DMOC's DEITY Game #3 - Willem van Oranje

Nukes can always whittle deity stacks. It might make the cities less worth conquering though.

Round 5: 215 BC to 430 AD [44 Turns] - Catapulting Ahead in Science

I was feeling pretty good after the dual wonder construction last round. I had the Great Library, which provides me with extra research and Great Science points, AND I got the Parthenon which makes the Great Scientist generation even faster. In fact, Boudica actually had 590 gold after I finished the Parthenon. Looks like someone could not take advantage of her deity bonuses.

Moreover, I got the Parthenon in a different city than the Great Library city, which means the Parthenon's Great Artist points won't affect the capital! That is a tip I give to you: try to keep Great People points the same if possible. Of course, sometime's that hard to do, especially when you build the National Epic, almost a necessity because of it's increased Great People generation.

While research was strong, diplomacy was becoming more of a headache. I really wish these leaders would stop asking me to do these things for them. If I were Spiritual, perhaps I would acquiesce to Bismarck's demands (which is one of the reasons why Spiritual is so helpful) and then switch back to no state religion after 5 turns, but I can't afford 2 turns of anarchy here.



Since Bismarck had another -1 in diplomacy ... I negotiated a resource deal with him. This is for several reasons:

• After 50 turns (I think) you get a +2 in diplomacy, or at least a +1.
• I don't need ivory. (No unhappy problems now, and I am certainly not going to war against these AI's that have 4 times my power now.)
• I get gold-per-turn, necessary to help my research.

Last thing - you can see me researching Music in that screenshot, to try and get the free Great Artist. However, I decided not to do that for several reasons.

• At least 3 other AI's could research Music at that point.
• My cities have low population, lessening the usefulness of a Golden Age this early from the Artist.
• I needed to focus on other techs. I didn't even have Currency at this point!

So I switched to research Currency, one of my favorite technologies in the game.



Oh come on Bismarck! Why is he being such an idiot? Is that city really going to be useful to him?!? On top of that, this city will cause even MORE "close borders" demerits with him. UGGGGHHH ...



Peter asked for Code of Laws. I decided to give it to him, to gain more diplomacy points.



And at long last, the Currency technology was in our possession. I had to fork over 5 gold but I have plenty in the treasury.



And about the race to Music, Pericles was the first. This is actually a good thing, as Pericles is the second-to-last leader in terms of significance to this game. (Sitting Bull is last). I always like it when the weaker civilizations win the "freebie" races rather than the larger ones (Boudica, Peter, Tokugawa). By the way, Pericles lost a few more cities to Tokugawa.



Here I am selling Aesthetics to Tokugawa for 240 gold. The reason why I like to sell technologies for gold is that I typically have lots of science multipliers (libraries and academies) and no wealth multipliers (markets are too expensive this early). That means it is more efficient for me to keep research at 100% if I want to maximize my civilization's commerce. Academies don't do anything to your wealth if you are at 0% research, but they do boost research greatly if you are at 100% research. If you notice the gold I have in my treasury, it will typically be at least 200+ gold. Later on in this game (say, the late AD's) I actually have stayed at 100% for perhaps 20-30 turns in a row since I am always looking for ways to improve my gold supply.



All right, Otto von Bismarck will pay for that stupid desert city he has. I hereby found Anti-Otto City! And I will soon be able to use a creative-enhanced theatre (creative cuts down the costs of a theatre) to help my culture there.



So this is the final leader - Hannibal! I can't say I'm happy, since he's a good AI who has all techs I do, including the yet-to-be-researched Drama.



All right, it's the 5 BC milestone, so I suppose I can provide you with some demographic info, etc. This will be continued in the next post due to the image limit.

[To be continued in next post.]

215 BC to 430 AD [44 Turns] (Part II) - Catapulting Ahead in Science

Again, here is the civilization information.

A keen observer will notice the ~230 beakers per turn at max research sped, and will notice the tile yields, to see what improvements I've built. I think this is a very good research speed for me now, but the problem is that this is the kind of map where AI's get so many island cities which generates a ton of commerce for them.



A closer look at the empire.



I still can't believe I'm second to last in score. At least Pericles has only 8 cities, while Tokugawa has 15. Any guesses on what happened? Pericles used to be second in score to Boudica early on with many more cities ... but of course, score doesn't mean everything since it doesn't take into account military.

I finally get my second Great Scientist (I think)! I really hope the National Epic will help speed things along in the future.

Anyway, I did a little bit of an unusual thing with the second Great Scientist. Normally, my strategy is to have the first Great Scientist build an academy in the capital, while the second bulbs Philosophy, and the third bulbs Education, to help in Liberalism. However, in this game, the Philosophy bulb would be almost useless.

• Someone already founded it - Saladin I think - and spread the technology around.
• I would have few trading opportunities if I had Philosophy.
• I still had only Slavery as my civic.
• I already have a very high research rate (over 200 beakers at maximum rate).

Therefore, I launched a golden age. This allowed me to do some anarchy-free civic changes to Hereditary Rule, Bureaucracy (Peter's favorite civic!) and Caste System. I made sure to finish up my last few whips before converting to Caste System.

A good thing about the Golden Age is that my GNP skyrocketed to rank #2 in this game. It would also hold the top rank for a few turns.



Peter asks another demand. I obey, as Pericles is a goner anyway. Does anyone know why sometimes the AI has a "+1 you have agreed to stop trading with our worst enemy" but not all the time?



Speaking of military, thanks to my 10xp unit before, I am building the Heroic Epic here. With the help of marble, I am building it fast. This is going to be a pretty poor Heroic Epic city later, but I'm thinking short-term now. Also, is there really any better spot?



Research went: Paper -> Philosophy -> Education (part bulb).

Thanks to my multipliers (Golden Age, National Epic, Parthenon) I was able to get a fast Great Scientist. This is why I needed the Caste System civic! This Great Scientist would be my fourth IIRC. My third Great Scientist built an academy in Floodplain City. Yes, I know my city is starving.



Here is a screenshot of my third Great Scientist. He was created a few turns ago, but I held him in my capital since I was trying to pull off one of my elaborate bulbing plans to get Steel from Liberalism. (See Churchill ALC for what I did.) However, I changed my plan as a result of what was going on in this game. You see, no one had Nationalism yet, and due to the marble, I wanted to get the Taj Mahal wonder, which meant Nationalism was to be my free technology. So I had an academy in my second-best science city. Even with the wasted turns, I am still doing well, though.



Oh wow. CONGRATULATIONS!

It's only been a FEW HUNDRED YEARS and Saladin FINALLY sent a force to attack Tokugawa. Wow, I'm sure Saladin will be able to take a few cities with that stack!

Ironically enough, he made peace with Tokugawa two turns later!



All right Tokugawa, I officially want you to eliminate this annoying #$%&.



Once I finished Education ... I looked at the tech screen. No one else has it! So I researched Liberalism ... hoping no one would beat me.



Due to a series of trades, I was able to get the full world map. Here it is:



By the way, notice how both Boudica and Pericles have GOOFED UP their hall-of-fame caliber starts! Pericles, with his capital (see below) is getting killed by Tokugawa (they've been at war since well in the BC's). Boudica with all those floodplains and TWO GOLD in her capital has switched in and out of WHEOOHRN more times than I care to remember, and isn't using her big army to her advantage to attack the much weaker Sitting Bull (she's annoyed to him)! I guarantee you, had the Zara Yaqob AI started where Boudica did, I'd be resigning right now.



Ahh ... Liberalism. 430 AD! A very nice date. And almost 400 beakers! A keen observer will notice the tile yields to see what improvements I have done.





No saves, sorry. I'm on a different computer (my new mac). And I want to save more space for my eventual Civilization V games.

All right ... there are some images not showing up. I'll have to check their links again.

EDIT: Figured it out ... I had an extra 0 at their #.

You've just gotten around now to mining the riverside grass hill in floodplains city. Just forgot about it before?

Any chance you could post a power graph after the updates?

Awesome write-up so far! I especially like the details on your decision-making in the mid and late game.

UWHabs said:

You've just gotten around now to mining the riverside grass hill in floodplains city. Just forgot about it before?

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No, that was intentional. Center City was one of the last cities to be founded, so my workers were busy roading from Desert City to Floodplain City, and since the hills that are not riverside are between those two cities, they got improved first. It was more of a matter of me choosing which worker actions were more important to me.

The funny thing about that riverside grassland hill is that it would pop copper later. (I would also pop TWO sources of silver later.)

goodolarchie said:

Any chance you could post a power graph after the updates?

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The power graph you can see in the BUG mod where there is the power of the other civilizations in relation to me. There's not much point to a power graph when everyone knows that I will be dead last. Also, Peter and Boudica put about fifty espionage points on me every turn since about 1AD so there's no way I'm getting visibility on their charts at all.

Coffee Mug said:

Awesome write-up so far! I especially like the details on your decision-making in the mid and late game.

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Thanks. Hopefully it will stay informative later on.

I've played to around 1600 AD right now. Boudica's going on 40 cities, although I have almost culturally flipped one of her's. Just a matter of time now ....

DMOC said:

I've played to around 1600 AD right now. Boudica's going on 40 cities, although I have almost culturally flipped one of her's. Just a matter of time now ....

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you're not going for a culture victory are you?

excellent writeup, very detailed and relevant.

shyuhe said:

you're not going for a culture victory are you?

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Remember that Anti-Otto City? It's about to take that Celtic city up north of it.

This game continues to impress DMOC, the stuff about keeping the slider at 100% for as long as possible is a really good tip and makes a big difference I find.

Just a question about your capital. It seems like in this game as in many of my games, when lit came in the only really viable place to put the great lib was your capital, which is probably what I would have done (if i were a good enough player to get into that position that is ). However, this essentially forces you to use your cap as a GP farm instead of a cottage city and you put the NE there accordingly. While this makes it great for GP's i find that this significantly decreases the power of bureaucracy as specialists dont get the bureau bonus. It seems that you've kind of gone for a bit of a hybrid by working some floodplain cottages as well in your cap under bureau.

Did you ever consider moving the cap to the floodplain city? Then you could have potentially farmed the floodplains in the old cap to run more scientists and worked more cottages for the bureau bonus in your new cap. I find myself often sweating over this decision myself (obviously it varies for every map) but what is your take on this dilemma, i'm sure you thought about it.

Thanks again, can't wait to see the end of this game!

Well guys you're in luck. I had a little surgical treatment today which basically limits my activities to reading, writing, and playing CIV as most of my friends have already left for college.

So expect yet another round. I'm still waiting for the haters to come to tell me to update faster.

bobbyboy29 said:

This game continues to impress DMOC, the stuff about keeping the slider at 100% for as long as possible is a really good tip and makes a big difference I find.

Just a question about your capital. It seems like in this game as in many of my games, when lit came in the only really viable place to put the great lib was your capital, which is probably what I would have done (if i were a good enough player to get into that position that is ). However, this essentially forces you to use your cap as a GP farm instead of a cottage city and you put the NE there accordingly. While this makes it great for GP's i find that this significantly decreases the power of bureaucracy as specialists dont get the bureau bonus. It seems that you've kind of gone for a bit of a hybrid by working some floodplain cottages as well in your cap under bureau.

Did you ever consider moving the cap to the floodplain city? Then you could have potentially farmed the floodplains in the old cap to run more scientists and worked more cottages for the bureau bonus in your new cap. I find myself often sweating over this decision myself (obviously it varies for every map) but what is your take on this dilemma, i'm sure you thought about it.

Thanks again, can't wait to see the end of this game!

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Perhaps I could have moved it to Floodplain city. However, that would have meant additional hammers and I just did not feel like doing so. I can see the merits in that, though.

Moreover, my capital was only running great people heavily at a few points in the game ... including that Goden Age. Once the golden age was over, there was no need for another Great Person soon so I went back to working the cottages. If I ever did need to run more Great People, I would take off citizens working the 0 and 1 food tiles first, which allows me to run specialists and work cottages. Also, Anti-Otto City was working some of the cottages and then giving them to Home.

So I'm a hater now eh?

If there's anything I'd like to see, it's that you'd keep reports up to where you've played instead of playing ahead. Giving advice and what have you is a large part of these games. The least you could do is maintain the illusion that you're doing so instead of flaunting your Tokugawa smashery and 40 city Boudica and all that jazz

Round 6: 430 AD to 970 AD [41 Turns] - Post-Liberalism Growth


Well, now that I had Nationalism you can bet that I started the Taj Mahal in my capital. Too bad the forge wasn't done in time, but then again I don't have time to build everything there!

And it seems like Tokugawa has been too busy warring vs Pericles and neglecting his exploring. Not that I'm complaining!



With all of my chain irrigation going on by Horsie City, I can now actually grow it beyond size 5. This chain irrigation also lets me grow Desert City (later).



Once I had possession of Printing Press, I checked the screen. I had acquired Music and Optics via a trade with Peter (for Education). Looks like technology is good so far ... but we can't neglect the power of deity AI's to catch up.



Seems like all of my effort in generating a Great Merchant in the capital paid off! Time to test out the cities and see which will offer the most gold! (The SHIFT + Right click shortcut [something like that] told me that Bismarck's capital was, oddly, the most profitable, other than the overseas capitals which I could not test.) And you can see that the Taj Mahal is in production.

Last thing ... seems like Boudica has switched out of WHEOOHRN yet again.



Oh dear Pericles ... well now you know not to skimp on military when Tokugawa's around! I intentionally ignored Boudica because we all know that she would have just done WHEOOHRN in and out.

Ironically, did I mention that Tokugawa and Pericles are the only Hindus around?



Meanwhile, Saladin FINALLY captured a Japanese city. He made peace with Tokugawa, only to declare war on him soon after! Too bad Saladin didn't realize that my culture would just overwhelm that place.

Oh, and Pericles soon capitulates to Tokugawa. As expected, although it does hinder my long-term diplomacy to have more people to declare war on.



My research went Guilds -> Economics -> Military Tradition, or something like that. I was able to acquire technologies like Banking in a trade, but I had to self-research Economics. That was fine - Economics allows the Free Market civic which increases my GNP. And it's Hannibal's favorite civic.

The Taj Mahal is done. Yes, I was so desperate to finish it up that I even resorted to working a plains tile! I was researching Military Tradition at this time, but I later switched to Economics. Why research Military Tradition when I could have Economics which would speed up my research of Military Tradition later on?



Demographics at 700 AD, one turn before the Taj Mahal is complete.



Here is Floodplain City - already a great commerce city. I am debating on whether to cottage over the grassland hill mines, or to leave them the way they are. And you can also see some of the signs that I made to remind myself of civic changes. (I never switched to Nationhood, though.)



Center City - the Heroic Epic city. It's pretty bad, but it will do the job. It's building infrastructure right now so that when Military Tradition is researched, it can build cuirassier after cuirassier.



This is just another screenshot showing my empire development to the west. I was keeping my options open at that time as I was considering nationhood, so I had a Globe Theatre city ready just in case.

And as you can see in the screenshot, Peter is in WHEOOHRN mode. Actually, I think that's because he declared war on Tokugawa. He was probably bribed by someone.



Right after the Golden Age started on turn 221 / 715 AD, I took a screenshot of the world map, just to have it updated. From looking at the map, I see that Bismarck's land is terrible, while Boudica, Pericles, Tokugawa, and Peter occupy the best sphere of land.

The nice thing about the Golden Age was that beakers-per-turn went from 525 to over 600 at maximum speed. The research would be higher, but I took off citizens on cottages at my capital since I wanted to take advantage of the Golden Age's increased Great Person generation bonus.



And a few turns later we refuse a silly demand by Peter to war with Tokugawa. Yes, it's a risk to get another -1 with Peter, but he's still pleased with me and he and Tokugawa seem to be even in power, so that's another good thing.

Unfortunately, we get YET ANOTHER demand. This is one that I acquiesced to. Bismarck was asking a lot, but he's my close neighbor with tons of power. By giving him Education, I got a guaranteed +1 in "You gave us help" plus up to +4 in "Our trade relations have been fair and forthright."



Saladin loses his own city he captured back to Tokugawa. I don't mind, of course, as more strife among the other leaders is fine with me.

Speaking of that, notice how Tokugawa delayed settling to his west, which allowed me to get Desert City so close to his capital. I can't blame him, of course, since the land east of him was so much better, but it's still odd.

And I am in a solid third-to-last position in score, not including Pericles of course.



Thanks to the Golden Age, Floodplain city is generating over 200 beakers a turn! I am so happy that I founded this city early so it could grow its cottages quickly. With my two super-research cities, it's no wonder I'm blazing through research at the moment. That reminds me ... I should probably put a windmill or something on the desert hill to make it at least workable. You can also see the farm in Floodplain City that is east of the irrigated corn. I needed to do some chain-irrigating to help out Iron City.



A few turns later, I get my second Great Merchant from Home. Excellent - I sent him on another trip to Berlin. So I will now have an excellent supply of gold to research at a deficit.

If you're wondering what the heck Boudica is doing with her super-large army, don't ask. I've given up trying to figure her out.



Meanwhile, at that same turn (227) I make anarchy-free civic switches to Slavery, Free Market, and Free Religion. I am still in Hereditary Rule and Bureaucracy, though. (Bureaucracy is netting me points with Peter.)

Bismarck founds a 2-city colony. At least it will mean another civilization to trade technologies with, since he doesn't have the "We Fear You Are Being Too Advanced" penalty.



As you can probably tell from my screenshots, my research has been Replaceable Parts -> Rifling, all at 100% thanks to these guys



Finally! Boudica is actually using her army for once! The ironic thing is, the only reason she's at war is because of an AP resolution that meant all of us were at war with Tokugawa. Ha ha! Of course, I'm not worried since Tokugawa's going to be attacked on all sides that he'll have no time for me.



All right ... we finally get Rifling...



...and Tokugawa is doomed.



TO BE CONTINUED ... in ROUND SEVEN!

Fleme said:

So I'm a hater now eh?

If there's anything I'd like to see, it's that you'd keep reports up to where you've played instead of playing ahead. Giving advice and what have you is a large part of these games. The least you could do is maintain the illusion that you're doing so instead of flaunting your Tokugawa smashery and 40 city Boudica and all that jazz

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I was planning on stopping, getting advice, then continuing. The problem was, the game just got too fun for me to stop so I just went on and on and felt like giving out sneak previews.

I think part of the reason there is so little comments is because there isn't a whole lot to criticize, you are playing a great game.

jaycuhbbb said:

I think part of the reason there is so little comments is because there isn't a whole lot to criticize, you are playing a great game.

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Very true. Every little detail is planned ahead. No worker turns wasted. Flawless efficiency.

It's always inspiring to see someone else playing so much better than I could ever do. Keep it up!

Thanks, everyone.

I'm almost done with the game. You're going to like what the ending is - trust me.

I'm following, the game looks like a lot of fun and I'd have been posting "whens the next round" if you hadn't been keeping up