[BNW] Enjoyable Deity Games

[ForkOfSpite]

Amazing timing - first day I've visited this forum in about two years. Maybe longer.

To Nizef - well done!

 

[Nizef]

Thank you. Given that this thread only started in February 2019, it has exceeded my expectations. Given the number of reviews (almost 170.000 by now) and number of replies (one of the most active threads ever), it has been a privilege to do this.

 

[penguin74]

Double write up for EDG 8-9.
EDG8 turn 274 quit. Mostly boring game. Tried to do a peaceful CV but was always just a step behind. Both Indonesia and Shoshone seemed to be prioritizing culture/tourism and beat me to every wonder I wanted by a few turns. Never really built an offensive military, so I wasnt in a position to go take the ones I needed. I had used some of my GS to get techs for culture stuff, so I wasnt really in a position to switch over and go science. Happiness tanked from ideological pressure (i still have no idea how that works), so I called it a day to move on to #9.

EDG 9 turn 452 Dom V. This game was a blast. I never did a honor/commerce dom run, so thought Id try it. Found Austria first, so thought Id start the war in that direction, but then found Babylon in the west, and wanted to take them out before they could really take advantage of tech boosts. Built 3 cities, one towards the east and 1 west just north of Ormus. Made sure to stay allied with Ormus and Hong Kong to help protect borders.

Babylon fell with mostly comp's, but decided to wait for Keshiks to hit Austria. I had left 1 Babylonian city on the coast, so Suleiman ended up taking that and putting 2 cities south of Babylon on the tundra. I wasnt to worried as I didnt think he could build up a big force in that terrain, and ice protected me from any naval issues. Austria took a little longer to conquer than I thought as he had a ton of knights, but eventually I got his capital with keshiks who now had range and logistics. I left him one city as well to not get that penalty.
I had planned to leave Venice for later, but he picked a fight, so frigates mostly took him out.

France was my only friend, but didnt know how long that would last. Took advantage of open borders to send the Keshiks up north to hit Spain. Managed to take his capital and 1 other city, but while the cats were away, the mice will play. Suleiman decided to hit my Babylonian cities with a force I never saw coming. I had left 2 crossbows, 2 musketeers and 2 keshiks over there, which I thought was enough, but it was woefully inadequate. after Babylon fell, I sold the other city to France as a bit of a buffer zone. With Ormus as an ally and my western city in a very defensible place, he made no more moves forward.

France was now predictably getting agitated and denounced me. Made peace with the Ottomans who immediately became friendly. Wanted to start with France before they could hit me as they had a good military. However, the AI cant really figure out how to deal with artillery. It took some time due to the sheer size of their armies, but I eventually got to Paris. Songhai was right there, and the Ottomans were already at war with them, so it became a race to see who got there first. Got lucky as they were 1 turn from taking a city that would have blocked me from a direct line to the Songhai capital, but he just missed and artillery strikes and some lancers swooped in. From there I had a direct line to the capital.

Luckily, happiness wasnt much of an issue. I had gone order to make sure of this, as France went that way and had pushed the Ottomans into a big happiness penalty for going Autocracy. Had tons of money from commerce and all the wars, so was able to leave very small forces behind as I could always annex a city and buy an army fast if need be. The frigates from the Venice attack were now battleships and parked by Madrid, so they swung around towards Istanbul. Upgraded artillery and battleships took it out, but I took some losses,

I had to make peace for a quick regroup before going towards Babylon. He still had a bigger army than me somehow, but I had plenty of cash and bought 2 extra merchants to help out. The army moved south and as soon as the treaty expired I attacked. What I didnt expect was how many troops he had behind near Istanbul in secondary cities. It became a race. Could I hold Istanbul long enough to take Babylon. I came about a turn or 2 away from losing it, but had enough cash to hard buy defensive buildings plus bombers. Landskechts just threw themselves in the way of troops as the artillery and battleships in the south took out enough troops to get me to Babylon.

Not sure what that equates to on a standrad pace, but Im happy with it. 2-6-1 overall on the replays.

 

[Nizef]

Double write up for EDG 8-9.
EDG8 turn 274 quit. Mostly boring game. Tried to do a peaceful CV but was always just a step behind. Both Indonesia and Shoshone seemed to be prioritizing culture/tourism and beat me to every wonder I wanted by a few turns. Never really built an offensive military, so I wasnt in a position to go take the ones I needed. I had used some of my GS to get techs for culture stuff, so I wasnt really in a position to switch over and go science. Happiness tanked from ideological pressure (i still have no idea how that works), so I called it a day to move on to #9.

EDG 9 turn 452 Dom V. This game was a blast. I never did a honor/commerce dom run, so thought Id try it. Found Austria first, so thought Id start the war in that direction, but then found Babylon in the west, and wanted to take them out before they could really take advantage of tech boosts. Built 3 cities, one towards the east and 1 west just north of Ormus. Made sure to stay allied with Ormus and Hong Kong to help protect borders.

I am happy you liked #9. I must say, that even after countless hours of both peaceful and warlike games, I still enjoy domination on Epic speed. Somehow it feels like I have more time to focus on the frontline instead of having to think too hard about when the AI or myself will hit the next relevant tech. Turn 452 roughly equals t 301 on standard speed.

 

[billby]

Tried the first Korea game this week. Yep... agree it is an enjoyable deity challenge. I can get off to a great start, wipe out Mongolia and move on... but the game gets to somewhere around turn 130 and crashes. I've learned the hard way, that you need to go back a lot of turns and try something different. That's OK, but I'm not going to be able to test if my marvellous strategy is viable.

Does anyone know how to avoid these crashes? I'm playing on a Mac, which could possibly be the problem.

 

[cocls]

Tried the first Korea game this week. Yep... agree it is an enjoyable deity challenge. I can get off to a great start, wipe out Mongolia and move on... but the game gets to somewhere around turn 130 and crashes. I've learned the hard way, that you need to go back a lot of turns and try something different. That's OK, but I'm not going to be able to test if my marvellous strategy is viable.

Does anyone know how to avoid these crashes? I'm playing on a Mac, which could possibly be the problem.

I guess it's because savefile bloating problem. You can check the size of your save file to see if it becomes much larger.
If so, you can use the save file unfloat mod to solve it.

 

[mbbcam]

I play on a Mac and I also get crashes from time to time. I'm not sure what the reason is. My "solution" is to set my preferences so that the game saves on every turn, and keeps 350 saves. It is not ideal, but it is somewhat less frustrating than losing tens of moves or having to give up a game completely. I'm not interested in Hall of Fame rules or anything of that kind, so I have no hesitation in reloading.

I guess it's because savefile bloating problem. You can check the size of your save file to see if it becomes much larger.
If so, you can use the save file unfloat mod to solve it.

I thought the file unbloat mod does not work on Mac. I thought it changed the DLL. I may be wrong.

EDIT: I just checked. Save file unbloat mod does change the DLL, so it is unusable on Mac.

 

[billby]

I play on a Mac and I also get crashes from time to time. I'm not sure what the reason is. My "solution" is to set my preferences so that the game saves on every turn, and keeps 350 saves. It is not ideal, but it is somewhat less frustrating than losing tens of moves or having to give up a game completely. I'm not interested in Hall of Fame rules or anything of that kind, so I have no hesitation in reloading.



I thought the file unbloat mod does not work on Mac. I thought it changed the DLL. I may be wrong.

EDIT: I just checked. Save file unbloat mod does change the DLL, so it is unusable on Mac.

Thanks, I looked at the mod and guessed it wouldn't work on the Mac.

Until now I've been saving every 5 moves. The problem with the crashes are that if you do exactly the same thing again, the game will crash at the same point. In fact even if you make a few changes, it will crash at the same point. And that's where it gets tricky because you can stop it from crashing if you go back further and change your moves a lot... but that can mean you end up losing or putting victory in danger.

 

[mbbcam]

Thanks, I looked at the mod and guessed it wouldn't work on the Mac.

Until now I've been saving every 5 moves. The problem with the crashes are that if you do exactly the same thing again, the game will crash at the same point. In fact even if you make a few changes, it will crash at the same point. And that's where it gets tricky because you can stop it from crashing if you go back further and change your moves a lot... but that can mean you end up losing or putting victory in danger.

I've never been able to discern any pattern in the crashes, and I've found that sometimes I have been able to reload and carry on, other times not, and I can't really see why it works in some cases and not in others. I happen to have a copy of Parallels, so I sometimes open Civ in Windows, and use Save File Unbloat to make a fresh save, then switch back to Mac and carry on. It is a rigmarole, but if it is the only way to salvage a long game, I will do it. I would play all the time in Parallels/Windows, but recently it has not been very satisfactory. Various visual glitches and other irritations.

 

[billby]

I restarted the game from year zero. Got to turn 115 before it crashed again - different spot, but same crash.

There's a copy of Parallels on my Mac. Will try your hack today.

 

[mbbcam]

I restarted the game from year zero. Got to turn 115 before it crashed again - different spot, but same crash.

There's a copy of Parallels on my Mac. Will try your hack today.

You probably know this, but I thought I would just observe that the Mac version of the game saves in a different folder from the Win version running under Parallels. One of the parts of the rigmarole is moving saved files from one folder to the other. On my Mac, the Win version saves to a folder inside the Documents folder (/Users/<username>/Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/ModdedSaves/single), while the Mac version saves to a folder with the path /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/ModdedSaves/single. It may depend on how you have set things up.

 

[billby]

I restarted from scratch again and ended up playing a dramatically different game. That wasn't my intention, the early barbarian activity was radically different on the third play through, so was the early aggression from the northern and eastern neighbours - this time before I finished National College. While it screwed with my plan, it didn't crash at all. Ended with a near-miss science victory in 321. The rivals were a few moves behind me in the space race, but a few turns from the end they declared war on me and I knew I'd only be able to hold out for a handful of turns once their army's rolled in.

Spoiler Here's my game notes :

EDG#1 report

Initial thoughts.

Korea means science. I'd prefer to play domination, but may have to go for a science victory. Let's accept that now.

I'm looking for areas suitable for farmland to build big populations in my core cities. And I plan to settle next to mountains where possible.

Tradition is likely to be the best path: tall cities work best for science.

A salt start is always positive, but, otherwise, the land looks unpromising.

There's desert, a pantheon could be worthwhile, but that's hard on deity. Let's see how we do.

Plan A is to beeline education, get five or six cities with universities and then maybe look at going to war.


Turn 30
I've scouted out what is likely to be the homeland. Stole a worker from the eastern neighbour.

Lots of barbarians, which put a stop to rushing out the first two expansion cities. But found Fountain of Youth and a few more areas with salt. That's going to help with tall cities.

Hoping to squeak out a pantheon - although it looks like being close, and will pick Earth Mother to get the most out of the salt.

Plan to start settlers as soon as the barbarians are out of the way.

Expect to build first next to Fountain, mountain and in close reach of the Cocoa to the east of Seoul. Then either the South coast where there's more salt or to the west where there are whales and marble. That may be one or two cities.... Also a potential spot to the north east with gems.

Turn 100

Got Earth Mother, faith looked high enough to get a religion, but I suspect it was a close run thing as only one was left when the great prophet turned up. Not much left to choose from, but for some reason the AI never choses tithes.

Ended up with the standard (and frankly a bit boring) Tradition four cities - barbarians ruined the more ambitious plan. The northern neighbour took out the two city states to the north through the T70s and T80s then attacked me around T90.

The eastern neighbour massed on my border, but after showing him ten composite bowmen ready to shoot he looked elsewhere.

Switched from beelining education to machinery and have amassed enough money to build ten crossbows... expect to liberate the city states - which should mean I'll be good for happiness and a protective northern buffer for another 100 turns or so.

Mid-game

War in the north and to the east spoiled the plans for six cities, stuck with the standard tradition four cities. It looks like that might be it unless an opportunity shows up. I'd like to build on the desert coast to the north west of Seoul to get the whales and iron, but fear that means I won't be able to build the Oxford University at a useful time. Likewise building a city for the gems to the north east would mean a long haul to getting a university.

Have now given up on the idea of domination, the eastern neighbour is too strong and bribing the next neighbour along to attack hasn't paid off. Instead of beelining dynamite, I'm heading for plastics and radio.

On a positive note, the tall city strategy is working well although at T150 I was still bottom for science and soldiers - not a comfortable position. There will be a surge in science with Oxford and the great scientists that are now emerging - I had to suppress building great merchants to keep science moving forward. No chance of a great engineer.

Haven't even thought about building wonders, although I plan to give the Porcelain Tower a shot for the scientist and Korean science boost.

Late game

Got the Porcelain Tower - it's likely going to be my only wonder.

Winning the World's Fair means I've almost completed Rationalism. Was third to the modern era, the others picked Order and Autocracy. Freedom is the least useful ideology, but picking two policies and having the culture to quickly grab the third has catapulted me to number 2 in science and the Foreign Legion means I have a big enough army to defend even if I'm still 6 in the military league table.

Hmm. Hubble Space Telescope - don't mind if I do. Picked this up, from what my spies could see, there wasn't any competition for this.

Winning

Not going to lie about this, the last 20 - 30 turns getting to T321 and the science victory was a grind. I had plenty of defensive wars in this game and spent on armies when I could have spent on production and growth, otherwise I think I could have launched the spaceship 40 turns earlier. With about five turns to go more or less everyone with a decent army piled in one last attack, but I'd spent valuable hammers and cash building enough defences.

In hindsight

Choosing Space Procurements was a waste of a vital policy at a crucial time. It might have been better to go deeper into Commerce, but on reflection I should have picked patronage and gone at least as far as the city state science bonus.

I probably put too much weight on getting Oxford, those two extra cities would have given me more clout and a more interesting game.

Here is the customary T94 screen shot:

And the last turn

 

[billby]

I've never been able to discern any pattern in the crashes, and I've found that sometimes I have been able to reload and carry on, other times not, and I can't really see why it works in some cases and not in others. I happen to have a copy of Parallels, so I sometimes open Civ in Windows, and use Save File Unbloat to make a fresh save, then switch back to Mac and carry on. It is a rigmarole, but if it is the only way to salvage a long game, I will do it. I would play all the time in Parallels/Windows, but recently it has not been very satisfactory. Various visual glitches and other irritations.

Ugh... it just happened again.

Can I check how this works?

I loaded Civ in Windows, installed the unbloat mod. Load my save file. Then immediately save the file. Then load that saved file into the Mac version.

Went back to the Mac and it still crashes. The file size wasn't any smaller.

Is there something else I need to do to unbloat? What about, perhaps, taking one move on the Windows version and saving that?

 

[mbbcam]

Ugh... it just happened again.

Can I check how this works?

I loaded Civ in Windows, installed the unbloat mod. Load my save file. Then immediately save the file. Then load that saved file into the Mac version.

Went back to the Mac and it still crashes. The file size wasn't any smaller.

Is there something else I need to do to unbloat? What about, perhaps, taking one move on the Windows version and saving that?

What I have usually done is played for a while in Windows, then switched back to macOS when I started getting irritated with the glitches in Windows. I don't think I've ever gone straight back to macOS, now I come to think of it.

Maybe also try reloading with the save from a couple of turns before the crash.

In the past, I have sometimes wondered if the crashes happen in macOS during the saving phase of the turn (I have settings to save every single turn). It is only a guess, but I'm wondering if the problems occur when the program is trying to write to disk.

 

[billby]

Yes. I found by trial and error - mainly error - that five turns in Windows then back to Mac did the trick. The Civ-V in Windows in Parallels experience is hard going, but far from impossible and 20 minutes of that is no big deal in a game that might last 16 - 24 hours in total.

 

[mbbcam]

I'm glad it seems to have worked.

 

[billby]

Thanks for the game. I did a lazy four city Tradition to NC, then two more cites after that. Peaceful SV T308. I might replay trying Liberty for a DomVC.

Really enjoyed this game. Was aiming for a domination victory but "accidentally" won a diplomatic victory on turn 331.

Planned a more ambitious start, but by turn 60 Venice had fallen and a troop carpet was approaching from the north-east so ended up bribing, playing for science until Comanche Riders and Artillery (around T175) then spending 50 turns in. a grinding war dealing with the menace (the enemy was three times my size by then).

An early religious idols pantheon meant tons of culture, almost got through patronage before hitting rationalism and allied with all the city states to help with warring.... but completely forgot that would give me the diplomatic victory. I could easily have gone the science victory route as well.

Played on and found it took another 50 turns to mop up the remaining capitals.

Most satisfying.

 

[Nizef]

Really enjoyed this game. Was aiming for a domination victory but "accidentally" won a diplomatic victory on turn 331.

Planned a more ambitious start, but by turn 60 Venice had fallen and a troop carpet was approaching from the north-east so ended up bribing, playing for science until Comanche Riders and Artillery (around T175) then spending 50 turns in. a grinding war dealing with the menace (the enemy was three times my size by then).

An early religious idols pantheon meant tons of culture, almost got through patronage before hitting rationalism and allied with all the city states to help with warring.... but completely forgot that would give me the diplomatic victory. I could easily have gone the science victory route as well.

Played on and found it took another 50 turns to mop up the remaining capitals.

Most satisfying.

It is most interesting what you wrote about Religious Idols. It is a pantheon I rarely go for but (as in this game) on the day it will work wonders for your culture output. You reminded me about the real power of getting +1 culture and getting it going relatively early. Thanks for trying out the game. I am sure you will find that many games in the thread have above average starts and thus will set you up for a more flexible game. I would really like to recommend #5 with Byzantium. Even if I created it myself, I must say it is something of classic. Have fun!

 

[Nizef]

Other "must play" games besides #5 are #42 with the Mayans and #72 with Denmark.

 

[billby]

I'm glad it seems to have worked.

Just noticed a message saying I’m ignoring you… that was a mistake, must have hit something wrong on my phone. If you got a message saying I’m ignoring you please disregard.