A Very Winnable Deity Map

[Kullervo]

Personally, I always take the coward's way out and disable barbarians . Also, though, when I have barbarians enabled, I try to go for TGW and then BW to whip it as fast as possible. I generally succeed, so problem with barbs solved. Then I generally keep peace until I get crossbows and trebs. Then I attack whoever is closest or weakest.

Having said all of that, I must say that I had even worse luck than TMIT and got Atilla the Hun at the same time that Surayvaman DOW'ed on me with a stack of 14 ballista elephants (build by the way, with my Ivory, which I traded him for gold and 14 GPT), 17 catapults, and a bunch of swords, spears, and axes. I wasn't even up to Metal Casting. I vassaled myself to him after losing 2 cities (tiwanaku and coryahuarachina). 3 turns later, Bismark DOW's on Suryavaman and me, and goes exclusively after me. Lost my capital (and my last city) in 900 AD or so.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm sure I'd have gotten a slave revolt or three and an uprising, but a few months ago I XML-banhammered events out of my single player games forever. The last straw was a -3 diplo event that resulted in an instant DoW, but it was a building cascade of annoyance really.

By the way, your aggressor plans war @ pleased and borders us. Mine does neither, has a reasonable nowarprob @ cautious, a low unitprob, and multiple worst enemies. I don't think you ate the worse luck .

Though I'll admit to gifting the alien a junker to get him to pleased as this dirty trick is growing into one of my favorites.

 

[Kadazzle]

To End of First War - Deity/Normal

Spoiler :

Continued to grow into my happy cap, while building temples, monasteries and axes.
Finished Paper, went on to Philosophy. Bulb Education.
After Education I went for Liberalism.
I traded Education for Feudalism and Machinery + 75 gold and Pacal's World Map.
Part-bulbed Printing Press, won Liberalism, took Nationalism.
Traded Liberalism to Pacal for Printing Press, Theology, Drama + Gold + World Map.
Switched tech to Guilds.
My 6 universities should be done shortly.
After Guilds I went Banking.
Traded Liberalism to Sury for Compass, Construction and Calender + Gold + World Map.
Traded Education (outdated tech by now) to Bismark for Engineering, Him converting to Confucianism, World Map + Gold.
I go to Replaceable Parts after Banking.
Empire at 1000AD, about to Start a Golden Age:

Went Gunpowder after Replaceable Parts.
Starting to build Oxford University, every other city is building Trebuchets.
Finished Gunpowder, went Rifling.
Part-bulbed Chemistry.
Switch to Nationhood + Theocracy last turn of Golden Age.
As soon as I got Rifling, I started to draft Rifles. I had a bit of Trebuchets built up from before, plus some Axes I could upgrade, so a potential war vs. Hatty was looking good.
Finished Chemistry, went onto Steam Power.
Invasion force:

Switched back to Vassalage/Free Market.
Traded Education, Banking, Gunpowder to Shaka for Scientific Method.
The next turn after I declare, Hatty bribers Bismark to join the war. I was planning on bribing him this turn >.>.
I captured Byblos, with the Church of Nativity (+34 gold).
Captured Aketatan.
Apostolic Palace makes peace 5 turns in.. great.
Traded Economics + Liberalism for Constitution.
I decided to stop here and ask for advice. I'm not really sure how to proceed, but I know I need to get Emancipation somehow, gain some land through war, and become happy.

Advise is needed and appreciated, obviously I need to get the Globe Theatre, but where? I just switched to Rep to help with happiness.

 

[bestsss]

A true deity player can parry that kind of attack if they see it coming (it's pretty low odds here anyway), but of course I'm not quite a true deity player yet, which is something I routinely admit.

In that light:


I doubt any human player doing this map had that kind of power. The AI in question cares the same about distancepower as shaka, the only exception being that it builds less units (hardly a surprise since Shaka is tied for #1 unitprob).

So who here built about 12-15 axes on top of walls in several cities before 500 BC (because I had more "power" than this hitting me, and I'm sure it was only about half the forces the AI had if that)? Cmon fellas. Show of hands. Of course, this could be the result of a war decision set before 1000 BC (probably was). So, who had an axe-rush worth of units in their borders just waiting for one of the most peaceful AIs on the map to trudge over neutral territory to hit them?

I bet not. So if you want to say I screwed up, fine. But a lot of winning games here screwed up exactly the same way and weren't penalized.

It's kind of like telling someone they should have built more units to counter the vedic aryans.

You totally misinterpreted the post. I dont say to build the units. That's total nonsense unless you are going to attack w/ them, super unlikely. I'd never advocate inflating your own power to deflect war decisions.
I told: settle a hill city, build walls (in that city) and pray... once you spot low unit-prob AI in war mode w/ neightbors that probably have enough power not to be affected (or good enough relations to trick the random). No distant AI can have so low power to be the target. So, it's bloody you.
Get ready!

That's all, at least you have warning, you have like 20 turns (10 at the very least) before the AI starts moving.
I dont say it's your fault, sometimes you get screwed and you admit the loss and move on, but again: if you spot the attack on time, there is no excuse to ignore it.

 

[Aamto12]

By the way, your aggressor plans war @ pleased and borders us. Mine does neither, has a reasonable nowarprob @ cautious, a low unitprob, and multiple worst enemies. I don't think you ate the worse luck .

oh yeah...oh yeah? well my last Deity loss came as a result of a DOW from...Gandhi. I kid you not. The most annoying part? If he waited just 2 more turns, Ragnar would've been all up in his grill. The even sadder part was I had cities on hills with walls in an attempt to defend...on the opposite side of my empire, preparing for Ragnar, who decided to march through my territory to get to Gandhi.

Seriously, though, that is just crummy luck on your part. I personally would re-attempt the map, as freak luck s like this are no fault of your own!

 

[Shurdus]

Pfff.... I got beaten badly on this map.

Spoiler :

I blocked the south and secured the gold. To the east I picked up the rice and horses and I setled the land in between. Some cities were coming along quite nicely. The only problem was that my scouting quechuas got slain at good odds. So there were barb cities popping up like you would not believe. Then I secured a few of them and before I knew what was going on, the entire Buddhist block - which was every one except for me because no one would send me missionaries - declared. I saw an attack from Pacal coming - he was in war mode for quite a while - but against the rest of the world I stand no chance so I quit right there.

It struck me how very quickly the tech rate drops when expanding. I had quite some trouble to keep some teching going. I was doing quite well up until that point, had aestetics on the AI and traded a few good deals from it, was on my way to lit and a sure GL build. I was filling a lot of the land too, had 6 cities by 500 BC with room for at least three more.

It is beyond me why the AI declared. I guess it would be one of those random things where the AI decides on a whim that I should go even though I did not border the AI. Stupid random declarations!

 

[Grashopa]

Would you use HAs here?

Spoiler :

I picked up feudalism off the oracle 975 BC. I'm in serfdom and HR so I can get the hammers up and the HE will be started in a few turns. Would you go with HAs against a very backwards Hat who is the only AI not in buddhism?

I really don't want to bother playing it because I can't imagine how even after a quick vassalization I could keep up with the dates others have posted. I also can get more than 6 cities and I'm not even sure you should do that here. Anything more than 6 cities really just slows you to cavalry which is the end game no? Whether I settle a couple extra or take some from Hat..

 

[ABigCivFan]

@Kadazzle @1260AD

Spoiler :

Some problems here:

1. Low happy resources due to war, need to trade for all avalible happy resources ASAP. might also need to up the culture slider a bit.

2. Very low hammer output currently standing at ~73 /turn for the entire empire. Since you switched to Vassalage, you are only building a bit more than half of a Rifle/turn. (see my other respond to Amato about hammer output in a Renaissance war) That is too slow to keep you your war against 2 Deity AIs. This is rather a big problem due to the lack of city specialization, i.e. more farms/mines/workshops in production cities. And the capital needs to work every high commerce tile, no sharing. Grow the capital pop ASAP and work more cottages since you already have the Oxford there.

3. Seemed you had traded techs quite liberally and the tech pace is quite fast among the AIs, and at the current pace, you will be far behind soon. The only way i see to catch up is going Democracy civics and cottage spam.

4. Lack of focus in Teching. you are large # of trebs, it is cheap to upgrade them to cannons, and you will need cannons to fend of Bis when he shows up with his SOD. So I would get Steel first. why did you get Scientific Method before all these useful techs? SM actually decrease your power so much since it wipes out the GL/Parthenon, and cheap monasteries which give you good hammer and science bonus.

5. Teo would be better placed by the river.

Overall, you are falling behind, the war is risky since your lack of key military techs, the production and economy to sustain the war. , if you venture deeper into Egypt, your trebs can get flanked, your rifles can get bombed by cannons. So at most i would recommend try taking 2 more cities to make byblos useful and cease fire. you should be able to play a bit defense and milk some GG points.

Then next focus on economy, get Democracy, corporation, run Uni Suff/Emancipation/buear/OR, then cottage spam. You still have some good options given multiple religion, can try cultural, space or limited war later.

@TMIT,

An unexpected DOW at 800BC by Hatty is bad luck. Queshuas are good barb fighters and they can easily get to 10xp to unlock HE, HE will give you much better chance to survive an DOW given enough preparation time. Still on Deity it is very difficult to survive a super early DOW.

@Grashopa

Spoiler :

Do you have enough land/6+ good cities? if not then taking more land with HAs are good. Otherwise, with financial and long rivers, I would recommend develop existing cities and economy; then prepare for a strong Renaissance war.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

oh yeah...oh yeah? well my last Deity loss came as a result of a DOW from...Gandhi. I kid you not. The most annoying part? If he waited just 2 more turns, Ragnar would've been all up in his grill. The even sadder part was I had cities on hills with walls in an attempt to defend...on the opposite side of my empire, preparing for Ragnar, who decided to march through my territory to get to Gandhi.

Seriously, though, that is just crummy luck on your part. I personally would re-attempt the map, as freak luck s like this are no fault of your own!

Yeah I got hit by Gandhi once too. It was definitely a surprise . Even more interesting is that sitting bull is even *less* likely to hit you at cautious than Gandhi...

 

[Berkobob]

@ TMIT - yeah, the RNG screwed you - in my game Bis went WHEOOHRN when I was the only civ without Buddhism and 0.2 of his power but he went after Pacal, if he goes after me its game over.

I would definitely try again, if a Deity scrub like me can win, you will win easily

 

[obsolete]

Ghandi went through some changes not too long ago, so he's not as DEPENDABLE as he used to be.

About the religion problem, that's because of Firaxis' tampering. Many may not be aware of this, but there are some hard-coded biases put in the game. Once a religion starts to spread, the game inhibits that from being spread to other civs. This IN THEORY was supposed to encourage wide-spread mixtures of religions (it doesn't work!!).

Instead what happens, is the AI's often end up sharing one religion, while the poor human player is stuck getting everything BUT that one needed religion. So hence, he's always ending up as the target, and there is LITERALLY nothing he can do about this.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Namely judaism and later religions spread before the first two IIRC, though if one opens borders with the holy city guy early you can usually get it. Usually.

 

[bestsss]

Namely judaism and later religions spread before the first two IIRC, though if one opens borders with the holy city guy early you can usually get it. Usually.

Open border do not affect the auto-spread (only trade network matters, which is affected by wars, incl barb cities). The odds are function of the distance (plot distances, like bird fly) between the target city and the holy city. The odds are doubled for shined cities.

Open borders do affect AIs decision to start spreading by missionaries, though and the logic is flawed when there are many civilization and pangea alike map (w/ lots of contacts)

All religions have the same spread factor, although:
The religions are checked in the follow order and there is no tie (founding religion features a tie and the human players are favored, wow):
Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism


The code if anyone interested:

Spoiler :

src CvCity::doReligion()

if (getReligionCount() == 0)
{
	for (iI = 0; iI < GC.getNumReligionInfos(); iI++)
	{
		if (!isHasReligion((ReligionTypes)iI))
		{
			if ((iI == GET_PLAYER(getOwnerINLINE()).getStateReligion()) || !(GET_PLAYER(getOwnerINLINE()).isNoNonStateReligionSpread()))
			{
				iRandThreshold = 0;

				for (iJ = 0; iJ < MAX_PLAYERS; iJ++)
				{
					if (GET_PLAYER((PlayerTypes)iJ).isAlive())
					{
						for (pLoopCity = GET_PLAYER((PlayerTypes)iJ).firstCity(&iLoop); pLoopCity != NULL; pLoopCity = GET_PLAYER((PlayerTypes)iJ).nextCity(&iLoop))
						{
							if (pLoopCity->isConnectedTo(this))
							{
								iSpread = pLoopCity->getReligionInfluence((ReligionTypes)iI);

								iSpread *= GC.getReligionInfo((ReligionTypes)iI).getSpreadFactor();

								if (iSpread > 0)
								{
									iSpread /= std::max(1, (((GC.getDefineINT("RELIGION_SPREAD_DISTANCE_DIVISOR") * plotDistance(getX_INLINE(), getY_INLINE(), pLoopCity->getX_INLINE(), pLoopCity->getY_INLINE())) / GC.getMapINLINE().maxPlotDistance()) - 5));

									//iSpread /= (getReligionCount() + 1);

									iRandThreshold = std::max(iRandThreshold, iSpread);
								}
							}
						}
					}
				}

				if (GC.getGameINLINE().getSorenRandNum(GC.getDefineINT("RELIGION_SPREAD_RAND"), "Religion Spread") < iRandThreshold)
				{
					setHasReligion(((ReligionTypes)iI), true, true, true);
					break;
				}
			}
		}
	}
}

 

[Duckweed]

@TMIT,

An unexpected DOW at 800BC by Hatty is bad luck. Queshuas are good barb fighters and they can easily get to 10xp to unlock HE, HE will give you much better chance to survive an DOW given enough preparation time. Still on Deity it is very difficult to survive a super early DOW.

800BC DOW in deity is not early at all. There's no excuse of not surviving it.

 

[ABigCivFan]

800BC is not super early. But survivability largely depends on how strong the invasion is and how many turns of preparation is allowed. If you do survive but lose a few cities this early most likely it is game over.

 

[bestsss]

ABigCivFan, 10 is the very least w/o border contact unless it's dagger... before the AI starts marching, see my remark there. For Hatty 10 is too little since she would not have the troops needed most likely.

Add 10 more if the AI has currency and you can gift a city to please it and ask gold. This is if you really need to please it and extend the period since archers behind walls should net you ok kill ratio to survive w/ a city (esp. built for) to peace deal.

 

[kossin]

Continued from first post.

To 1535AD

Spoiler :

Got MT from Liberalism while no one had Paper. I built a lot more workers (2 per city) to improve the land ASAP. I was lucky enough to unlock HE with my 9XP quechua and built it in the Ivory/Iron city. I was also first to Economics... used the GM for a 1900 gold trade mission to Pacal to upgrade Cuirassiers -> Cavalry.

My only scare was when Shaka went into WHEOORN and had a fleet next to me... I tried begging 1 gold but he wouldn't bite. Instead, I had my Cavalry sitting close by and signed a DP with Pacal. He went for Hatty instead so I joined the war as I had planned to anyway. She brought Asoka into the fight which also made it easier.

Anyway, both are dead from Cavalry in 1300s and then Diplo is so good I just got for UN against Pacal.





Thanks for a fun game ABCF!

 

[ThoMeuhGal]

You know, you got really lucky in that I happened to still have a save kicking around (usually it would be long deleted by now). However, this was the one game in a thousand where my capital didn't follow my standard routine. So if you are looking for any science info, you're looking in the wrong place. In this game I spread my wonders around, etc. My capital is functioning more like an Auxilliary city here.

Spoiler :

OK I take note of your comments. Thank you very much

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Open border do not affect the auto-spread (only trade network matters, which is affected by wars, incl barb cities). The odds are function of the distance (plot distances, like bird fly) between the target city and the holy city. The odds are doubled for shined cities.

Open borders do affect AIs decision to start spreading by missionaries, though and the logic is flawed when there are many civilization and pangea alike map (w/ lots of contacts)

Religion founders love missionaries in general, especially certain leaders.

I know full well OB does nothing to auto spread, but anything you can do to get the majority religion is a good idea, and OB is pretty much the only thing you can control other than having a sailing or road trade network (and the sailing one is very common).

800BC is not super early. But survivability largely depends on how strong the invasion is and how many turns of preparation is allowed. If you do survive but lose a few cities this early most likely it is game over.

In my case it was the whole blind-sided aspect of the thing. I'd met her, but she had 2 worst enemies and I couldn't even see her borders so I didn't think much of WHEOOHRN from hatty. Worse yet, I blew a few units (mostly quechas admittedly) taking a barb city, which finally gave me SIGHT of her borders. And 15 units.

In other words, I underestimated the effects of maxdistancepowerratio in the XML and the RNG turned up a relatively rare DoW on top of it :/. I'm not a perfect player, so I make high-odds gambles like "peaceful AI that is far away won't attack me". Sometimes high odds gambles fail though.

I still remember a game gliese was playing where he lost because a barb archer attacked his capitol defended by an archer and won, with him having no means to reclaim it and only 1 other city .

 

[obsolete]

Welp, as you see TMIT, it is all YOUR fault.

I suggest you hire one of the newer players (on the other side of the forum) quickly, WHILE THEY STILL KNOW EVERYTHING!

A few months from tutoring by them and you can know EVERYTHING too