RBE DSG4 - Beyond Deity

Civilization: Egypt
Opponents: Seven
Map Size: Standard
World: Continents 70% water
Climate: Standard
Barbarians: None
Rules: Standard, except for AI cost factor 50%
Victory: Any
Version: 1.29f

T-hawk is captaining this game. He will set the roster.




RBE DSG4 - Start File

Good luck.


- Sirian

Ooh, nice start, especially if we build a granary and clear & irrigate a couple of those game tiles for mega bonus food! I sense a settler factory coming on...

Edit: Roster here (Sirian, if you see this, feel free to edit it into the first post for easy reference: )

Urugharakh
Zed-F
T-hawk
Sulla
JMB

Iteean can be an alternate if we lose somebody.

Should be a heck of a ride, although I'm not sure how we can top the legendary RBE2; heck, that start all by itself might make this game easier

Ok, here is my confirmation.

Also confirmed (sorry Iteean!) With the two best civ traits in the game and this rather nice starting location, we should stand a pretty good chance at Beyond Deity.

PS - I like the smiley that Sirian chose for this game.

I assume we're planning to work toward a peaceful victory here. We need map info & contact, but don't need to worry about huts. Start with a temple while we research pottery, then some scouts & MP? A culture advantage may help keep the AI off our backs a bit longer. Using a forested game tile we should complete the temple as we grow to 2, where we pull 5 spt with 2 forested game, for quick warrior builds. Then it's a choice of settler/granary or granary/settler; I would tend toward the latter but it will depend on scouting results. There may be another high-food site nearby that needs quick settlement. Or, we could settle close enough that a new city could borrow the topmost game.

I'll volunteer to take the first set, unless you want a different order, T-Hawk.

I was going to let Urugharakh lead off, since back in Epic 12, he pulled off some great early-game management to turn in the only victory. We could use some of that here. I'll slot you in next, Zed, unless you don't want to lead off, Urug.

Here's my proposed order:

Urugharakh
Zed-F
T-hawk
Sulla
JMB

Should be fun! First time I've gotten to play with Sulla or Urug in an SG.

Urug, go right on ahead. Play twenty, thirty, or forty turns to start; then Zed play 20 if Urug doesn't go the maximum, and then 10 each from there.

Thanks for the compliments, T-hawk. I take the challenge and start tonight.

Sounds good to me. Go Urug!

Start: Moving the worker onto the hill would provide additional information but looses 2 worker turns. So I move worker west onto the game where I'll build a road anyway.



Moving 1 tile northwest will bring in one additional bonus grassland and 2 additional hills at the cost of the gold. Without barbs a capital on a hill is not necessary, but the improved shield production will be useful later. So I move.

We found Thebes in 3950 BC and start researching pottery at max science. A warrior is ordered.

3750 BC: We produce our first warrior and send him onto the hill. We spot spices. So the top spot was 1 tile north of our starting position and I opted for the second best.



We finish our 2nd warrior in 3550 BC and send him scouting. Hope for map information and contacts.

3400 BC: 3rd and final warrior from Thebes spots the sun. We start barracks as prebuild for granary. We meet Alex. His tech prices are ridiculous. He surely adds our full tech penalty to his prices.

3300 BC: Alex discovered warrior code as expected.

3050 BC: We discover pottery. I switch Thebes from barracks to granary. Worker will clear the first forest this turn to add 10 shields. Trade Alex masonry and pottery for alphabet and 10 g. Could have bought bronze working in addition, but this would have cost our whole cash for the next 20 turns. So I choose to wait until our 3 scouting warriors make more contacts. I start a 40 turn research on mathematics. Even with full research we can get to writing in less than 40 turns. This will drop probably after a couple of AI civs get writing and we get more cities. But I rarely wait 40 turns for writing. The AI usually neglects math. So we have a good chance of being the first discovering it and should gain some stuff for brookering it around.

2950 BC: Thebes finished granary. Time for our first settler.

2710 BC: Alex starts pyramids

2630 BC: Our first settler finished.



I start on temple to make use of the 10 shields from the second forset and to get some culture. Alex still lacks ceremonial burial. The unescorted greek settler in the north will found on the tile I planed as our third city. With this map I actually didn't felt like runing early game blockades for urgend spots, but that may change once our warriors are back home. Observing the minimap, it seems we are alone with Alex on this continent.

2510 BC: We found Memphis. Pharsalos founded directely north where I planed our 3rd city.

2430 BC: Thebes finished temple. I chopped 2 game forests for a gain of 20 shields, irrigated one and mined the other. So we are at +5 food/turn and grow every other turn which is optimum until we pass beyond size 6 or change goverment. Alex has writing. No chance to buy it.

2270 BC: Second settler finished.

2190 BC: Greeks start Colossus

2110 BC: All I did this turn was founding Heliopolis.



Thebes will build a settler every 4 turns. I have Memphis on warrior/worker cycle now, but we should consider an early temple there. Alex still lacks ceremonial burial. So we get a culture advantage, which is very useful in deity games. Unfortunately we are alone with him on this continent. Hence my math gamble failed. Buying @2nd is more expensive than researching ourself. Only trading might be useful, though here the cost difference hurts us. We might need a war with Alex. So researching bronze and iron working after the math gambit finished should be prudent. In case we have iron, we can upgrade a couple of vet warriors to swords with the cash gained from minimun research. We only need Pharsalos and anything Alex will found farther south. So a targeted strike should give us a chance against hoplites. On the other hand we might apply cultural pressure on Pharsalos as Alex still lacks ceremonial burial and we are already way ahead in culture.

There are lots of cows and silks in the north, not seen on the pictures. This will be a superb FP area unless we can capture Athens and eliminate Greece.



BC2110

Urug, that was more than 40 turns... it was 41!

Got it. Will likely play tonight, will play to 1750BC to even out the turn numbers.

Stuck on a continent with only one AI opponent? That's definitely not the situation we would have wanted. The fact that it's the Greeks doesn't make things any easier either, since it makes early war all but impossible. I'm seriously worried that Alex will come after us as soon as the land grab phase ends, and we'll be hard pressed to stop him. At least his aggression level is pretty low though, so maybe we'll avoid war...

The first turn through the rotation will probably be the most critical in the game. Here's hoping that we all have good luck and don't get sneak-attacked.

On the bright side, it looks like the two of us have a fair bit of land between us. It's uncommon, especially for a low aggressor like Alex, for the AIs to go to war before they're done filling up the land. Making outside contact soon is going to be important, although I'm not sure how we're going to go about getting Map Making...

Early turns: We have another settler ready in our capitol so I send him NW. I want to grab the last bit of grass close to Athens and block Pharsalos off from the rest of the Greek cities. This will hopefully force Greece to settle in less desirable lands since he seems to have a lot of jungle to deal with. Our Thebes worker completes the road to Memphis and starts the road to Heliopolis. Our settler heading NW does a bit of scouting as he does so and spots a greek settler pair heading in that direction. Fortunately he is able to beat them to a prime spot with a bonus wheat tile, and Elephantine is founded. The greek settler pair heads back south.

Middle turns: We complete another settler and I send him north to grab some of the cows. I want some insurance that the greeks won't just bypass Elephantine and settle in our rear. Memphis completes a warrior and I send him in that direction as well, as only having 1 warrior up there for barb defense is probably too risky; Memphis is on our road net and Heliopolis soon will be, both will be able to turn out anti-barb warriors relatively quickly if need be and are relatively reinforceable, so I'm less worried about our south for now. We also have another lookout warrior down there at the moment.

Late turns: We complete a third settler. I'm a bit worried that Pharsalos at size 3 might spit out a settler and head north to claim some of our backlands but I'm also worried that if some greek settlers start heading south from their core we could lose all opportunities to grab some territory down there. Still, I want to deny as much food-rich land to the AI as possible, especially bonus resources, so I send the settler north. We should have another settler built in 3 turns which can head south. A greek worker is building a road right past Elephantine, looking like he's heading for Pharsalos. Thanx, Alex! Alex founds Mycenae near the end of our turn.

Alex is in a bit of a bind, he's short on good land. He's got lots of dyes, but Sparta, Mycenae, and Thermopylae are buried in jungle, Pharsalos and Corinth are pretty dry though irrigable, and Argos has floodplains but not many shields. Other than Athens, only Knossos has a half-decent amount of good tiles available, and it's a 3rd-ring city. At the end of my turn he still doesn't have Ceremonial Burial, but he does have Writing, as well as Bronze Working, the Wheel, and Warrior Code. We might be able to out-produce him, even with his beyond deity bonus, if he doesn't start putting a major focus on workers soon. We, on the other hand, are industrious, and so far the very first thing each of our cities has done is pump out a worker... we need a temple next at Heliopolis, however.

Here's a proposed dotmap. This includes keeping Pharsalos at its current location after we capture it. It wastes a couple desert and a forest between Elephantine and Pharsalos but otherwise looks ok to me, but doesn't put a ton of cultural pressure on Pharsalos. We have settlers on the way to Red and Blue dots, and our northernmost settler has his move yet to go this turn so you can decide whether to go after Red or Blue first, letting our straggler take the other. Yellow is another good city site up north but a bit far away to be useful right now, and Green and Light Blue are good spots down south. Green has the only Dye that Greece hasn't wrapped up already, and Light Blue is nice to fill in the gap between Green and our core. Both are jungle-bound other than a couple fish, however. Maroon dots are fishing villages and are not really important right now.




And here's the save file:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/rbe4-egypt-1750bc.zip

Early war could be tough, we'd need swords at least. Still, if our advantage in land quality continues to hold (which it may not), it might be possible to wage a limited campaign and take a couple cities, then sue for peace. If you want to try the pressure route instead, you could move Red dot due south one and Blue dot SW one. That would make Red dot pretty dry, though.

Hey Zed-F,

If I remember correctly, there are no barbs in this game...

JMB

Ah, yes, we don't need the 2nd warrior north for barb defense. Right, well it shouldn't matter much where he goes then, feel free to redirect to Elephantine if you prefer. Also our lookout warrior could be moved elsewhere if necessary although it would be nice to keep an eye on where greek settler pairs head down south.

In case we own several warriors (at least 3) without specific task, we should block the greek settler pairs heading south.

Originally posted by Zed-F
Urug, that was more than 40 turns... it was 41!

Click to expand...

That was with purpose to save time. I intended to found Heliopolis at the desired spot. It was late yesterday night and I had to get up early today. So there was no time for a dot map. Easiest way to solve the problem was doing one more turn. We should be flexible and use the rules to our advantage and not to our disadvantage.

Wow, this is going to be one TOUGH battle for you guys!

You drew the absolute worst choice for an opposing civ to sit with you on a small island, the Feud-defense Greeks! While that makes early war ugly, there are many benefits to a strike that hutrts him and takes Pharsalos and another city.

Let me give you some odds should you accept the mantle of war...
Vet horse vs fortified Reg Hoplite-win 25%, lose 40%, retreat 35%
Vet horse vs fortified Vet Hoplite -win 13%, lose 47%, retreat 40%
(That's if they're in a town or grass, it's about 25% worse on hill)
Expected Number of vet horses needed to take a city with TWO
hoplites on a single turn: 5 (losing 1) vs Reg, 6 (losing 2) vs Vet

Vet sword vs fortif. Reg Hoplite-win 52%, lose 48%, no retreat
Vet horse vs fortif. Vet Hoplite -win 33%, lose 66%
Expected Number of vet swords needed to take a city with TWO
hoplites on one turn: 3.5 (losing 1.3) vs Reg, 4 (losing 2) vs Vet
With their higher attack, you need less swords than horse, but due to slowness will lose more of them in the process.

If you siege instead of blitz, taking multiple rounds, and IF there is no barracks for them to heal, a 4 on 2 attack results are:
Vet horse vs Vet hoplites: win 37%, lose 60%, retreat 2%
Vet sword vs Vet hoplites: win 83%, lose 17%, losing 2 swords
For horses, chance to win goes to 55%/75%/87% with 5/6/7 horses.
If the silly hoplites are only regulars, not vets, and you have vets, your odds go way up! 4 on 2 swords wins 95%, 5 on 2 horses wins 88%. (Caveat - these calculations don't account for promotion on either side, which may be a factor)

Bottom line - with horses, attack with triple the number of defenders, and with swords, double the number of attackers.
Preferably in both cases, on a single turn, don't let them heal or reinforce.

(As an aside, Gallic Swords vs Hoplites or Numidian Mercs,
Vet vs Vet, win 28%, lose 40%, retreat 32%, number needed
to take in a blitz is 4.3 (losing 1.1), or siege wins 72% of 4 on 2,
but lose only 1 unit, compared to loss of 2 slower swords)

Those odds are really not THAT bad, considering the potential gain from going to war. It's all about concentration of power, if you can have 2-3 times the attackers at the spot you choose, you can overcome the hoplites. If they use non-vet hoplites, your vets will actually crush them, given a numerical superiority.

What about their counterattack? Let's say you're no dummy and have a rax and three vet spears defending, because you know when and where things are gonig to happen, while they're clueless.
Six regular swords will beat you, or five vets.
Nine regular horses are needed, or seven vets.
Eight regular archers will win, or six vets (if you don't get 'em first)
With the barracks on your side and this many attackers, promotions on your side definitely would be a factor. Conclusion from their counterattack: get sufficient numbers almost in place, and when you declare war, hit the cities quickly and deny their iron right away before they can make swords.

Regarding the 41 turns, the original smiley denoted it was a friendly ribbing It's standard practice in our SG's to allow one or two extra turns under extenuating circumstances, as long as one person doesn't invoke that too often. A good opening, Urug.

Charistatistician