Any way to reliably get Heron Throne as Lanun on Deity?

I always try to build Heron throne with Lanun in my capital, but I find that on Immortal and Deity it usually gets built around turn 80 by the AI. Is there a non-marble strategy for getting it consistently? In the past I have relied on a coastal plains hill start, fishing first, and then 3-4 workboats. Sometimes I make it to HT, sometimes not.

akatosh said:

I always try to build Heron throne with Lanun in my capital, but I find that on Immortal and Deity it usually gets built around turn 80 by the AI. Is there a non-marble strategy for getting it consistently? In the past I have relied on a coastal plains hill start, fishing first, and then 3-4 workboats. Sometimes I make it to HT, sometimes not.

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MNAI with deity - nothing is guaranteed...

All land locked opponents? Aside from popping a hut worker, you would have to chop it.

Oh and pray the barbarians don't punk you.

Definitely not.
On deity it definitely depends on big luck for success (GE normally - you can't pop hut workers on deity).
Its not super important tho - my advice would be to capture it.

You should definitely be going worker before heron throne though - it'd probably speed it up with chops/mines anyway.

You can get HT by around turn 70 on Deity with any of the following:

1) fishing from a hut (happened twice this past weekend in back-to-back games)
2) mysticism from a hut
3) patria (faster workboats and pure hammers)
4) coastal marble start (settle on top of marble and research masonry instead of mysticism after fishing)
5) gold or dragon bones start (for extra hammers and faster fishing tech)

Any of these plus a 2-3 pirate cove start, some plains forests, and maybe 1-2 seafood resources can be enough. Even at turn 70 it's no guarantee, I have lost HT to Deity AIs on turn 56. If they pop a GE from a hut or get the Bareke event you are guaranteed to lose it.

I am wondering if it is possible to get to HT by turn 70 without any of the above using a more average start and a better build order. Also, I am going to test out some build orders later to see whether you should make pirate coves first or develop seafood first, whether you should grow on seafood and slow build workboats or work hills forests to get them out faster, how many workboats you should build, etc. I'll post the results later.

I think generally pirate coves are better early on, you hit the happy cap very fast. seafood really helps for workers/settlers later

So I tried out some build orders, using a game with the following settings:

Hannah the Irin of Lanun

Deity, MNAI 2.42
Standard Tectonics (60% water)
Normal speed
No huts, no barbs, regular events

Deleted all AIs except Charadon of Doviello. I wanted the normal tech and building rates for a standard map.

After several restarts, I got what I consider to be a pretty good start for Lanun wanting to rush HT on Deity:

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/3959/civ4screenshot0068.jpg

Some things to note about the start:

1. Freshwater plains hill for extra production for the first couple workboats and higher early health cap.
2. Little bit of extra commerce nearby to get to fishing faster. Silk is actually not bad because you still get 2 food and some hammers plus the extra 1 to speed up fishing.
3. Triple cove start, good for the long term.
4. Plenty of extra production from the forest plains hills.

First thing I did was nerf Charadon to oblivion by deleting his units and moving him here:

http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/4093/civ4screenshot0058.jpg

Second thing I did was to worldbuilder in a fish, a crab and a pearl because I wanted to test different build orders:

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/7486/civ4screenshot0069j.jpg

You will see that these extra seafood are not necessary to get to HT in reasonable time, and moreover, it is very possible to get freshwater plains hill triple cove starts with 2+ seafood in <10 minutes of restarts. This one easily could have been seafood instead of the 2 cows which I did not use. It will take some restarts, but it's nowhere near as rare as generating triple gold floodplains type starts.

Then I went on to test some build orders. As a base, I teched to fishing while growing on the 2 silks. Fishing came in at turn 21, and I believe I had 2 warriors built and a third halfway done. I used the turn 21 fishing as the base for the following builds. All of them teched Ancient Chants-->Mysticism and adopted God King as soon as it was available.

1. 2 pop on forests (while shrinking)-->workboat on fish-->cove-->cove-->cove-->HT on turn 58, 281/650 towards Message from the Deep

2. Workboat-->fish, Workboat-->crab, next 3 pop on forests-->HT on turn 53, 65/650 towards Message from the Deep

3. Grow on fish while building workboats, cove, cove, cove, spare pop on forests-->HT on turn 61, 466/650 towards Message from the Deep

4. Stagnate on Silk+forest to workboat, workboat-->fish, cove, cove, next 2 pop on forests, HT on turn 56 with 233/650 towards Message

5. Workboat-->fish, workboat-->crab, workboat-->pearl, grow to happy cap of 6 instead of 5 with spare pop going to 3x forests-->HT on turn 55, 180/650 towards Message

6. Fish, cove, cove, forests-->HT on turn 55, 231/650 towards Message

Just for kicks I tried another approach. Worldbuildered in a marble on the starting plains hill. Note that this would be an extremely rare start--marble on an ideal riverside plains hill, with a triple cove potential+seafood. Instead of teching mysticism, I teched masonry.

7. Fish, cove, cove, spare pop on forests-->Turn 50 HT, 49/325 towards Mysticism

I am not sure what to conclude from these tests, other than the build order does not seem to make a huge difference. Build orders that emphasized getting food ASAP, skipping coves, and brute force working plains forests got HT fastest but were obviously behind in tech. Starts that used only coves, or fish+2 coves, got HT a little slower but had ~200 more beakers in Message from the Deep. I should note that there were small micro differences in each build order, especially regarding how I got the first workboat out, like exactly which turn I switched from an unimproved crab to a forest, etc.

Would love to hear any feedback, or if there were any build orders I should have tried that I didn't. Also, I fail to see how any worker first build could have gotten to HT by turn 60... only way it could work is if you had a wine/gold type start and went crafting-->mining-->fishing or something.

Also, here is the save if anyone wants to test. Although I did not turn events off, I never got an event that impacted the outcome (extra pop, extra tech, and so on).

Pretty cool, I will check it out.

Oh I didn't realise you restarted.

With that you can probably roll an awesome start relatively quickly, and get it in time.

Events should be the same if repeated.

Yes, I think I did 5-6 restarts before I got this one. With a weak start (straight line coastal with 2 coves, 1 seafood, lot of forests, and a cow or pig or something) you will not make it to HT in reasonable time. You need the extra early commerce to get fishing faster. With fast fishing everything else becomes possible.

Even with a strong start like this one, though, AI can get to HT around turn 50 or 60 on Deity. You have to really rush for it if you want it.

edit - events are definitely not the same... I think making changes in the build order and what tiles you work seems to influence events.

I've never really understood how events work - but what I've heard from Sirian is that their treated something like a stack of cards, with the "deck" prepared before game start.
That's for bts though.

regarding HT vs techs... it's true that you got up to 400 beakers differences.
however that is for a game 8 turns later, not knowing your GNP you can't really tell if you were that far behind in tech.
ie: if you got HT on turn 53, with 65/650, then you focus on commerce/science for 8 turns : how much will you have at turn 61 ?

IMO strat 6 is the best :
fish/cove/cove -> forest, HT 55, 231/650.
you then have 6turns to focus on commerce/science (5-6pop : fish cove/cove + work the pearl 4or 5 commerce (+workboat+fishing boat before the end of 6turns) + work the crab 3 commerce : you should get between 13 + 2coves (10?-11?) (if pop 5) to 15+2coves (if pop6) times 6 turns of commerce: 23*6 - 26*6= +138 or +156
+ 5-6 *6 hammers : 30-36 hammers.
(and it's sure you'll have pop6 by turn 61, working all those food tiles)

IMO total at turn 61 is:
HT(turn 55)
MftD : 370/650 (minus 80)
+30-35hammers on other things
when compared with the strat 3 you "lose" only 70-90 science but get 30-35 hammers worth instead, and gained 6 turns vs the AI.

compared with strat 4, you lose nothing, you gain 1 turn and lose 3science... which, 1 turn later you will over compensate largely.

in any case,

very nice study

I just realized that I never do restarts. I setup the game I want to play and play it no matter what start I get.

I rarely restart based on land, only if I realise I've screwed something up when setting up. (Like in my 18civs/duel idea, I initially tried on highlands except I got a start in tundra and mountains separating the troops so I restarted with FoR).