[GS] Found a great starting location, but...

[osak]

Hey All,

So I've just started to play on deity difficulty with lady six sky, and I found a promising starting location with good tiles around the starting location, including mount roraima just south (one tile movement to the south reveals it).

I was happy to start this game on good grounds and started to go for it. I was planning to go for SV with a possibility to go war early with a nearby civ, considering the power of hul'che early game is nuts. So because of it I went straight to archery.

Early exploration revealed my 2 closest neighbors. Gilgamesh to the east and Cyrus to the south (north and west are ocean). None of them were really happy with me even with sending delegation to them right away. Gilgamesh even declared war on me early. Like really early. I started with scout - builder - slinger and when my slinger was just finished he went with war with me. I was like 3 turns away from archery at this point and my warrior was like 8-9 tiles away from my city dealing with a barb camp. Nevertheless my city was fallen in 2 turns.

Next try I was skipping the scout and the builder (I got a builder from pantheon later anyway) and went for slingers. Since my army was bigger this time Gilgamesh declared war on my much later so I had time to spam out a lot of hul'che and defended my capital. I even had time to settle my second city about 5 tiles south to my capital. My army was strong enough to go after Gilgamesh and I took down one of his cities.

The problems are the following:

- I have 0 chance to maintain loyalty in the captured city. It becomes a free city within 3-4 turns even with the +loyalty policy and with moving Pingala to the city. Also the other cities are getting walls and my army gets shredded. Gilgamesh offered peace once, but I kinda have to stay in war as I need space as both Gilgamesh and Cyrus are close and my starting location is in a corner basically.

- While I'm dealing with Gilgamesh Cyrus forward settle 2 cities towards me leaving no space at all to the south, and cause of those cities my second city is starting to loose loyalty. Not too fast, but still a problem having Cyrus so close to me. I feel like he's going to declare war on me soon too. If Gilgamesh weren't so aggressive I could had settle where he did, but with Gilgamesh attacking me it's just not possible to develop to the south.

So, if any of you having more experience on deity and sees some challenge in it I have attached the save file from T1. And let me know your experience, or tips/tricks how to deal with this rough situation.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts in advance.

 

[bengalryan9]

Always expect an early declaration on Deity. Always, always, always. Focus on troops first.

That said, you really lucked out here - Gilgamesh is a big softy. Declare friendship with him the very first turn that you meet him and you'll never have a single issue with him. At least then you only have to worry about Persia.

I know that you went on the offensive with some success but I personally would've taken advantage of Maya's strength and turtled against Persia... the AI will get slaughtered by your UU. With Gilgamesh as your BFF you'd have that land to the south available to settle. Later on if you wanted to take a few cities from Persia you could team up with Gilgamesh to make it even easier - you'd get bonus XP and CS strength from an alliance with him.

Those are just my quick thoughts based solely on your description.

 

[osak]

Oh man.... I thought you can only make friendship with civs who you have a good relationship with. Usually they all decline friendship requests unless you have the green smiley face
But now reading Gilgamesh's first agenda it makes sense.
This one information just changes the whole game now as I only need to focus and deal with Cyrus.

Cheers friend!

 

[nauberry]

And in the case you get forward settled by Persia, you could also just wait until the city loyalty flips to you. Maya are built to have tall cities, and if their city is next to your huge capital, it should start loosing loyalty at some point. Of course you can also skip this by conquering the city as @bengalryan9 said.

 

[osak]

I was managed to deal with Gilgamesh with friendship, so I could focus on Cyrus. I was spamming out hul'ches, and produced 1 settler again to settle south of my capital. Then I just continued creating hul'ches and some warriors preparing to conquer Persia. But I made 2 big mistakes and those caused me to stop on my conquest. I declared war on Cyrus while he was attacking Mitla just south of my 2nd city. The timing was fine as majority of his army was damaged and my hul'ches had easy time finishing them off. Cyrus still got Mitla, but in 2 turns I got it from him.

And here I made my 2 mistakes.

First of all for some reason I though freeing Mitla is better for me as I'm going for SV, so I liberated it. This led me to a problem when I was going for the first Persian city. My closest city to the Persian city is like 10 tiles away while the Persian city itself is at the border of Sumeria. Loyalty issues kicked in. If I were to keep Mitla, I could have maintain loyalty with policy card and a governor. I also haven't paid attention for era score and got into dark age maximizing my loyalty problems. And because I had to deal with loyalty issues my conquest stopped, Persia got crossbowmen and I lost my advantage. Also there was a vote meanwhile where I got the vote for how to produce military units. As I was in war I thought the -50% production is a good idea, but thinking back I just helped Cyrus as his army was down I still had the majority of my own. So I should had gone for the +100% production.

The second huge mistake I've done is that I was asking Gilgamesh too late to join the war. He could have dealt with the city I was going for after Mitla. So I think after taking over Mitla I could have just gone for the Persian cities south of Mitla and cause less problem for myself.

So at least I see my mistakes and I'm learning. This evening I start it over again and see how it goes if I make different choices. I think I should also spend more times in each turn figuring out what's the best move

 

[Vargas1]

Good work on reviewing and identifying areas to improve!

I just want to note that, as you did, it’s smart to declare war on Persia if he’s close by rather than waiting for him to declare on you, since he gets strong bonuses for declaring a surprise war.

 

[Pietato]

Not sure you really need to take any of Cyrus' cities. You are the Mayans.

 

[osak]

I know Mayans have a good chance with small empire, like 6 cities should be enough, but there's no room for 6 cities to settle. Also the bonus is 6 tiles from the capital right? maybe 2 cities can get it, but not the rest. I absolutely feel going after Cyrus is right. But if you have time take a look on the save. Like in 10-15 turns you can see the whole positioning.

 

[Unmitigated Gaul]

Maybe just raze Cyrus’s cities? That way you can settle cities later as you choose?

 

[Pietato]

I know Mayans have a good chance with small empire, like 6 cities should be enough, but there's no room for 6 cities to settle. Also the bonus is 6 tiles from the capital right? maybe 2 cities can get it, but not the rest. I absolutely feel going after Cyrus is right. But if you have time take a look on the save. Like in 10-15 turns you can see the whole positioning.

Honestly, I would have restarted if I started next to so much ocean as the Mayans. Latest patch was supposed to stop this from happening

 

[osak]

Yea that's true, but I got excited by mount roraima I might not play this game through to the end, and just find a better location for a longer game, but I still find the early game exciting on this location. Good for practice I guess.

 

[Pietato]

My first Maya game spawned next to Mt. Roraima and ocean as well. Deity, huge, small continents. A great city-state spawned next to me as well, which meant I had only 3 cities in range of the capital. I finished the game (science victory) but it felt off.

 

[kb27787]

If Maya science is what you're going for (and I'm no science player whatsoever)... consider something close to OCC... you won't be able to spread out those precious builder charges over too many cities... and GPP is rather irrelevant with things like Nalanda and whatnot.

 

[Pietato]

Just did 10 Mayan starts to test. 8 were by the coast. 5 were also by Mount Roraima...

That seems...unlikely.

 

[osak]

Sometimes I also feel that the starting locations are rigged somehow. Like if you play with Canada on Huge Earth map (not TLS) you will always start in the middle of Siberia, on the exact same hexagon, no matter what.

 

[Linklite]

Sometimes I also feel that the starting locations are rigged somehow. Like if you play with Canada on Huge Earth map (not TLS) you will always start in the middle of Siberia, on the exact same hexagon, no matter what.

They are. Many civs have a starting bias to help them take advantage of their abilities. Canada has a tier 1 (so the strongest) starting bias for tundra and tundra hills, which apparently are most present in Siberia. Since they have the strongest bias for those features, they'll never be beaten to it (unless another civ is present that happens to also have tier 1 starting bias and then they'll probably start near to each other anyway.

It makes sense, you don't want to Portugal starting in the middle of the Sahara or Mali starting in a rainforest. Some of the biases are pretty artificial to get there though; Spain has a bias for geothermal vents - the logic being that they have bonuses for settling different continents, and geothermal vents spawn near continental divides, which means s Spain is likely to spawn near the border of two continents, allowing them to use their divide. I don't like it that much though, because Spain was associated with navies - vents are more likely to form inland and so actually downplay naval games for Spain. I would give a higher tier coast bias so they get the advantage of being closer to non contiguous continents encouraging naval play and the colonisation of other continents. Then as a lower tier bias maybe put for continental divides so they can still go take advantage of their bonuses if playing on a map with a single contiguous landmass like Pangaea.

Here's some reading for starting bias, if you're interested: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Starting_bias_(Civ6)