The Deity Challenge Line-up #13 - Indonesia

@fimbul - Actually unless you read the spoilers before you play it then it doesn't. The first post says "In choosing this third map, I have purposefully chosen a challenge that I think is not too hard and not too easy, but a little more difficult than the two previous ones. The map is a random roll, but (sizeable map spoiler ahead, probably best read after you've gotten some way into your own game)"

Only in the spoiler does it give any indication that the map goes well with UA: "should encourage players to try something other than 3/4 city tradition science victories. I think the civ's UA and the map actually go quite well together, unlike in The Morocco game."

@sclb - Again I agree that on continents map you almost always prefer a coastal capital. This issue with this one is that you can't see the coast so don't even know which way to move down the river. Are you just gonna move in a random direction and hope?

I played this map twice, first time I settled my cap inland and first expo near the coast, and then claimed all the spicy islands just the same as everyone else, because I wanted to get the NC before spreading out. That game didn't end well because I was attacked and overwhelmed unprepared but the second time was smooth.

Point is, I had no idea where to settle but I still did on the same locations regardless

redrum68 said:

... you can't see the coast so don't even know which way to move down the river. Are you just gonna move in a random direction and hope?

Click to expand...

From the book of MadDjinn "..above a certain graphic details threshold rivers are animated and you can see the direction of the water flow. That direction points towards (ocean, sea, another river ..) . So more often than not a river will give you a direction towards a likely close coast but not the precise distance and no guarantee that said particular coast is the closest one. On a continent map that distance can't that long usually .."

@stormtrooper412 - Exactly. Sounds like we both played it almost the same way the first time through. But then for any subsequent play throughs just about anyone would go settle on the coast with the map knowledge they now have. Settling on the coast makes this map significantly easier since its a much stronger start and you end up settling cities further away from other civs which decreases the likelihood of early wars.

@peddroelm - Interesting! I didn't know that. I'll have to load up the map to see if that's the case (though my graphic settings are pretty low). This is essentially what I was trying to figure out. Whether people had some way to figuring out where to coast was on the first play through to settle the capital there or if its just because they had map knowledge.

Edit: Also, reading through this thread most of the initial wins/attempts settled inland so seems that I probably wasn't the only person that didn't know where the coast was on the first play through. The further you go in the thread the more people settle their capitals on the coast.

Edit2: Watched the first 5 mins of your LP peddroelm and saw how you explained the river trick. Audio on your LP isn't too good though but I'll have to try this trick out

Not sure it was worth using the UA but did mean I had no happiness issues the entire game. Did limit my ability to feed the capital. Pretty standard Tradition, Rationalism, Freedom, Commerce.

Everyone was friendly with me. Rome and Sweden were fighting each other in my lands but no DoWs the entire game.

Mistimed a whole bunch of stuff so had to burn two policies in Patronage. So I was only able to open Commerce, got BB but not enough to get reduced prices in Commerce tree. Parts ended up being more expensive so I had to hard build one.