The Deity Challenge Lineup #12 - The Maya

NOTICES FROM THE HOST

- The next DCL will a wee bit harder (on paper) than this one or the Morocco one. I hope this doesn't lead to less people taking part. Part of getting better is trying difficult stuff and learning from it. None of us that ever won on Deity did so by staying on Prince and not taking on more difficult challenges. That said, I hope that last time in my game.

- There has been mention of adding final turn BPT, GPT, etc to the Finisher's Spreadsheet. I am more than happy to do this, but it means that you will have to take the necessary screenshots to prove it. Already, I am not so happy about the fact that not every finisher is posting the actual screenshot that shows the trophy icon, so I am having to take people's word for it that they won. But for things like BPT I for sure want visual reference. Not everyone has to do this, but if you want to, then take some screenshots.

-I would like to see a lot more vidLPs of DCL games. I will be posting my own of the DCL #13, and would like to know what I can do to incentivise VidLP submissions. What can I offer you in return for the hard work and time investment necessary to do it?

Thanks to Acken, PeddroElm, Moriarte, Marbozir and MadDjinn, whose VidLPs are about 80% of the reason I'm able to ever beat Deity and enjoy it, at all.

The next map should offer even more variety of play and choices for the players, as well as a challenge. If you're looking forward to Friday as much as I am, you can have the hint that DCL #13 will feature one of the weakest civs of all, some of the toughest opposition, and yet a map that goes some way to evening the scales. I really hope that my judgment is correct that it's not too easy and not too hard.

Laters,

Consentient

consentient said:

How about making a VidLP of your next game?
...it would be very interesting and helpful to those of us that aren't quite at your level.

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Thx, but I seriously doubt that too many people want to be on my level - generally they want to win fast ie mainly beating the comp in a game while I'm in the civilization building business hence pretty much everything I do differently only slows things down. Only as a warning example of how-not-to-do-it my LPs might work besides since MadDjinn and later El Cid stopped doing those I haven't even much bothered to watch anyone else's LPs.

Somewhere in late vanilla I did record few of my own games for educational purposes to myself so the concept isn't a total impossibility but highly unlikely atm.

I think I'm going to start playing with the next posted start. I've picked up all the DLC needed to load the games (had previously just owned G&K and BNW).

I tend to play rather slowly. On two counts: I don't have a lot of time for playing, and when I play, I take a lot of time on every turn, think everything out. So I won't be able to keep up with the other players. It takes me more than two weeks to play a game, so I'll probably play every other game at best once I start.

I play Deity exclusively, though I probably only win 20-25% of my games. I play under some pretty stringent self-imposed regulations, though. I play standard size and speed, but everything else random (my civ, all opponent civs, world type). I take whatever I roll and go with it; I don't re-roll for a better start. And I play games through to the bitter end, even if I don't have a chance of winning. I never replay a turn for any reason. I don't steal workers from city states. (Though I dream of being able to rescue them from barbs). That slows down my early development, I know.

I also think I tend to handicap myself through my play style. I'm very reluctant to declare war, for any reason, even when I know full well that I could get away with it and that it would help me with my game. Occasionally, if I'm on a small landmass and fighting is the only way to get cities, I'll go to war. Otherwise, I just found Tradition's four, as well located as I can, (sometimes a fifth) and grind things out. I don't do much with diplomacy. I don't try to arrange mass denunciations. Occasionally I'll bribe a warmonger to fight with someone who would otherwise attack me. That and trade is about the extent of my diplomatic involvement.

My victories are always turtling science victories. Since one needs science for everything else, I go all in for science, and that pretty much only positions me to win in that way. I've recently got bored enough of always going that route that I thought I would try a cultural victory. I failed abysmally. I don't know how one would go about getting a deity level cultural victory. (Admittedly my civ (America) wasn't suited for it; I had determined even before I rolled that I was going to try culture no matter what, just cuz).

I don't care about getting victories in the smallest number of turns possible. I just play win/lose. Any win counts the same in my book. (So Grendeldef, I for one wouldn't mind watching a slowed-down, civ-building video of yours. That's how I work; I just try to build a sound civilization.)

I've been wondering lately whether I manage money as well as I should. I prioritize growth, then production, and pretty much let money just be whatever it happens to be. I want to experiment with a dedicated money city. I tend to only build trading posts in jungles, in cities that will be working them for the science anyway. I want to try deliberately building more TPs for the money. All my cities are pretty much just generalist cities. I also wonder if I'm getting as much out of city states as I should. At deity, it seems hard to get very many of them as allies (I've had Alex in my last four games!) but I think I could get more of them as friends than I tend to do.

Don't know what else to say about my play style. I played a couple of Deity Challenges a year back that didn't call for any DLC. Without seeing their turn-by-turn decisions, I couldn't learn from the better players what to do better in my own games; I could just marvel at how much more they made of particular maps than I could do.

Anyway, I hope I get to join you all on your next game.

I mostly stick to lurking, but I have played a couple of these challenges and comparing the various games is quite good fun. So a brief description of my game which ended up as a science victory for me at turn 293:

Hey Gori, sounds like we are similar players in terms of level. I'd say my win rate on Deity is between 40 and 60%, but it's probably because I don't play as many difficult maps as you are playing.

In terms of play style though, I am totally bored by science. If it's the only way for me to win, I'll take it, but I usually start out wanting to win by Domination, Culture or Diplomacy, whichever seems like it will be the most fun.

Culture victories are definitely the most difficult on Deity, but this guide helps a lot:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=501996

Basically, you run it almost like a science victory, but with some key differences. It is also possible to do a CV with war, capturing the wonders and great works.

Well, if the start you post on Friday lends itself, maybe I'll take another crack at culture.

Say, by the way, would you be willing to put the world-type in a spoiler when you post the next start? That's another self-imposed regulation of my own play style: that I don't start the game knowing what kind of world I'm on. The only difference that it really makes is that it makes it non-obvious whether to build a scout first. (If you know its pangaia or continents, of course you do; if it's small islands, of course you don't. But if I don't know, I have to follow a hunch as to whether to go with a scout first.) No biggie. It's just that I'm going to try to play these games the way I play my own.

Gori the Grey said:

That's another self-imposed regulation of my own play style: that I don't start the game knowing what kind of world I'm on.

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Yeah, I used to do the same thing in my own games. Not knowing the map type adds a bit of realism. Sadly, I need every advantage I can get to win Deity challenges, so it has never occurred to me to ask for the same request.

I can put the world type in a spoiler, but you'll have to also cover the left part of the 'Load game' screen since it shows an icon when you click on the save. But I second what Shark Diver says that if you give yourself too many setbacks, you might lose out.

Nothing is more satisfying than winning a CV on Deity. So far I've only done it twice peacefully. One time was with Sweden, who are savagely underrated for all kinds of VC, not least CV. But even that one wasn't easy because the AIs were at peace with one another for most of the time so they could just build culture to their heart's content. The other time was even harder, and therefore even more satisfying.

Urg very annoyed I wasn't able to get a religion, despite getting second pantheon DF and the 1st guy and next 2 taking culture pantheons! Come on now WTF???? Venice somehow beat me to religion working his 1 pearls becuase he had no wonders. Very annoying! I went liberty and 5 cities, getting the Petra by the oasis. Trying to figure out what to do now that I am first to ideologies taking freedom and everone else picking hte others making me start to choke on unhappyness turn 192

consentient said:

NOTICES FROM THE HOST
Thanks to Acken, PeddroElm, Moriarte, Marbozir and MadDjinn, whose VidLPs are about 80% of the reason I'm able to ever beat Deity and enjoy it, at all.

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yeah but it's also mighty frustrating when I see just how good all of them are while I struggle a damn lot

stormtrooper412 said:

yeah but it's also mighty frustrating when I see just how good all of them are while I struggle a damn lot

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I sometimes feel the same way, stormtrooper, but take heart. I used to play Magic: The Gathering Duel Commander. It doesn't matter if you know what this is, but the fact is that to play competitively in a tournament and win you need to spend $1000+ and be really, really good. The first tournament I entered I got destroyed in the first round and didn't understand why my deck (which I'd spent a lot of money on) didn't perform as I wanted.

I went away and practised and tweaked my deck a bit, and the next tournament I swept everyone aside.

I think the line between 'improving Deity player' and 'top Deity player' is probably just something you cross after some time, when you get more of a feel for the game and your decisions are better because you've made the wrong choice a ton of times before. Sometimes I suck out (like being unable to deal with in this Maya game) and sometimes I do pretty well, like being able to score a T259 DiploV in the Indonesia game.

Keep it up, and I'm sure you'll get to where you wanna be

Finished this one turn 255 with a culture victory. Far from perfect, messed up with the WC, but still good enough and an attempt at variety with a 7cities liberty game.

Details in video on my thread (see signature) and last part being uploaded right now. Total length is around 7hours.

SS:

@ Acken

El Mirador is a Mayan city. Acken settled it and gave it to Siam to save on GM's travel time....

Though I can't stop wondering at some people's luck. I settled my third city near Venice, and those salt and truffles tiles were already nabbed. Acken settles his 4th city there, and the tiles are still available? (I went Liberty, as well)

El Mirador is a Mayan city name

adcarrymaokai said:

El Mirador is a Mayan city. Acken settled it and gave it to Siam to save on GM's travel time....

Though I can't stop wondering at some people's luck. I settled my third city near Venice, and those salt and truffles tiles were already nabbed. Acken settles his 4th city there, and the tiles are still available?

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Without your settle times I can't really comment, that city is settled turn 49 in my game. Edit: based on your screenshot on page 1 on turn 67 you don't have this city yet but on t67 the salt is still not taken by Venice. So it is just a matter of settling faster.

Ooh goodie, I can watch the rest of Acken's LP.

@adcarrymaokai

I've been experimenting with Scout, Monument, (Shrine if good pantheon), (2nd Scout if Pangae), Settler x3, as per TommyNT, for early expansion. And it's really good unless you have a warring neighbour, in which case you need to make other plans.

Acken said:

Without your settle times I can't really comment, that city is settled turn 49 in my game.

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Ah, I see.

So is it really worth to go early settlers? Given the hilly start, I thought I'd save hammers by growing to pop 5-7 and building settlers in 7 turns instead of 14 turns. Obviously, territory lose might be an issue, but cutting settler production in half seems pretty important to me.

adcarrymaokai said:

Ah, I see.

So is it really worth to go early settlers? Given the hilly start, I thought I'd save hammers by growing to pop 5-7 and building settlers in 7 turns instead of 14 turns. Obviously, territory lose might be an issue, but cutting settler production in half seems pretty important to me.

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Without doing any real math, it sounds like you are waiting about 20 turns in order to save 3-4 turns each for building 3 settlers. So in those 20 turns, one assumes you are building infrastructure, which is good. I'd suggest that 3 cities building infrastructure 10 turns (on average) earlier would offset that, not to mention the territory loss you noted.

Another way of looking at it is that your capital is not growing when you are building settlers. Would you prefer to stunt your growth earlier when you haven't expanded to all of your best growth tiles, or later when you have expanded and upgraded all important tiles (and should be growing more efficiently).

I'm a big fan of early settlers.

adcarrymaokai said:

Ah, I see.

So is it really worth to go early settlers? Given the hilly start, I thought I'd save hammers by growing to pop 5-7 and building settlers in 7 turns instead of 14 turns. Obviously, territory lose might be an issue, but cutting settler production in half seems pretty important to me.

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I never found a good reason to delay settlers besides not having luxuries (sea luxuries) or wanting a 1city GL NC start.

The reason why you may grow before settler is if your capital has great growth potential, like multiple wheat/deers. That way you can quickly get your pop before expanding. But if like this map you only have mostly weak 2food tiles (3 once improved) it's not worth it in my opinion because you wait too long to get pop for a marginal decrease in the time it takes to make settlers.

Each turn you delay an expansion is a turn that expansion doesn't do anything. And finally there is nothing of capital importance to do in the capital unless you try a wonder (but on deity...) so usually after 35-40 turns is the ideal time to produce your settlers. Just get 3-4 hills and the time for production will be reasonable, 14 turns sounds like way more than I usually get. Tradition can often get 8-10 turns while Liberty will get 5-7 with only 3 hills (which you should already be improving into mines).

Also I played liberty, and what I said here is twice as important for liberty because 2-3 additional pop won't cut down the time for settlers that much but may delay production by like 20 turns. And you need the headstart because of having to make a monument.

Obviously, fast expansion requires good worker steal to be ready to grab those luxes.

And to add to the early settler point of view, you can also chop wood to speed up that process quite a bit.