MadDjinn's Deity LP - Rome

MadDjinn · Jul 8, 2011

Ok, so here we go with Rome! (post .332 patch) (as voted on by the YouTube channel subscribers)

For about 70 turns you'll see some 'exciting' play, then there's the 'empire building' phase where I test the limits on REx->ICS, and finally we end up with a late game war for all the marbles. (mostly because I forgot I was supposed to be trying to win :mischief:

)

The settings were Pangea/Standard size/Standard speed.

The opener is a clear winner (IMO) for a Iron based civ. The timing of the Liberty Settler and Iron Working line up fairly well post-patch due to IW being a little cheaper to tech.

Enjoy. (Save file attached if you want to play along)

Link to video.

Valentir · Jul 8, 2011

Good start. I always feel unlucky with my start, as Iroquios would already be at war with me 10 turns ago with 8 warriors and 5 archers. Looking forward for next video.

Furycrab · Jul 8, 2011

Cool more good stuff to watch!

Wonder if could get a copy of the initial start file, if for nothing else to play along or play ahead and compare.

MadDjinn · Jul 8, 2011

I haven't started a new game since, so I should be able to get a copy of the starting save for this one. I do have the DLC civs though, so that's the only caveat.

This is a decent start. Rome gets iron in ~30% of the games I've tested with them. If Rome doesn't get Iron, there's ~50% chance that there's absolutely no iron within 12 hexes of Rome. That's a pain...

Getting out there and scouting/meeting the CSs/other AIs early really helps keep a very aggressive neighbour from a straight DoW. (via amassing, but not using, gold) I'm hoping the replay will show me what his warriors were doing though. He coveted my lands, bought my cow, but didn't come visit. I'm thinking he thought the Siamese were a target until I showed up with the Legions.

w a i n y · Jul 8, 2011

Love the videos. Out of curiosity, do you think a regular swordsman rush beats a regular archer rush in the new patch? Obviously with Babylon and China you're going archer and with Rome you're going sword, but what about a generic civ (or one with a later UU like France and Ottomans)? Or is the best strategy going to be sword rush followed by catapults a bit later, assuming enough iron exists?

MadDjinn · Jul 8, 2011

The 2nd Vid actually starts at 30:28 in the video.

I must've slipped one clip to the end by accident. So it'll seem like 2 turns are missing unless you start at the end.

Magma_Dragoon · Jul 8, 2011

I noticed you were upset about the Iroquois capital being 5 tiles from yours, but for the opposite reason I would be. Are you trying to build cities on every 4th tile to leverage Rome's glory ability or is ICS generally accepted as the "best" way to play?

My style is to cover as much land as possible with as few cities as possible, in order to minimize the happiness overhead of building each city. Is that bad in your opinion? I'm new to emperor but find king kinda easy.

MadDjinn · Jul 8, 2011

w a i n y said:
Love the videos. Out of curiosity, do you think a regular swordsman rush beats a regular archer rush in the new patch? Obviously with Babylon and China you're going archer and with Rome you're going sword, but what about a generic civ (or one with a later UU like France and Ottomans)? Or is the best strategy going to be sword rush followed by catapults a bit later, assuming enough iron exists?

It'll depend on the map (resources) and civ most likely. Archer rush, or Chariot archer rush for those with them, vs. sword rush is debatable. Archers come earlier and are cheaper, but tend to be squishy. Roman Legions or Hiawatha's no iron Mohawks (plus the other Warrior UU upgrades) can march ahead. (or spear rush for those UUs)

I'd have to try an archer rush to see how it would flow.

Or no rush. Still an option.

MadDjinn · Jul 8, 2011

Magma_Dragoon said:
I noticed you were upset about the Iroquois capital being 5 tiles from yours, but for the opposite reason I would be. Are you trying to build cities on every 4th tile to leverage Rome's glory ability or is ICS generally accepted as the "best" way to play?

My style is to cover as much land as possible with as few cities as possible, in order to minimize the happiness overhead of building each city. Is that bad in your opinion? I'm new to emperor but find king kinda easy.

ICS is just one tactic. But if you're going to do it, you need to create the correct matrix to keep trade routes to 3 tiles and maximize the number of cities in an area.

Going the opposite way (minimize number of cities over an area) is just fine as an option.

In these videos I was thinking that the ICS tactics were back and stronger than before. Which was 'correct' in the end, but the pay off for it is lacking. So you can do it, and it won't cost you much, but there's little reason to do it. (unlike when the game launched)

TheSorcerer · Jul 8, 2011

Currently watching the second video. Just wanted to let you know I really enjoy watching your LPs - already watched the entire China LP and it helped me alot getting better with Civ 5. Thanks alot and keep it up!

anandus · Jul 9, 2011

I love your videos. They really help me become a better player. And it's enjoyable too

But a thing I was wondering is: You always research or build when you get prompted to, never making a queue.
Aren't you afraid of missing out on any overflow? (If there is)

LaminarFlow · Jul 9, 2011

MadDjinn said:
ICS is just one tactic. But if you're going to do it, you need to create the correct matrix to keep trade routes to 3 tiles and maximize the number of cities in an area.

Going the opposite way (minimize number of cities over an area) is just fine as an option.

In these videos I was thinking that the ICS tactics were back and stronger than before. Which was 'correct' in the end, but the pay off for it is lacking. So you can do it, and it won't cost you much, but there's little reason to do it. (unlike when the game launched)

So what are the benefits of ICS? I prefer to have minimal cities to keep my culture cost down. I usually puppet the cities I capture and rarely annex or raze. I didn't play much when the game first came out so I never read up on ICS.

Silly Boots · Jul 9, 2011

LaminarFlow said:
So what are the benefits of ICS? I prefer to have minimal cities to keep my culture cost down. I usually puppet the cities I capture and rarely annex or raze. I didn't play much when the game first came out so I never read up on ICS.

Having a ton of relatively small cities gives you a lot of beakers, gold, as well as extra production for armies. Pre-patch it was very powerful with the +5 :c5production:

from Communism, but it appears that with this LP to still be a force to be reckoned with even after the "nerf".

MadDjinn · Jul 9, 2011

anandus said:
I love your videos. They really help me become a better player. And it's enjoyable too

But a thing I was wondering is: You always research or build when you get prompted to, never making a queue.
Aren't you afraid of missing out on any overflow? (If there is)

I don't feel the need to queue things up all the time. Sometimes I'll select a tech deeper into the tech tree, but otherwise a few seconds to consider if I should still be on this particular path is fine by me.

As per overflow, it's there, and never 'lost'. Beaker overflow just ends up in whatever tech you choose next.

LaminarFlow said:
So what are the benefits of ICS? I prefer to have minimal cities to keep my culture cost down. I usually puppet the cities I capture and rarely annex or raze. I didn't play much when the game first came out so I never read up on ICS.

Silly Boots said:
Having a ton of relatively small cities gives you a lot of beakers, gold, as well as extra production for armies. Pre-patch it was very powerful with the +5 from Communism, but it appears that with this LP to still be a force to be reckoned with even after the "nerf".

Pretty much this. That, and with the right policies/set up, you can 'overcome' the penalties for SP acquisition. (somewhat... it's still slower than a small empire, due to fixed rates from Cultural CS allies and limited numbers of 'boosters' but overall rate can be mitigated to a point) I think in this game I gained ~3 full SP trees worth of policies by the end. I definitely expanded, so there's definitely more SPs available if you expand and take the right policies. (Piety for example)

anandus · Jul 9, 2011

MadDjinn said:
As per overflow, it's there, and never 'lost'. Beaker overflow just ends up in whatever tech you choose next.

Oh, I didn't know that

RedRover57 · Jul 9, 2011

I really enjoy your videos, but I would like to see what you do with a less than optimal start. In this series your start was near perfect, with 6 iron in your capitol and plenty of room to REX. Plus being able to take Hiawatha's city with Pyramids built already was classic. So it was ideal for your planned strategy. I would say that you would usually need to reroll 20-30 times to get a similar start (top 5% of possible starts). In your previous series (China) I would place your start in the top 1%. I have started hundreds of games and have never seen anything like that 5 lux start with 3 mining lux.

What would you do instead if you started out isolated, with a large mountain range separating you from the other civs such that you only found 2 civs before turn 50 and very little room to expand on your little peninsula? This is more of a typical start for me. I guess you would have to reroll and not make a video :mischief:

Lose · Jul 9, 2011

good video man you got sooo lucky with the 6 iron
what would you have you done if you had none?
and it was also good to see a non writing beeline start

subbed!

Furycrab · Jul 9, 2011

RedRover57 said:
I really enjoy your videos, but I would like to see what you do with a less than optimal start. In this series your start was near perfect, with 6 iron in your capitol and plenty of room to REX. Plus being able to take Hiawatha's city with Pyramids built already was classic. So it was ideal for your planned strategy. I would say that you would usually need to reroll 20-30 times to get a similar start (top 5% of possible starts). In your previous series (China) I would place your start in the top 1%. I have started hundreds of games and have never seen anything like that 5 lux start with 3 mining lux.

What would you do instead if you started out isolated, with a large mountain range separating you from the other civs such that you only found 2 civs before turn 50 and very little room to expand on your little peninsula? This is more of a typical start for me. I guess you would have to reroll and not make a video

Well I don't think he hides the fact that he has at the very least a decent first 30 minutes start before he puts it up to youtube.

Rome has an Iron bias, which means you'll have that much iron a good 30-33% of the time. The wonder was convenient, but not exactly a game breaker and he got plenty of bad luck, he got at least 2 wonder fails, the Porcelein Tower went earlier than usual when he was less than 10 turns from GE popping it, which means he will likely struggle to keep up in tech seeing he unlocked Piety.

He could have gotten an easier first target. The Iroquois didn't exactly put up the best fight, but I've had games where I ended up against something like an Iron-less Gandhi as my first neighbor. He at least figured out how to pump out Mohawks.

Considering this is played on Pangaea I don't think I would have to reroll that much to get a similar start. Personally I find dealing with runaways to be the biggest game breaker.

Misterboy · Jul 9, 2011

In MadDjinn's defense re iron:

I just started a Songhai game and planned to play an aggressive game (which I don't normally do). Granted I was aiming for horses to get the Mandeluk (sp?) ready, but I was really going for iron early to support swordmen and catapults as the AI is super aggressive on high difficulties, especially early on before I could get to Chivalry.

Well, no iron near me whatsoever. No chance of getting it with a city. So under my breath I mutter to myself that his start was really lucky and how easy it is to seem like a great player when your start is so good. And then I remember that in other Let's Plays, he didn't have luck in some areas. He tends to make his own luck and that's why it's easy to pick up on things he was lucky on, but not so easy to pick up on things he was unlucky on. He adapts pretty damn well.

And sure enough, I adapted, and found a city state with lots of iron and allied with them. Problem totally solved. Somewhat thanks to MadDjinn I might add, because he's the one who taught me to explore, explore, explore.

MadDjinn · Jul 10, 2011

Furycrab said:
Well I don't think he hides the fact that he has at the very least a decent first 30 minutes start before he puts it up to youtube.

Rome has an Iron bias, which means you'll have that much iron a good 30-33% of the time. The wonder was convenient, but not exactly a game breaker and he got plenty of bad luck, he got at least 2 wonder fails, the Porcelein Tower went earlier than usual when he was less than 10 turns from GE popping it, which means he will likely struggle to keep up in tech seeing he unlocked Piety.

He could have gotten an easier first target. The Iroquois didn't exactly put up the best fight, but I've had games where I ended up against something like an Iron-less Gandhi as my first neighbor. He at least figured out how to pump out Mohawks.

Considering this is played on Pangaea I don't think I would have to reroll that much to get a similar start. Personally I find dealing with runaways to be the biggest game breaker.

nope, don't hide that. Each of the vid series is generally to show some sort of mechanic or VC type with a civ; not to show that I can constantly win in horrible starts. That'll be saved for the MP games.

oddly, not getting the PT and not going Rationalism only mildly mattered. It wasn't as bad as it could have been pre-patch. (RA spam/etc) Though, yeah, I was always behind in tech until near the end but by that point it didn't matter.

Hiawatha would have been much safer had he started in forests. Being able to fight him mainly on plains sealed it for me. Otherwise, I think there's a problem with the AI not understanding upgrades. Or maybe he still thought he had to use iron even though that's not needed now. (he had 6 anyways) He should have instantly upgraded all starting warriors to Mohawks as soon as he had IW. (which he had before me) but we'll still find things that are obviously lacking.

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