Trying to learn Deity

I'm doing my 2nd deity game to prepare for the next gotm. Playing on Macintosh, I don't have Spain, thus I chose India (religious, commercial and I never played them yet). I also set on trying an ICS like style.

The beginning looked promising: wheat, silk, lake. Soon I had to learn, that I was alone on not so great an island.

I did minimum research on writing and literature, which I learned in 470bc. A few turns ago, a Japanese galley showed up, and now the Greeks appear. I also see read borders in the west (Rome) and orange borders in the east (England). The other civs are France, Zulu, and Iroquois.

Japan, and Greece do not know literature but probably nearly all other middle age techs. Both have contact with Rome and England.

Now to my questions:

a) Was it o.k. to continue ICS-like, even being alone on my island? What else?

b) I pop-rushed temples in the vain hope of going for a cultural victory. Probably not a good choice, as I see now. Greece has slightly, Japan a lot more culture. Comments?

c) How to best proceed? I intend to first trade for as much contacts as possible to get tech prices down. Next to go for map making (1 have 4 silks to trade), next to try for "enabling" techs like math, mysticism, polytheism and hopefully for monarchy.

d) Should I try to build embassies before trading? I doubt it.

e) I intend to trade my map away for techs, since I have my island settled. I would trade for maps later, since I am in no position to reach out. Comments?

f) Anything else?

Thanks very much for any advice and comments.

tao

a) Although I will often use a dense build for optimum land use, I have not tried ICS so can't really comment on this aspect. You have quite a large income for 470 BC in the second screenshot, so it seems that ICS is working fine at this point, although the lack of large cities may hurt in the middle ages. Having harbors will allow all of those coastal cities to reach larger sizes, and might let you get some use out of those tundra cities in the south. The commercial trait tends to cancel out some of the negative corruption effects of ICS.

b) A peaceful cultural victory is nearly impossible on Deity due to the 40% cost discount all the other civs get on cultural buildings. Also the other civs get 2 settlers to start with, so they begin cultural projects very early. Most cultural victories on Deity will essentially be milked domination wins which end up with over 100K culture. Pop rushing the early (religious) temples wasn't really a bad idea though since the effect of the temple cancels the unhappiness from the rush, and you will end up ahead after the 20 turn penalty ends.

c) You have a good plan in going for Map Making, and it is likely that the other civs will build a harbor somewhere on Deity for a trade network. Just make sure to build a harbor yourself, or even prebuild it with a Palace so you can get it in place right after you get Map Making. A harbor for a non-militarist civ is 80 shields, which might take some time with ICS cities. The silks will be quite valuable to large Deity civs, and you should even consider trading away the 5th silk since small cities won't suffer much happiness issues and you have cheap temples. You will probably end up buying the rest of the ancient era techs, but look for opportunities to re-sell the techs you buy to less advanced civs. Government tech such as Republic or Monarchy are highly valued by the AI, so these techs are a good target for minimum 40 turn research.

d) Embassies probably aren't necessary before trading, but if your excess gold is going to be demanded anyway they can help diplomatic relations and give some information about warfare between the AI civs. Since you are relatively safe on an island, an embassy might let you act as a mercenary between warring civs. For instance, if Japan is at war with Greece, they might pay you 150 gold to sign an alliance against Greece with not much risk. That being said, it would be safe to ignore embassies until the middle age.

e) Yes, you might as well trade away your map once you have contact with all of the available civs. You will probably end up with the world map for free while trading around techs in the middle ages.

f) Nothing else really except that I also started a Deity GOTM training game with India and ended up with a jungle/desert start .

g) Check who have and who is missing what tech. Use your $$ as bridges to buy and sell tech. Proper planning as a middleman can net you all the tech without paying much or even earn from it!

After meeting Japan, Greece, and Rome, I had a heavy trading round and got

• contact with everybody
• embassies with everybody
• complete maps
• ROPs with everybody

even though my assets were only literature and contact/tech brokering. After the trades were done, I donated my leftovers and everybody is gracious or polite towards me.

Problem is, my assets were not enough to get monarchy (only about 50g, 3gpt left). I have to get a harbor to trade my silks and make some money.

Greeks as only scientific civ got monotheism. I'm on min research for feudalism, but wondering whether it would be more advisable to be on monarchy to get the price down. Republic currently is out of the question, not enough infrastructure.

A couple of minor suggestions:

Is there a reason for building forbidden palace in Madras? Is it a prebuild for something else? I would build it further north so that all the grassland cities experience low corruption. Putting it down south means low corruption in your tudra cities which are never going to amount to much anyway. I am assuming that you are planning to move your capital at some point in the future (e.g. to another island) which is why you are building so close to your capital?

Try and settle on the corner of the Roman Island asap. If you are going to take them on in the future an established city on their Island will help loads. You may also have to fight them for iron if you don't have any on your island! The city may also open up trade links with other civs once it has a harbour. You can also set workers on the tiles on the other Island so that Bombay can use them - those cows will be very useful.

A harbour is probably more important than military at this stage. I would switch Chittagong over from Warrior. Alternatively build it in Karachi after the granary as that city will probably always be working the whales.

The southern cities in the tundra seem pretty corrupt, so I would divert all the workers to your heartland around the capital (e.g. Madra, Delhi etc) and the northern cities to get their commerce and production up asap. The southern corrupt cities are not going to amount to much so the only reason to connect them first is if they have lux or resources. Otherwise they can wait. You have a few fortified warriors to use as military police in the meantime.

Edit: Misspeeled my worms.

I made it to the dawn of Industrial Times (760 AD) by dealing a lot. Regrettably all my min research tries were too slow. I buy techs for silk and gpt from the 2 superpowers France and Rome to keep them happy. I trade maps each turn, always making a small profit. My cities on the Roman continent contribute wines, and I sneaked in two cities giving me incense and gems.

When Greece declared war in 740 AD, they made me happy. I intended to wipe them out once my deals were about to expire some 8 turns later. Gonzo The Great triggered my Golden Age, became elite and produced Great Leader Chandragupta next turn; RNG sometimes I have to love you.

I have a very long time pre-build for the UN (about 270 shields now at 14 shpt). With Chandragupta I'm pondering on whether to move my Palace to the Roman continent (which would mean war to Rome in consequence) or get Smith's Trading and continue the money way.

It's quite a good preparation for gotm20.



PS: I would be interested in a Mac compatible SG if the chance arises.

Can someone tell me what ICS is again???

amirsan- It stands for Initial City Strategy, I think, which is where you put cities with a little to a lot of overlap in tile usage.

OOO, yeah now I remember! Thanks!

BTW, Tao, Good Luck with your game

Was it infinite city sprawl?

ICS=build cities as close together as "possible"

@tao: I'd be interested in an update, if you continued to play.
What about the gem city? Did it flip or did you put a large garrison there?

ICS = Infinite City spawn to be correct. The explanation is correct though.

Yeah I remember it was something like that...

Tao, that you remained competitive with a solo island start, with contact made by the AI already on to MM, is terrific. If they had come any later, it might have been too late.

I have never been better than average culturally on deity until the late game, and usually just plain lousy. I would build Spanish temples as early as possible to help fend off flips in the Middle Ages, but only when you have a breather - something else is usually more important. Troops, for instance. The exception is border cities. I would garrison my border cities against flips as well.

Originally posted by Txurce
I have never been better than average culturally on deity until the late game, and usually just plain lousy. I would build Spanish temples as early as possible to help fend off flips in the Middle Ages, but only when you have a breather - something else is usually more important. Troops, for instance. The exception is border cities. I would garrison my border cities against flips as well.

Click to expand...

In this game, I usually built temples first thing by pop rushing. Since there were only barbs and no civs on my mini-continent, I didn't need much military. And the early culture boost made 2 Greek cities on the island west of Delhi flip to me (I had founded 2 cities on that island also and thus got complete control peacefully)