The Deity Challenge Line-up #36 - Assyria

...but at least it was instructive as to what you can do when you have a ton of space and luxes.

Whatever lessens the map was trying to teach were totally lost on me. I tried wide Liberty (12, 9, then 7 cities, IIRC). I was always lagging well behind two or more AI, and not able to get SV done in time.

I still think there was something very odd with the AI behaviour. They did not expand properly until much later, and by then it was too late.

Anyone else see that? In my games, the AIs were (mostly) more peaceful (to me) than I expected, but they expanded like normal.

Turn 143 resign. I tried a wide approach but messed up everything. Barbarians were all over the place and they kept pillaging everything keeping me in pretty constant unhappiness.

I am happy to say that I managed the barbarians well enough, no need to open Honor for that. But this map frustrated more than any of the DCL so far. Usually it is the early DOW that gives me trouble, but that only happened in one of my attempts. The map looks easy enough, but I found it quite challenging. I guess the low production?
 
If you had low production, were you making full use of caravans? My tech path prioritised techs that gave me new routes. If you run 8 caravans to your capital it will first grow like nobody's business, and later you can get a decent hammer bonus by switching to production caravans.

Also, only the starting spot was really hammer-light. Some of my other spots were great for hammers.
 
In my first try, very wide peaceful Liberty, I settled spots for patches of lux -- like the flat-everywhere wine. Definitely not worth it. That city was a drain all game.

As I scaled down, focusing more on production for the expos, my games got stronger. Ultimately it was 4-city Tradition, all decent spots, that let work it through. I prefer to go 6-8 city Liberty, and have had a few games where that was competitive enough with my 4 city Tradition replays of the same map, but this was not one of those!

But no, switching over to production caravans did not occur to me. Confession: I have actually never played a game running all caravans to the cap. I find that immersion breaking.
 
Well if you're wondering why we get much earlier win times than you some of the time, that's your answer right there. The #1 reason people get fast CV and SV finishes is with caravans to the cap.
 
yeah Caravans to the cap is a given in a peaceful game, makes your cap grow like crazy
 
Turn 180-ish ragequit

Spoiler :

Slow start, terrible barbarians all over the place resulting in T128 Education. Fortunately I had enough gold to jump start my science and quickly bought Universities and I was right back in it.

Then barbs appeared out of nowhere and pillaged my plantations in a city I figured it was clear. And then my spy got killed on a 85% coup and I got fed up
 
T307 SV

My life sort of got turned upside-down the past couple of months so I couldn't play Civ, but I decided to finish this now that things have settled down. As everyone knows, production was rubbish, so I set up two of my expos by the mountains where production was better. The start was sluggish, but once I got settled in things were pretty good. I don't think I've ever built so many Archers before, but with the early-game barbarian situation on this map, I'm glad I did. The neighbours started to DoW me at around T270 soon after I started building SS parts so I sold my biggest population city on the coast to Harun, which bought me enough time to build the remaining parts in the mountains in relative peace.
 

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I sent claud a pm about this, but I am interested in others' impression about this map script. Is it one that stands out to you, and if so, why? Do you like or dislike its characteristics?
This is one of my favorite map scripts, I play it a lot.
I am wondering how much the map changes from game to game? I have only tried three times, but it seems to me that the water features are always in the same place. I am not actually sure about the hills and mountains. No wonders is a drag. Luxes and resources vary every game. Is that all correct?

It really seems like a script that favors going wide. I would like have more tension for the Tradition / Liberty decision. I am tempted to add an AI and two CS. Would that be too much?
 
I believe features like mountains, coastline, and rivers are always the same. Calendar luxes are always in clumps, at least in the eastern half, but I'm pretty sure all lux get redistributed every roll. Very hard to find balanced city sites (lots of food and poor hammers, or vice versa). It actually isn't a Large/Huge map at all, it just seems that way because there is relatively little water.

Barbs are always a nightmare, but that means you can farm a lot of culture with Honor open, and fulfill lots of quests.
 
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