[MH2] - Monarchs take on Deity

Princes, Monarchs and Emperors of the world, unite!

For the pure entertainment for the likes of Dave mcW and Obsolete, I hereby present you:

Monarchs take on Deity!

I was reading the latest Deity succession game (Deity Spying, still ongoing), played by Kossin, Shyuhe and Obsolete, where Obsolete rants on and on about how monarch-newb they're playing, how monarch playerlike their land improvent looks, how monarch rookie their workers are working and so on and so on. So, let's show 'em how REAL monarch rookies play deity!

For this SG I'm looking for 2 or 3 players, who cannot win on emperor more than 75% of the time, but as a minimum you should be able to win on prince about 75% of the time. If you regularly attempt immortal, please do not sign up. I want us to be as unprepared as possible for the onslaught we will face.

When some players have signed up, we can discuss the leader, map and settings. Though I'd like a strong leader (maybe unrestricted leaders), I would like the map and settings to be not to extreme to our advantage, it has to resemble a normal deity game with a strong leader, and a strong start. Maybe even use one of DR Kossin's easier starts, though I prefer a fresh map.

Let's see if our combined experience, together with very focussed play, and attempts at mathematical calculations can make us win on Deity!

Deity players are welcome to critique our play, point out obvious rookie-like mistakes and just in general rant on about how monarch-like we're playing and that we'll never win, but:

Deity players, please don't offer advice for the upcoming turnsets!
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Rules:

1. Win!

Roster:

1 Mike Hendi
2 Happyturtle
3 Asaf
4 Ichabod
5 Stochastic

Sure, I'm in! I'm Prince/Monarch.

I'd like to sign up. I usually win on prince, and I now play on monarch. Getting better at that
Most of my experience is from vanilla and Warlords, but I've played a few BTS games. I hope that won't be an issue.

I hope I have the time for it (I'm already in 2 other SG's), but this sounds too interesting to just pass on.

My first goal in this game is to survive til the AD's...

I'd like to play. I used to win a good percent of my emperor games and I was starting to get better at immortal, but I haven't played the game for six months, so I guess I went back a few levels.

The idea seems pretty nice. Maybe we'll find out that it is not that difficult

Welcome aboard everybody!

What leader do you guys want to play? And more importantly: What leaders do we want to play against?

I think Spiritual is good for us, to be able to give in to demands more easily, swapping favorite civics etc. I think we need to maintain a good diplo situation.

Ghandi might be pretty good, especially if we start with stone and/or marble for a wonderspam with settled specialists, and the fast worker won't hurt, especially on normal speed.

What do you guys have in mind?

I'd like the game we play to be as similar as a normal settings random map, where a lot of things have just fallen into the right place.
So that means: Pre-select opponents, and reroll the map until it fits the playing style we want.

I have the most experience with Isabella, but Fast Workers are pretty awesome.

Gandhi has one problem (well, not gandhi, but the indian civilization), his starting techs are awful. In deity, we're going to be competing against ais who start with 2 settlers, so we'll have to be fast to secure some land. India starts with mining and mysticism, the latter being an useless starting tech in deity level. With these techs we can have a difficult time reaching pottery or writing while managing to get a fast 2nd and 3rd city.

A civ that starts with mining and agriculture would be perfect. I guess that we waiting for a map with a good starting position might make this not that big of a problem, tough.

About the leader, I think a creative one would be good, since fast border pops will be very nice to block land fast and an organized one would help us to overcome the maintenance costs that we aren't used to. So, I guess zara would be my choice.

Financial is another good trait, philosophical too. Mansa Musa could be a nice option, skirmishers would give us a good unit to counter barbs and an eventual early DoW.

I don't think that choosing opponents is a very good idea, but that just me. I like the surprise os random opponents.

A good diplo will be key for our game to last until late (I prefer not say anything about victory yet), but I wouldn't count on managing to wonderspam. The only wonders we'll get in deity will be the ones we beeline too and even then we'll need luck.

Not sure which leader to start with, but I think financial is the most important trait for us. Philosophical is good, but since we won't have wonders (probably) and specialists will be scarce (at best) at the start of the game, I think it's less important.
I personally like charismatic, especially at the start of the game because of the +1, and the XP bonus is also good.
Hannibal is an option, although UU and UB are far from amazing.
Fishing as a starting tech is very good for sea food resources, which we can reroll until we to get. Maybe lakes?

I agree on not choosing opponents.

Maybe Darius... Financial/Organized would do wonders to our economy...

But I'll advocate again for the importance of fast border pops to block land. If we get a civilization that start without mysticism, we'll have to tech it, build a monument (or whip it when we reach 2 pop, but then we'll need bronze working and a revolt to slavery) and wait ten turns for a border pop. If we choose to play a non-creative leader we should have this in mind in the placing of our first cities.

IMO, the main difficulty in deity is the speed of the AI landgrabbing. If we start with an easy blockable chunk of land, that's not going to be that big of a problem, but that's not that usual. So before we think about economic advantages/military advantages, we have to think about how we're going to grab the land to leverage those advantages.

Hatty perhaps? Creative, Spiritual, starts with Wheel and Agriculture, and has an early UU? Or Willem for Creative, Financial? Honestly, I really don't know what we're up against.

This looks like it could be either loads of fun! Do you still have room for one more? The OP still has all slots open but it looks like there are already 4 people taking the discussion fairly seriously... I'm at emperor level but on epic time.

If you will take me on too, I'd support the idea of Hatty. I expect that creative and spiritual will be very nice and if it really is a just win than the extra priests from the obelisk might just be able to bulb us up to a quick Apostolic Palace.

Otherwise I think I'll lurk with interest.

Hatty is an excellent leader to get your feet wet on deity. Other leaders that are nice to try are Gandhi, Asoka, Willem, Gilgamesh, Cathy etc. Basically I'd take a leader that has at least one of creative, spiritual, or financial in that order of preference. Remember that good diplomacy is the most important thing in deity.

Will lurk and comment with interest

Ichabod said:

IMO, the main difficulty in deity is the speed of the AI landgrabbing.

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I wouldn't know... but then again, that's the point of this game.
So if that's the situation, I support creative as well.

shyuhe said:

Hatty is an excellent leader to get your feet wet on deity. Other leaders that are nice to try are Gandhi, Asoka, Willem, Gilgamesh, Cathy etc. Basically I'd take a leader that has at least one of creative, spiritual, or financial in that order of preference.

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I think according to the rules of this game you're supposed to wait after the 1st turnset and then say 'Oh, you should have gone with hatty... Too bad'

(1) Damnit, I've tried to edit the opening post THREE times now, and everytime after modifying it, my internet connection fails somehow. I'll try again after posting this (wel if this one gets through )

(2) I guess we have room for one more, so welcome aboard Stochastick

(3) Thanks for showing interest, Shyuhe! I really enjoy reading deity games, probably like most of us. Lets see if we have read enough deity games to turn some of that theoretic knowledge into practice (and not die)

The idea of the game is indeed for us to be thrown in the deep, and let us figure out things without help, but you're free to comment our play after the turnsets, in any of the following matters: And maybe we get Obsolete to rant about our foolish useless little noble-playstyles

When we have failed...uhm... i mean IF we might fail ofcourse, yeah, that's what I meant, we might try agian, while trying to get help from deity players, like: Deities give the orders, Monarchs try to carry them out as well as they can.

But thanks anyway for your pointers

(4) Ok then, we'll go with Hatty, and we shall not choose opponents (warning: this might make things a lot harder!)

(5) Now for the map: I prefer something standard like fractal, pangaea or continents.
Or maybe one of the easier Kossin maps. Of course, that means preknowledge of the map (not very realistic) and no random opponents.
We might take this or http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=347975 autosave, and try it. If we don't look past the first post in that topic it should be good enough to count as a random map, unknown opponents. I bookmarked the save back then, but I can't remember anything anymore about that game.

(6) Surviving's not the plan. We must WIN! I'd rather take risks and die trying, than getting into an unwinnable position to survive.

Continents should be less stressful in the early game, I think.

Thanks Mikehendi!

Continents would probably be easier diplomatically at first, but I think there are a couple of disadvantages:
1) I think "We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced" scales with difficulty so we will have far fewer tech trades until meeting the rest of the world.
2a) If we are stuck alone next to a psycho it seems that might be the end before we start.
2b) From what I have read elsewhere it looks like there is a very serious risk of having an AI on another continent go "critical" and take over the world when the human isn't there to manipulate the diplo.
3) If we want to get out with a relatively easy AP win than we need to be able to spread our religion to all the AIs.

So having said that I think some sort of Pangaea or Fractal might be the best choice, but what do I know?

The suggested map might be a good choice, but it is Incan. Would we have to get someone to world builder us into Egypt or can we change when we start? I've never tried something like that and feel woefully ignorant. Alternatively I guess we could try as Incan, granaries are essentially a creative trait.

Yeah, Hatty is a good choice.

I agrre with mikehendi, even tough jokes about our chances in this game are welcome, I rather try to win and lose miserably than trying only to survive and watching some AI winning culture without us doing anything

About the map, the one posted is fine by me, but I think we could generate a new one. I prefer a fresh map. Maybe with 2 gems and gold in the BFC

About number of turns played. I think early game we should pay something like a maximum of 10 turns or until we finish researching a tech to decide on the next (if it finishes quicker than 10 turns). Early game is too important to take it lightly. Important events like Monty showing up in the 3rd turn should be reported too and then waiting for some discussion with the rest of the team, in my opinion.

If we want to make it a little easy on ourselves, we can reduce the # of AI's. For example - take a standard size map, and only have 5 AI's with us in the world.
I don't think it's a very big change, but it could give us a little less hard time when trying to grab some land.

Ichabod said:

About number of turns played. I think early game we should pay something like a maximum of 10 turns or until we finish researching a tech to decide on the next (if it finishes quicker than 10 turns). Early game is too important to take it lightly. Important events like Monty showing up in the 3rd turn should be reported too and then waiting for some discussion with the rest of the team, in my opinion.

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I totally agree on taking the early game very slowly. We should discuss about every decision in the early game. If you play 2 turns, and Monty dows someone, stop and discuss. After the discussion that player can resume his session, but it should be discussed. If we decide to backstab, we need to change plans immediately, not at the end of the session.

I'd say turnsets last from about 5 turns, to 10 turns max if nothing really happens. I don't want to put up strict numbers, just play until something happens, and if nothing happens, stop after 10ish turns.

We shall micromanage our asses off, pull of every trick we know, and micromanage like hell (did I say micromanage yet).

At least in the first cycle of the roster (30-50 turns) we should discuss things like what tiles to work turn by turn, in what order the worker improves tiles etc.

AP win technically counts as a win, but personally I find it a bit cheesy. Fractal can be worse than continents, ending up in isolation or with 1 AI. On pangea there's the risk of getting boxed in very fast.

If we choose a fresh map, we could ask someone to peak in WB to see if we're not isolated or sandwiched by Shaka and Monty, or maybe some other insta-defeat mechanic.

If we decide a fresh map, I could try and generate a few nice starts tomorrow, like about 20 hours from now

OTOH, I don't mind playing the "very winnable deity map", as it's proven a good map when you first try deity.

Asaf said:

If we want to make it a little easy on ourselves, we can reduce the # of AI's. For example - take a standard size map, and only have 5 AI's with us in the world.
I don't think it's a very big change, but it could give us a little less hard time when trying to grab some land.

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Don't let TMIT read this!