The Divine Request – Deity Walkthrough

famsi.org said:

Aztec is actually an eponym derived from Aztlán, meaning “Place of the White Heron“, a legendary homeland of seven desert tribes, called Chichimecs, who miraculously emerged from caves located at the heart of a sacred mountain far to the north of the Valley of México. They enjoyed a peaceful existence of hunting and fishing until they were divinely inspired to fulfill a destiny of conquest by their patron gods Mixcoatl and Huitzilopochtli.

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The time of peaceful fishing and hunting has passed; it’s time for the Aztec people to truly test their strength and obey the gods' will. There have been sights of an eagle standing on a cactus growing from solid rock nearby, this is the sign we’ve been waiting for, this is where we’ll settle down and begin our journey.



My schedule is starting to clear up so I thought I’d open this thread and get started on my follow-up report as there was a lot of interest after the previous game. I’ll be going all out on deity this time, it should be a fun ride. Again I will be playing “live” in order to make it more exciting, to let people in on the decision-making process I'm going through and to enable discussion on the game. Feel free to play along, but please keep any information I don’t already know out of my sight.

Starting position:



Like last time the settings are standard/default "play now".
- Fractal as I don't want to know what the map is like in advance.
- Deity difficulty.
- 3.13 Bhruic's.

I will probably start playing tonight or tomorrow.

good luck.

i would settle in place as there doesn't seem to be satisfactory way of getting the marble or a river without losing turns/corn

It is kinda sad about the river but at least you have fresh water so settling in place seems the way to go..

thats a nice start you just have to grab the marble with another city, unless you want to move the settler where the scout is, which keeps fresh water and doesn't lose any resources. but i'd settle in place (not that i'm a deity level player)

Does he even need to grab the marble? It will be gained by the 100 culture border pop, which is 50 turns max, less if he can increase culture output before then. Will he need it before that, bearing in mind he needs Masonary as well?

A very good start. Elephant is a good happy resourse, especially starting with hunting. Now I think settle in place and tech for agriculture-arching-mining-BW. Marble is good, but as tycoonist says, there no way to get marble for nothing.

If I wasnt afraid there is some desert to the west, I think I would settle ON the Elephants. It would give you an unpillagable +1 happy out of the gate, and a 2 hammer city tile. Moving the scout W then NW may give you a better idea, I would hate to add 6 FPs or 3 Desert tiles by moving.

Another option is to settle ON the Marble on turn 2, it would keep the cows and the corn, add a river, and likely some nice cottagable land East of the river. Moving the scout to the Marble, then whichever direction, NE, SE, or E, would reveal the choices that way.

What is the game speed?

The Aztecs start with Hunting + Mysticism, I would settle in place, tech Agri->AH->Mining->BW->Wheel->Archery or summat. Worker first, definately.

AngryZealot said:

What is the game speed?

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Rusten said:

Like last time the settings are standard/default "play now".

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Standard, so game speed normal.

Good luck Rusten, for what we can see you seem off for a solid start.

My 2 cents: Settle in place. Ag-Arch-AH-Min-BW...Do you think you would still have time for masonry-medit-priest-ORACLE-CoL after that??? Getting access to the UB earlyish would help for whip-driven expansion.

I would move the scout to the SE to see if settling on the marble is a viable option, especially if you don't think the above option is feasible.

futurehermit said:

My 2 cents: Settle in place. Ag-Arch-AH-Min-BW...Do you think you would still have time for masonry-medit-priest-ORACLE-CoL after that??? Getting access to the UB earlyish would help for whip-driven expansion.

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definitely not. deity AI tends to build the oracle around 1800BC (and thats assuming no industrious civs.)

my tech order would be agriculture first and then let the worker farm while you head straight to BW, then archery. please note, this route is more risky because of delayed archery.

Good luck Rusten. The start looks like it will give you a lot of options. Based on what we see I would move the scout onto the marble, then whatever looks good. My tech order would be Ag->AH->Mine->BW but I usually skip archery altogether on immortal. It may be necessary on deity if you don't have horses.

Settle on the Ivory. You keep your three strongest tiles (Corn, Cow, flood plains), and you get an extra hammer. By itself, that cuts the time for the first worker by three turns.

I'd tech Ag-AH-Archery. Then either to BW, or perhaps Wheel if Horses are near.

I agree with settling on the Ivory, but starting with Hunting, and this being Deity, I suggest you start a Scout and grow to at least pop 2, then build that worker while teching through Ag-Archery-Mining-BW then AH, while building Scout, Worker, Archer, Archer, Archer, Settler, Worker, Settler, Worker (at cap). Worker has 2 farms to make, then I think I would want him chopping out that first settler and building a couple mines, the Pasture isnt as important ASAP.

Also, a 2nd scout can go out and find more sites for future cities, more huts for deficit teching (BTW, 3.17 did jack up the gold from Huts pretty well, I like 3.17 and see very little reason not to patch), and overall fogbust/find AIs a little better.

I think I am actually going to try and play this, and sort of follow along with Rustens general plans, when he decides, and see how it goes. I am no Deity player, not even Immortal to be honest, too many bad habits and just too much fun to blow out AIs at Rifling on Monarch, but after watching Rustens last game, which was amazing, I learned a TON about how to streamline certain aspects of my own style. Glad your doing another so soon Rus, you have a great way of doing write-ups that really speaks at a level the mid-range player can understand.

I agree with lilnev's tech order. Second tech archery is a waste as barbs don't invade that early. Getting the cows up is more important (plus how else will you make archers without hammer tiles??).

I'd scout west before settling on the ivory. I'm worried that you'll lose out on hills in the bfc if you go 1W. The tile W and NW of the ivory aren't hills so you may end up hammer poor by moving to the ivory.

shyuhe said:

I agree with lilnev's tech order. Second tech archery is a waste as barbs don't invade that early. Getting the cows up is more important (plus how else will you make archers without hammer tiles??).

I'd scout west before settling on the ivory. I'm worried that you'll lose out on hills in the bfc if you go 1W. The tile W and NW of the ivory aren't hills so you may end up hammer poor by moving to the ivory.

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I'll buy that, currently there are 3 hills in the BFC, and moving 1W would remove 2 of them.

As I said, I dont play Deity, so I am probably being over-paranoid with my techs, heh, and I actually thought the cows were on Grass, being Plains makes them 3F3H? with a pasture, which is a great tile indeed. So Ag, AH, Archery, Mining, BW? Is it ok to delay BW that long? Hammers are going to come from chopping trees and whipping citizens with all that food, arent they?

Getting the marble in my BFC doesn't matter. For starters it's not a great tile to work (although "ok" here due to the river) and secondly I'd have nothing to gain from having it on turn 10 rather than turn 50. The only exception would be a run for the Oracle, but the deity AIs are incredibly fast at getting that wonder, it can go as early as turn 35 if Huayna and Pacal are in the game. As this seems to be a pretty good capital I doubt I'll chose a risky gambit such as the Oracle as that will slow down my expansion, it just hurts so much to aim for it and then miss it. Having marble in my 3rd ring is great though, that means I can get the GL and the NE up quickly instead of aiming for priesthood. TBH the Oracle is hardly a marble wonder because you can't take the time to hook up marble before starting/finishing it without taking severe risks.

I agree that this seems to be a good start. There's food, there's marble and there's a happiness resource--can't ask for more really. I guess the map generator is feeling generous after the Tokugawa roll in the SG forum. My only worry is the jungle tile to the south. I won't have IW for a long time and this could really reduce the amount of early city sites. I can't really compete with a deity AI in getting IW and settling cities in heavy jungle. The scout will probably be sent SE somewhere, but I'll settle in place unless something big is revealed.

Don't think I want to settle on the ivory, I already know that I will lose 1 riverside grassland hill (great tile) and possibly another (1N of the hut). There's also the issue of getting horsehockey tiles to the west.

Not going to make a scout, they often die after 10 turns on deity. It's even worse here as the jungle indicates we're in the middle (panthers). Barbarians pop up ridiculously early as well. Further my worker will have plenty to do (corn, ivory and cows) so I don't see any reason to delay it. Getting that 6 food corn up and running should be the #1 priority.

I agree with Agriculture -> AH, but I don't want to make any further tech plans before I scout the area. Barbarians start moving into your territory at 2600 BC on deity IIRC.

I'm no Deity player, but would settling 1N work? There are probably more floodplains to the north. It also leaves space for a Corn/marble city to the south, making the marble a food profit when the Corn is worked.

As for techpath: Animal Husbandry-Agriculture-Archery-The Wheel-Pottery

Edit: Move the Settler to the FPlains first, then the forest to scout out the north before settling north.

Settle in place. Nice capital with lots of hammers from all the forests you've got (there are more in the capital's BFC than what is displayed on here if you settle in place because of how the game lets you see a little bit of an unexplored tile).

Tip: I don't know if starting a very early war (with jaguars) is a good idea on deity. Maybe it's better to tech first and do wars in the renaissance.