The Deity Challenge Line-up #34 - Egypt

Argh my stated goal of building Hanging Gardens is continually being thwarted. Seems like having no forest to chop in the start zone is a real drag.
 
Decided to give a DCL game a try as I've never done one before... and wow, the only thing more raging than the barbarians is me. One barb camp even spawned in my city's line of sight... isn't that kind of thing not supposed to happen?

Spoiler :

I decided to settle on the hill. Barbarians distracted me and I didn't get a Pantheon, but Enrico took DF really early anyway so I wasn't terribly bothered. Theodora picked up God of the Sea, Monasteries and Mosques so I was happy to adopt her religion and even got a nice diplomatic boost for freeing her missionaries from barbarians.

Settled my second city between Mt Sinai and the river. I'm not a big fan of Mt Sinai, but I thought it was a decent site for a city nonetheless. Third city went up at the mouth of the river to the north. Pleasantly surprised to find a workable Rock of Gibraltar 3 tiles to the west that was revealed when my borders expanded. Not sure what it's doing in Africa though. Got the NC up later than I would have liked but whatever, it happens. After it was done though, I saw Petra was still available and decided to give it a go. It is Egypt on a Marble start, after all. Hard built it on Turn 120. :)

I'm more or less "in the pack" right now (T211) and nobody's run away with the game yet, but I feel that I might have to reload. I ran into early happiness issues which stunted my growth and it's really starting to drag me down now.
 
GenuineRisk said:
Decided to give a DCL game a try as I've never done one before... and wow, the only thing more raging than the barbarians is me. One barb camp even spawned in my city's line of sight... isn't that kind of thing not supposed to happen?
Click to expand...

I tend to the think this is 1 map where an honour opener is worthwhile, as the game progresses you can leave 1 or 2 camps to continually farm barbs for culture.
 
stormtrooper412 said:
Yeah experimenting with the Honor opener here seems reasonable...
Click to expand...

Yeah a lot of people seem to say just build another archer but you have to consider the tradeoff - This is a low hammer start so an extra military unit will cost several turns of production or you take the Honor opener initially for a bonus against barbs so your scouts can actually do some heavy lifting.
You'll make back some of the culture and if you leave a couple camps around to farm then this payoff gets better.
Spoiler :
Especially with so much empty space in your capitals backyard
 
To effectively deal with them, you need at least a pair of Archers and your starting Warrior. Perhaps opening Scout -> Warrior -> Shrine -> Monument -> Archer would work. It hinges on popping a culture ruin or a scout -> archer upgrade, iunno, all wordy talky but my recent games sunk like a stone so I'm not really in a position to advise currently
 
Redaxe said:
Yeah a lot of people seem to say just build another archer but you have to consider the tradeoff - This is a low hammer start so an extra military unit will cost several turns of production or you take the Honor opener initially for a bonus against barbs so your scouts can actually do some heavy lifting.
You'll make back some of the culture and if you leave a couple camps around to farm then this payoff gets better.
Spoiler :
Especially with so much empty space in your capitals backyard
Click to expand...

TBH, even with honor opener, scouts wont do much against raging barbs. Buying an archer and building a 2nd warrior is not overkill. Lucking a scout to archer ruin is particularly appealing on this specific map
 
cazaderonus said:
TBH, even with honor opener, scouts wont do much against raging barbs. Buying an archer and building a 2nd warrior is not overkill. Lucking a scout to archer ruin is particularly appealing on this specific map
Click to expand...

A scout fortified on a hill in your city zone getting 20hp per turn and with the Honor bonus vs barbs is actually pretty strong and should stand alone. I lucked out and got my warrior upgraded to a spearman from a goody hut and that thing was eating barbs for breakfast.
 
I find the easiest way to deal with Rag Barbs... especially on this map when you are in a very safe position is to just hyper expand and get your 4 cities out asap which is what you usually want to do anyways which makes it tough on barbs. So do not worry so much about scouting with your warrior. Get your cities out and protect your settlers! I swear that spawn busting is dead. I do it alot but never hear of anyone suggesting it but it works out pretty well for me when I don't want to have barbs all over. Now if I want barbs becuase I am farming XP or Culture I do not spawn bust!

I moved North East and settled by the mountain and settled city number 2 on the other side of the Mtn. City 3 and 4 on Luxes.

My problem is that this map is a bit goofy compared to the usual maps since we are on the edge of the map :( !
 
SV T305

Spoiler :

This has been the slowest win in series so far but still AI was not even close to winning (Shoshone had 2 parts at T300 and 70K in their bank). And culture wise I could still manage and keep happiness in place (-34 public opinion, Order was voted as the World's ideology).
3 city Tradition, everything was very late due to barbarians, I think NC was at T110 or so, Education ~T130. The only wonder I really needed was Petra which I got. I had many RA and many friends but science was pretty low. After all barbs were killed it was just a regular game.

Policies: Full Trad, Rationalism, Commerece to buy cheaper stuff.
Ideology: Freedom x8
Religion: none, and DF was taken by Venice!

Thanks, sometimes different conditions and map type is needed :)



 

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I started again opening with honor opener and even though it s nice to destroy barbs, i m not sold on the whole thing. I agree with soo about citues being your best defense and even offense by far. I think i m gonna start one more time to test another approach.

Also, request for advice regarding liberty. If you go for a 4 city NC. When do you consider it s late to build 2/3 more expos ?
 
T259 Entirely peaceful CV

I should get back into the habit of doing write-ups at the time or shortly after. My memory of this game is a bit poor now.

Spoiler :
Earlygame I used units to kill the barb camps ASAP before they produced too many units, and then quickly produced 2 settlers to consolidate a small patch of land. A lot of barb quests were won and close CS were allies forevermore. The starting warrior went East until he met Venice, and then all the way round. After scouts upgraded to Archers I built 2 more to explore the strange-shaped map. One unit also blocked Theo from taking any spots South of Constantinople.

The Midgame was much easier on account of HG, Petra and other wonders not being contested by AI. Most AIs loved me until Ideologies. Getting trade routes was OK after Caravan range was extended.

The rest was pretty straightforward.

For those who struggle with Raging Barbs, my advice is DO NOT farm them. Kill them off and keep them clear by positioning troops. Use Worker/Setter radar, too.


Pics show:

Spoiler :
1. Early empire fending off the barbs
2. Winning the World Fair (having sent 1st and 2nd Hammer civs to war)
3. Te-Moak flips to Venice (cuz Freedom > Order)
4. Something that I've never seen before. Another Civ initiating a GW swap with me!
5. Tourism @ 1st Influential
6. Victory

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Very painful start, but now I am at 10 cities, Petra + DF with lucky ruins/reloads. I wanted to keep expanding, but it's kind of a bit too late at this point. Will try to go for wide CV, but it might as well fail. After I finish Liberty, I plan to finish Piety. Need 3 more policies to finish them. Then probably Aesthetics and maybe skip ideologies.
 

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T105 NC
Spoiler :
Very late, and I'm really late in science/infrastructure. Currently I'm beelining Metal Casting, but on the top tree I don't even have trapping.

The original plan was to go for quick capitals, since Byzantium was so close, but after that that there was no one close enough. I have some forces near Siam, but it won't be enough to take the capital, and those Siam elephants are really dangerous, and will probably crush my small force.

Took Honor opener, then focused on liberty. Got a GE from the finisher and grabbed Petra (although I suspect I could have hard built it very easy and get an academy to catch up in science).

I might try to just pump settlers and settle the area around, since I got a decent religion (Desert Folklore,Tithe, Pagodas, Choral Music, Itinerant Preachers). I don't think I can lay out 4-5 decent cities this late, so I will probably replay from the start, and just go wide with self founded cities.

I just built too many units for a peaceful start, and too few for a decent rush (considering the map).
 

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cazaderonus said:
I started again opening with honor opener and even though it s nice to destroy barbs, i m not sold on the whole thing. I agree with soo about citues being your best defense and even offense by far. I think i m gonna start one more time to test another approach.

Also, request for advice regarding liberty. If you go for a 4 city NC. When do you consider it s late to build 2/3 more expos ?
Click to expand...

Hmmm that's really a question for Acken but if you're playing Liberty I tend to find that you should build no more than 4 new cities before your NC because the cost of the Wonder keeps scaling up. But you have Egypts UA and Marble so the penalty isn't so bad.

Liberty's advantage is playing wide so you probably want around 6-8 cities. It's best to build them asap after the NC. I find that settling late cities on coastal tiles can be the best if you're able to run a production cargo ship. That provides about 8 hammers per turn so a late city can catch up really fast. Egypt is actually a pretty robust civ - the Burial Chamber gives 2 happiness which does a lot to offset the unhappiness from extra cities.
 
If you're talking about the initial expos, then you want them done by T50 at the latest.

If you're talking about adding them after 4 city NC, then the real answer is to get them done ASAP after NC. Assuming T85 NC, I would say that any cities settled after T100 will make Liberty considerably more challenging.

My widest Liberty empires are usually 3 city NC, then capture 2/3 and settled 2/3 by T100. Even then, I still feel the sting science-wise until they all have working universities. If you're not using conquest to support the lack of science, then it will hurt even more.

For a peaceful Liberty game, Acken is definitely your man. I think the Celts game had the most cities early, IIRC.
 
Actually I just found another benefit to opening Honor - I've actually been winning some of the Culture Generation CityState quests, don't often get that on Diety. Keeping barb camps alive to farm has been pretty good I think in this map it really has paid off.
Oh and for late expos try and settle adjacent to mountains - the Observatory is pretty decent and it really makes up for the science penalty.
 
Relentless barbarians!

They sacked my cities three times, the first tech my spy stole was THEOLOGY! It's gonna be a slow, painful game, I lost 2 Archers, my starting Warrior and a War Chariot

update: resigned on T155, I'm thinking a complete resettlement of each city, my location choices seemed incredibly poor. I'm thinking:

Spoiler :

move capital down to Sinai
first expo in range of Gibraltar
second expo on the Nile, in range of the fish, wheat and stuff
third expo either east on Dyes or north on Gems
 
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