Need advice with first deity win with Pedro

Hey guys, big time lurker in these forums and I"m looking for some advice. I've been playing this game on and off for the past few months and finally want to make the jump to trying Deity. I wanted to play as someone I haven't played as, so I decided to try to get a CV with Pedro. I looked at Deau's CV guide that he put out a while ago and it's helped me some, but I still have some questions specific to Brazil.

-I know brazil has a slower start because of the jungle bias, but is there any ways to get to NC quicker than turn 100-105? Been trying with 4 city tradition opener, then 3 city, but it seems I still get about the same turn count

-In early game, is it best to try to do quests mainly with CS to try to keep them as your allies? I tend to fall really behind on city states usually due to neighbors really friending it up with them and not sure how to really combat that, especially if I want to try to get patronage-scholasticism.

-For tradition starts, do people mainly concentrate on growth above all pretty much at the start to try to get a bit larger population before going for more hammers or what?

-Along the same lines as the above question, for tradition starts, do you mainly sell of extra luxuries or, if your borderline happy, trade them for luxuries you don't have? This may tie into the CS problem since I don't get luxuries from them.

I think if I can work on getting to renaissance a little quicker, I have a better chance at at least 2 of the CV wonders recommended from this period (Sistine/Uffizi)

Heres a picture and somewhat breakdown of the game I currently have plus an initial save if anyone wants to help me out.

You seriously do not need 4 cities (weak cities are a hindrance!); if you are going for culture victory, you should concentrate on your capitol mainly.

Your capital is way too small for turn 141 Tradition. It looks like it should have been founded NE of Horses, which would have allowed it to get a Food Cargo Ship from Brasilia, providing 2X the food that a food Caravan would.
There is an unused trade slot, you should fill the first 4 ASAP. If way behind in science compared to Byzantine (and if you think they are unlikely to DOW you in the next 35 turns) then the mix at 3 routes should be 1 external to Antioch and the other 2 food internal to the capital, otherwise 3 routes all internal to the capital.

Brasilia was way too slow getting its granary.

Sao Paulo appears misplaced. If it had been placed SW of where it was it would adjoin a mountain to allow an Observatory.

The war with the city state looks like it was a bad idea. It's in a position to intefere with a trade route running from Salvador to the capital.

joncnunn said:

Your capital is way too small for turn 141 Tradition. It looks like it should have been founded NE of Horses, which would have allowed it to get a Food Cargo Ship from Brasilia, providing 2X the food that a food Caravan would.
There is an unused trade slot, you should fill the first 4 ASAP. If way behind in science compared to Byzantine (and if you think they are unlikely to DOW you in the next 35 turns) then the mix at 3 routes should be 1 external to Antioch and the other 2 food internal to the capital, otherwise 3 routes all internal to the capital.

Brasilia was way too slow getting its granary.

Sao Paulo appears misplaced. If it had been placed SW of where it was it would adjoin a mountain to allow an Observatory.

The war with the city state looks like it was a bad idea. It's in a position to intefere with a trade route running from Salvador to the capital.

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Not sure if you can see it, but NE of the horses are actually some bananas. Also, no way to know there are horses there on the initial save I moved my initial settler one square to the right to settle it on the hill on the river, which I thought would be the best place for it.

As far as Sao Paulo, I placed it where it was for the hill plus it would allow me access to all the copper in that area and allow me to monopolize it as well as get FPT from Earth Mother. Maybe that was a bad idea.

Brasilla was my last settled city. I built the settler late after I got NC done in Rio, so that might be why its slow getting its stuff.

I guess my better question would probably be, should I concentrate on growth more than production for the first bit to get more pop then try to switch to production?

Yes, especially once you have finished tradition. Free aquaducts and the other bonus from the finisher and landed elite increase the efficiency of - this is the main benefit of tradition.

crabe said:

Yes, especially once you have finished tradition. Free aquaducts and the other bonus from the finisher and landed elite increase the efficiency of - this is the main benefit of tradition.

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Cool. I might try this map again and only do 3 cities and focus on growth until I get 2 settlers built, then probably focus on gold/food to get the infrastructure I"m missing.

Of my 3 satelite cities, which do you think I should not settle?

Darkdan1138 said:

Not sure if you can see it, but NE of the horses are actually some bananas. Also, no way to know there are horses there on the initial save I moved my initial settler one square to the right to settle it on the hill on the river, which I thought would be the best place for it.

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Yes, I did see the Bananas on what looks like a hill that probably had jungle on turn 0, in this case I'd have planted a city on Jungle-Hill-Bananas.

Actually, in this case it would have been an easy prediction on turn 0 that one of Horses would more likely than not be present in the tile when AD was discovered, especially if the "strategic balance" setting was used. Horses can only be flat plains/grassland tiles and the tile in question ended up not only adjoining your capital but surrounded by Jungle.
The jungle itself also would cause the fertility formula to give something to compensate for all that jungle on top of what luxuries and bonus resources were in the area.

So I restarted this map to try some of the tips you guys gave me. Its working so far as I was able to get both Uffizi and Sistine Chapel. I'm getting close to radio, but now I have a few other questions for this game.

Bysantine has been running away with some culture and tourism (she picked 2 faith buildings that also give tourism) and is also the tech lead, but is right now in a war with America on my continent. Order is the ideology most have picked, so I"m wondering should I go order to not have large unhappiness from civil dissent and have a tourism bonus that way, or should I go Freedom for the 2 free tenets and its policies and hope to eventually overcome Bysantines tourism?

Darkdan1138 said:

Bysantine has been running away with some culture and tourism (she picked 2 faith buildings that also give tourism) and is also the tech lead, but is right now in a war with America on my continent. Order is the ideology most have picked, so I"m wondering should I go order to not have large unhappiness from civil dissent and have a tourism bonus that way, or should I go Freedom for the 2 free tenets and its policies and hope to eventually overcome Bysantines tourism?

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The only way to answer this question is to head on over to the Tourism status screen and see if anyone other than Byzantine is also more influential over you than you over them. (This assumes there's not yet a world ideology; if there is one, that's painful to have something else.)

joncnunn said:

The only way to answer this question is to head on over to the Tourism status screen and see if anyone other than Byzantine is also more influential over you than you over them. (This assumes there's not yet a world ideology; if there is one, that's painful to have something else.)

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So funny enough when I finally got to where I could do an ideology, I find out that Byzantine switched from Order to Freedom so I got to go freedom no problem. However, everyone else except for Greece is order, and Sweden, being friends with the most CSs, goes and passes that Order will be the world ideology. At this point I'm behind on social policies and my tourism output isn't that great due to not getting many GAs (I built the artist guild but didn't have it specialized a lot). So I dropped this game and started a new map.

New map is a great one now with me being next to several salt tiles. I knew salt tiles were good, but its really making a huge difference on this map. I've been able to found 3 cities, get a decent religion up (Earth Mother, Tithe, Pagodas) and am growing really well. My only problem is my immediate neighbor is Atilla . Fortunately, I'm staving off his attacks on me by bribing him to go to war alternating between my other 2 neighbors (Korea and France). Its now about turn 160 on this new game, my religion is the dominant one on my continent, the only other religion being one Atilla founded. I'm able to complete both the Sistine Chapel and the Uffizi with relative ease, and I'm not too far behind in tech I don't think. France has been gobbled up by both Korea and Atilla. Korea is an extremely close ally with us sharing religion, and having a good standing, and atilla is happily fighting a war with the current leader, the Netherlands, on the other continent. The civs on the other continent are Denmark, the Netherlands, Assyria, and the Ottomans. How long I can keep Atilla happy, I don't know, but I've got an ok army protecting my border and his. I'll post a screenshot next time I'm in game to show my placement.

Darkdan1138 said:

I've been playing this game on and off for the past few months and finally want to make the jump to trying Deity. I wanted to play as someone I haven't played as, so I decided to try to get a CV with Pedro.

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Darkdan1138 said:

So I restarted this map to try some of the tips you guys gave me. Its working so far as I was able to get both Uffizi and Sistine Chapel.

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Darkdan1138 said:

So I dropped this game and started a new map.

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Sorry to be so pessimistic, but CV is not the best place to start with Deity. Pedro is one of the weakest civs, and CV is tougher than SV or DV or DV. Pedro's buffs are pretty much only about tourism, but a Pedro CV is still harder than Diplo or SV with any other civ.

Darkdan1138 said:

-For tradition starts, do people mainly concentrate on growth above all pretty much at the start to try to get a bit larger population before going for more hammers or what?

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This is actually backwards. Hammers are more important in the early game. You can grow later -- I generally don't start really pushing growth until after Aqueducts. Growth does matter early, but the biggest benefit of early growth is that it lets you work more hammer tiles. Hammers = buildings & units. Units = City-State quests, gold and workers from barb camps, & winning wars.

Growing cities also costs happiness. Happiness can easily be converted into gold via lux sales. Gold is extremely useful and snowbally in the early game -- buying more lux tiles allows you to sell more luxes, meaning you actually can get a positive rate of return on gold spent this way. Gold also serves the important function of rushing Libraries in laggard cities, potentially shaving a ton of turns off National College.

Hammers > Food early. This simple realization was responsible for one of the biggest jumps in my play ever.

Been playing this on and off and I finally pulled off a CV deity win with Pedro late last night, and it was my first deity win too!!




So I started up this map after failing hard with my old map and decided to just play it through to see how I did on pangea instead of continents. Ended up having the Maya and Portugal as my immediate neighbors, followed by Ethiopia surrounded by many city states, and Mongola and the Huns on the complete opposite side of the map (Indonesia was already destroyed by the Huns by the time I found them).

I was able to found 4 cities in ok spots, but later found out that the locations had limited food, so growth was slower than I expected. Even so, I was able to stay pretty close in tech. I wasn't able to found a religion, but I wasn't worried about that. Wonder wise, I picked up Sistine Chapel, Uffizi, Porcelain Tower, Forbidden Palace (No one went Patronage and 3 city states wanted it built), and Eiffel Tower. I wanted to get some of the later ones, but Maria at this point had started to run away with tech. She and I also started competing on archaeology sites hard. Fortunately, I had 5 sites on the edge of my territory.

I was able to stay out of every war during the game by bribing off everyone to war with each other. The Huns and Mongolia really helped with that Ideology wise, I went Freedom, while Maria and most everyone else went Order. Ethiopia and the Huns went Autocracy and the Mayans went Freedom with me. The only real problem that I ran into I didn't see this until the graphs after I one) was Maria won first place in the Worlds Fair, which didn't get voted on till REALLY late in game. So she was the runaway civ in everything this game. It got so bad that the only way I was going to win was switch to Order after I became influental with all but her and the Huns. As soon as I went influental, Maria finally gave me open borders so I could Musician bomb her with 5 musicians around 7k strength each. Turn 343 is a late win, but for a first Deity win I'll take it.

Well done Darkdan! CV for first Deity win is an extraordinary achievement and 343 is a good turn time.

Congrats! Looks like you didn’t have any jungle for Brazilwood camps either?

beetle said:

Congrats! Looks like you didn’t have any jungle for Brazilwood camps either?

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Nope, only place that had any jungle nearby was to the north, and didn't look like any good places to settle. Also, that would put me really close to the Mayans

So Darkdan, I lost count, was that your fourth or fifth try with Pedro going for CV? I admire your determination, as I have given up on CV for now.

Do you feel like you were better each time? What the major difference the last time through? How much do you feel it is just RNG?

beetle said:

So Darkdan, I lost count, was that your fourth or fifth try with Pedro going for CV? I admire your determination, as I have given up on CV for now.

Do you feel like you were better each time? What the major difference the last time through? How much do you feel it is just RNG?

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I think that was the third map I actually tried on, probably the fifth try overall. Each time I was trying something different with initial build order and priorities, as well as number of cities. The problem I had with the time before is I had 3 cities, and my immediate neighbor was Atilla. That game I was bleeding gold to keep Atilla focused on someone else and not me. By the time I got close to where I could really start for a cultural victory, the actual culture leader was already 1 civ away from his own CV.

This last map I think I did very well for a few reasons. My location, even though it was open, was semi-isolated because of the number of mountains around my cities. I also didn't focus on a religion like I had done in the previous games. This allowed me to be friends for most of the game with my immediate neighbors who had spread their religion to me. It also helped that the warmongers were on the other side of the continent generating their own hate. Also, getting 4 settled cities with good production each and focusing on early city state allies boosted my science and happiness that I didn't have in the earlier games. So overall, I had luck with my map location which helped me focus more on my gameplay. My only downfall would've been if I had gotten into a war around the Renaissance or Industrial as I think I had.... 5 Crossbowman and 2 pikemen as my army at that point.

If I want to maximize my odds for CV with Pedro, what are your suggestions for map type and opponents? How many turns should I play before re-rolling? I will be playing standard size, standard pace, default number of civs/cs.

I would suggest fractal or Pangaea, then do a two scout opener, hope for archer upgrade for at least one of them. The map types and double scout to meet everyone as quickly as possible, trade with them, build an early archer or two if no scout upgrades and hunt city quests, especially for culture civs. The prime thing you want for culture is a strong capital, if you want to reroll maps. Religion helps a ton for quicker wins, but getting on on diety is map dependent.