DDD VI: Lincoln

Hello All,

This is the sixth map in what (I hope) will be a series of high level games for those of us who, some seven years after Civ IV’s initial release, are still coming to terms with the dark arts required to emerge victorious on the game’s toughest difficulty settings.

In general, I will try to post a series of fairly short updates on a fairly frequent basis. But, since real life has a habit of intervening, I may have to take the occasional break.

Players of all levels and abilities are welcome to shadow, ask questions, challenge my logic, and prove me wrong. I am a so-so player at this level. Don’t be surprised if I lose here and in future games.

If you should wish to shadow, you are welcome to post your own game in this thread. However, I would ask that you use spoiler tags to hide any details that relate to your particular game. Questions of an exceedingly general nature (e.g. “When should I build the Oracle?&#8221 are fine.

In case you were wondering, DDD stands for "Doshin's Deity Den." I'm a simple guy, so alliteration appeals to me.

DDD VI

Deity; Fractal; No Huts, No Events; Normal speed/opponents/settings. Random leader.

Will the Fractal lottery be cruel or kind? There's only one way to find out.

Our leader is...



Lincoln!

Lincoln has two traits that are among the best in the game:

Philosophical. Great People emergencence rate increased by 100%. Double production speed for University
Charismatic. +1 per city. -25% experience needed for unit promotions. +1 from Monument and Broadcast Tower

Charismatic seems to be the default trait for buffing leaders of civilizations with weak UUs or UBs. This is not a hard and fast rule, but France, America, and the Celts account for six of the game's nine Charismatic leaders.

The UU:



The Navy SEAL replaces the Marine, gaining an additional 1-2 First Strikes and starting with the March promotion. These are both good bumps, but really, if you are warring with Marines, the game should already be wrapped up.

The UB:



The Mall. Again, this offers a nice bump over the base building (+1 happy for Hit Musicals/Singles/Movies). But when was the last time you built a Supermarket and though "gee. What an amazing late-game building?"

The start:



Well, this looks decent, albeit a little food poor. I know a good post exists on civfanatics describing how the map generator creates a capital's BFC, but I can't seem to find it... oh well. I *think* that the game considers a Plains Hill Sheep a food resource and that this, coupled with the FPs, is deemed good enough to feed the capital.

It looks to me like there is a Plains Hill 1S, 2W of the Warrior and probably 2S, 1W / 2W as well. In other words, if I move my Warrior 1SW onto the Grassland Hill, I don't think that I'll learn anything new. As such, I move 1E:


In terms of tech, America starts with Fishing and Agriculture. This means that AH can be teched immediately, provided that the surrounding land reveals nothing else of note.

Yay!

Losing fresh water sucks, but 1SE still looks pretty good. Nice and green with plenty to chop.

Lincoln's one of my favorites despite having no uniques, in large part because he's one of the easiest leaders to go for an early Math bulb with since he starts with plenty of food (including Agriculture) and can go straight to AH if he needs to. That's usually how I play him, but then again I'm not very good.

As always, looking forward to this one.

Cool, I look forward to reading DDD threads. I don't attempt to play them as I'm nowhere near Deity level, but it's great to see what you and other people do - especially as you give some explanation as to why you make the choices you do so (hopefully) it helps me improve as well.

Hurray, readers.

I think I've only played with Lincoln once before, but hes seems to be a very strong leader. Well, in a human's hands at least. As an AI, not so much...

Lincoln screams GLH Shame the start's not coastal!

Round 1

Since The Oz-Man had nothing bad to say about settling 1 SE, I decide to forge ahead:


That looks good to me.

In T5, we learn that we are not isolated:


Two turns after that, a second AI decides to show his face:


Both AIs came from the East. With a further turn of exploration, it seems that Ragnar is the closer of the pair:


Ragnar, of course, hates Gandhi by default:


With Animal Husbandry in, my prognostications are proved correct.


I'm actually ok with that. A Plains Horse, when improved, offers a tile yield of +1 +4 +1 . Settling on top of a Plains Horse, by contrast, provides the player with +2 +2 +1 . So you are essentially gaining +1 for the loss of +2 . Now, food is the most important resource in the early game, so the loss of that one hammer is already slightly alleviated. But more importantly, the capital now has instant access to an extra hammer. If I had settled, say, 1E of the current location, I would still want to improve the two Sheep before turning my attention to the horse. I would need to wait at least 14 turns before I could benefit from the improved horse tile, and 28 turns before I would 'catch up' with the extra hammer offered by settling on the resource. And this doesn't take into account the fact that my Worker can now improve the Plains Gold as my third tile (and size 3 is, after all, the point at which most capitals should stop growing to build a first Settler).

Math isn't really my thing, but I think this is a basically correct way of saying "accidentally settling on a Plains Horse isn't the end of the world."

It's still very early but there is a great potential city site nestled immediately between my capital and Ragnar's second city:


I might even start to build a Settler at size 2 to grab it. This is operating under the assumptions that:

1. There are only three Civs on our landmass. America, the Vikings, and India.
2. Gandhi will build several wonders and spam Missionaries.
3. Ragnar will fly into a rage and take all of Gandhis wonders/shrines/developed cities.
4. I will have a real problem.

However, with two golds, I can reach Horseback Riding very quickly. With HAs, I can then rush or (better yet) back-stab Ragnar.

It's still only T15 though, and for all I know there could be four more AIs who share our landmass. Still, meeting Ragnar forces one to think ahead.

See, you should always listen to me. I knew this was the right capital spot because [INSERT BS STATISTICS I MADE UP].

Your plan looks like a good one and could put you in a strong position. It's been a while since I've played a game against and am curious what he gets up to on deity as for . I don't maximize philosophical as much as I could so if you wanted to add some pointers every once in a while that'd be great.

I remember SGOTM (I think it was 12 or 13?) where basically everyone knew that mapmaker put strategic resource 1W and yet almost every team went settling 1W because that way you picked up wet sheep...

what I want to say with this...settling on hidden strategic resource is not end of world and it has it's advantages (better city tile, can't be pillaged!)

HA rush? The gold screams that

Dem barbs

I didn't know the barbs started with Mining on Deity!

@shulgi

Philosophical is a great trait, maybe even the best in the game, so long as you're constantly trying to maximize its potential. And the thing is, there isn't one basic way in which to employ it. It's very much game, context, and civ dependent.

Essentially the trait gives you a free National Epic in every single city, long before the wonder itself is even available. Great People are no cheaper, but they come twice as quickly, in all your cities, all the time. This means that certain early game bulb paths become more viable, and it is also less heart-wrenching to burn a Great Person on cheaper techs for trade bait (Mathematics, Compass, Paper etc.) because another Great Person will be along shortly. Your capital can have access to an Academy twice as fast and, once you're done generating the first Great Scientist, you can stop running Specialists and go back to working tiles.

The trait is especially useful if you want to generate a quick GP that is not a Great Scientist or Great Prophet. In a standard game, the player's first GP will come through a Library. A Library provides two specialist slots that each add + 3 to the Great Person pool. You need 100 to generate the first specialist, so one of your first cities will typically run two Scientists for 17 turns.

With other Great People, your early options are much more limited. You either need to commit to building a particular wonder (GSpy = Great Wall, GEngineer = Mids, GM = ToA or GLH) or tech to the Classical period and then start running one or two Specialists (GSpy = a Courthouse, via CoLs, GEngineer = a Forge, via Metal Casting, GM = a Market, via Currency). Let's say that, for whatever reason, you want to pop an early game GEngineer. The Mids can guarantee this for you, but a non-Philosophical leader will have to wait 50 turns before they receive their Great Person. A Philosophical leader, on the other hand, only requires 25 turns. This is a huge difference, if (say) you want to bulb Machinery and attack with Xbows (a tactic frequently employed with Sitting Bull) or rush one of the Aesthetics-path wonders, (e.g.) TGL.

There are lots of other tactics that can be employed. If you want the earliest Treb rush possible, have two cities run two Scientists each. As long as you play with a civ that can avoid Fishing, the first GS will bulb Machinery and the second Engineering. Alternatively, twice as many Great People can give the player a decent shot at Libing Steel (something like 6 Great Scientists are needed). Or if you roll an isolated start, it's possible to bulb Astronomy twice as quickly and establish overseas trade routes.

So lots of options... I only name a few I can't see myself doing anything especially fancy, but I'll try to keep track of my GP in this game.

Ouch, that is really a lot of barbs. I died after looking at your last image

I think that this might be the one time when HA rush is very much viable on Deity. Settling Cap on Horses, and having a gold in BFC =

Crashing Rags early should be a good move, Gandhi is easy to befriend, so you will be able to trade with him even if there are no more AIs on the landmass.

I'm looking forward for this game and series! But please take my advice with a grain of salt, I'm no Deity player.

EDIT: If I read the minimap correctly in the latest screenshots, you have already played ahead and settled two more cities. Did you go for a settler at size 2?

Played a few turns into this.

In my game, my HA rush miserably failed when Shaka decided to give Ragnar Iron for Wheat

ben-jammin said:

Played a few turns into this.

Spoiler :

Before my first settler was even halfway built, Ragnar settled your spot....ON THE GOLD. Youre doing it wrong, Rags

Click to expand...

Revent said:

In my game, my HA rush miserably failed when Shaka decided to give Ragnar Iron for Wheat

Click to expand...

These moron deals infuriate me.

admtanaka said:

These moron deals infuriate me.

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Especially when we have to pay like 100gpt and 3-4 resources for it

Izuul said:

Same thing in my game. Is that spoilerish info?

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whoops, I edited my post, but I guess it's still quoted in yours.