The Deity Challenge Line-up #39 - Austria

Acken · Sep 1, 2015

There is now a thread to express yourself if you have remarks and ideas:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=546469

The map is attached at the bottom of this post !

Welcome to the Deity Challenge Line-up!

- The spreadsheet of all challenge finishers to date has been updated and is available here.

Rules:

- New games will be posted every 10 days.
- All the games in this series are set to Deity difficulty.
- User civilizations, maps, and opponents change with each challenge, but the game speed is always set to Standard and the starting era is always Ancient.
- We try for a variety of starts
- This isn't a competition so there will be no predefined victory conditions.
- If you complete 5 challenges, your name will be added to the 'Top Finishers' list.
- When posting about your victory, please begin the post with the turn number and Victory Condition in bold letters - e.g. "T247 DiploV" (this is so the person who updates the spreadsheet can see it more easily)

* We welcome all comments and write-ups and invite you to post screenshots of key moments and the moment of victory (if you are successful), but please use the spoiler tag if you post a picture, make a comment about which civs are in the game, or about wonders, or locations of ancient ruins, etc.

In short, if it’s information you can only know by playing the game, don’t spoil it for others by divulging this information in the open. Thank you for your co-operation

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DCL Game #39
You: Austria
Map Type:

Spoiler :

Extra Settings:

Spoiler :

Difficulty:

Spoiler :

Starting Location:

Spoiler :

Quick combat and movement are on (turn them off if you like)

Game Version - 1.0.3.279
Downloadable Content: – G&K, BNW, Conquest of the New World Deluxe, Genghis Khan's Mongolia, Harold Bluetooth's Denmark, Isabella’s Spain and Pachacuti's Incan Empire, Kamehameha's Polynesian Empire, Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon, Sejong The Great's Korea, Wonders of the Ancient World. The map packs are intentionally excluded.

Past Games

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Past Games Links

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I hope you all enjoy the map!

If you want to share a map please send a private message.

Please note that maps you wish to share MUST have map packs disabled, so those who do not have them can enjoy the challenge. To do this, you MUST go into the DLC option from the Main Menu and untick the options ‘Scrambled Nations’, ‘Explorers Map Pack’ and ‘Scrambled Continents’. You will need to do this EVERY TIME you start a new game, or just simply delete the map packs from your computer.

Blatc · Sep 2, 2015

Definitely a new type of map for me. I went with only 3 cities (Tradition) early and think some AI are handicapping themselves by expanding to poor locations. It was a love fest early on - hugs for everybody - but certain civs are waging war successfully now. I think I'm going to turtle until XComs; we'll see.

consentient · Sep 2, 2015

Didn't want to disappoint those soothsayers who predicted I would reinstall the game and play this.

However, am going outside my comfort zone and playing for OCC Science.

Acken · Sep 2, 2015

Spoiler :

stormtrooper412 · Sep 3, 2015

consentient said:
Didn't want to disappoint those soothsayers who predicted I would reinstall the game and play this.

However, am going outside my comfort zone and playing for OCC Science.

I wanted to do an OCC run of this but now it will seem like I'm copying you so I'll do it on one of the following maps

peddroelm · Sep 3, 2015

is it really OCC if you yoink a couple of city states along the way ?

stormtrooper412 · Sep 3, 2015

Obviously not, I wanted to do an old school legit OCC but that seems like a nice idea also

consentient · Sep 3, 2015

T333 OCC Science

Spoiler :

peddroelm · Sep 3, 2015

consentient said:
T333 OCC Science

I used FIFTEEN nukes defending my one city from the menace, and in all honesty, without Pocatello's loans I would not have been able to buy the parts. Full write-up to follow...

Spoiler :

Blatc · Sep 3, 2015

Acken said:
Spoiler :

The map is voluntarily cramped with meh terrain for you to use the UA. Hope this work as expected

That got boring playing, essentially, as a neutral civ, so going to start over and make a point of using the UA. Strategy wise, I'm thinking in general it makes more sense to 'take over' a Militaristic CS as you get the benefit of their units (i.e. what you would gradually get through ally status), whereas with something like a Cultural CS you might reduce your main benefit (culture) significantly per turn upon marrying them. For mercantile CS, what happens with their unique luxury? If they keep it, then you'd only lose the 2-3 base happiness vs. when allied to them.

consentient · Sep 3, 2015

peddroelm said:
Spoiler :

Near the end you could've brought yourself a nice new capital on a far cosy island (CS)...Build the nautilus on an isolated island and sail it onto space .

Don't get me wrong, there were many ways I could have made this easier for myself, but I wanted a 'pure' OCC SV as I've failed the last few times.

beetle · Sep 3, 2015

Before I get started, I could really use some insight regard the map settings and the civ UA.

Blatc said:
Strategy wise, I'm thinking in general it makes more sense to 'take over' a Militaristic CS as you get the benefit of their units (i.e. what you would gradually get through ally status)

Yes, but that misses the UU of the CS -- which is what I like best about Militaristic CS.

whereas with something like a Cultural CS you might reduce your main benefit (culture) significantly per turn upon marrying them.

Exactly right. Religious CS are similar, but maybe they are less important?

For mercantile CS, what happens with their unique luxury?

It disappears. And for maritime, the food bonus disappears.

As with Venice, and as with any civ for that matter, CS are better as allies than puppets. So what do? I think I will use geography as the major driver. But I think you are correct that Militaristic CS are the least bad to puppet.

consentient · Sep 3, 2015

The UA is just plain awful. If you're going to make use of it, you have to realise that you're doing it for flavour . There is no way you can optimise the sub-optimal

There are definitely interesting things that can be done with it on this map, don't get me wrong. But you won't choose the marriages based on what type of CS they are but on location, I would wager.

beetle · Sep 3, 2015

I like changing my game up for flavor, but let's skip that. Is the UA really worse than nothing? If you count up the gold value of buildings and units and subtract off the cost of marriage it is a tidy profit!

From that though, subtract the value of 30+ turns of CS ally. Still, it seems to me like it must be a net gain? @consentient, on your tier thread you got plenty of push back from the Austria fans -- but nothing that I recall as persuasive. And no math.

consentient · Sep 3, 2015

OK well my argument here contains mild spoilers

Spoiler :

stormtrooper412 · Sep 3, 2015

When I think about it, Austrian UA is really kind of bad. I suppose the Religious CS are the least bad to marry, anything else and you're pretty much shooting yourself in the foot as you are generally better off building and growing own cities AND have CS bonuses as well.

@Blatc: If you marry a Mercantile CS, they lose their unique lux and only retain the one they have visible on the map anyway. I think that bit was hard coded

budweiser · Sep 3, 2015

I haven't played a full game of civ in many moths. Here I am at about 140 doing the CS military creep. Tradition>Honor with a gold focus.

Spoiler :

peddroelm · Sep 3, 2015

The UA has some merit during late game domination with powerful economy. Marry CS at the other end of the world close to enemy capitals. Rushbuy airport + 10 air repair bombers/stealth. Bomb the capitals and snipe them with paratroops/xcoms.

Earlier wise it has flexibility - based on position relative to potential warfront and CS army size/composition. Marrying 4-5 extra galleas/frigates/privateers on a water map when bee-lining navigation can be a huge gain for example. Same for well positioned 3-4 cannons CS when rushing artillery.

Best synergy with H-C-A : during war phase you can afford to acquire forward bases (sometimes across continents ) to spam highly promoted troops "behind enemy lines" .. Not something to be used early - but mid to late game to get big jump in military strength near vulnerable AI position and a well developed city.

Been a few months of civ but I might give this map a try this weekend ..

Blatc · Sep 3, 2015

Let's say it is turn 80 and a Militaristic CS has 8 units. You can ally and marry 5 turns later. How many turns would it be before you accumulated 8 units through allying? If you're going domination, I'm thinking it would make more sense to marry, upgrade, and get right to war (maybe wait for machinery).

I played around with this a bit and main issues I faced were drops in happiness as you add these cities and drops in gold due to unit maintenance.

Cultural - seems like a huge drop in culture from ally to marriage. Culture is usually a weak point for me; probably the CS I'm least likely to marry
Religious - likely a big drop in faith output, but not as important as culture and something you can ignore and still have a strong game; seems a good choice
Mercantile - if you're losing the unique luxury, it makes sense to ally and maintain as allies to help cover for drops in happiness as you marry the other CS
Maritime - I'm usually more in need of happiness to deal with growing population/# of cities than food and I seldom ally Maritime anyway, so with good dirt/location Maritime goes higher on my list to marry
Militaristic - probably my first choice to marry, all else being equal; I believe they tend to have more units, but could be wrong

Of course, an amazing location could override everything above, ex. Fountain of Youth.

I think favourable CS to marry would have:
-unique luxury
-can connect to capital - mainly thinking of the gold
-able to send caravan or cargo ship to at least 1 other city you control
-weren't recently in a war (lost units, pillaging). If they have more units than you want, you can delete and get small amount of gold anyway
-en route to next target (Domination)

Edit to add: biggest question for me is how to get the economy to take off in the first 100 turns so I can use this UA? I guess, target Currency earlier...

peddroelm · Sep 3, 2015

Turn 100 might be too soon. Maybe go to war pillage a few cities (and units if honor) and then marry if conditions met (happy reserve, gold reserve, big army in good spot). Honor finisher leads to snowball (more units to kill/pillage more to buy even more units) - injecting a significant number of units at the right time might accelerate the process ..

Guess the dirtiest way to do it would be to sell crap captured cities and use the gold to marry

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The Deity Challenge Line-up #39 - Austria

Deity

Attachments

Prince

Domination!

Deity

Peacemongering Turtlesaur

King

Peacemongering Turtlesaur

Domination!

Attachments

King

Prince

Domination!

Deity

Domination!

Deity

Domination!

Peacemongering Turtlesaur

King of the Beers

King

Prince

King

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