2 gems map is telling me I have to self-tech hunting+archery. This is sad.

What the title says. I'm playing on Deity, now take a look at this start:



It looks good, right? And if I told you I had room for 6 cities in pretty good locations? And if I add that my closest neighbor is Mansa? This map HAS to be played, right? Well...



This game can be so frustrating some times .

With such nice starts, you have time for anything needed against barbs
(good leader also)
It's really nps at all to tech Archery when you have 2 gems.

any way to chop/build the great wall?

Tgw is no option here imo, no stone or Ind & slow worker start (15 turns).
It's going too early for that.

It's actually a good experience for you, DrCron
You overestimate Deity if you think teching Archery slows you down too much, there are those rumors floating around that you are sooo limited on this diff. level with options and tactics..
but there are plenty ways to progress & win, and sometimes it needs difficult situations to discover them.

They are only AIs and it's very helpful to ignore score & city count, or to not panic if they seem more advanced for now

You can easily fogbust everything. I rarely tech Archery on Deity Isolation and still manage to spawnbust with warriors only. You just need 2 or 3 promoted warriors at the front as you are progressing (don't just park them and then make new warrior come all the way from home to the front line, move all the spawnbusters at once). Spear against fortified Woodsman warrior on a forested hill has more chance to lose than to win. And against two... It is only if you see axes that you should tech Archery. Also, if you lose, that Spear or Axe is still very far away and if it is farther than 4-5 tiles, it will not go for your city directly, you get your time to prepare.
But, with 2 gems, just research Archery for the love of god!

Yeah, Deity AI is still very forgiving. Fippy gives you very good advice. Your 5-6 size 4-5 cities can beat 8 size 11-13 cities. Incredible but true.

Do you have the starting save?

From what i can see it looks like spawnbusting most of this warriors would be pretty easy and then i would be considering chopping TGL. Probably go Mining > BW first, Sailing instead of the TW to connect 2nd city (once no copper shows up), and then Masonry. Fill in other techs while chopping TGL. With double gems Archery can be teched rather quickly if you really need it.

Fippy said:

It's actually a good experience for you, DrCron
You overestimate Deity if you think teching Archery slows you down too much, there are those rumors floating around that you are sooo limited on this diff. level with options and tactics..
but there are plenty ways to progress & win, and sometimes it needs difficult situations to discover them.

They are only AIs and it's very helpful to ignore score & city count, or to not panic if they seem more advanced for now

Click to expand...

I wish I could quote this 100 times.

I'm not going to mention names, but it winds me up when I see people saying that deity games are simply played a certain way every game to win. It couldn't be further from the truth. Yes, there are some basic well-proven strategies, but deity is the one difficulty level where you, at least sometimes, need to identify the correct strategy and actually come up with something clever. And for the rest of the games you are free to choose a variety of options.

Rusten said:

I wish I could quote this 100 times.

I'm not going to mention names, but it winds me up when I see people saying that deity games are simply played a certain way every game to win. It couldn't be further from the truth. Yes, there are some basic well-proven strategies, but deity is the one difficulty level where you, at least sometimes, need to identify the correct strategy and actually come up with something clever. And for the rest of the games you are free to choose a variety of options.

Click to expand...

You can pretty much always (probably more than 90% of the time) play with Cannons + anything and Cuirs (Rusten, did you come up with Cuirs?) to simply win on Deity. But for something astonishing like really early victory date, you need to adapt and understand a bit more. I feel (remember actually) that I could simply win on Deity with 1/5 of my current skill and still there are people like Snaaty and many others (you also) who are so much more complete players.
Although Deity is not a challenge for me, there is still so much room to improve. Personally I enjoy when there is not so much of a wiggle room and when you have to single out that one way to stay alive and win, but reality is that every game no matter the difficulty, has that one single optimum. Even when you aren't as threatened as in Deity.

I have never played an optimal game in my life and probably never will but my focus is on being closer to it. I believe that all co-called powergamers have that very same drive.

I'm not going to take the sole credit for "coming up with" cuirassiers. U Sun for instance also used them around the same time. But I definitely popularized their use. It was my go-to at a time where people mostly drafted rifles at the higher levels (influenced by Snaaty's general guide). Mounted units in general were frowned upon. It was the same thing with HAs. People thought you couldn't HA rush on deity until I showed them.

Intresting... a great start! Lincon got great Starting techs for it aswell Me personally.. have no problem with hunting/archery on diety... + you have a really good commerce start.. enough to get out 2-3 archers pretty easy

shakabrade said:

But, with 2 gems, just research Archery for the love of god!

Yeah, Deity AI is still very forgiving. Fippy gives you very good advice. Your 5-6 size 4-5 cities can beat 8 size 11-13 cities. Incredible but true.

Click to expand...

Imploding said:

Intresting... a great start! Lincon got great Starting techs for it aswell Me personally.. have no problem with hunting/archery on diety... + you have a really good commerce start.. enough to get out 2-3 archers pretty easy

Click to expand...

@Flippy (and the rest): ok, you convinced me! I'll get hunting + archery to deal with those barbarians. Fogbusting in this map isn't so easy because Mansa and Zara are a bit far from me.

Izuul said:

Do you have the starting save?

From what i can see it looks like spawnbusting most of this warriors would be pretty easy and then i would be considering chopping TGL. Probably go Mining > BW first, Sailing instead of the TW to connect 2nd city (once no copper shows up), and then Masonry. Fill in other techs while chopping TGL. With double gems Archery can be teched rather quickly if you really need it.

Click to expand...

TGL acutally sounds great, since probably all of my 6 cities will be coastal.

Ok, since we have several good Deity players here, can I ask you guys a couple of questions?

1) What would be a reasonable tech order here? My 2nd city will have cows, so AI should be there somewhere. I'm Lincoln so I have fishing + agri. I'm definitely starting with mining, but @Izuul: I think I'll need archery before masonry, barbarians are an issue right after I get my 2nd city.

2) 3 cities before starting TGL should be ok?

3) For the future I'm guessing this game will be a race to lib. Eventually I assume I'll have to attack Zara because he's always snowballing, and he definitely will this time because he has plenty of empty land to expand. His capital is really far from mine so it's bound to be a long war, and I probably won't have horses. So... maybe a drafting war with rifles + cannons? I guess I'll need theaters to get GT somewhere and draft every turn. Or am I looking too far ahead? In any case, I really don't want to go for a cultural victory, even if a peaceful game seems doable (I got a bunch of those victories on Deity, I'm having more trouble with warmongering on this difficulty so I want to get better at it, not to mention I have a CHA leader).

I'm attaching the starting save file in case anyone wants to see it.

Well if you want to take a shot at TGL on deity you need to prioritize it. Protecting yourself from the barbs is a higher priority, but i really think if you spawn bust well here with warriors you can get by without Archery. There's not really that much land to cover.

I'd probably delay AH (maybe look at another site for 2nd city) and maybe only build 1 settler before chopping the wonder. I'd have to play the save to get a better feel for the timing though.

Yup i rarely build more than one settler if i want GLH on Deity (unless overflow whipping with huge amounts of food).
Sometimes even no settlers if no great 2nd city spot.

While your start is very nice long term, it's rather slow at the beginning.
You need 15 full worker turns, and gems also are not giving much combined food + hammers. So you have 1 early "power tile" only with wet corn.

But you do have many forests.
I would probably rather get a 2nd worker for chopping before a settler here, i looked again and there's really no great 2nd city spot. This start looks easier than reality.

GLH does seem like the best move, so probably mining - BW (finding no copper) - sailing (lighthouse can be started and prepared for whipping possibly) and /or hunting + archery if barb troubles (at this point it depends on what you would rather start building, and archer or lighthouse) - masonry.

AH i do not like it much here, Capi does not need it and it's only for 1 cow that could also be farmed first.

25% chance of iron 1S

Well, the game wasn't winnable after all. I solved the barbarian issues with the tips here, got TGL, but by 350 AD Zara has... 22 cities! There's no way I can stop him. I got the map on this turn and took a look at it, there's just no way I can stop his expansion early on, he's too far.

I tried bribing Shaka against Zara a bunch of times (including the time when they had different religions) but he wouldn't take anything. Then he started plotting against Mansa and that was it.

Anyway, it was a very weird early game, with Mansa getting MC before Alpha (which made my MC bulbing from an early GM rather useless). Thanks everyone for the tips though, I now learned another way of dealing with barbarians. I guess I should stop re-rolling every time I see I have no copper or horses

Mansa actually does that pretty often because his UB is unlocked by Metal Casting.

Not sure if i have time to play, new FFXIV content soon and i need some sleep

But let's forget Zara for a moment, and look what we can do with this game

Goal should be Cuirs, in detail i think i would go for Mansa's stuff with them and try reaching Cavs for Zara before he gets Rifles.

Research on Natio, and GS breeding with Caste + Paci (1 turn anarchy, but oh well).
Maybe something like this..
Washi can grow one more turn, then use 5 scientists Boston can get Bananas when food goes low and Phila sugar improved, not sure if finishing library makes much sense with the mine

Not easy, but in theory if we get first GS for Edu bulb, second for Lib a bit later (with compass and no machinery) and 3rd for PP (towards Cavs) there might be a chance.

You can adjust some resi deals, sell maps and so on..failgold not needed then imo.
Can build barracks, granaries or if nothing else research.

Izuul said:

Mansa actually does that pretty often because his UB is unlocked by Metal Casting.

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Oh crap, I didn't know that. Anyway, he also teched Aesthetics before Alpha (which I had as well), so basically because I didn't go straight to Alpha I couldn't trade anything with him

Shaka was 1st to Alpha and he wouldn't trade at cautious, so I had to wait for Zara, which took forever. If I played this game again I would totally go Alpha first, and that would make things slightly better (though I still think I wouldn't win).

@Flippy:

I just got calendar this turn, so yes, improving those resources was my first step. The rest of the plan sounds doable... If I had horses. Zara has every resource I have, so I can't trade them with him (just to be sure, I played another turn to get the fish, and I cancelled the clams deal with Suly, but he has those 2 as well). I forgot to check whether he has sugar and bananas. But in any case the situation isn't good regarding horses.

And keeping hinduism at this point is really dangerous. When I got OB both Zara and Mansa were Hindu (philo wasn't there yet, hence no Taoism), but then Mansa got FR and Suly somehow convinced everyone on his side to get Taoism, and I ended isolated. I think if I don't switch our of religion I'll get DOW'd soon. Probably soon after Shaka gets his (pathetic) stack crashed by Mansa's defense and he starts looking for another war.

And even if I got enough horses to beat Mansa and vassal him (getting his horses then), if I attack Zara I'm pretty sure he'll bribe Shaka to attack me. Why wouldn't he? And at that point it would be easy for Suly to join. Maybe, just maybe, if I switch to FR I can avoid this, but we are also assuming that at that point Zara didn't vassal Suly or Shaka either, which seems a lot to assume given the circumstances. Even Mansa could (should?) peace-vassal to Zara when I attack him and start taking his cities.

I think the only chance at this game is re-starting, b-lining Alpha and trying to bribe Shaka to attack Zara earlier in the game. Or maybe even Suly, if I send a scout to meet him early on. Or both. I really can't think of another way of beating this map. What a shame, turn zero looked so promising.