The Continuing story of Baron Munchausen [Deity Large Hemispheres]

BornInCantaloup

BornInCantaloup

Agent of Chaos
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In lines that are yet to be written,
In words that are yet to be spoken,
Now at the willing service of House Romanov,
I, Baron Hieronimus Von Munchausen, shall describe the rise and fall of Catherine the Great,
Empress of all the Russias, whose hand in marriage I once had the honour to decline.





The Age of Reason.

Wednesday.

We discover the sight of the errr... city.
Spoiler :


Game settings:
Spoiler :
Deity difficulty
Large map
Normal speed
Hemispheres
Massive continents and tiny islands
Tropical Climate
No huts, no events

9 handpicked AIs:
Willem Von Orange
Shaka Zulu
Isabella of Spain
Mao Zedong
Pacal II
Victoria I
Hannibal
Charlemagne
Zara Yacob


I intend to provide a slow-paced walkthrough of what I hope will be a challenging and interesting map.
Everybody is welcome to post in this thread: feel free to shadow, comment, troll, ask, criticize, etc.

Shadow games:
Enjoy the save !
But please, when posting, use spoilers, especially if you're playing ahead of me!
The game settings were carefully selected. I recommend you give them some attention before starting the game (especially the map type and leaders).
 

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Hmmm, settling east is tempting. I hate to settle on riverside green hills even though it's really not a big deal. In this case you know settling east will get you more riverside in general.
 
looks like generous start :) aka pretty good.

what is worrying is the sight of jungle in the north east

i would probably settle 1N and prioritize mining the gems so it doesn't get jungled

why you chose large map?
 
I'm also tempted to go east.

Would it be a good idea to try the oracle here? We have gems for early commerce but we know there are Isabella who is known for early oracles. Seems risky.
 
SIP for me. I just don't see a compelling reason to spend a turn moving.
 
Scout goes 2NE to see if that's a cluster of gems. Solitary gems are actually pretty rare.

edit - although come to think of it, scout moving onto the forested hill 2N of the settler would also reveal that unwooded tile 2E of settler, right?
 
vranasm said:
why you chose large map?
Click to expand...
It's been a while since I played a game, so I wanted a "big game".
Also, I'm curious to see if/how 9 AIs speed up the tech pace and/or make the game harder.
Finally, Hemispheres on Standard size regularly produces smallish landmasses.

sinimusta said:
Would it be a good idea to try the oracle here? We have gems for early commerce but we know there are Isabella who is known for early oracles. Seems risky.
Click to expand...
Good point ! Yes, Isabella and Pacal were selected to make the Oracle an unsafe choice.
I don't think I'll bet on it if there is another strong opening available.

vranasm said:
looks like generous start :) aka pretty good.

what is worrying is the sight of jungle in the north east
Click to expand...
To me, this is an extremely good start :lol:
The jungle belt worries you (jungle north east, sure but also west and south) but this is exactly what I was looking for... + a sugar tile to settle on. Too bad about that.
I love the jungle goodies.


@Settling location :
The scout should move, first.
I'm sending it NE, NE to check for more gems tiles.

Note we're surrounded with jungle. The forests we have were jungle tiles that have been normalized by the game.
- Moving the settler will lose forests.
- Moving the settler will lose food.

If the scout doesn't reveal anything tremendous, this is a SIP for me.

Settling on the bananas is an option that I hadn't really considered. 3F city tiles are awesome and it may be the best choice. Some additional drawbacks to those mentioned above :
- This is a 5F tile... :sad:
- It takes a turn to settle there ;
- worker needs to waste a turn moving before improving the corn.
So... surely the start is more explosive if the banana is settled. But it only results in a 2 turns earlier worker and the corn would only be improved 1 turn earlier.
Then, of course, there is the +7F surplus at size 2 : neat :)
You can try it if you will :)
 
Turns 0-10 :

Spoiler :
So the scout moves NE, NE, reveals nothing of importance and we SIP :
Spoiler :


Now, it's pretty obvious we want to start on a Worker and research Agriculture.
The research of Agriculture is delayed to turn 5 (we bank beakers by unselecting the tech at each end of turn). This may allow to meet some neighbours and benefit from some 5% discounts (neighbours will know Agriculture).

The scout can either scout straight to the SE, along gems and the river.
Or it can start going to the NW. The NW being closest, this is what I chose.

We quickly find the coast to the west. So we head north and meet Willem, the expected tech leader, towards whom we direct our Espionage points.
At turn 5, this is the land we've uncovered :
Spoiler :


From this point, we head East before going down South.
It's still important to meet AIs, and we want to have a clear view of where it's possible to expand.
We meet Charlemagne in the North-East.
Isabella finds us from the South.
Turn 10, Agriculture is done. Here's the new land we've uncovered :
Spoiler :


Now this is an important stopping point.
Next tech needs to be assessed and we have already a lot to think about. For example : how to improve the land and how to grow our city and how to produce our first settlers/workers/barb defence.
We have 1 religion (Buddhism). 1 AI remains to be met.

Overview :
Spoiler :


Capital :
Spoiler :

 
sinimusta said:
I'm also tempted to go east.

Would it be a good idea to try the oracle here? We have gems for early commerce but we know there are Isabella who is known for early oracles. Seems risky.
Click to expand...

I've seen too many pre-2000BC oracle dates on Deity to base my opening around it, and that would be without knowing there's an Isabella or a Justinian on the map. Intuitively we think that the more commerce you start with, the better the Oracle is. But there are safter strategies that put you in an equally strong position IMO. Cseanny likes to do the very early Alpha beeline, that can be very powerful on Deity. HA rush becomes a good option. Gunning for Aesthetics->music as well, where if you get beaten for the GArtist is still an excellent path for tech brokering.

jihe said:
Settle on banana?
Click to expand...

On further thought this makes a lot more sense to me than moving east. Settling on the bananas to the NW retains the best tiles and is also moving towards more river visible in the opening screenshot. The faster workers is negated by the turn spent moving the settler and the turn spent moving the worker to the corn, but should then start to pull ahead after turn 20 or so.
 
NihilZero said:
Scout goes 2NE to see if that's a cluster of gems. Solitary gems are actually pretty rare.
Click to expand...

On standard map scripts, I don't think it's possible for gems to spawn outside of jungle. If they're in a starting BFC the jungle is removed (that's what we get here), but if there are other gem tiles outside the BFC they would have jungle on them.
 
NihilZero said:
edit - although come to think of it, scout moving onto the forested hill 2N of the settler would also reveal that unwooded tile 2E of settler, right?
Click to expand...

Well, come to think of it, that would have revealed the sugar... which is a resource I was hoping to settle on.
Not sure I'd have done it, because it would have lost the banana in the NW.
Now... in retrospect, this is still a food rich location (southern banana) that gets 3 gems and loads of rivers. Only forests are lost.
Looks like an excellent place to settle.

MegaLurker said:
I've seen too many pre-2000BC oracle dates on Deity to base my opening around it, and that would be without knowing there's an Isabella or a Justinian on the map. Intuitively we think that the more commerce you start with, the better the Oracle is. But there are safter strategies that put you in an equally strong position IMO.
Click to expand...
I think this is trickier than this.
- only high commerce starts make it safe to build the Oracle ;
- the Oracle converts 150H into :science:

So... while high commerce is a necessity on higher difficulties (for safety), high production starts are those that benefit the most from the Oracle. Because high production starts don't suffer that much from the 150H spent. High commerce starts may as well be better off spending their hammers on expansion.
Convert is the key word.

MegaLurker said:
Cseanny likes to do the very early Alpha beeline, that can be very powerful on Deity. HA rush becomes a good option.
Click to expand...
All CRE leaders are excellent to beeline Alpha... at least to beeline Writing.
Cathy, in particular, is fit for such a beeline, with an AH start. But we started with Agriculture...
Also, it's best if their cities have the means to produce the cheap Library (45H).
Here, we can see a lack of hammers without Bronze Working.
With a pigs + cows start and some bare hills, an Alpha beeline would have been a strong choice.
 
Turn 10, we've reached a point where we know enough of the map to play a little anticipation game.
There are several categories that deserve attention.

Victory conditions:
Spoiler :
This is a Hemispheres map with Tropical climate. It is science-friendly.
Space and Diplomatic victories are the favoured options.


The land:
Spoiler :
It is food rich, commerce rich and very green. It is prime quality and we know the map is very playable.
Several city locations can already be seen.
A question regarding settling will concern the gems and the pig: split the gems in 2 cities or leave them to a single one?

There are only a few hills, which is natural with Tropical settings.
Finding a good Heroic Epic spot is high priority, because there may not be many. Maybe the plains hills to the west can fill that role, provided there is food (there are bananas for sure).

We cannot see any marble/stone/ivory.
No marble decreases the appeal of Aesthetics.


The capital:
Spoiler :
Is awesome.
There is 16 food surplus with corn, 2x bananas and 3x sugar. The growth potential is immense.
3 green hills and 11 base hammers with gems + city tile. This is decent, lower side.
9 grass cottages can be laid. Decent as well, better side.
13 forests : this is a lot, a forest spam.

Although non-standard choices, both the National Epic and the Globe Theatre could be built in Moscow (possibilities).
In any case, raising the happy and health caps will be a stake. Maybe Hereditary Rule (with warriors) should help.


Military:
Spoiler :
3 gems and so much food can take us a long way.
I'm already dismissing any axe-based or Horse Archer action.
Macemen are very possible and compatible with an Astronomy bulb (req Machinery), with Catapults for support.
Swordsmen... I'm willing to consider, too. Powered with Classical Era techs (Maths, Monarchy), a sword rush can be very efficient. Again, Catapults for support are conceivable.


Tech path:
Spoiler :
Short term:
- The Oracle is a possibility. However, I'm reluctant to bet on it when Pacal and, especially, Isabella are in the game.
- The Writing beeline is strong when Creative. However, we only can see 1 pigs tile, which isn't even in our BFC. That doesn't make AH a strong priority. Pottery into Writing would be possible but the gems fill the role of many cottages by themselves. Also, most of our cottage tiles are forested.
Finally, we lack hammers to conveniently build a Library in Moscow with just Mining/Agri/AH/Writing.
- Bronze Working would help. You've understood that much from my emphazis on the lack of hammers. With 2 jungled gems nearby, actually, the Iron Working beeline has very high value.
Food tiles may also get jungled (pigs, rice) and some others are already jungled. IW would be very convenient to have early.
We don't necessarily need AH before IW, since some strong food tiles can be shared.
- Archery: safety factor. The capital will need to be carefully managed to produce enough warriors for Barb defence. The extra archer or 2 would ensure we don't waste this good-looking map.

Mid term:
- Calendar is an obvious objective: many bananas, sugars, dyes... Calendar requires Sailing.
- This makes Mathematics a good tech target after Iron Working. Maths + IW may trade for Alpha (best case scenario).
- Aesthetics: I wouldn't prioritize it without marble.
- Metal Casting: we'll see. Not highest priority but a convenient tech to have, especially if we want to set up an Astronomy bulb (requires Machinery), or if we want to war with Macemen.
- Code of Laws: nice to ensure a tech lead. Not sure how it fits in. If we open the Paper bulb with Great Scientists, then we'll have a hard time bulbing Astronomy. Astronomy, sure enough, could as well be a Liberalism target.


Next, we make a plan for Moscow's management.
Objective : resist the barb assault from T35 to T50.
 
MegaLurker said:
On further thought this makes a lot more sense to me than moving east. Settling on the bananas to the NW retains the best tiles and is also moving towards more river visible in the opening screenshot. The faster workers is negated by the turn spent moving the settler and the turn spent moving the worker to the corn, but should then start to pull ahead after turn 20 or so.
Click to expand...

The other thing about settling on banana is that a helper city (2nd, or 3rd if 2nd city needs to grab resource) can be settled on sugar.
 
Thrar said:
On standard map scripts, I don't think it's possible for gems to spawn outside of jungle. If they're in a starting BFC the jungle is removed (that's what we get here), but if there are other gem tiles outside the BFC they would have jungle on them.
Click to expand...

You're almost entirely correct, except for one thing - jungle is removed from gems not only in the BFC, but also in what would be the third ring of the initial site. ;)

Look out for it next time you see a jungled start with gems, you'll see what I mean. You can also have no gems at all in the BFC, but still get de-jungled gems just outside the BFC. Kind of annoying, sometimes, to find that you missed the gems, but if you're quick you can pick them up with your next city before they get grown over.
 
On the tech path - I'm not that experienced on Deity, but to me hoping to trade IW+Math for Alphabet seems extremely unrealistic.
In my experience, by the time the first AI gets Alpha, almost everybody will have IW and many will have Math. Finding an AI that's advanced enough to have Alpha but that doesn't have either of the two I would consider very unlikely.

Since you start with Mining, I think you can afford getting BW before Archery (if needed). Other, longer-term plans that don't include Archery seem risky to me when it looks like there's quite a bit of empty land around you. After that perhaps I'd go for Aesthetics after all, purely for its trade value.

For me, the first priority would be to expand and fill the good land around you. That requires some barb protection and enough hammers for settlers and workers.
I would re-assess military options later, but then again, maybe that's why I don't usually make it too far on Deity...

NihilZero said:
You're almost entirely correct, except for one thing - jungle is removed from gems not only in the BFC, but also in what would be the third ring of the initial site. ;)
Click to expand...

Fascinating. Always something new to learn...
 
BornInCantaloup said:
Also, I'm curious to see if/how 9 AIs speed up the tech pace and/or make the game harder.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty certain that it will do both of those things, other factors being equal.

Bigger maps (and this one is over 1600 tiles, which is about double the size of a typical pangaea) take longer, and that factor alone makes them harder, particularly on Deity where the AIs get hefty bonuses in the later eras. I also think that simply having more land on the map helps the AIs as their advantages seem to snowball the more cities they have (and they pay negligible upkeep). I'd say this could be a tough game, notwithstanding the beautiful landscape around the start point.

I played a few turns. Can't see it going well for me as i) I haven't played Deity in years, literally; and ii) the aforementioned big map will make things unpleasant, not least with my lagging machine.

Spoiler :
Met Willem, Charlie, Izzy and Pacal. Founded a second city near a nice cow-rice-gold-marble spot.

Tech path was probably something like Agr-BW-Archery. There is a lot of space around with no AIs apparent nearby so barbs could easily come along and ruin the fun early here, so I'm playing conservative with archers. Then I went Pottery, not sure if that's the right choice but granaries are nice.

I expect to lose bad, but I survivied the first 35 turns! The surrounding land is indeed a sight to behold, all rivers and vast green expanses. A good player could probably do something awesome with it.


edit - now it's turn 40

Spoiler :
Heeeeeelp! Mommy!

Changed my mind about pottery and went AH. Probably doesn't matter much, as I am evidently about to die under a storm of hirsute, unwashed barbarians.


edit 2 - and up to turn 85 or so:
Spoiler :
Well, I survived the barbs, killing ten archers and seven warriors. I mostly skulked inside Moscow with three archers, occasionally coming out to pick off a straggler. Got off lightly with only my gems being pillaged. One stressful moment was St Petersburg, defended only by a warrior, being attacked by an archer, but the RNG gods were in an uncharacteristically charitable mood and I survived.

So I expanded up to six cities, then of course I realised that this is a large map and six is not enough for national wonders...I was surrounded by barb cities and sort of hoped to hook up iron and pick off a couple with swords. However, after backfilling with Aesthetics trades, I have discovered that there is no iron anywhere...balls.

In general, I seem to be doing terrible. I am so rusty on Deity, I have no clue what I'm doing.
 
Played to T38, seems that my barb luck was better than NihilZeros:

Spoiler :
[/URL][/IMG]

Southern part of the visible world, again the marked spot needs fishing. And yay marble!:)
[/URL][/IMG]

I stopped to think and ask advice what to do next. Techwise IW would be very useful but it could be traded and probably wouldn't have trade value if I did it. I'm considering going writing-math. The idea here is to trade math for alpha and math brings me closer to calendar. With marble MoM could be nice. Marble also could justify going aesth-lit-music which is as Megalurker noted a good path for trading. But I think I'd go calendar before that.

The downside is delaying pottery and cottages and granaries. Also the plan relies on the AI getting aplha early but with the strong teching AIs here I think that's reasonable. Actually maybe I should pick fishing relatively soon, it's not expensive and if traded it just wastes wfyabta limit.
 

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BornInCantaloup said:
I think this is trickier than this.
- only high commerce starts make it safe to build the Oracle ;
- the Oracle converts 150H into :science:

So... while high commerce is a necessity on higher difficulties (for safety), high production starts are those that benefit the most from the Oracle. Because high production starts don't suffer that much from the 150H spent. High commerce starts may as well be better off spending their hammers on expansion.
Convert is the key word.
Click to expand...

Indeed, the Oracle is a bit of a catch-22 on Deity. The high commerce starts that make it most do-able are also generally when you have the least need to convert those hammers into beakers. And vice-versa, it takes too long in the games in which it would help you the most. When I was still playing on Emperor I got into the habit of building the Oracle just about every game, now I pretty much never do unless I'm trying a certain opening for fun as opposed to trying to give myself the best chance to win.


All CRE leaders are excellent to beeline Alpha... at least to beeline Writing.
Cathy, in particular, is fit for such a beeline, with an AH start. But we started with Agriculture...
Also, it's best if their cities have the means to produce the cheap Library (45H).
Here, we can see a lack of hammers without Bronze Working.
With a pigs + cows start and some bare hills, an Alpha beeline would have been a strong choice.
Click to expand...

It's certainly not the textbook Alpha-beeline opening. You'll probably need BW as you say, a large map invariably means more barb trouble so Archery is a likelihood as well. I wasn't necessarily suggesting an Alpha beeline here, just saying that on Deity a high commerce start gives you a number of options you should consider before thinking about the Oracle.

NihilZero, is there a reason all your archers are within your cultural borders? Were you fogbusting and just got overwhelmed to the point that you had to pull back or did you not get the units out in time to fogbust at all? 'Cause yeah, those seemingly endless swarms of barbs are pretty much guaranteed on Diety with all that land fogged. Just wave after wave. On the other hand this often means you unlock the Heroic Epic in record time :crazyeye:
 
@ Sinimusta:
Spoiler :
Aesthetics proved to be reliable for me. It's kind of a risky play with Willem around as he often techs it himself. This time he did not, and he was also still the only AI who had Alpha when I got it. I would have been shafted if he had got Aesthetics just as I did, as my tech situation would then have been pretty hopeless.

As for the barbs, they really messed up my game. Not so much from the damage they did, which was surprisingly mild, but they threw me off my stride and I lost valuable time riding out the onslaught. They also settled cities in key locations that I desperately needed for myself.

Not only that, but it turns out that deity barbs don't stop coming after they settle cities. They pro-actively continue to produce units and invade your territory, and I had a second round of pillaging to contend with. Lost my copper shortly after I got it online to attempt to build axemen, along with half my road network.:cry:
 
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