A gold start with Darius shouldn't be unwinnable, but...

[DrCron]

...I honestly have no idea what to do. As you can imagine, this is on Deity.

Here's the start:

Continents map, standard size and speed. Looks good enough, but I can't get to turn 100.

The problem is...

Spoiler :

There's ocean to the west, dessert to the east and jungle to the south. The only thing left is north, but Huayna Capac is there, extremely close (I meet him on turn 3). After I sip I find there's horses 3 tiles west of my capital. So the logical solution would be to get my 2nd city there and rush HC. But he has 2 silver resources in his capital and gold in his 2nd city, so he's teching at a ridiculously fast rate. On one of my attempts he god philosophy on 925 BC (oddly enough, he didn't have Alpha yet).

Immortal rush doesn't work because he gets IW very early. Horse Archer rush doesn't work... for the same reason, actually. He settles Machu Pichu next to my cities, on a hill, and I simply can't take it. On one of my attempts I launched my HA rush with 10 HAs on 700 BC and managed to take... 1 city. It doesn't matter if I get math and chop like crazy, it's simply never enough to take two of his cities. And even if I manage to achieve this the rest will still be painful thanks to the iron in his capital. Oh, and he also gets longbows during the BC.

The other two leaders in my continent are Qin and Mansa. I could try to ignore HC and attack Qin (he eventually gets close from the south) but I would end up conquering either dessert, jungle or both; from a PRO leader. Not to mention there's no reason for HC not to attack me anyway. And if I don't attack him early his tech speed will destroy me later on. Oh, did I mention HC sometimes bribes Qin into me? That's also fun.

I can't see a way of doing something with this map without rushing HC, and I can't manage to get a decent rush against him because of his OP start. So...

...If any player better than me manages to do something good with this map, I'd love to see how to deal with this.

 

[Fippy]

SIP is your problem

Yup it's a better Bur Cap, later..but that's not always important, on deity i will usually take the quicker start.
Settling on dry rice makes this so much faster, via fog gazing you can see there are only some forests lost by moving (replaced by others south thou).
Fresh water is like those river tiles, does not matter early.

 

[Snowbird]

..

Spoiler :

Immortal rush doesn't work because he gets IW very early.

Ofcourse it works. I have to agree SIP is probably worst possible option, I went for PH (which also gives bureau FP, but I did no overthink it). If you replaying rush for n-th time, settling on gold would be fastest, but I would not ever do that on first try.

Spoiler :

So, I had to wait untill sword left city... (yield shows iron come from desert and I figured he had no copper to go IW so early)

Finished taht other sword in the open, and put ex-settler to lure/roading

Then ofcourse unpillagable trade deal:

So after a bit of dancing with workers and horsies(spears seemed be more lured by horsies than workers although)

Which leaves:

It is decent, but mostly due to having barb cities to conquer. But 4x gold+3xgems (I probably should have switched to IW except you know Mansa around). Lucky with barb city spawns, srewed with iron trade --- I guess it evens out.

In general few swords/spears should not stop immortals, no.

I don't see why one should be obsessed with killing incas. You can finish the job later once you tech with all that gold and floodplains. (and gems)

 

[Kaitzilla]

If the Deity AI is hopelessly far ahead, I've always been able to catch up and turn the tables with Espionage.

For the truly desperate situation, I've founded a terrible city in bad spot, put some Spies in it, waited 5 turns, built a tiny bit of culture in the city with a Monument or Build Culture, spread my religion that the AI doesn't have, and then gifted the city away to an AI with good techs.
That gets a -50% (culture), -50% (spy waiting), and -15% (different religion) bonus for a couple of tech steals.

 

[DrCron]

SIP is your problem

I have to agree SIP is probably worst possible option

Ah, crap, moving the settler might be the only thing I didn't try early on. Thanks for the tip. Now, if it was a first attempt and you didn't know where was HC, what would be the assumption one makes to move the settler? That on continents Deity a rush is likely to happen?

@Snowbird:

Spoiler :

I never got that Zhou city there. That's always where HC builds Machu Pichu. I guess moving the capital changes this too.

Oh, and do you buid barracks for the immortal rush? I usually build them in the capital because I have the time, but I'm not sure about the 2nd city.

 

[DrCron]

If the Deity AI is hopelessly far ahead, I've always been able to catch up and turn the tables with Espionage.

For the truly desperate situation, I've founded a terrible city in bad spot, put some Spies in it, waited 5 turns, built a tiny bit of culture in the city with a Monument or Build Culture, spread my religion that the AI doesn't have, and then gifted the city away to an AI with good techs.
That gets a -50% (culture), -50% (spy waiting), and -15% (different religion) bonus for a couple of tech steals.

Wow, I did tech steal with espionage before, but never even though of this. Thanks, that sounds really useful.

 

[yyeah]

Ah, crap, moving the settler might be the only thing I didn't try early on. Thanks for the tip. Now, if it was a first attempt and you didn't know where was HC, what would be the assumption one makes to move the settler? That on continents Deity a rush is likely to happen?

I played a bit this map and like my 1st move was Settler 1NW basicly to get more river tiles PH 1E was allso option but i dont like haveing my Capitol without fresh water and not on the river, i just dont do it. And theres no need for assumption for early rush i meet HC in a 3th turn so i knew hes v close and rush is an option question was do i have a horses.
I took a risk just bulid 2 warriors steal worker and basicly one needs to explore HC's land with warriors ( you can even tech archery) and dont allow him to hook up Copper/Iron if he had one. Tahats all without metal one can ezy roll over him with Immortals. You just need a bit of distraction with warriors/archers until you get a doom stack of immortals.

 

[DrCron]

@yyeah:

Spoiler :

He has iron, and I won't get IW soon enough to know where he has it (but he will have IW by the time the rush starts). It doesn't look like pillaging all of his mines with warriors is really doable.

 

[yyeah]

@DrCron

Spoiler :

You can , just pay attention on tile yield.
For example.

I gave Izy AH in World Bulider and horses. I dont have AH but i can see on this Plains that its yield is 1 2 1 and it should be 111 it meens she have strat res there, becouse she got AH i know thats horses.
Basicly if you c that tile yield shows 1 more then it should be it meens theres strat res ... copper iron horses ...

 

[Snowbird]

Now, if it was a first attempt and you didn't know where was HC, what would be the assumption one makes to move the settler? That on continents Deity a rush is likely to happen?

Having better yield from city center>>faster worker>>faster everything? What do you loose in exchange? It is easier to compensate fro lack of health, than for missed opurtunities. I think I would move to plain hill by default.

Spoiler :

Oh, and do you buid barracks for the immortal rush? I usually build them in the capital because I have the time, but I'm not sure about the 2nd city.

Spoiler :

Built in first city, did not build in second. Rather typical for me.

I took a risk just bulid 2 warriors steal worker and basicly one needs to explore HC's land with warriors ( you can even tech archery) and dont allow him to hook up Copper/Iron if he

Spoiler :

Would need to pillage to oblivion to prevent trade... my problem was that he got iron in trade in ~1700BC and I would need to pillage 2 tiles close to his cap to cancel.

 

[DrCron]

@yyeah: ah, ok, will keep an eye on the yields then, thanks for the tip.

@Snowbird: yeah, now that I see it that way you're totally right, settling on PH makes perfect sense.

 

[DrCron]

Well, I did it!!! Settling on the PH really changed things! I'm now at 675 BC with 6 cities, 5 of them pretty good:

Spoiler :

Started the immortal rush, found the iron spot in the dessert and pillaged it on the 1st turn of the war (I took Machu Pichu same turn). It took a while and lots of immortals sacrificed to get Cuzco (tons of archers + walls + 50% culture defense) but I finally did it. And with it I got the Great Wall.

I have enough immortals to get Assyria, and I could settle an 8th city on the floodplains area (no food resource but I can always farm a floodplain, that way that city can work the gold SE of Tiwanako). I need to develop my economy though, but the conquest gold gave me a few techs so that's fine.

I think the barbarian city NW of my capital helped a lot. It doesn't appear if I sip and it forces the Inca to not settle Machu Pichu in a hill. That makes a big difference.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Wow, I did tech steal with espionage before, but never even though of this. Thanks, that sounds really useful.

You can do some nigh-gamebreaking stuff. Many years ago I won a game on immortal that way where thanks to a botched rush I didn't get writing until 1000 AD, was one of the stupidest but most amusing-ending games I've ever played.

If you put points into espionage on target and pressure target city so it can't build security bureau later you can basically equalize with that target for very little cost. Of course to win on deity like that you'd need good production or your own research too.