Competing vs Darius I (Immortal WT)

Competing v.s. Darius I

Another SSE/WE walkthrough


Level:: Immortal
Leader:: Ramesses II


I suppose, there are a lot of different titles I could chose, but I decided this one because, it seemed for most the game Darius I was my main nemesis, both in tech… wonders… and even in War.

I started this game hoping to use my pat & pended SEEWE strategy, but wanted to experiment a bit with the new Corporation system. What follows is the result of this trial, separated in two parts.

Part I – 4000 BC to Liberalism Race
Part II – Liberalism Race to Final Turn





Here we go, Ramesses II with our regular (and HARD) settings. I think the other two leaders I’ve played lately (HC & Ghandi) sort have hurt my optimal play with Ramesses a bit (picking up bad habits), so I want to try a few more whacks with Egypt to get back into the flow.


Some Past Walkthroughs indexed here::

BtS
The Insane Walkthrough (HC)
The Insane Walkthrough (Ghandi)
The Insane Walkthrough (Ramesses)

WarLords
The Insane Walkthrough (Ramesses)
The Unreal Walkthrough (Ramesses)
The Unreal Walkthrough (Part II Ghandi)
The Impossible Walkthrough (Ramesses)
The Impossible Walkthrough (Part II Ghandi)

4000 BC
Well, some goods and bads I see here. That corn I can irrigate right off the bat, so I’m rushing out a worker ASAP. A few hills will help with production, but I don’t like how the river just HAS to end at a corner where I am. I will still get fresh water from the lake but who cares! I want that river for my Hoover Dam(n) and Statue of Liberty, and pollution free energy power (if we get that far!) Oh well, that’s what we started with and we’ll just have to go with it.

Hey, will we even be able to build the SE in this spot? Hell if I know, I still haven’t had time to figure out how the world angle/radius/elevation/thingy requirements work with it. I’ll try to make that a priority after this walkthrough is complete in another thread…

First things first though, settle the guy in place, and THEN use the warrior to scout. I like to settle first to see more of where I want to move the warrior next. Though I’ll probably grab the hut first. I’d rather let the borders pop it to be safer, but in 5 turns the last thing you want is a scout from an AI popping it. That’s happened to me too many times in the past.

Let’s start with mining tech (yeah it sucks we don’t begin with it).

3560 BC
Met Darius I.
He’s a tech trading fan, I love him for that.
-ni

2520 BC
And here we are, StoneFence will be ready by end of this turn. Unfortunately we couldn’t find any stone, (or marble!) but we’ll just make do with what we have. That’s the trees and mighty whip! Keep in mind, there is a big whipping penalty for trying to race wonders, but some sacrifices have to be made.

2200 BC
The Great Hall is ready for completion. Again, do whatever it takes to get that wonder rushed (except for using a GE!).

Note, we hit our happy cap and so ran a priest. We can run up to 2 with an obelisk due to the UB.

1880 BC
Our first city is ready to be built! Unfortunately, this spot really isn’t optimal. What I wanted to do was move one more spot to the East, which would give me the copper as well as a production boost, and also a maximum group of tiles reserved just for that city (no overlap). Unfortunately my warrior (and scout?) got jumped on and killed. And now if I move one step over, I risk something killing my settler which would put us even more behind! So I’m just going to settle here, because things are going bad enough for us, and I’m so busy trying to get the pyramids now up as well without any stone!

Note: I’m still pretty pissed at losing my warrior. They are supposed to have a built in 5% bonus vs animals, yet I still lost. I actually moved him on the other side of a river just to prevent from losing to a lion. And he still died. Don’t animals get a penalty from attacking across a river? Come to think of it, since cats hate water so much, how does a lion cross a river to attack you anyway?

1720 BC
Gprophet arrives (good, start giving me a boost here!)
-ni

1280 BC
Orca is running and we get our free tech choice. Yippee!

I’m going to take mathematics here, because this is specifically what I timed my order to be. And yes, it may not be so great as we risk losing the race for the Flying Gardens, while still not having stone, but I’m going to take a gamble for it anyhow. Besides, we need mathematics eventually one way or another.

1240 BC
Met Pacal. I’m still not too familiar with her (well it looks like a her!)
-ni

825 BC
Another Gprophet comes to town to brainwash the educated population. Instead I put him to work on hammers.
-ni

800 BC
Pop Rush PythonMids!
A quick look at the wonder screen tells us we won’t lose to a race here, so I’m going to sacrifice a bit of population just to MAKE SURE we don’t lose a tie. We have some setbacks without stone overlays, so I’m not going to take any risks.

Don’t forget to switch to Rep.
-ni

700 BC
Can you believe, only NOW do we find that evasive stone resource? Ok, we rush a settler down there and try to get it. Unfortunately we didn’t get to harvest it for our wonders, but it will come in handy for the University of Stinker and AngerWhat? Time to get it NOW. And don’t worry about not having barb protection, that’s why we have the Great Hall.

Note: I see three food sources in this spot, so I plan to turn this into a good SE city when up and running. Mostly science, and later for espionage I think, at least for now.

Note: Capital working on aqueduct and as soon as that’s done we are on to the Flying Gardens. Unfortunately I won’t be able to use the river to connect the stone, so I need to hurry up with workers and connect a road ASAP!

350 BC
Alright, Flying Gardens ready for completion. Stone is FINALLY online! That’s the good news. The bad news is we sill haven’t got any marble; damnit!

Note: Happiness is 1 off from cap. That’s what we want, because the Gardens will hit that cap next turn. Also, our health is capped, but we will get +1 to make up for the extra citizen on the same turn. So everything is set optimally here.

200 BC
In the North-Eastern quadrant, we are going to settle our 4’th city. I love hills/plains because they give an extra BOOST to the city. And while I don’t like sea-side tiles, at least there is some food there, and we want to fill in the territory SOMETIME.

Interestingly enough, our science is on 100% and we are running a neutral cost economy now. But that will change the second this city is founded. Well, some costs just have to be made.

150 BC
Great Spy arrives. I don’t like to build Scotland yards with them early, I always settle, and build with them in the end game.
-ni

50 BC
Half a Million souls strong.
-ni

25 BC
The Poor Library is ready for completion. That’ll speed up our teching to civil-service. And then we’ll probably go toilet-paper or philosophy route.

Note, 16 Spy-Points a turn from this city without a slider. Not bad, it lets us easily peek at what the “Jonses” are up to.

150
Ahh, the AD years. And now it is time for city #5. One more after this, and we have our mighty combo of 6! Which practically guarantees us victory no matter what.

I’m going to place it here because I want to get those gems and fill in a corner space before Darius gets any ideas to do it himself. Also you can’t really see it in this shot, but there is another sea-food tile in range also.

175
And here it is, the mighty city #6! I’m going to plant it here, in this area of jungle and forest. It’s a spot still able to fill in, and I think it would make a good National-Bark city once biology comes in. In the meantime, it will probably remain as a dirt poor city until that era.

250
We are just about done the Parthenon. Even without the aid of any freiken marble! But a little population rush helps at the very end (bust it’s costly!).
-ni

350
G. Scientist arrives in town. Time to run our mighty academy.
-ni

540
Oh, did I forget to mention earlier, that our stone deposit also was going to help out with the Chicken Pizza here? I’m a bit surprised to win this prize actually.

BTW, we are on our race to philo now, instead of toilet-paper. I decided it was best to make a run for the AngerWhat? as it seems Philo hasn’t even been touched yet by the other civs.

Note: Sadly, we have a 10% chance here to get a over-powered great-artist, despite the only thing contributing to one of them is the Parthenon. Yes, with all the other stuff in there, we will have a 1 in 10 chance still of everything going wrong. What can you do?

560
We are able to convert to Confucianism. We do so immediately. This puts us in a perfect love-triangle between Darius and Pacal. Now we’re set up great in the diplomacy.
-ni

600
We are tasked to a Library Quest. We need to build SEVEN libraries. Argggh. But we only have 6 cities because we don’t need any more. Oh well, time to make (or take) a seventh then. But why stop there? If we go for 7 cities, we might as well build 8 just to use the Forbidden Palace.

Ok, ok… let’s set our goal for 8 cities now.
-ni

680
Great Prophet comes to town.
-ni

720
City #7 is coming on-line. I decided to put it here because the hills/plains will give a prod-boost. But in hindsight this was a mistake. I didn’t know this at the time, but there was a perfectly hidden seafood tile in range of where the barb archer is. Oh well, that’s a lesson learned to you, always check EVERY tile while you can, cause the one out of a hundred you miss, will be the important one (Murphy’s law of Civ).

So, do as I say, not as I do.

740
And here we go. Shemale-Wagon Paya is ready for completion. Now no more needing to trade for monotheism which will fill up our tech slots. The power of this combined with PythonMids gives us another nice leverage over the immortal AIs.

820
Whoops!! Founded Taoism by accident! Yet another mistake! For some reason, I wasn’t thinking too much (going too fast through my turns). I wasn’t expecting to hit this one too fast, but oh well. We COULD go back in the autosave and just change to another tech in the meantime, but that would be cheating! I’ll live with my mistakes, so I’ll learn harder for when not to do it NEXT TIME!

At least this means losing the AngerWhat? race will be impossible, unless of course someone has a GE ready.
-ni

940
Anger What? is up and running. The 500 hammer investment wasn’t as bad as it looks; despite the fact we didn’t have ANY freiken trees left to help out with.

960
Alright, here we go, we just put a down-payment on what used to be a barbarian city. As soon as the deal is complete we’ll have this one try to rush out a library as well.

980
We now hold a Million Souls.
-ni

1010
G. Scientist arrives to counter brainwashing from the priests.
-ni

1100
And now, we holds 2 million souls.
-ni

1120
Library Quest is won! I simply can’t refuse to gain a FREE scientist in this spot. Certainly it beats the free tech option.
-ni

1160
Great scientist pops.
-ni

1200
G. Artist pops. Arggggggh! And I tried everything to dilute the Parthenon artist pollution. I was even running a whole string of priests to make sure that wouldn’t happen.

Well that’s Murphy’s law for you!
-ni

1220
More bad luck. We LOST the liberalism race…

To be honest, I knew I was going to. I was watching Darius tech-master his way and blaze right through while we had no chance to catch up. And now, he’s taking his free tech, and jumping yet another whole level above us.

Looking at this score, his 1728 compared to us at the bottom of the list with only 1013 doesn’t look good. And that’s INCLUDING all the wonders we got! Seems we have to rebound somehow. He’s much bigger than us now (I guesstimate), and has the advantage of big level-bonuses.

Anyhow, I know what I did from this point as it was my game. The real question is what would YOU decide to do at this point. Aside from the obvious “We lost the liberalism race, so time to quit.” I’m curious to know what most people would plan here.

And so, ends part I…

Woot another obsolete thread. Always a good read. Love these. But why o why o why did you improve the cows so late????????????? Animal husbandry is hardly a tech detour and it would have shaved of so many turns from building wonders it hurts the eye. Also the second city, Memphis, why not 1SE so you also get the copper and the wine and it would still be on the riverside? You are a much better player then I am, so I am wondering about these things.

i would have taken the risk with memphis's placement, but hey, i guess you had your reasons. darius is a bit of a teching beast,so i would say war is the only way to go.