing 4 civic switches would be reason enough in itself to start a GA. As JammerUno states however apart from these civic switches it's not a very good moment for GA, would be much better if have grown cities.

Now if we let the capital do all the gpp work for now there's no need for caste and with slavery there's also no need for HR as markets forges give a +3 happy boost due to gems and silk which isn't connected yet. More than enough as there's still loads of things to whip. Now we only need 1 turn of anarchy and we can delay our first gp fuelled GA until after the Taj Mahal GA hopefully.

I decide to go with this plan,

125 AD
monasterie finished in Dur i want to whip the missionary here but since there's 13 hammers overflow i assign courthouse this turn meaning to switch to missionary next turn

175
Han and Liz make peace

225
But i made a mistake in timing forgetting about the missionary, i put it on now, whip it next turn


National in cap

[URL=http://img339.imageshack.us/i/civ4screenshot000174256.jpg/][IMG]http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/4554/civ4screenshot000174256.jpg[/URL]

Solution for borders in Osip, together with a chop we have library up in no time here.



Trade with Han + buro/paci switch





SB had researched into philo already so...



GS born



Paper researched



More trade



She wants it but i won't give it



400 AD now, UOS has been built on the other conti so we may not be save on lib. At least it's not another civ on our conti which would be worse. If the other conti doesn't get it i will i think as no one has paper yet while i'm already researching edu with 2 GS standing by in 4 turns.

A trireme is on it's way to the islands

Mari has been founded 1N of dye, forgot to take sc

Try to conquer the barbcity in such a way as to get xp to 10 on chariot. 2 archers left, i'll attack with 1 wounded sword again, if it loses i'll promote the other one and hope that one wins. Chariot has to take on the wounded archer after. If it wins i'll attack with it again next turn, it'll lose than i hope in which case i can try with the chariot again, no sure success here.

Not much more to say really, i should try my best to get lib asap from here keeping an eye open for opportunities to trade for compass. I need a couple of workers extra, some cities are working unimproved tiles which isn't good.

With a Pacifism + Slavery combo that you now have, the Market becomes an important building for some cities. It's a big hammer investment, but it can still be well worth it for the right cities.

If you had gone with Caste System instead, the 2 merchant slots unlocked by the Market would be redundant, but now they are quite valuable with Slavery. Especially once you reach the time when Great Merchants become preferable to Great Scientists...you will be glad that you built a Market in those cities.

With so many buildings to choose from, one task that remains is deciding which cities get a Market. The Wine city looks like a possible candidate to build a Market, for example. I see a good selection of commerce-rich tiles for that city.

I question about when you were building the NE. You had a 1F3H tile, but decided to work a lousy 3F1C tile instead to grow. Because you had marble, that tile you ignored was in reality a 1F6H tile!

TGL alone, is worth 8 sci-gpts. The sooner you get that NE built, the sooner you earn 16gpts, which is all a freebie.

obsolete said:

I question about when you were building the NE. You had a 1F3H tile, but decided to work a lousy 3F1C tile instead to grow. Because you had marble, that tile you ignored was in reality a 1F6H tile!

TGL alone, is worth 8 sci-gpts. The sooner you get that NE built, the sooner you earn 16gpts, which is all a freebie.

Click to expand...

8/turn is nice, but so is an extra happy citizen in a bureaucracy capital. And the citizen is cheaper.

Getting 2 GS is the important part, the first one can be delayed a bit.

^Exactly. I could have had NE earlier anyway but my first intention was to run specs in multiple cities. I changed direction in that respect.

@Artichoker, markets will indeed become important. The idea is to take nat from lib and take a shot at Taj. Since i have bad commerce going but food situation is very good i'll intend to run lots of specs. I don't think i have enough commerce to get a military advantage soon so i may go constitution after Nat. Have to see after nat though, researching towards astro and getting constitution in trade may be a good alternative.

SB and Han look rather weak i can surely take them on somewhat later this game.

Looks great, in 5 turns you'll probably be able top bulb most of lib, take nat and get out the taj. More workers are indeed needed; you also need to chain irrigation to the wheat near Nippur.

If there's an opportunity to take lib without a bulb, perhaps an academy in one of the southern commerce cities would give better returns. The upside is better long term prospects, the downside is you'll shorten your window of opportunity to take out SB with rifles/trebs (or cannon): that his score is already lower than yours is telling and there might be a chance to take advantage of that if he starts lagging behind further.

Yes i'm fairly happy, the cities are beginning to look better too. I need quite a few extra workers to optimize the land though. UOS has been built on the other conti so i can't fool around with lib i think. It's though to outresearch SB to rifles, it's probably not necessary too, i'm almost as big as Han and SB together so i can kill them later anyway. I don't think Liz and Han will be declaring on each other again but if they do i must bribe Liz to peace i think. Han was losing the war against Liz, i don't want him to vassalize to her.

^Lizzy's unitbuildprob is far lower than Han's, so the only trouble you face if he capitulates to her is keeping up in tech, which shouldn't be much trouble unless you get declared on.

Although it's hard to say what time will be best for a war, I can't see much troops being produced without either rushbuying, slavery, or drafting, or maybe a combination of the three, which would be fun to see.

I don't see the advantage of going constitution except for Rep, and I doubt Rep would outperform Astro economically. The land to the south is excellent for cottages, making mass specs less attractive there. I also fear it has low trading potential. Perhaps Astro-Scimeth-Communism would be a decent path.

Astro will give a good economic boost, scimeth can be bulbed by a GS, and communism will provide a free GSpy for a GA to help with the Kremlin, and you'll have more options for production. US/Bureau/SP or US/Nationhood/SP, either one would work, it'll just be a matter of seeing how dependant you are on your capital's commerce.

JammerUno said:

^Lizzy's unitbuildprob is far lower than Han's, so the only trouble you face if he capitulates to her is keeping up in tech, which shouldn't be much trouble unless you get declared on.

Although it's hard to say what time will be best for a war, I can't see much troops being produced without either rushbuying, slavery, or drafting, or maybe a combination of the three, which would be fun to see.

I don't see the advantage of going constitution except for Rep, and I doubt Rep would outperform Astro economically. The land to the south is excellent for cottages, making mass specs less attractive there. I also fear it has low trading potential. Perhaps Astro-Scimeth-Communism would be a decent path.

Astro will give a good economic boost, scimeth can be bulbed by a GS, and communism will provide a free GSpy for a GA to help with the Kremlin, and you'll have more options for production. US/Bureau/SP or US/Nationhood/SP, either one would work, it'll just be a matter of seeing how dependant you are on your capital's commerce.

Click to expand...

There's no need to compare the two...why not use both?

Astronomy is a natural because of the GS bulb, but the choices after that are numerous. As Dirk mentioned, one possible goal is to trade Astronomy for Constitution.

Scientific Method, however, obsoletes two valuable wonders at once, and provides no immediate benefit.

You might do better by going for Democracy.

@JammerUno, Indeed constitution is a poor choice for trading, ais will research it soon, especially these ais. Rep would help big time though, i have food in abundance in many cities and it's really late for pre emancipation cottages. Even rep specs only equal non pp non river villages commerce wise though so there value should indeed not be overestimated. Bio would be a big boost in this respect. There's one other thing to be said for constitution, it would allow early demo and a switch to demo going all cottages. With this land that would work i think but it's an extremely peaceful and somewhat boring way to go about the map. And it might backfire if i can't get pp in trade around that time.

Astro is probably better and probably has good trade value. It would be very strange if i couldn't trade for constitution soon. Scimeth isn't such a great idea for the same reason constitution isn't, it's even easier to get that one in trade compared to constitution. Liz will probably research it early. Optics is important anyway as apart from lib acquainting the unknown civs is the most important thing on the agenda.

I think it's too early to make assumptions now. Winning lib and then building the Taj should be first, techwise i have a lot of backfilling to do as trading for things like construction/mono/drama is not really a good idea i think.

As for production, i'll have tons of production in slavery, look at Obsoletes Deity Liz game i whipped one city to over 100 turns of unhappiness, several to +/- 70 turns. Situation is roughly the same here.

@Artichoker, Astro bulb is a very good idea here, i need to put gp on hold in that case and i'd need to have pp iirc. No problem to get those gp i think though one is needed for an academy in the future capital. I think after lib i should get optics asap in trade or self researched, it's really important on this map.

I'm not completely sure about the AI tech preference, but I think some will head toward communism quite early. I also considered the Scimeth drawbacks, but don't think they'll be that bad. The value of the parth has drastically decreased since paci/NE, to the point where it's giving total bonus of 16.67% only. The GL is still important, but that will decline as well when population grows.

As for using both cottages and specs, it's surely doable, although it never has my preference. Rep/CS is the choice for specs, eman the choice for cottages. Once cottages mature, you're looking at US as well. It's still a good option for the short- to midterm, since you can squeeze the last beakers out of Nippur/wine/marble before converting them to prod/draft. Constitution is easily obtained by trade.

The reason for bringing this up this early is the fact that you can bulb most of lib in the next 10-15 turns if a GS appears. Take nat, build taj, like we discussed. But the techchoice you make directly after taking lib deserves some thought as well. What will be the goal? Communism, AL, democracy, astro?

The future capital (the Dye city) looks like it has a few tiles that are in contention with Hannibal's lands. In order to get full potential from this city, the cultural borders need to be secured.

Once cathedrals come into play, it may become a race to see who can build cathedrals the fastest. Nationalism will unlock Hermitage, but the base culture in the Dye city is not that high (the Parthenon was built in the other city), and each city can have only 2 national wonders maximum.

Is war a better solution to secure the cultural borders of the Dye city, or should some investment be made to make sure that your own culture prevails?


edit:

Building the Taj Mahal in the Dye city might help to secure its culture. Doing this before building a Palace there will virtually guarantee having full cuture in the city. Before these 2 buildings are completed, the old capital can continue to gain Bureaucracy bonuses. The only drawback is that your bonus when building the Taj Mahal is 100% instead of 150%...although the remaining 50% bonus is still kept by the old capital.

Building Taj in Dye city would be good indeed. Unfortunately i think it's risky. I don't know what's going on on the other conti but there is a wonderspammer (i think it's Ramesses) who has paper (built UOS) already there. So i may need to hurry Taj in current capital helped by 2 chops there.

In my experience Han is one of the weakest civs culture wise and i have a headstart on him.I think i can hold him off with some more monasteries, hermitage and maybe a hindu cathedral. Dye city will also get an academy which helps a bit as well. In the end there'll probably be a war against Han as well of course.

@JammerUno, i discussed a few possible techpaths in my last post. I think researching/bulbing to astro asap, take it from there is best atm. But maybe i should research/trade for optics but wait for 2 scientists to bulb astro. In that case i would have to research something else (not gunpowder). So an attractive route is guilds/banking/economics waiting for 2 scientists to bulb astro. The problem with this is that i'd like to trade for machinery/optics if i give them edu i will probably be beaten to economics, nat is risky because i might lose the race to taj. Trading edu or nat for only machinery is extremely expensive too. So maybe i need to self research machinery? Guilds tends to have some trading value if you research it early enough. Can only trade it away safely of course if Han and Liz don't have edu already. Han is especially dangerous on this route because of the FM civic.

Hermitage is a good compromise as a solution to the culture problem, as long as you are willing to spend a national wonder slot on the Dye city. That would leave 1 slot for Oxford. You gain the Marble bonus as well, so its a cheap national wonder. I'm not sure whether you're planning for Ironworks this early, but having a rivered city for it always helps. With a levee, the Dye city could make a decent Ironworks city. Out of Oxford, Hermitage, and Ironworks, one of them cannot be built in the Dye city...so something must be sacrificed. But as I recall from looking at the map, you don't have many cities that are on a river.

Regarding the tech path, self-researching Machinery is not bad actually, because it extends the longevity of The Great Library and The Parthenon. As long as you don't have Scientific Method, these 2 wonders can continue to work for you. And when using GS bulbs to do a significant part of your teching, one key factor is opening up the bulb opportunities that you want.

When do you plan to switch out of Pacifism? If it is during the next GA, then you can use the Parthenon bonus to keep your secondary GP farms productive.

Dye city only really needs Oxford, Wallstreet would be nice but it's usually not that important for my strategy as it comes late. I use to build IW in a production city to get it really productive, gems city may be a candidate but it's well into the future atm. May go to war before and build it in a captured city, same for Wallstreet.

Apart from the next 2 GS's that'll be burnt on lib astro really stands out as bulb candidate. PP and scimeth suck as such as i'll get those in trade easily. Chemistry would often be a good candidate but here astro's far more important i think. But i need 2 other gp as well, a GS for academy in dye city and a random gp for a second GA. So 5 gp needed from here then we can sit back i think. Last one probably starts the second GA and i'll switch out of paci then.

Regarding scimeth, i usually don't delay this tech meaning i trade for it when i can get it, GL and Part have diminished in value by that time and scimeth opens up some very good techs. I do delay it if i have built a really religious empire with AP,UOS and maybe even SM. So no reason to delay scimeth here.On the other hand the 3 techs it opens up don't do as much as on other maps, i don't have stone for Kremlin, physics is a good one for war or a shot to radio need to see about that,Bio is always good but not superb here as a lot of my food comes from resources.

I begin with building/whipping some workers in food rich cities and the capital which can build them in 2 turns enter a quiet building period. I unlock he by winning a 77% fight against a wounded archer in barb city. I have to self research compass for the lib bulb unfortunately , not that it matters much, my own research is virtually non existent so shooting for some expensive tech is only on with bulbing.Get lib 680 AD, choose nat and begin Taj. I'm busy building unis in most cities to try for oxford soon.

740 AD
Liz techs economics

780 AD
AD i've researched optics, whip 2 caravels and go searching for others

920 AD
Taj finished, GA. 6 unis built but Oxford is 33 turns on 2 mines, 17 with production all out in GA. A much better idea is to build the palace first, get up some workshops i think.Maybe one of the unknown ais can trade me stone but i doubt it.

Research is in the neighbourhood of 300 bpt now not too good but if think i've been spoilt by playing Liz often lately with her 1/2 priced unis and the wealth of early gpp. Problem here is that i just don't have a good capital for research, I could have cottaged it earlier but it would have been hard working all the mines and growing at the same time. The new capital will be good but it still takes some time. So i could have waited with the unis but the only alternative was a direct gear up for war while i don't have any renaissance tech atm, in the meantime the unis do help a bit with research. I have farmed all my other cities which doesn't help too much either. Once it's war time i'll have great production through whipping though.

As for now, i'll revolt to HR now and i think i should revolt to caste system too. Not that much to whip atm and with HR the cities can grow. But what will i do at the end of of GA, back to slavery of stay in caste. And do i switch OR at the end to speed up Oxford build more. I think staying in caste and switching or makes sense as i will have a second GA soon. I can switch back to slavery then.

Current tech, Liz is beginning to run away and SB has trouble following proceedings he has astro though, all as expected.





Took some screenshots of proceedings.