Deity Isolation Workshop (Stan/Norm/Fractal/NH/NE)

[Pedro78]

Okay I'll play the next game, that's cool. Definitely interested in watching your let's plays.

 

[Lain]

Alright, here is the new game. Kindly provided by @Pedro78 .



I already started playing and think it's a good challenge. Curious to see what people will do with this

Save attached.

 

[Pedro78]

I'll have to play a couple of games to get back in shape, so I'll probably start this one next week.

This looks like a rather crappy spot, but I don't see anything that could justify moving the settler here, especially as losing fresh water is quite a big deal with isolated starts.

 

[Pangaea]

I'm playing another game now, and given the warnings about this one being tricky (and the start looks fairly yucky) and how much time the previous game took, I may have to sit this one out and learn from your write-ups instead.

SIP looks like the only real move here, I just hope it won't kill any fishies.

Boudica is pretty terrible, but at least you have a reason to build monuments.

Early Monarchy is in order, for happiness, commerce and HR.

 

[Lain]

Rather than doing a write-up, I am making a Let's Play out of this one. I played until first contact already (in under 3 hours, so should be reasonably watchable in terms of speed) and am contemplating to upload it this night.

Kind of a win-win situation.. if I lose, some kind soul could tell me why and if I win, well, would be the first Deity Isolation victory on video, as far as I know. So there shouldn't be a lack of motivation on my side .

I'll still post some kind of write-up, comments on the map and stuff. Maybe discuss it with someone else who might play along.

 

[Lain]

Alright, here we go. Don't get startled by the wooden introduction. I was nervous!
Thumbnail is kind of spoilering, so...

Spoiler :

Playlist should be available. Still can't figure out for the life of me why the music is getting louder at random times. Probably upon entering a new era. Annoying.

 

[Pedro78]

I watched all three videos, didn't spoil me anything as I had already played until ~1200AD on my first attempt.
Not much to say about the commentary or the quality, everything's pretty good

A few comments about the gameplay (mostly in the early turns, will compare my game to yours as I play along) :

Spoiler :

I don't understand why you went Pottery before AH, especially as it's usually better to farm the wine rather than cottaging it, as you're going for early(ish) Monarchy anyways. Skipping Archery probably was a good idea (one of the few good things about being Agg).

In my first game, I did move my capital on the same spot (or maybe 1S as I didn't have BW yet) that you did, but it was my second city. Not 100% sure but I think it was better to settle it first as the clam city really doesen't bring much early on (you need it for GS production, though)

I'm really sceptical about the city you settled 3W1N of your capital after Optics. The Iron city looks like it's worth it though.

Not sure who to attack first. Ragnar's land is quite good so he might be the best target if you can pump out enough cannons before he gets Machine Guns and Infantry. Otherwise you can always take out the smaller continent, then Joao (6 cities should be fine even if he gets to infantry), not sure which one is better.

Anyways, nice vids, keep up the good work

 

[unas876]

Nice content! Didn't really ever find any other youtubers with great Civ4 content, since AZ stopped uploading frequently and is now quite rusty. But this is high level gameplay, had me focussed throughout. Even though I can't really conceive of a way of how you're gonna weasel yourself out of this dilemma

Spoiler :

I mean three people might DoW on you at any point and you're still super far behind in tech for obvious reasons The map generator didn't really do you many favors - for starters only two seafood on your entire island....

For part two for some reason the overall volume dropped and I had to watch it at the max volume my computer supports, but thats no big deal. The music randomly getting a bit louder is not a big deal either, the only thing to look out for is when you go to war and then the trumpets or whatever when you smash one stack into another or the drums when you promote multiple units at once, those can for some reason get super loud. Don't know if this will happen in your videos, but those were the only sound issues I've ever had when watching Civ4 Let's Plays.

Looking forward to the rest of the game!

 

[Lain]

Hey, thanks for your feedback Much appreciated.

@Pedro78

How is your warming up going? Hope you can join soon

Spoiler :

Yeah I overestimated the food and thought I would put more cottages than I did in the end.

Would have liked to settle the future capital sooner, but lacked the courage because the barb situation was unclear. Dying to barbs on video is not a good start

Not sure about the new cities either, but could be worth it with Astro trade routes.

I thought a lot about who to attack, still not sure now, but I made a bit of progress and talked about those plans .

@unas876

Still trying to find the right settings for recording, but it should be better from now on. Trying to improve it for the future . Still a bit unfamiliar with everything.

Spoiler :

Yeah it's a tricky situation, but there should still be some hope. Domination will be hard, maybe do something with UN later. The real problem is the religious lovefest going on at each continent. Tech situation looked dire at that point, yup . Hope I will even get into a position where I can actually smash a stack in this game . If I get there, I'll keep the sound advice in mind

Glad you enjoyed it. I continued a bit further. Still hope a win can be pulled off somehow.

 

[unas876]

Alright since I'm only a measly Immortal pleb, I have a few questions after watching the latest two parts

Spoiler :

1.) Why exactly were you so stingy with Astronomy once you found out that at least two other people were going for it? Most guys were in Mercantilism, sou you didn't slow down their tech pace incredibly much by holding off for three more turns? I guess you were trying to keep them from attacking you for as long as possible, right? Joao could have done this with Carracks anyway though. Trading Astro earlier would probably have granted you quite a few more tech trades, thats why I'm curious.

2.) You didn't want a Defensive Pact with Saladin because you said Ragnar might attack both of you then, which is understandable. But why didn't you get the Pact up after Ragnar attacked Joao? You could now potentially get a war between you, Sal, Gilgamesh on the one side and Qin on the other, right?

3.) When Joao, Ragnar and Qin were all plotting and you didn't know yet whether all three might come after you, why did you never beg any gold or Archery or whatever of them? You did it one turn before Qin was gonna attack you, but can you be 100% sure that they are gonna move their fleet over to your borders before attacking? I realize you missed Qins fleet in the end and lucked out a little on his movement timing, but in general, is making sure their fleet isn't in range of your borders enough to be sure they aren't gonna attack next turn?

4.) What makes Joao a lucrative target? The war against him would be the easiest, sure, but you don't really have time to take him out completely (or is that the plan?), nobody likes him, he's behind in tech and any of the nice wonders you could capture from him would be under constant border pressure and cost a load of maintenance for distance and the troops you'd need to prevent revolts or culture flipping.

 

[Lain]

I can try to explain some of my thoughts, but I also did a lot of mistakes so my thinking is not necessarily a source of wisdom . Somehow I got into a tough position and that probably shouldn't have happened with a few better decisions. Interesting how it snowballs, though.

Spoiler :

1) Yeah I didn't want to give away Astronomy because the moment someone gets it, next turn all people might have it (especially since there were so many "friendly" faces... no trade restrictions amongst the AI). With some people possibly plotting on me, I wanted to delay them if possible. The carracks are a good shout, but I was trying to monitor his navy. Which is something I failed at with Qin. I could possibly have got more trades, but I felt that I got in the most important things.

2) Good point, I noticed that for the next part and did something about it.

3) Not sure what the best time for begging is. Technically, if you beg 1 gold immediately and they "keep plotting", you possibly don't gain any time by doing that. And 10 turns later (which they might have needed anyway) you get attacked and the option of begging is gone. I relied (a bit too much) on scouting their navy and trying to figure out what they are up to, that way. The outcome with Qin was lucky, but mostly due to the scouting mistake. Now I will have 10 turns more to prepare and they are badly needed to put up a better defense against Rifles than something like Maces/Trebs.

4) The plan is to take him out completely, yes. No capitulation. That would be possible since nobody likes him and thus minimize the risk of bribes and peace-vassals. That would resolve all culture tensions, since nobody else is on the island. I would like to attack someone stronger, but the Buddhist continent seemed too far ahead and Saladin/Gilgamesh are far away, get a defensive pact with each other and are good trading buddies. The Buddhist guys also had defensive pacts and relations/techs that would have made me an easy target for bribes. Only guy without potential defensive pact is Joao at that point. And I felt of confident of taking him out. With Pyramids and ~15 cities I could have started a comeback and potentially invade the Buddhist continent. Saladin/Gilgamesh are easy to get to friendly and could provide UN votes later.

So far the theory, the reality can be seen now since I continued a bit .

Next time I am definitely playing a non-isolation game.

 

[tycoonist]

Really enjoying watching this Lain. I've picked up a few cool tricks already. Watching the way you handled the barbarian situation in the early game was very helpful. I particularly liked the border popping the Chinese army back to his continent!

Having said that, have to say that the game looks pretty unwinnable. Maybe there's still a chance. But attacking into a deity AI who has infantry (and nearly tanks/marines one has to assume) across the sea with a naval disadvantage... you're gonna have to play this one very well to even stand a chance.

 

[unas876]

Spoiler :

I just got done watching. I think my biggest worry right now would be Combustion. If he gets that, you don't have any way of quickly shipping reinforcements, which is already tough enough with his huge fleet of Frigates and Ships of the Line. That, plus even if Sury has killed a lot of his big stacks, you can't bribe Sury off and it might just all be for naught.

 

[Lain]

So I finished the game now.

Spoiler :

Pretty hopeless in the end. Even though I really thought I might get out of this somehow. Trying to reflect on the game, but it's hard to put the finger on a single aspect that cost me the win.

The early game was too slow and cities #2 and #3 not great. But I felt that the barb situation (skipping Archery) didn't allow for the better settles further away. So maybe getting Archery might have helped in the long run, even though it seems like a nuisance at first. Starting techs didn't help either. But improvements should be possible. Getting Astro just 5-10 turns earlier would be such a big deal.

Then I was so busy with catching up and never felt I could pull off a convincing attack. The only weak target was picked off by Ragnar and I was left with a lot of guys who were Friendly towards each other (danger of bribes) or even had Defensive Pacts at some points. DoW from China didn't help either.

Starting to think that the play for Great Merchant(s) might not be as useful as I thought. Don't have much production anyway and being in Caste System doesn't help with that. Upgrades are not worth much when there aren't enough units to upgrade. Looking back, there might have been a window to launch an invasion on the Saladin/Gilga continent.

Still feel like I am missing something more subtle though. Something that would result in a better Astro time and kind of solve the other problems automatically, to some degree.

Will play some "normal" maps next and feature isolation after building up confidence with a few wins .

I will try to upload games regularly so if you are interested in following that, feel free to drop a comment/like/subscription or just check in every now and then. Not really interested in making YouTube a serious thing, but feedback is always appreciated and helps to find motivation.

Apparently some companies "copyrighted" parts of the music used in the game. I can leave them in the videos but they reserve the rights to place advertisements and stuff. So if you see any of those, it's not me being greedy or anything like that . Might just mute the segments if that becomes too annoying, so let me know.

 

[tycoonist]

Spoiler :

Thought you played it pretty well but a win was always going to be tough with a) Boudica in isolation, b) the religion situation abroad. If you replayed this game from the time you got astro onwards, I think your best chance would have been to pursue friendly relations with Ragnar and Qin and go for Saladin and Gilgamesh. They weren't that advanced at one point, if you'd managed to avoid the war with China, you could probably have snowballed killing Gilga into killing Sal (or the other way round.)

Joao looked tempting, but even if you did get there before Ragnar, you still might not have had the land to win the game before those horrible late game wars against deity late game navies and railroads.

Loved the videos by the way. I'll watch more whenever you put them up. They're really helpful for me since I'm starting to get a bit better at deity myself.

 

[Pangaea]

I'd be fine with you turning off the music even without your videos getting spammed by 'copyright' holders. I tend to find it a little distracting anyway. Especially when people are making comments, like you did here, and like Chris does/did in his.

Sorry about the loss. But it was a very difficult map, with a poor leader. Deity is difficult in normal circumstances, and everything is much more tricky in isolation, when you have no control over what the other AIs do, and can't wage war or trade until 1000AD or whenever it might be. Due to the rapid and increasingly quick tech pace in the later eras of the game, a non-military win is pretty hard as well.

 

[Pedro78]

Sup everyone

Turned out that I couldn't play civ this week (didn't even have access to the internet). I'm gonna start playing the Boudi game tonight, expect this to take a really long time as I'll try to plan everything carefully.

@Lain
Didn't have time to watch your last videos (might spoil me a little, though). I will watch them as I play along. Not sure how to get 600AD Astro on this map, but I'll definitely try for it (on my first attempt got it in 800-900AD iirc, had the same problem with GP generation).
If you're not going for CoL and don't have marble, you have to start building up your 3rd GS on T90 (625BC) to get 600AD Astro, and that's not easy on that kind of map.

 

[Pedro78]

To T50 (2000BC) :

Spoiler :

Tech path : Ag - AH - Wheel - Pottery - Mining - (BW started)

Build order : Worker - Warrior - Warrior - Settler - Worker ; started on a granary in second city

Worker usage : Rice - Sheep - 2xWineFarm - started roading into the second city - improved sheep. Right now second worker finishing the road to the second city, then will cottage/chop there as needed.

Didn't have much barb trouble (map knowledge helped a little), and don't expect much barb trouble from now on, as the second city fogbusts a lot of land.

Next city will be the fish city down south, and fourth city will be the clam city 3S1W of the capital.

Things I'll do for sure :
- Beeline Optics, skipping everything but Monarchy in the upper tech tree as I don't see any benefits in going for CoL (low food), or Alpha (low hammers)
- Move the Palace to the second city, as it's a much better cottage spot

Things I'll probably do :
- Get the first GS from capital, second from fish city and third from clam city. Fish city will be used to whip Caravels, as it will be my only usable coastal city for a while.
-Stay at 4 cities (maybe 5) until 10 turns to Astro or so, as I don't see any spots that will bring extra commerce.

Attached the save, any advice/criticism is welcome

 

[unas876]

Spoiler :

Interesting that you managed to grab that nice spot first without going Archery. Did you have to take any risks in terms of barb defense?

 

[Pedro78]

Spoiler :

I fogbusted the whole West of the spot with warriors/scout, then moved 2 warriors along with the settler, killed 1 barb Archer while defending in the forest. Overall, I didn't really have to take any risks, especially as Agg warriors have pretty good odds when defending against Archers in the forest (70% iirc).

There are still a couple of un-fogbusted tiles on the island, but capital can build a quick warrior if needed, and the other warriors can return to city #2, so I feel pretty safe about the barbs now.