Deity cookbook I: Gilgamesh from Sumeria

[shyuhe]

Here's my report up to 1800 BC:

Spoiler :

tech order: mining -> BW -> AH -> pottery -> writing -> (currently aesthetics)
military: 2 vultures, 2 warriors, 1 worker.
3 cities, total pop 7 (5/1/1)
15 bpt at break even.

I settled the spot to the south claiming cows and blocking off the mountains. I then settled SW on the river to grab the resources there. It looks like I've blocked off lots of land so I just need to grow really fast now. I'm short workers and bpt so I'm thinking churn out 3-5 workers, get aesthetics and trade for alpha/IW. There's some great land to claim on this map, as long as we don't tank our economy in the process.


my land:


And my diplo:


I just made contact with Saladin so I'm thinking SE of Eridu may be a penninsula. Now that I'm looking at my save, I probably should have skipped aesthetics and teched towards priesthood - I completely forgot about the UB.

 

[CellKu]

@Dirk1302

Spoiler :

1.) Why didn't you settle Eridu 1S? That way you would have settled on a hill and gotten the grassland hill SW. Moreover, in case of an attack it gets better protection. And this site (except now for Kish) is the entry to your main empire. So, Pacal et al would have to attack this city if they wage a landwar against you. Did you want to avoid getting too many water tiles? 1S of Eridu would have blocked Pacal, as well (having borders up to the mountains after the first border pop).

2.) Very ambitious REX, btw (same goes to Snaaty). I am not sure whether I would dare to settle Kish that far. I would be very intrigued to learn more about how you will get your economy back online. The conquered barb cities will increase your cost. (But maybe you are right and they net you sufficient money to get to currency. Good luck! )

 

[Dirk1302]

@CellKu

Spoiler :

1) Actually i didn't think about it too much. I remember minimizing the number of water tiles was the reason to settle as i did. I like to build work shops so the plain tiles 'll be useful in time. While settling i hadn't really considered a war. Pacal is very unlikely, Sulei could have been but it always looked likely that he'd pickup Pacal's religion eventually. In hindsight i think i should have given this point more weigh though.

I was there before Pacal, i wonder if he'd founded Mayapan the same if i'd settled on the hill, if so we'd be fighting a culture war there now, if not it would have been better for sure.

2) Kish is ok i think, it's Angle that might be one step too far. Still considering what i do once i've captured it. Generally i like rexing and recovering from the economic problems, i play a lot of my games this way especially on deity since the mid/late game potential is so great.If you look at ABigCivFan's games for instance you'll often see that he doesn't go to war before Assembly line. He reckons that factories and coal plants finally give the human player tools to match the ais production.I have played a couple of games myself along these lines and this is indeed a viable strat. At least you're closer to the ai production wise. The more cities you secure in the early game though the better it obviously works. Finally if Snaaty and i recover from this rex there's a fair chance that we can win a space race without going to war at all. After democracy the land is great for cottageing (it isn't now, a town without PP is still only 4 commerce.)

And here we have Ziggus. I learned this rex/block technique from Snaaty btw so maybe it's not totally coincidental that we play the same way here .

 

[Earthling]

Well, it might be distracting me from another game, but you can count me in. I really like the idea of voting on the best save (One thing I predict, if we have an AI that DOWs someone, it's not gonna be that save )

Up to 1800 BC

Spoiler :

First, I settled 1W. I'm proud of that decision - it looks very good right now as it allows a nice second city by the cow and fish. Also, great to have copper at the capital - obviously helps with barbs!

I haven't met any other civs yet, first of all, the war with the barbs looks like it will be heaviest.

Lost my first scouting warrior


Second city shares copper at first, quick WB


Jungles don't look so promising barb wise though...


The first great work reveals very little... but I have been keeping up with land area on F8. We seem to have a fair amount of land cause including the jungles to eventually settle.
It is a nice nickname for me though...


So here's my empire, 1800 BC, definitely need to get commerce back up; I might stop the settler rush at the 4th city by the SW stone and rice.

View attachment Earthling-Gilgamesh1800BC.CivBeyondSwordSave
I'll be checking out your games too - I'll edit this post in a bit.

Edit: Shoot!!! I had to quickly close a couple of other people's posts I opened - I saw you guys had scouted/settled much more aggressively than I had. I don't want to have stuff spoiled for me cause I haven't scouted nearly as far yet (no huts to go after...).

Edit Again: Well, I've played up to 1 AD - really crazy game and interesting developments. It looks like everyone's not that far though, of course, so I'll be waiting a while for the write up. (1 AD is the first save to vote, right?)

Spoilered For HEAVY SPOILERING: PREVIEW OF 1AD

Spoiler :

Battle Royale- Place Your Bets!
Gilgamesh and Saladin Versus Pacal and Suleiman.

"500 Quatloos on the Earthling!"

*Star Trek battle music*

Spoiler :

Also, we regret to inform you the religion of Islam will NOT appear in this game

 

[Dirk1302]

Short summary until 1800 BC, if i made mistakes or forgot someone please alert me and i'll edit it in.

Spoiler :

Well the map is very generous so all positions look good atm.I'm just looking at the reports as it is now, i can edit this summary later to get in more details as for now there seem to be roughly 3 ways of playing the map.

Build oracle, block in the neighbourhood of the rice/cow spot in the south.
CellKu,Tycoonist,Rusten.
CellKu and Tycoonist got a city up there. In Rusten's game there's a barb city on that spot. He should be first there. I'm going to have a close look at these saves, CellKu settled 2000 BC on the rice/cow spot. Oracle is not that expensive 125 hammers iirc but settling this city 2000 BC too is an achievement. If i compare to my own game, i built an early barracks which is 60 hammers. I usually don't like the tech path leading up to oracle but with Ziggus at the end of it it's indeed more attractive to play this way.

Mind you if you fail to get a GS first the position'll drop somewhat in value imo. A settled early GP while good can't compete with an early academy i think. Maybe bulb Theo with the GP for some AP trickery in this case. So a library should be built early. Best would be library in a second city overtaking the capital but i don't think that can be done.

Block in the south, rex and build up military without oracle. Pretty straight forward.
Dirk, Snaaty, Shyuhe.
Shyuhe built the rice/cow city 1S of rice as opposed to Dirk 1S1W and CellKu 2S1W, this doesn't block the position completely until the second border pop. I doubt that this is important though as it's unlikely the ai'll sneak past before that time. In exchange he got a dye in BFC which is nice.

Be more conservative in rexing building the second city near stone to go for the mids.
Gliese,silverbullet,RRRaskolnikov.
These players all researched IW early to profit from the gems there. Normally i'd say go alpha in this case but here i think it's the right decision since the prerequisites to Alpha also have to be researched delaying the gems for some time. The second gems will help a lot with the early research.

Earthling took a far more conservative approach settling the backyard. As he says himself he should have explored more. Still time to get some cities in the south up though in which case there's not much wrong with his position.

 

[CellKu]

@Dirk1302: Your summary is great! It gives a very nice overview. So we have three approaches with three players each plus one with one player. Nice symmetry!

Just to be on the save side - I am not sure whether we are all on the same page in that regard. But do we play until 1AD this week? Initially, I thought only until 1800BC, but you mentioned voting over the weekend and quite a number of players have started posting til 1000BC or even 1AD. If you could clarify that I would be immensely grateful. (Oh, and I would like to be in time for your next summary.)

With regard to your game.

Spoiler :

It seems that Pacal expands much more sowly in your game. I am not sure whether I would have been able to settle your far away spot and my blocking city. Pacal seemed to settle quite fast in my game.

@all

Spoiler :

What is your take on Pacal? Do you usually see him building many units? Would a war with - perhaps - cuirrasiers be an idea? Or would you attack earlier?

 

[tycoonist]

@ dirk1302

Spoiler :

i think its worth considering the different techs that the saves have available to pop from the oracle: i can pop CoL, whereas Cellku can pop MC, adn rusten has already popped MC. in my opinion, MC is a better choice, i should have teched pottery.

 

[tycoonist]

@all

Spoiler :

What is your take on Pacal? Do you usually see him building many units? Would a war with - perhaps - cuirrasiers be an idea? Or would you attack earlier?

Spoiler :

i think that seeing as there are no elephants, it would be best to wait until gunpowder units before attacking Pacal.

 

[Dirk1302]

@Cellku

Spoiler :

Regarding Pacal, he's usually very weak. So a cuirassiers war against him is certainly a possibilty. He techs well though so if you want to do this i'd keep the empire relatively small, growing vertically, keeping the research rate high. Those large empires need more time to get online is my experience. I'm sure Pacal falls easily in the endgame too so i don't think rexing is a bad idea. Sulei's an entirely different story, he'll have units all over the place.

I founded Kish around 1320 BC iirc, indeed i had to hurry for that spot. Pacal's rather big in my game suggesting that he initially had more than one direction to expand to, so you can indeed be lucky/unlucky as a result of this.

The idea was to have the 1 AD saves in by friday , vote over the weekend, i'm going to be very lenient with delays however since we're not in any kind of hurry. If one of the players who submitted a 1800 BC report or someone else who wants to join in asks for one i'll grant it. Actually i'll repeat your question in the discussion thread so we can discuss it further.

As for the summary, i hadn't planned it in advance but as i was reading through the games (work was quite slow this afternoon) i thought it'd be a good idea. Next summary'll be when most of the 1000 BC reports are in from the posters that submitted a 1800 BC report. At this moment there aren't enough 1000 BC reports to do it. Idea is to edit in the reports that i miss later so no need to hurry. I'll put up links to the summaries in the opening post so they can be easily found even after they've been posted.

 

[Dirk1302]

Double post

 

[Dirk1302]

@Tycoonist

Spoiler :

If i'd have gone oracle i'd certainly take MC now. Col value has gone down a bit now that ziggurats are available with priesthood. Otoh, it's a bit marginal. Col will have very good trade value too and you'll found confucianism which is rather a double edged sword, the extra religion is nice, but it slightly lessens the chance for ai religion brawls.

There might be a subtle side effect, Obsolete claims that buiding all the wonders and especially taking away the oracle Col slingshot hurts the ai. If the ais indeed wait longer with Col because confu has been founded already it'll hurt their research for sure slowing them down on the lib path. Very speculative all this i know.

 

[Earthling]

First - I have a question before I do my whole next writeup (to 1 AD). I probably should search the forums and you might just link me to another thread, but anyway: In order to not get these small thumbnail screenshots, and instead have the large ones, should I host them through imageshack or something? How are you doing that?
@Cellku,Dirk - little spoiler warning cause I have played up to 1 AD

Spoiler :

About Pacal: It seems things have certainly varied game to game. In my game he was becoming an absolute BEAST - if you open my previous spoiler (it's just a teaser really) you'll see how I played that out. Also, saladin and pacal in my game founded opposing religions as well, and I'm not positive but I believe zulu was in a short war before I even made contact with him. At any rate, at least for this first save, I would be very interested if we could choose between someone who went with a peaceful route versus the warmongering one, to see where things diverge (play two different saves for the next turnset, in other words, though I know the rules are already set).

 

[Dirk1302]

Photobucket has a very fast uploading system and is very easy to use:
http://photobucket.com/

As for your request i've played until 1 AD so i can answer,

Spoiler :

As an extra option in this cookbook thread it's possible to play on from your own 1 AD save until the next round 1000 AD. I can't see how we can vote for 2 saves to choose from. Sure the game diverges once you declare/get declared on but by 1 AD the saves'll differ considerably anyway.

I'll await your writeup with interest btw, see how it pans out.

 

[Earthling]

First, @ Dirk, thanks for answering my question - I'd just misread things and knew the part where you couldn't vote for your own save. But I won't be greedy; I'd probably play along with whatever save we end up voting for anyway.

So, here's my 1 AD Spoiler - Write Up

Spoiler :

First, this is all the way to 1 AD; I didn't take a specific save at 1000 BC.
The very next turn after 1800 BC I met my first rival - Saladin, via a workboat


Meeting the other AIs, I saw that Saladin with Hinduism disliked Pacal and Suleiman (Jewish). I planned to convert to Judaism as well for diplo.
Also, Saladin only has 4 cities, and when he had a GG born I knew something was up (screenshot of that was lost). I surmised later that this was due to Zulu, though I don't know for sure.

There were a few barb cities to the south and as everyone knows plenty of good land, so I wasn't sure what I was gonna do going into this turnset at first. (Also, sorry bout the lack of screenshots pre 1000; didn't have much really going on there as you'll soon see.


I did settle the 4th city by the stone/rice. I decided I had to tech monarchy as I didn't have mids and people weren't forthcoming with happy resources. Scientists in capital and Eridu; the first one I get a little bit later goes to an Academy. Here's my empire at 1000 BC:



So, what's up, you might be wondering. Well, by this point I had decided to go all on a war with our neighbour, Pacal. Reasons for this included the religious division on the continent, the leverage of our UU, and the fact that if I didn't take Pacal down he was going to steamroll everyone.

Here's what Pacal was up to:




However, my scouting showed that for all his settler and wonder spam, Pacal was neglecting his military:


I reached HR, switched to that and slavery, and was cranking out vultures like crazy. You'll notice from the wonders shot that Pacal got the AP; I voted for Suleiman in the hopes of diplo with him, but Pacal voted himself in. Just another potential thorn in my side that I couldn't let slide. (If I were an AI, I'd probably have some crazy -8 penalty with Pacal, maybe "You must respect the prime directive") Pacal got the Jewish shrine, and seemed to be on a heavy religious techpath (obviously he also founded Christianity).


So, I took the barb city on the way to Pacal's capital:


By this point (about 400 BC) I knew I was in a dire situation: I had to hit Pacal while he was still vulnerable, before longbows or something. Here's a pre-war power graph:


So, all these forces here in this Screenshot - these are reinforcements still on the way - I really decided I couldn't wait on the war!


How will that war turn out - check my next post (I think I'm near image limit, thanks again Dirk for the recommendation about photobucket.)

 

[Earthling]

Continuing on my write up. First of all, here's the 1 AD Save (it's actually at the very start of 1AD, I haven't made any moves on that turn)

View attachment Earthling-Gilgamesh1AD.CivBeyondSwordSave

1 AD Spoiler

Spoiler :

So, how does this turn into a multi-nation brawl, you ask? Well, first we can thank our favorite shifty red-eyed bastard devil. I'm sure he's hiding a headcrab or something under that turban for how evil he is.


Before the war, Suleiman was willing to declare on Pacal. As I said, I'd switched to Judaism, tried to vote him into the AP, just to get on his good side. But when the time for war came, he refused to join in.



Lo and behold, a few turns later Pacal bribed him into war with me! (nice coincidence too btw - in which picture does he look eviller?)




But there was also good news: Saladin, apparently from his religious hatred, decided to DOW Pacal all on his own!



I was avoiding Pacal's cruddy little jungle cities - going straight for his core of course. Outside the capital, I hoped I had enough forces to overwhelm him.



And I did....



In a break from the action, the great historians of the world still don't seem to like coming up with anything useful, nor do they like me. "Earthling the Hopeless" seems to be catching on:




During the war, Pacal is apparently still on his religious tech bent. I'd switch espionage to Sulei; nothing more it could do for Pacal now. So, it came to pass that upon the discovery of divine right, the prophet Muhammed brought his message to the city of Xukpi, founding the religion of Islam. Unfortunately, this was all of one turns detour for my constantly pumping stream of troops. Maintenance and troop upkeep was killing me, and the (noble?) faith became no more:




As far as the war goes, I encourage you to check out the save for locations of troops by now; however I will give a brief summary at the end of this post. Here is more troop movement into Pacal's lands:



Saladin appears to be putting up a bit of a fight; however I think he's a weakling in this game. I need to take that city (wonder city) anyway



Finally, here's the 1AD Power graph. Taking the Capital only dented Pacal!


Also, Pacal has Elephants, though I sent a chariot to pillage the resource I knew of, he may have another:

For those of you who don't need to see all the screenshots again; also for future reference, I'm putting a
Spoiler: Summary At 1 AD

Spoiler :

I am currently at war with both Pacal and Suleiman. The AP, Jewish, currently controlled by Pacal, has voted for the war to stop, causing very annoying unhappiness when I defied. Suleiman appears to be waging limited war (hasn't sent much my way) as he was bribed into it. Saladin DOWed Pacal on his own and I don't know how much damage he's doing.

I have captured Pacal's capital, and razed a junk city that was also the Islamic holy city! As you'll see in the save, troops are marching into his core empire and I think I stand a very good chance of taking his next largest cities. Suleiman has just gotten feudalism (also like 1 turn ago, just like the AP vote was around 50 BC - I was really hoping I could stop playing and share the save at like 100 BC but had to play through, and some of these things have happened now). I have met Shaka, don't really know what he's doing, he is quite distant from us at least.

In short, I'm hoping (and not without reason) that the war will take a decisive swing in the next 5-10 turns and Pacal will be defeated. Or, it will fail and my empire is economically collapsed. But, once again if you haven't, the judgement call on the war should be viewed from the save; people have different analyses of where things can go, and it is very close.

 

[Dirk1302]

@Earthling

Spoiler :

That's a very bold way of playing. Indeed Pacal has a tendency to neglect his military, the AP makes it all very complicated though.

A few questions and a suggestion.

Was the war necessary? It's normal that the ais take a huge lead in the early/mid game on deity.

How are you going to avoid the strike in 2 turns, you're losing 15 gpt at 0% atm.

If you get Lakhama (i think this'll work as Sal has already catapulted the city for you) what's next? you have to take more cities to free for instance Mutal from heavy cultural pressure. But you can't afford all these extra cities so you'll have to raze at least some of them. But if you do that Sulei or Pacal will settle these spots again.

Your population can't get unhappier than it is now, Uruk has -11 on food and will lose a pop each turn, to get something out of this whip these cities as much as possible.
Ziggus first for maintenance (not in Uruk of course), units if and as long as you can afford them. Infra otherwise. Lower pop at least helps with maintenance and your cities can maybe work some tiles again as unhappiness decreases with lower pop.

 

[Snaaty]

to 75BC (I was in a hurry and had to quit some turns bevore 1 AD... ...I can add the missing 3 turns if you want):

PS: And this time I havent forgotten to make a screen of the alltime-low in income due to expansion...

Spoiler :

I build an army as planned and gunned for the statue of zeuss in parallel...
View attachment 196002

I haven´t traded anything so far and with chopping the two forests in the BFC from this city, the race for Zeuss is won, reducing it to 4 turns. Pacal just has selfresearched Aest this turn, but he wont catch me

I will delay trading Aest a little longer to keep chances of the GLib up... ...there the usual techs out there, IW, Alpha and Math, but as things are I can live without them a little longer anyways.

I also breeded a GS in parallel as planned and settled him in capital... ...building an army, zeuss and breeding a GS delayed my expansion quite a bit, but in the current screen I´m already down to +1 gold at 20% research, so more cities would have been "supoptimal" anyways at this point...

...

Speeking of expansion and cost-control

With an army of 8 units (think 6-7 vultures and 1-2 chars) I took both barbcities as planned (loosing 1 unit), leaving me with 6 cities... ...ALL FAR, FAR AWAY FROM CAP

Upkeep rises a little and income drops a little... ...but see yourself my alltime-low in this game:

View attachment 196006

Yup, loosing 14 gold at 0 research and having only 150 gold in store

But since I just researched lit and can start on the GLib this turn the plan is to get somehow back to the green at 0% research and go on via some specialists...

Crawling towards priest to whipchop some ziggs...

...

Only some turns later things have already recovered and I´m doing quite fine again, thanks to the ziggs in my satelite-cities:
View attachment 196004

Techs are looking decent also, I managed to sell lit to pacal (who had some gold left after I finished Zeuss) and sprinted in deficit mode to CoL:
View attachment 196005

...

Overall things are looking very good. Next GS in 5-8 turns, depending on scientists hired. Alpha can be traded and the Philbulb will bring me back into the techrace. With a little selfresearch Monarch also can be traded, making a revolution to Pacif + HR an option

Everything is blocked now and after the NE is finished in the cap the run for lib can be started while the satelite-cities get some more settlers and workers out.

If nothing goes wrong drastically, the game should be on the rel. save side, making a "no war spacerace" a viable option

 

[CellKu]

Until 1000BC

Spoiler :

Some events during this turn:
1520: discovered silver in the capital!!! Yeah!
1440: Confucianism FIDL
1240: GG BIDL
1160: Mahabodhi BIDL


Builds in capital: Oracle (took MC) -> settler -> vulture -> granary - lib -> forge (in progress), but maybe I switch to a vulture or a worker, I am not sure yet. At least after Uruk has grown I will build more workers there.

Here an overview of Uruk:


Builds in Eridu: granary (partly whipped asap) -> lib (in progress)
A worker improves tiles.

Build in Kish: started with granary, then (after Fishing) switched to WB
A worker improves tiles.
Already culture battle under way. Sal expanded exactly one turn before I settled Kish. But I won two tiles back a few turns after my border had popped.



Techs: AH -> Writing -> Fishing -> Sailing (in progress)
Didn't stall my research right after Writing was in since I needed to get fishing for Kish. Then I turned my slider down to 0% until Uruk got its lib. So, now I have some money to tech at full speed. In 4 turns I will get a lib in Eridu, as well.

Units: trained my vulture a bit by slaugthering barb archers in Ligurian. Now, however, Shakas archer have taken over from Pacal. So I have to watch out. Don't want to have Shaka close!
Current units: 3 vultures, 2 warriors, 2 workers

Other civs:
During this turn Shaka DoWed Sal (his then Hindu brother!), then switched to Judaism. Before the end of this turnset he asked me to join in. I declined.
Pacal asked for open borders - I declined (no sailing yet).

 

[Dirk1302]

@Snaaty until 1 AD

Spoiler :

Looks like my game, Magyar is a nice bonus, Sulei had already settled there otherwise i would have captured it and kept it too. You don't have much money/research now but that'll recover fast indeed.

I suppose you built Soz mainly for the culture? You could have taken it off queue 1 turn before finishing, it's not as if you can't use the money. But the long term culture boost there is probably more important indeed. I use the same trick btw building Parthenon in my foremost city.

 

[Dirk1302]

@CellKu

Spoiler :

I guess you're going to assign scientists in Eridu asap to overtake the prophet in Uruk. Enough time to do that . Silver in capital's not bad either.