The Deity Challenge Line-up #17 - Germany

Where does all you gold and culture comes from ?

Please see attached screenshots.

I'm not anywhere near as mathematical as you, but I think that the unit cost UA + Big Ben + lots of cities + lots of trades (does the Hanse do something with this?) + selling luxes to the ones I'm not at war with, is why I was so rich this game. I think
Spoiler :
Liz
gave me a chunk for peace shortly before this

As for culture, I'd just won World's Fair, so it's double from that, plus after the army was built I was spending a lot of the 'leech' money from kills on CS, and have nearly all of them allied. Plus lots of wonders I guess.

@Consentient

Nice job. I guess your mini-slump is officially over now?

I'm not sure why my turn times are going the wrong direction.

Alas, time to get back to the Dutch slog.

Who knows? I'm not a very good player so inconsistency is the thing that eludes me the most. I'd like to go from strength to strength but I cannot win consistently yet, and especially suck at peaceful play.

The Dutch one was a slog, indeed. Hope you finish
Spoiler :
Sully
off or find some other way to win.
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot 2015-01-18 10.59.50.jpg
    Screenshot 2015-01-18 10.59.50.jpg
    150.8 KB · Views: 224
  • Screenshot 2015-01-18 10.58.42.jpg
    Screenshot 2015-01-18 10.58.42.jpg
    249 KB · Views: 185
  • Screenshot 2015-01-18 10.58.24.jpg
    Screenshot 2015-01-18 10.58.24.jpg
    259.6 KB · Views: 235
It's mostly your city output vs city maintenance that is excellent compared to mine at the end. I have almost a 1:1 ratio with over 500 maintenance cost. But that has a lot to do with the fact that I have like 6 cities in resistance when I win, and cities in resistance give no gold. Also they aren't yet connected.

I wonder if I should focus my conquest cities straight on gold/happiness and bother less with the extra stuff.
 
@Acken

Spoiler :
Like I said, I'm not very mathematical or advanced in my approach. I saw someone (Moriarte?) spamming trading posts in his conquest cities, so have done that ever since, when I have enough workers. I think I probably had over 20 workers in this game by halfway through the sweep.

Copenhagen was puppeted and only annexed when I wanted to buy units in it later on.

Addis Ababa was puppeted and spammed with trading posts.

Palenque ditto. Moscow was puppeted but I didn't waste much time on the tiles because I knew that Kamehameha was close to getting military techs I didn't want him to have, and I wanted to press on and keep the momentum.

From that point on, I just razed or annexed and worked the gold.

Happiness was thankfully never a problem.

From your write-up and screenshot, it looks to me that you had a harder time because you started attacking later. You started attacking at Artillery, which I never reached. As a result, the map was crowded with Tradition culture borders. I was able to slip between the culture borders, and could ignore everything except the capitals or raze. I understand that you wanted to use the uniques, though. They are fantastic fun. My favourite unit.

I also think that in my play through, the AIs were just developing and tech-ing really badly. I got lucky in that respect. For example, in the Maya game, soon after I met Pocatello, he reached the Modern era, in like T150-170 or something stupid. If my knights and XBs had come up against superior troops, I'd have had to park all the units in Moscow, and switch to a science drive, which might not have worked. Would probably have had to just play defensive and try to win a Diplo.

Also, for anyone reading this, I picked the map so I obviously had more knowledge of it than others. That, together with luck and reasonable use of other people's strategy tips is what enabled the earlyish victory, not my skill. :)
 
@consentient don't sell yourself short.. Had you been fallowing my "honor 3 city" to the letter it would've kept you at peace till machinery and then had to face "metal casting" units from your neighbor + given more time for the rest of the AIs to develop city strength and army size .. No video ? :(
 
Well I knew I couldn't follow it to the letter specifically because of
Spoiler :
berserkers
. Also, I'm not a fan of the starting spot for any actually empire-building. I did build a 4th city, but mainly for strategic reasons.

I started warring earlier not just because of
Spoiler :
Harald
but also because I am nowhere near as good as you at manoeuvring my troops and at keeping the science going. So I tried to compensate by starting earlier. I suck at capturing cities with more than about 35 strength, and I am slow at getting artillery. I didn't even get them in this game. Thankfully everything went right for me and the AI was lame compared to how it could have been.

I tried making a video but the program I am using just keeps crashing (Quicktime).

I hope you will make one though?
 
I'd like to first say thanks for posting this map. It's a great deal of fun. I must say that I haven't read much of the previous thread since I wanted to keep things fresh, so I only read the original post.

Spoiler :
I moved my warrior east and decided to settle to the east on the river/hill. Seems like a good decision based on the pick-up of pasture and lux resources. My capital is shaping up very nicely. Kept the warrior scouting east and found SkillDorado first (cha-ching!). Used the cash to buy a settler at pop 2 and placed the city on the hill tile next to the wonder (Harald loved that, of course).

Speaking of Harald, the fact that he was "friendly", but at the same time amassing the largest army, was of course a dead giveaway that an attack was imminent. So I spent the early game building units (I got a few through barbs) and growing my capital. My social policies were Honor opener, Tradition through Legalism, Honor right side then finish Tradition. Later plan is to take Rationalism through Secularism, then finally finish Honor and take a few ideology policies. No wonder building, no religion (even though I found 2 faith ruins and took One with Nature I just missed a religion by a few turns - luckily I didn't bother because the AI missionary/GP spam was relentless as usual). Only key infrastructure buildings and military unit spam.

As predicted Harald back-stabbed with a massive army (considering he had only 2 cities) around turn 50ish. I killed most of them off and took his capital around turn 70. I had to make white peace right away so as not to lose the city. I nabbed SoZ as a nice prize.

Spoiler :
Turn 74 - Harald's capital



During the next 15 or so turns he re-built a huge army (seemingly impossible for only a single city, but whatever, it's deity) and DoWed me again. It was a tough battle but I took his last city on about turn 110 or so. Teching to Machinery before Education to upgrade all my comp bows to crossbows was the key against his pikes and berserkers.

Surprisingly, wiping out Harald didn't really bother the other AI (must be the change to warmonger rep in the last patch). I have maintained DoF's with Ethiopia, Polynesia, Mayans and Egypt for most of the game. I spent about 40 turns working on infrastructure and trying to catch up in science, while still amassing a larger army. Russia started to run away, however, and our relations slid to the point that they DoWed me on around turn 150. I was not able to get anyone to fight them earlier and I couldn't bribe them to fight anyone else either.

Russia is a beast. I finally took a city on the way to Moscow (and burned it down), but only after killing off a huge number of her troops first. Allying the merc CS to the NE with their large army was very important as a distraction. My saving grace against better units (she has rifles and just hit Modern Era while I am barely in Industrial) is a large number of promoted gatlings. It's around turn 180 and going to be a tough push to Moscow, but at least it's open terrain. She has tremendous production capability and is 15% above me in tech (I had to detour away from Scientific Theory to go for cannons, so my science is lacking). Gonna be epic. If I can break her then the rest will be much easier. I'm hoping to try out panzers later, if I get there.

Spoiler :
Turn 182 SS



 
@Acken

Spoiler :
Like I said, I'm not very mathematical or advanced in my approach. I saw someone (Moriarte?) spamming trading posts in his conquest cities, so have done that ever since, when I have enough workers. I think I probably had over 20 workers in this game by halfway through the sweep.

Copenhagen was puppeted and only annexed when I wanted to buy units in it later on.

Addis Ababa was puppeted and spammed with trading posts.

Palenque ditto. Moscow was puppeted but I didn't waste much time on the tiles because I knew that Kamehameha was close to getting military techs I didn't want him to have, and I wanted to press on and keep the momentum.

From that point on, I just razed or annexed and worked the gold.

Happiness was thankfully never a problem.

From your write-up and screenshot, it looks to me that you had a harder time because you started attacking later. You started attacking at Artillery, which I never reached. As a result, the map was crowded with Tradition culture borders. I was able to slip between the culture borders, and could ignore everything except the capitals or raze. I understand that you wanted to use the uniques, though. They are fantastic fun. My favourite unit.

I also think that in my play through, the AIs were just developing and tech-ing really badly. I got lucky in that respect. For example, in the Maya game, soon after I met Pocatello, he reached the Modern era, in like T150-170 or something stupid. If my knights and XBs had come up against superior troops, I'd have had to park all the units in Moscow, and switch to a science drive, which might not have worked. Would probably have had to just play defensive and try to win a Diplo.

Also, for anyone reading this, I picked the map so I obviously had more knowledge of it than others. That, together with luck and reasonable use of other people's strategy tips is what enabled the earlyish victory, not my skill. :)

Well I never wanted to go really fast to begin with. Modern warfare was the plan all along. Otherwise I would have just gone for crossbow domination if I wanted speed, there is no contest that it's faster.
I didn't really have a hard time really. I'm just looking at ways to make better gold in my domination games, the fact that I had to go through many more cities is not really the problem, I think focusing new cities more on gold would be a good idea though.
 
Yes, I know it was your plan all along. I hope my message didn't read as preachy. You are MY hero, not the other way around! :p

But surely if you have 25 cities you're gonna have a maintenance headache and no gold, right? Unless you sell all the buildings and just spam trading posts?

If the goal is domination, then I think anything that costs money is bad, really. The amount of gold that cities can make is laughable compared with the amount you get from the Honor finisher. If you play with Liberty instead of Honour, Full Commerce helps, but I'd still rather raze if I don't need it.
 
Well there should be a point where new cities still make a profit between road connection and gold output. I just think I should go for more markets/banks/TP in new cities. A bit of a shame courthouses cost that much maintenance, but I think it should be worth it since you have more control and no longer affected by puppet penalty.
 
Spoiler :
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I give you, the crappiest Deity win in the history of everything.

To continue where I left off, with city states finally giving me double digit happiness, I was FINALLY ready to get the ball rolling. However, I was starting to worry my end game science would be a case of too little too late, as my cities were too small to be running science specialists and still grow properly. That would change with Essen, which was the just about what I needed to justify the horror choice of going Liberty for no reason.

The world diplomacy was mostly controlled by me. And I mean the relevant diplomacy, not that congress thing they kept trying to embargo each other and stuff. Everyone wanted German money in exchange for testing out their new nukes. However

Spoiler :


And she wasn't joking. Lady Fortuna smiled on me in this case as well

Spoiler :


Obviously, at this point Lizzy would be out of the race even though she had Apollo online for a good while. Well, tough break lady, can't go into space if you're at war with everyone.

Which put Harry a bit ahead but my army of great scientists was up to the task

Spoiler :


I hope you've learned a valuable lesson, Harry and Lizzy. While you're too busy fighting, someone else is just benefiting from all of that. War is never the solution, my dears.

Finally, a shot for the ages. In the sense that in the time a good player would have won two whole games, this is how I kick off the DCL :)

Spoiler :


And it goes to show that anyone can launch under any circumstances.

Few notes on why it took me so long:

- I suck
- I picked liberty which I have no clue how it's played
- Ideology was a big mess, I went Order then switched to Freedom because I was raking in the unhappiness.
- Still, I had to hard build all parts, jeez it took forever


 

Attachments

  • oh crap.jpg
    oh crap.jpg
    243.3 KB · Views: 488
  • proved it.jpg
    proved it.jpg
    469.8 KB · Views: 457
  • war is bad.jpg
    war is bad.jpg
    257.1 KB · Views: 490
  • winnar.jpg
    winnar.jpg
    439.3 KB · Views: 470
Well I tried this one again and went a little better. This time I knew which directions to scout first ;)

Spoiler :
Lost on turn 317 to Russia(SV) who had conquered half the map taking out Denmark(who had wiped out Mayans) and Polynesia. I had 1 GS and 1 4 turns away which would have got me nanotechnology and particle physics with over 9k in the bank to buy them instantly. Only went 3 cities because there were no descent spots left for cities and went freedom even though everyone else was order except Russia(autocracy). Had money flowing the whole game, averaging about 200GPT per turn from industrial to the end even without a single cargoship(no coastal city) Got NC before t100 and Oracle around t85. Also got Big Ben, Neuschwanstein and Hubble.

What ruined my game was the damn savage next door, he used 5 citadels against me before ever DoW on me, we were even friendly. So I spent 20-25 turns building up an army to take him down only to have Russia massacre him in less than 40 turns leaving me with an army and no target(Russia was my friend throughout the entire game so didn't attack them which was a mistake in hindsight). Ended up liberating a city-state(kuala lumper or something like that) and taking an english city to the SW with oil and aluminium.

Spoiler :


 
Well done stormtrooper! A win is a win, (almost) no matter what.

Liberty is not best suited for SV, IMO. It can be used with Commerce, but Tradition is still far better.

Better players will be able to give you better advice.

Anyway, well done again. :)

P.S> You might wanna shrink those images ;)
 
thanks :)

I didn't really *want* to launch, but I was absolutely sure I wouldn't to Honor and hunt the rabble across the map because that's what *everyone* would do. In the end, I played as if I were deliberately trying to gimp myself. I launched much earlier in my other Deity (training) games using a Tradition/Rationalism combo. I have to admit, Culture is definitely more fun

screenshots, yeah, resize them next time, I have a biggish screen obviously and I didn't notice
 
Spoiler :
Well now that was exhausting...
I decided that since I am on the path of peace, I would not bribe any civ to war at all this game. (hence I just let Harald go after whoever he wants... otherwise I would've sent him into the cultural runaway (who was at just below 80k culture at the end) around midgame and probably won sooner... still) Also did not sign any RAs (saved gold for CS) until modern era where gold started flowing. Worst thing is my first lvl3 spy died on his first coup attempt (as opposed to the China game where he managed several before retiring) so no CS coups at all.

Still I'd take a deity CV any day over SV. And this is probably the first deity game where I did not bribe anyone or steal any workers or DoW/be Dow'd in general. I think one of the conditions of the Peace Prize achievement should also involve no war bribing whatsoever.

To pick up where we left off last time, where I had hidden myself behind my great wall of Maya... who, stupidly decided to DoW the Vikings despite his army being nowhere near.


Finally his army arrived... however I doubt CBs are going to cut it, especially in AIs hands. I ordered my troops to make way for them however...


Of course Pacal's pathetic attack force was annihilated and I had to block to help him...


In the meantime I got my 2nd world wonder. PT was taken by Lizzy (and I didn't really want it as I did not sign any RAs with my gold); Uffizi much better serves my purposes.


I mediated on Pacal's behalf, lest the war play itself out and Harry should get crucial cities in a peace deal and I find my borders invaded by Vikings. Because we were such good friends (and we continued to be until the end of the game) the price was quite cheap. This lead to a happy age for my empire where I built Eiffel, SoL and Cristo (Kame got Louvre), and my archaeologists acted as ambassadors of peace.


Years later however, after ideologies, the second Viking-Mayan war started... and this time it was out of my hands... Harald has no desire to go to peace with him. Kamehameha's empire fell to the Vikings in the meantime. Rammy and Lizzy are fighting like an old married couple.


So I had to surround Pacal with my units and camp them there, preventing the city from being captured. Against artillery (and PLANES), Pacal's troops didn't really stand a chance.


Winning WF because AIs don't really even try... look at Harald's pathetic effort despite having the most cities...


The awkward moment when Harry finally realizes he can also attack Frankfurt and not just Hamburg... I had speed-built some knights and sent my workers there as a precaution already.


Hally finally got one of Pacal's cities in a peace deal (Vikings (auto), Egypt(auto), Ethiopia(auto) and even one-city Kame (free) DoW'd him (Ord)... I wonder why...), which was fine by me since he's also a good friend and is quite loyal.


So decided to turn the Mayan wall into the Ethiopian wall. I abandoned Pacal as any good ex-friend would when the other partner refused to renew the DoF (he had been getting close with Lizzy (ord) (who is a culture gimp so I don't care about being on good terms with), who the world hates, and I fear they would invite each other to DoW me, so I opened up a little hole for Ethiopia to capture the city) I was actually quite happy to see the carpet of units as I now know I will never have to fear the Vikings again. Sure enough, Hally and Harry denounced each other right afterwards and fireworks flew between them as my low-tech brutes and archers stood by watching the wonders of modern warfare. No bribes were necessary. Lizzy got eaten up and nuked in the meantime.


And you wonder why my win time was so bad, well look at this. Ethiopia captured Palenque and added the hoard of wonders on top of his own hoard of wonders in Addis Ababa, with culture heritage sites, he was a huge mountain to climb. 77k, which made wondermonger #3 Rammy's 40k look really pitiful. Even Lizzy was at 30k or so...


Eventual victory. Spaceship boosters were going up here and there but I was never really worried as I had calculated that my CV was faster. Rarely enough Ethiopia (~500+ tpt) was also threatening a CV, being at "rising" with everyone. However once I built Great Firewall I had nothing to fear.

Well that was fun kinda... (although I was on edge at times because I promised myself I would not use any bribes... and wondered if my friends were going to backstab me)
 
Spoiler :
Well now that was exhausting...
I decided that since I am on the path of peace, I would not bribe any civ to war at all this game. (hence I just let Harald go after whoever he wants... otherwise I would've sent him into the cultural runaway (who was at just below 80k culture at the end) around midgame and probably won sooner... still) Also did not sign any RAs (saved gold for CS) until modern era where gold started flowing. Worst thing is my first lvl3 spy died on his first coup attempt (as opposed to the China game where he managed several before retiring) so no CS coups at all.

Still I'd take a deity CV any day over SV.

Screenshots to follow.

A CV with a civ that has no cultural advantages? Very nice……I never really even considered it….especially after meeting Kamehameha and Egypt.
 
Once again another great CV kb27787! I enjoyed looking at your landscape compared to how I played out your game from turn 80! Very different! I used bribes and my own war to clear up the land and had plenty of space. I found it fun trying your game from that point though but in the end we have very different ideas and play styles!

When and if you play my turn 81 save file... I expect you to downsize but it will be interesting to see how you get more workers since I play the game with so few! Also I will be impressed if you can win a CV from my start!!
 
Once again another great CV kb27787! I enjoyed looking at your landscape compared to how I played out your game from turn 80! Very different! I used bribes and my own war to clear up the land and had plenty of space. I found it fun trying your game from that point though but in the end we have very different ideas and play styles!

When and if you play my turn 81 save file... I expect you to downsize but it will be interesting to see how you get more workers since I play the game with so few! Also I will be impressed if you can win a CV from my start!!

Well chances are I'll get wiped out :lol: (and in your game it looked like Ethiopia was about to destroy you too... although what happened to my Mayan wall that I so carefully planted? Somehow the city name became Duisberg) so don't get your hopes up on me... I am not used to wide starts esp. if raging barbs are on...
 
Top Bottom