5BC Defiant Deity again

[Own]

First two attempts failed, and we're trying again.

Spoiler :

If you're just joining us, you're probably wondering what 5BC, an odd enough variant by itself, and defiant are doing together. Well, I've got a decent explanation. I finished a solo game on 5CC Deity on a large map. I was too chicken to gamble for space or conquest, so I took diplo, but I may yet reload to see if I could get either space or conquest (3 of the 5 cities were 120 spt's in mobilization). Anyway, I had to kiss a lot of butt, and I wondered if a 5CC defiant could be possible. No way, too hard. 5BC? Sure, ok.

We may want a strategy revision. That last start was both excellent and bad in various ways. We could have had four local luxuries if we had held on to that indian city. A cow at the start, and four other fertile city spots, with both iron and horsies to boot. OTOH, there were four rivals on our continent, and we experienced more war than usual even for defiant.

For new strategy, we may want to try an archer rush. 7 archers and a spear, head for a pop 2 or culturally expanded city, capture it, then get another city or two/ techs for peace. That would get my vote.

Variant:

5BC- We can only ever build 5 cities, the rest must be captured

Defiant-

• Refuse demands
• Boot all AI troops
• No MPPs, MA's, RoP's, or TE's
• No gifting anything to the AI
• No giving stuff to the AI for peace (but we can accept peace straight up)
• Unlike normal defiant, we can capture cities and workers.

I'm probably forgetting something, if I am please tell.

One more thing, make sure you have NoAIPatrol=0 in your ini file. I was shocked to discover that I did not have it after playing the last game. That was why we had so much war with the Mayans.

I'll roll a start soon, make them all on standard continents, preferably 60% water.

Roster (not neccessarily order)-
Own- confirmed
Tone
Mumpulus-
killercane-
BeF-
Elephantium- Confirmed
Othniel-

 

[Own]

Standard Continents, 60%, wet, warm, 5 billion, no barbs, Germany, normal AI aggression.



I'd move the worker to the wheat, and settle on the spot. There's still plenty BG, and we'll get the shield back eventually. Settling on the spot allows us to irrigate the wheat.

 

[Elephantium]

Checking in.

Two questions:

* Can we virtually gift anything to AIs? e.g. sell Currency to a Sci AI for 1 gold to bring them into the MA.
* When signing peace, can we give gold to get the AI to give us more techs with the treaty?

The start looks good. I'd settle in place and move the worker to the wheat.

 

[Own]

That's a spirit of the rule violation, so I'd say no.

If straight peace is acceptable, we can do whatever we want, that includes paying gpt and peace for a tech, so yes.

 

[Mumpulus]

I'm good for another try.

The settler is on a BG. With only 5 cities to start, I'd rather not found on it. I'd propose a move north so we are certain to have a spot available to the south that will still be on the river. I think we can wait 10 turns for the wheat. I'd even mine it if we find more food elsewhere.

As for strategy, Own's proposal sounds good. In fact, I think we did pretty well in the conquering department during the last game, it was just holding on to our acquisitions that didn't work out so well.

Agreed that the constant wars were a bit unexpected... This time we'll make it, I'm sure.

One other thing I'd like us to consider: with us being allowed to build only 5 cities, it has been natural not to use CxxC. But given the defiant part, maybe we should think of settling just a bit tighter; maybe not CxxC, but not OCP either.

Spoiler :

M60A3TTS, if you're lurking, I'm not advocating ICS here

 

[Own]

After going on a wild goose chase for my conquests ini file (turns out it was a hidden file ) I have fixed the problem that I thought I did a while ago. Btw, on the ini file it says at the bottom "Net Name= Own." How does it know that?

I'll play the first twenty, trying for the archer rush. You've made a good point about moving the settler. In a solo game, I'd still probably settle on the spot because growth is key, but I'll go with your plan. I'll move the settler north.

Edit: This start is terrible, I'll roll another.

 

[Own]

Here's another start as china this time.



4000BC- Move worker to cow, settle on the spot, start on rax. Start max research on, hmm... pottery.

1. Begin irrigating cow.

5. Start roading cow.

7. Beijing grows, barracks in two. Lux > 20%

8. Mine BG

10. Contact Inca, pottery and 10g for warrior code. Start min on alphabet.

11. Lux > 30%

12. Archer >archer. He goes exploring.

16. Lux > 40%

17. Archer > archer.

20. Nothing



Build more archers and then finally a spear, attack the closest city that won't be autorazed, then make peace asap, I'd take cities over techs.

 

[Own]

Roster-
Own- just played
Mumpulus- up
killercane- unconfirmed
Beorn - eL - Feared- unconfirmed
Elephantium- on deck, maybe
Othniel - unconfirmed

You can either play or wait for more confirmations mump, up to you. You also can play more than ten turns since they're quick.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Confirmed, with a school-time drop out reservation as per the PM notice you sent.

On start 1: you'd lose so much growth by moving it wouldn't be funny. I'd strongly suggest settling on spot but we're off the hook anyways.

Start 2: Better traits, better start, this looks like a winner. Some city spots are drooling good around there, albeit on the food poor side without AGR.

Good trades, good research path. We'll have to either sneak-attack Macchu Picchu or give up on it being size 2, they'll whip it to 1 in a turn. They don't have a lot of pop (3 total out of 3 cities), esp. with their early settler, and haven't had bronze for a long time so we can take them out, they're ripe. I'd go at 5 or 6 archers, maybe with a settler in the meanwhile.

 

[Elephantium]

What was wrong with the first start?

 

[Own]

Good analysis beorn. I hate not starting with alphabet, I have no idea what to research. There's no tech expensive enough worth min research and also no tech that we could have a chacne of getting a monopoly. The Wheel on max might not have been a bad idea.

The instant the borders expanded on the previous start it revealed desert to the south and the west and jungle up north. No thanks.

Roster-
Own
Mump- up
KC- unconfirmed
BeF- on deck
Elephant- inside of the hole
Othniel- unconfirmed

 

[Mumpulus]

it revealed desert to the south and the west and jungle up north

One game like that is enough for a while, so thanks for rerolling Own

It's past midnight here, so I'll pass on playing now. I'll play this tomorrow evening, but will try to post my game plan during the day

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Alpha is always good since we have warrior code already, which is all we need.
Pots is a plus, but we'll gain more on the short run by capturing a major city off our closest neighbor than by delaying everything for our first granary.

Once we have a commendable force, I'd definitely build a granary. We'll have few good food cities and even if we can only build 4 settlers, we'll need a host of workers. 3 turn archer-worker factory could be a nice option, another option would be to settle the coast river to the SE for a cow sharing, micro-intensive use of food for faster growth.
4-4-2 -- 4-4-2 -- 4-4-2 -- 2-4-2-2 -- ... on one side (sequence unfinished, it should have some regularity within 20ish turns) and
2-2-4-2 -- 2-4-2-2 -- 4-4-2 -- 4-4-2 -- ... on the other, effectively maximizing growths globally once both have granaries. I'll have to do it in full once both cities are up and running but there's great potential in there. Good value for a 4 tile overlap.

I'd go for that as city 2 since we need every cow steak we can slice to fill these chinese bellies. No restriction of child birth under my watch!

 

[Othniel]

Confirmed if you want me to play, but I leave for vacation in 2 days. I'm hoping to be able to play starting around August 25th but not 100% sure on that. If you still need people when the 25th rolls around, I'll be happy to jump in. If you have enough players, I'm just as happy to merely lurk.

Anyhow, my brief $0.02:

Capturing Machu is kind of a tradeoff. We save on a settler build but the placement isn't ideal. It doesn't look to be on a river and it squeezes the river sites 3-4 tiles NW of Beijing. We'd have to do straight up cxxc if we want to fit a city in between, and those plentiful BGs look mighty fine for a low-corruption military pump.

Agree with Beorn on squeezing in another city next to the cow, and on the 5-6 archer force for a quick strike on Machu.

Alpha's fine but finding securing horses has got to be a priority. BTW, I definitely like China better than Germany! Better traits for war and Riders kick.

I haven't played defiant before but I'm currently embroiled in an AW SG, and I just want to make sure I have the differences clear. In Defiant, we can do normal trading and also initiate peace as long as we don't give the AI stuff for peace. Am I right?

 

[Own]

Once we have a commendable force, I'd definitely build a granary. We'll have few good food cities and even if we can only build 4 settlers, we'll need a host of workers. 3 turn archer-worker factory could be a nice option, another option would be to settle the coast river to the SE for a cow sharing, micro-intensive use of food for faster growth.
4-4-2 -- 4-4-2 -- 4-4-2 -- 2-4-2-2 -- ... on one side (sequence unfinished, it should have some regularity within 20ish turns) and
2-2-4-2 -- 2-4-2-2 -- 4-4-2 -- 4-4-2 -- ... on the other, effectively maximizing growths globally once both have granaries. I'll have to do it in full once both cities are up and running but there's great potential in there. Good value for a 4 tile overlap.

I'd go for that as city 2 since we need every cow steak we can slice to fill these chinese bellies. No restriction of child birth under my watch!

Hmm... with only one cow sharing it is definately preferred, prevents a lot of food waste. But that would require CXXC spacing, but it's worth. 3 turn archer worker factory is a great idea, but can't be done soon.

Capturing Machu is kind of a tradeoff. We save on a settler build but the placement isn't ideal. It doesn't look to be on a river and it squeezes the river sites 3-4 tiles NW of Beijing. We'd have to do straight up cxxc if we want to fit a city in between, and those plentiful BGs look mighty fine for a low-corruption military pump.

How is it a tradeoff? This is 5BC, not 5CC. We can capture all the cities we want, but we can only build five. Even if it forces some squeezing, it won't get in the way unless we let it. Capturing MachPich is only a positive thing.

Alpha's fine but finding securing horses has got to be a priority.

Yeah, I probably should have researched the wheel.

We probably want to buy techs this game, since war will get us a lot of money back. But I don't know, it's always a difficult question. I usually go with self research on deity, because commerce for commerce it's cheaper, and the money doesn't go to the AI. But once you start buying, you can't get off that path because you'll kill your research for 20 turns. I try to self research, but when a real juicy deal comes my way I have to take it (like the deity game in my sig, that sixfer was too good to pass up, even though I knew it would put me on track to buy every tech for the rest of the game). Basically let's start off self researching, but when a juicy deal comes let's take it. I wish we started with alphabet, so we could try and get a math or writing monopoly.

 

[Ansar]

lurker's comment: Looks like a fun game!

Will keep watch, especially for Mump's boatload of pictures - nice for lurkers because we're too lazy to open the save.

What was wrong with the first start?

Even though Own already said the answer, a little fog gazing could have told you about the jungle - and I'm sure that's enough to turn the start down.

 

[Othniel]

How is it a tradeoff? This is 5BC, not 5CC. We can capture all the cities we want, but we can only build five. Even if it forces some squeezing, it won't get in the way unless we let it. Capturing MachPich is only a positive thing.

I think the best city spots are along the river around Beijing. I don't think we want to wait until the AI settles there first (so that we can capture a city) , so I'm guessing we'll settle there ourselves. Only a tradeoff in that we're forced into cxxc spacing if we keep Machu. Not a bad thing in my mind, but Mump mentioned that looser spacing than cxxc was preferable for our 5 self-built cities...

 

[Mumpulus]

Here's what I'm going to do:
- move northern archer north (there's a border just in view there) and western archer west; use info to make dotmap
- move newly built archer south and look for food
- coordinate explorer archers and new archers for attack
- build units at full speed, choke on lux tax but don't care
- turn the game over and watch the start of the fighting

 

[Elephantium]

lurker's comment: Looks like a fun game!

Will keep watch, especially for Mump's boatload of pictures - nice for lurkers because we're too lazy to open the save.

Even though Own already said the answer, a little fog gazing could have told you about the jungle - and I'm sure that's enough to turn the start down.

You mean on the NE side of the original hill? Now that you drew my attention to it, it seems obvious.

As to Machu, it looks to me like it *is* on a river. Also, CxxC spacing from the capital to Machu shouldn't be a problem if we space things a bit looser to the E and SE.

 

[Mumpulus]

0) 3000BC
All is well in our empire

IT
Beijing: Archer > Archer

1) 2950BC
Move archplorers as planned, this is what they discover:


I've marked what I'd say is a good spot to settle a combined production/commerce city. Another one I'd settle CxxC on the forest between Beijing and Machu Pichu, our second CxxC SE of Beijing to share the cow (I also like that plan), for the last one we'll have to explore a bit more.

So we have found the Incan capitol and they're positively swamped. I'd much rather go for the capital because we're sure it won't autoraze, and we have a better chance of getting another city for peace.

Plans, plans, plans...

MM Beijing for +2fpt and 10spt.

2) 2900BC
Just exploring.

IT
Machu Pichu is size 2.

4) 2800BC
More exploring

IT
The Incans found their 5th town.

6) 2710BC
Start the archers towards their goal

9) 2590BC
Beijing is size 6. Hire a scientist to keep lux tax at acceptable level

IT
Machu Pichu has produced a settler

10) 2550BC
I'm going to stop here already, even though I haven't done much. The path we're following is not very conventional, so I just want to make sure we're all on the same page here.

I would have our current archers converge on Cuzco. We should be able to mount a force of about 9 or 10 that way (7 now + 2 more produced by the time the southern archer reacher Beijing). Continue building archers to create a second smaller party to converge on a second town in the intervening turns. (4 or 5 more archers). Continue building archers to counter their attack on Beijing (3 or 4 more). Kill, kill, kill. Make peace, count our added towns or start another game.

Our future territory:


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