Ramesses II (Industrious-Deity series)

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Ramesses II (Industrious-Deity series)

I can remember like it was yesterday, when peopled used to tell me to stop playing Ramesses because his traits can't win on Monarch. :mischief: I think we've come a long way since then, though I have to confess spiritual has got nerfed multiple ways in BtS so I haven't really been too eager now to use him lately. Though I guess it's time to dust him off and still give him a chance. But then again, his starting techs, and UB is very non-archipelago friendly so.... this may be interesting (or quite boring!).




:: Industrious-Deity Series Archive ::
 
Do you think spiritual has been nerfed? I think it got better, mostly because of the risk of slave revolts.
 
Give us a pic of the start so we can engage in futile debates!

Ohh, alright.

Do you think spiritual has been nerfed? I think it got better, mostly because of the risk of slave revolts.

I've noticed some other people making these wrong conclusions. So far it seems to be those who either don't play Spritual, or always played it very poorly.

This is a severe nerfing to Spiritual. And I don't see where this nonsense from slave revolts makes it immune. Spiritual suffers just as much a penalty as any other leader. And you are going to be stuck in slavery for the same amount of turns as the other guy...

Now look what happens with the golden ages. Everyone gets a free spiritual trait.. .but you? You get... NOTHING. No compensation.. zip.. nadda... nothing.

And... do I really need to state the obvious.. but..

CRISTO REDENTOR !!!

FREE SPIRITUAL TRAIT! God damn.... and what do the Spiritual Leaders get? A free ORG trait wonder.... no?

No! Nothing! Zip.. no compensation whatsoever.. nadda.

Again, firaxis' real lack of testing (as always) seems to blame. The first nerf should have put a reduction on 1 to 2 turns for civic swapping to compensate. The second should have put another 1 to 2 turns slice on civic switching. But no... Firaxis dropped the ball on this again... they didn't think it through. So spiritual is having an extra 2 to 4 turns extra time to wait for civic switches than anyone else. THIS IS NOT AN ADVANTAGE!!

So now what was the top trait amoungst deity players pre BtS has now shifted quite a lot down the list. Its day as #1 is gone now... I almost wonder if Firaxis did this on purpose after looking at the top caliber games that were being carried out and figured (ohhh well Spiritual is too broken, it wins on deity too much).

============================


Turn 0

Spoiler :

For some reason, the last patch of BtS keeps turning off Bubbles on start-up. Anyway, our third (deity) leader attempt finally ends up with stone in a much quicker-to-access manner. Actually, if you include all the times in the Immortal threads, it starts to become noticeable it’s getting hard to get this resource close by in Archipelago maps. However, we’ve finally got it, so I’m thinking I may attempt to go for the Mids in a classic SSE/WE.

We’ll have to scout the warrior around a bit more, and decide if I want to go for the mids right away in the capital, or try to gambit with a settler to work on the mids, while the capital works on other things. If I’m lucky, I can get both the G-Lighthouse and Mids. The thing is, if I mix the wonders amoung more than one city then I will be nerfing some of the benefits of having everything in the capital.
And.. if I’m not lucky, I will get a bunch of gold, so it’s a win-win situation here no matter what... I can’t lose.

DID YOU JUST HEAR WHAT I SAID?! (Gambler John Patrick imitation)...

I CAN’T LOSE... I CAN NOT LOSE!
 
Ohh, alright.

I've noticed some other people making these wrong conclusions. So far it seems to be those who either don't play Spritual, or always played it very poorly.

This is a severe nerfing to Spiritual. And I don't see where this nonsense from slave revolts makes it immune. Spiritual suffers just as much a penalty as any other leader. And you are going to be stuck in slavery for the same amount of turns as the other guy...

Now look what happens with the golden ages. Everyone gets a free spiritual trait.. .but you? You get... NOTHING. No compensation.. zip.. nadda... nothing.

And... do I really need to state the obvious.. but..

CRISTO REDENTOR !!!

FREE SPIRITUAL TRAIT! God damn.... and what do the Spiritual Leaders get? A free ORG trait wonder.... no?

I just meant that a spiritual leader can switch in and out of slavery as needed, to reduce the risk of a revolt. Whereas nonspiritual you basically just have to lump it.

Agreed that the golden ages hurt it a lot though. Cristo redento hardly matters... how often are you switching after that thing is built?
 
cristo is key on marathon and spi here has a bonus(dbl prod. speed) - you can switch each turn instead of every 5 turns which is great. The most abusive part being - have a big neighbor with whom you have good relations and who directly competes with you in space: 1 turn of barbarism, tribalism, etc., switch him to those civics, switch back next turn. Obviously he's gonna switch back to more decent civics, but that'll cost him 5-6 turns of anarchy at that size of the empire. So instead of a kamikaze attack to raze his capitol since he researched and launched faster then you or sabotage his parts - you have a very cheap and safe method(it's cheaper to sabotage a sec. bureau and pay for 5 civic switches then sabotage a sec. bureau and a part of his ship - significantly cheaper).

That being said, I think it's still the best trait in bts too - maybe not so hot anymore on normal speed, but on marathon where you have the same 5 turns limitation for switches(you can potentially do 3x switches in a game, and it'd be wise to abuse the feature) and GAs are comparatively shorter... still best trait, hands down.
 
I just meant that a spiritual leader can switch in and out of slavery as needed, to reduce the risk of a revolt. Whereas nonspiritual you basically just have to lump it.

No that is false arguing. If you switch out of slavery, you have to wait another full 5 turns (like everyone else) before you can switch back in again. And if you are in slavery, it's because you want/need to whip your cities and keep whipping. Now you are going to miss your optimum whips because of trying to evade a revolt chance? :crazyeye:


Agreed that the golden ages hurt it a lot though. Cristo redento hardly matters... how often are you switching after that thing is built?
Cristo hardly matters? You HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!
I don't think we are playing the same game here... or someone is missing some obvious fundamentals of it.

:eek::eek::eek:

If I am gearing up for a late-stage war, the optimum switch is EVERY turn!

cristo is key on marathon and spi here has a bonus(dbl prod. speed) - you can switch each turn instead of every 5 turns which is great. The most abusive part being - have a big neighbor with whom you have good relations and who directly competes with you in space: 1 turn of barbarism, tribalism, etc., switch him to those civics, switch back next turn. Obviously he's gonna switch back to more decent civics, but that'll cost him 5-6 turns of anarchy at that size of the empire. So instead of a kamikaze attack to raze his capitol since he researched and launched faster then you or sabotage his parts - you have a very cheap and safe method(it's cheaper to sabotage a sec. bureau and pay for 5 civic switches then sabotage a sec. bureau and a part of his ship - significantly cheaper).

That being said, I think it's still the best trait in bts too - maybe not so hot anymore on normal speed, but on marathon where you have the same 5 turns limitation for switches(you can potentially do 3x switches in a game, and it'd be wise to abuse the feature) and GAs are comparatively shorter... still best trait, hands down.

I remember trying to exploit this way back when Cristo was first introduced. Unfortunately it DOES NOT WORK. The AI gets immunity to anarchy from you, and I think this was intentionally done to prevent this exact game-exploit. Unfortunately they don't tell you about it, so you have to learn the hard way, like everything else with Firaxis.

I believe, you at least used to get the first turn resulting in anarchy from them, but then the immunity kicks in. After that, you can flip them for over a thousand years, and they just get free-civic switches at your expense.

=======================================


Turns 0-10
No screen shot because there really wasn’t anything worth noting. That area to my East-South is just a dead-end cut off by water, so no room there. I then began to move my warrior toward the West to see what was down that wing..
-ni

Turns 10-20
Spoiler :

Got one workboat out, now time for another... and then possibly a third. Because of the location of the clam to the south, it looks like putting a settler near the stone may be a feasible idea. AFTER I get TGL up and operational. I see a lot of amateurs go settler first.. that’s great WHEN IT WORKS, if it doesn’t they just re-roll. But we are playing straight-up for our life here...not some HoF gambit for POINTS.

Turns 20-30
Spoiler :

I have been getting hit by quite a few animals at this point, but in good shape due to proper terrain moves. Anyhow, we timed our hut just perfectly here. And we popped.... MINING! Ahah. I’d be so pissed if I was forced to pop it on my last research turn on mining, (that always happens).

Turns 30-40
Spoiler :

As you can see, I indeed did decide to go after 3 workboats first.
And so far, I started scouting down the West-South. It seems I haven’t met any enemy scouts or workboats yet. I may be isolated here. That can really be a problem if I need Astronomy, to link up with everyone. It means, this whole TGL plan may be practically for nothing. Perhaps I should just abort it here... but I had already researched techs for it...

Turns 40-50
Spoiler :

Well, I decided to just pray, and hope for the best that I could make contact without Astronomy. So I continued with the plan for TGL. Besides, even if I can’t use it to its fullest at least I can prevent another AI from being able to.
This is from turn #51 but since I don’t have any other shot, this will have to do for now.
As you can see, deity barbs always try to cause problems with wonderbuilding. They just refuse to give you a frieken break unless you get the Great Wall. But then, you’ll end up missing out on the Lighthouse anyway. So what can you do...

Turns 50-60
Spoiler :

Well, a little bit of a delay compared to our normal speeds, but turn #55 we put the last hammer into our first wonder. Slavery helped shaved off 3 turns here, so I was grateful for the food. Of course, I wasn’t so greatful to the barbs who tried to make sure my wonder building was delayed as much as possible. I guess things could be worse.

But they will eventually come to a hault, since I was able to get horses. I actually felt pretty sure horses (or metal) would pop in that spot, and it’s part of the reason I didn’t want to risk moving my capital on that tile. The terrain generation in this game is just getting too predictable/obvious.

It may look rather silly working un-improved tiles, but like I said... barbarian problems.

Turns 60-70
Spoiler :

Here we are, Pyramid city. I decided it was best to get Mids in a sister-city, since the capital had so much food around it would be better to put it to use for other smaller builds.

As for Pyramid city, I COULD have settled on the stone hill, but after doing a lot of thinking and judging, I decided to settle here, and in fact I even had the clams hooked up on the same turn (God I’m good). This lets me work 3 decent capital tiles from that city, while the capital works the food farther back.

Of course, this is from turn #71, because I have no shots from the 60-70 turnset again.

Turns 70-80
Spoiler :

My capital is showing the ill effects of whipping, but so be it. And here I Am trying to get another settler out. I already have a UU out guarding the West, which is rather busy running down those pesky barbs who keep trying to run into my capital. The warrior barbs have already turned into archers, and soon they will turn into hordes of axes coming. But my UU shall prevail. Though I will have to plan on building quite a bit more very soon.
Notes:
On turn #76 I got a notice ToA was built far away... If only I had marble I could have gotten that!

Turns 80-90
Spoiler :

I wasn’t sure what to call this city, so I named it Wine-Coast. Now my front got a little stronger, and my chariot(s) can heal a lot more quicker. Soon we’ll be trying to push it farther into barb-land. Barb-land, because we still haven’t met anyone else yet. Looks like we just won’t be doing any power-trades for quite some time here.

Turns 90-100
Spoiler :

Well, well, well. 475BC and no one took the Pyramids yet, looks like it is ours. But just to be sure, I’m going to whip it to completion here. Looks like those critics were wrong about not being able to nab mids on deity, (we even got another settler out AND built another world wonder at the same time!).
Of course the critics who say it is possible, will tell you it will lead to your death. Hmm. Now time to see if THOSE critics are also full of sh!t. We shall see...........

In other notes, looks like someone just completed Temple-of-Solomon. Who that is, is a good question. I still don’t know who the other 6 players are. And without my foreign trade routes, my lighthouse really isn’t doing much. I also had to self-research math and everything else now, so my teching is really not going that well, but Rep will at least help to dampen some of the bad luck in that department.
 
Have you set an exploration galley/workboat around your island to be 100% sure you're isolated? You could be delaying potential trade routes and tech trades if you haven't yet...
 
No, if the AI was anywhere near (even far away) they would have long by now had workboats greet us. Believe me, with their insane bonuses they have workboats headed your way before you can even THINK about getting your first hammer/axe/shield into one...

Anyhow, I remember DanF mentioning Era bonuses kick in around 2000 BC, and top off to about 30% discount in the Future era. So today I ran a worldBuilder test to verify the late-stage part. It seems their era bonus is much more powerful than that even with the latest patch of BtS. I am showing all projects getting a 58% discount. They only have to put in 42% of the original cost!

Pretty insane..

I have things to do now, but later may test the BC era bonuses, I don't doubt that may be shocking too...
 
No, if the AI was anywhere near (even far away) they would have long by now had workboats greet us. Believe me, with their insane bonuses they have workboats headed your way before you can even THINK about getting your first hammer/axe/shield into one...

Anyhow, I remember DanF mentioning Era bonuses kick in around 2000 BC, and top off to about 30% discount in the Future era. So today I ran a worldBuilder test to verify the late-stage part. It seems their era bonus is much more powerful than that even with the latest patch of BtS. I am showing all projects getting a 58% discount. They only have to put in 42% of the original cost!

Pretty insane..

I have things to do now, but later may test the BC era bonuses, I don't doubt that may be shocking too...
I do not find this shocling at all, considering how poor the AI specialises his cities. In order to stay competitive he either has to build more smart like a human - which is not going to happen - or heneeds a discount in order to compete. I cannot think of any other way to make the AI stay up given the mechaics of the game.

Giving the AI a discount makes sure that he can build fast, but then again so can a good human player. The AI is not so fast though that winning becomes absolutely impossible. I'd say Firaxis tweaked the AI to just about right.

Besides, you won the Roman game just fine while facing one setback after the other so you of all people should not complain about AI bonusses. None of them make up for amazing-player bonusses. ;)
 
Would've been more fun if the AI relied less on raw power bonusses and more on a not-being-stupid bonus though. Although I'm no expert on programming, I feel the algorithms used for some AI processes aren't good enough. I feel firaxis figured to solve all their AI trouble by just giving them raw power, instead of giving them actual AI.
The cityplacement algorithm isn't great (settling 1 tile offshore), the city specialisation seems to be wonky (building national wonders in strange places). I don't know whether programming the AI to think ahead more would just require to much CPU power, or firaxis felt the raw power bonus would suffice.
 
Well, well, well. 475BC and no one took the Pyramids yet, looks like it is ours. But just to be sure, I’m going to whip it to completion here. Looks like those critics were wrong about not being able to nab mids on deity, (we even got another settler out AND built another world wonder at the same time!).
Of course the critics who say it is possible, will tell you it will lead to your death. Hmm. Now time to see if THOSE critics are also full of sh!t. We shall see...........

On archi maps you can usually do whatever you like for quite a while. A LOT less emphasis on rexing and blocking.
Although scouting out the available landmasses is still important, I think you're missing a significant opportunity by not having scouted the perimeter of your land, could easily pick up sight of AI borders in the fog in order to help anticipate culture bridges.
With room for 7-8 cities on your main landmass and at least beaver city to the north you're in pretty good shape either way.
I guess you could be leaving it fogged in order to let the barbs drop cities in peace, but I'm not convinced that's an excuse for being in the dark about possible culture brides to potential trading partners.
It's pretty standard for landmass like yours to be seperated by just a single strip of ocean that can be bridged by culture long before astronomy comes online.
At the speed deity AI rexes it wont take long for them to do their part and get some culture into their coastline tiles.


The snarky (sarcastic, mean spirited) commentary isn't really helping much. It's an unpleasant distraction from what is otherwise a great read.
I look forward to more pics.
 
The AI gets immunity to anarchy from you, and I think this was intentionally done to prevent this exact game-exploit. Unfortunately they don't tell you about it, so you have to learn the hard way, like everything else with Firaxis.

they're immune to your switching, true; but you switch them to barbarism, tribalism and the like, so they'll have to switch back(till then they'll usually research ~20-25% slower). Now, when they switch back, they have to spend the turns in anarchy - and since they have to switch all 5 civics...
 
To be fair, early on you're not going to need to whip every 10 turns so the spiritual trait got a little buff there, it might not be enough to make up for the nerfs though.

About Cristo Redentor, well you seem to play for space or UN diplo in almost every game obsolete, the wonder comes in the late era after all, not all games last that long, but I agree it's powerful. :)
 
Don't forget that the spiritual trait is like a resource for the Cristo Redentor wonder (+100% production) so it costs less hammers to make up for the smaller reward, and it makes it very easy to deny it from a non-spiritual opponent.

In fact with his trait combo, Ramesses can build cristo faster than any other leader in the game! :lol: (+150% on traits alone)
 
they're immune to your switching, true; but you switch them to barbarism, tribalism and the like, so they'll have to switch back(till then they'll usually research ~20-25% slower). Now, when they switch back, they have to spend the turns in anarchy - and since they have to switch all 5 civics...

Well, before I go to bed tonight I'll load up an older game and do some world-builder testing on this.

By the way, after testing the BC era bonuses, at least they do start off at 0% instead of the 5% right off from the bat. But I don't know how it ramps up so fast to 58% in the future era.
 
IIRC, 60/100 (normal deity bonus) * 70/100 (future era discount) = 42% of your cost in the future era.
 
No that is false arguing. If you switch out of slavery, you have to wait another full 5 turns (like everyone else) before you can switch back in again. And if you are in slavery, it's because you want/need to whip your cities and keep whipping. Now you are going to miss your optimum whips because of trying to evade a revolt chance? :crazyeye:
No you time it for when you are not planning on whipping for 5 turns. You're only whipping a city once every 10 turns, right?



Cristo hardly matters? You HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!
I don't think we are playing the same game here... or someone is missing some obvious fundamentals of it.

:eek::eek::eek:

If I am gearing up for a late-stage war, the optimum switch is EVERY turn!
Well first of all have to point out the obvious... if you want to switch every turn, Cristo lets you do that. But why do you want to do that? What civics do you have to switch in the late game?
 
IIRC, 60/100 (normal deity bonus) * 70/100 (future era discount) = 42% of your cost in the future era.

Yamps, thanks a lot for the numbers! BTW, I think I remember seeing this elsewhere once upon a time. However, the general consensus I have seen is that the NORMAL DEITY BONUS is not allowed to count for PROJECTS, but now it seems at least in the last version of BtS it definitely does count toward projects. :mad:


Well first of all have to point out the obvious... if you want to switch every turn, Cristo lets you do that. But why do you want to do that? What civics do you have to switch in the late game?

Well, you would definitely want to capitalize on basics like: PS--> US -->PS
going every turn. As well as hot-swapping your other appropriate civics to match them. I can't tell you the other civics because they will be situation-dependent, only YOU can see which of the others is optimal.



=====================================

Anyway, I did some spy --> civic swapping, and the test has turned out to be a failure. First of all I started to put non-spiritual leaders into Despotism, Paganism, etc. The kicker is, non of them bother to switch back! I kept hitting the end turn thing for 30 turns, and they wouldn't damn switch out! ???? This was in the Future era even.

I thought maybe the AI does a check to see if it's worth an anarchy switch, so then I decided to do the test on a spiritual leader. Turns out, the spiritual leaders also DON'T switch out, despite it's free. They stay in all first-level civics!

Something is definitely broken again....

If someone else wants to world-builder and test this, go ahead. I'll try some more probing today and see what happens. Maybe my game went down a certain path where civics with the AI just got all bugged up?

:confused:

If I took Zara, and converted him in just ONE civic, like Representation, only THEN did he bother to revolt, despite Representation was actually a civic that was very good for him!! :lol:
 
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