BuShiDo - the Way of Exploit - Tackling 1 vs. 7 Deity Standard Pangaea

[maltz]

While old strategies become obsolete, new (and sometimes more powerful) ones get developed. I only hope that the new strategies look a lot different from the old ones and offer higher reward to warrant players' interests into discovering them. It is not so much fun to beat a much harder boss only to find an equally simple ending and absurdly calculated, mismatched scores.

 

[snarzberry]

Great game Maltz! I really enjoyed reading through that

 

[Radox the Green]

Excellent stuff. When you said in the earlier OCC deity domination thread that you were intending to try this I thought you were as mad as a box of frogs, but the RA-denying and the CS clearly make all the difference.

 

[maltz]

Thanks. I am now working on a Level-9 Difficulty mod.
In the first attempt, I extrapolated AI's advantages from Level 7 to 8. The testing game is about to be reported in the story forum.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=421634

Welcome ideas and suggestions.

 

[chickenhed]

I created an account here JUST so I could compliment you on this incredibly well-written thread, Maltz. What a blast to read this has been!

 

[Rittmeyer]

lol

now after getting confortable with Deity we`ll have to move up to Maltz difficulty (level 9). It`s going to be insane!

 

[maltz]

Thanks for doing that for me. I am sure you like other posts in this forum too.

My skill is actually not very good - I constantly learn from others' reports and strategies. I load my game all the time, sometimes all the way back 50 turns before, since I frequently screw up here and there.

I just like to explore new things and hopefully come up with a mod that makes the game as exciting as it can be. As currently there are too many exploitable AI shortcomings, I want to come up with a mod that even if a player exploits everything possible, there are still good challenges. An alternative way is to make self-imposed restrictions of what we cannot do. But I like to keep my choices open. A strategy game is more fun when there are more combinations of ways of doing things. If our options are limited, luck starts to become too important.

 

[humbe]

Awesome thread. Read through most of it. Many interesting points. Hope they will change some stuff to avoid some of the worst exploits.

Trade lump sum of gold against GPT stuff that can be aborted sounds pretty exploitable. Maybe it just shouldn't be possible to trade per turn stuff versus instant stuff. Barring that, if you've traded away resources for a lump sum of money, that resource should probably be unavailable to you for the next 30 turns no matter what. At the very least, losing one resource shouldn't give you back all the other resources traded

I load a lot in games too. To do something really hard, one usually have to go to extremes, and then one often are very vulnerable to surprise attacks or similar. For instance, concentrating extremely on peaceful exploration/research/production, or moving all your forces to war leaving borders undefended.

Never did like the team stuff though, so never tried that at all. I'd like to play 2-3 humans vs many AI type of games, but even though we typically all play versus the AI and cooperate, I don't like team mode, because I don't like that we share stuff like research. I'd rather want a team where every team member is a totally separate player, which cannot declare war against each other or trade with the other team members. Then it's more like peaceful competition between humans versus AI in same game :9

 

[Hamburger]

Wow maltz, excellent thread and game. You are a much better player than I. I am about to win my first King game so I am a ways off from Deity. Thanks for putting this all together. Great read.

 

[Knayr]

Quick question: What font are you using for your screenshots? It rocks!

--K

 

[Aestis25]

Really well played and well done. That went smoother than I expected, too. Thanks for taking the time with the write-ups & screenshots--turned what would have been an interesting experiment on its own into a truly involving read for us!

 

[mrjepson]

Great Read!

 

[maltz]

Quick question: What font are you using for your screenshots? It rocks!

--K

Sorry for the late response - the font is called Copperhead Gothic Light. I call it "Age of Empire (the original, from 1996 I think) font".

 

[maltz]

I don't think I will get away with opening a new thread with this, so here comes the advertisement:

The Level 9 MOD "Difficulty X" is largely complete. It can be found on MOD Hub thanks to Pouakai! (Or whoever ends up uoloading it for me!)
Or you can simply download from here.
http://www.civclub.net/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=88338&extra=page=1
There are some screenshots about installation. The user has to manually select the 9th difficulty in Advanced Setting.

If you can read and type Chinese (you don't have to be able to speak it, yeah!) you are welcome to join a "Level 9 Challenge" succession + group effort story hosted on CivClub:

http://www.civclub.net/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=88887&extra=page=1

 

[AznWarlord]

Just read this whole thread, great game! Been thinking about why the AI were so behind in military tech. Could it be that they were just too dumb to buy libraries? I believe they have a programmed restriction on how often they can purchase stuff, or else they could easily buy everything with all the money they get. Perhaps they spent all their purchases and production on military units/wonders, and didn't bother to put up any libraries, which would also lead to a drop in great scientists. but then they did have an overall tech lead, they just don't beeline the military techs.

 

[TPQ]

Thanks for putting the effort in maltz. A great read and lots of well edited screenshots to accompany it.

Very enjoyable!

 

[bryanw1995]

I like general strategies for default settings. So it`s not about a bunch of rules, it`s just that I`m not interested, let`s say, in a strategy that only works with Siam. I never even played Siam. If I can only beat a level with Siam, I can`t beat that level at all.

But let`s make a set of rules about what I`d like to see....

- Deity
- No UU abuse. Everyone has a UU. I just mean a strategy that is not based on abusing a UU to win a decisive war. So if you will war with gunpowder, no musketeer, no janissary. And so on.
- Standard or Small maps. It should be standard, but I play small maps. In Civ 5, they fill more like the default map to me.
- Normal speed. I don`t even consider slower speed or read about them. That`s another game enterily.
- No reload, ruins on, default number of Civs for map size.
- About Babylon: the UU is ok, the UA is the problem. Babylon can bulb a tech that will lead to a tech advantage that no one else can have in the same point of the game. So it`s not valid for a general strategy.

...

and of course, no acess to iron (at all) in your first war. This is the main point.

Almost every civ has something that is an advantage at an early point in the game. Part of the fun is to find interesting and creative ways to take advantage of it. If you want a general strategy for small/deity/standard, I'd say selling all luxuries/open borders combined with very early LS rush using meritocracy will work most of the time. That can still work on a standard map, though it is harder. And are you talking pangea-only maps, or is that also unfair? What about archipelago? Small continents? Terra? etc etc etc.

 

[Rittmeyer]

Almost every civ has something that is an advantage at an early point in the game. Part of the fun is to find interesting and creative ways to take advantage of it. If you want a general strategy for small/deity/standard, I'd say selling all luxuries/open borders combined with very early LS rush using meritocracy will work most of the time. That can still work on a standard map, though it is harder. And are you talking pangea-only maps, or is that also unfair? What about archipelago? Small continents? Terra? etc etc etc.

- LS rush assumes you have Iron. If I have a 6-iron tile close by I'll win any Deity game. My point is winning consistently without iron or abuse of some powerfull early UU (Immortals, Ghandi Elephants and so - Landskretch is ok).

- Almost every civ. But not all of them. Try Washington. Try Iroquois with no iron. Even bismark.

- Small Continents. Pangea makes it much easier, at least you have some better acess to RA's and many more sources of iron (buying/allying). Try small continents, when your only neighbour is DOW'ing you every 7 turns after the latest peace treaty. No iron, no RA's, no one to sell luxuries to.

My point being, iron and acess to peacefull neighbours is what really counts. That means a lot of maps are extremely hard, especially small continents, while others are very easy.

 

[bryanw1995]

Small continents can be bad, but you might also spawn next to a couple of peaceful neighbors. That part is random. And you winning any deity game just b/c you have 6 iron is a bit of stretch, though you certainly have a good chance to win in that scenario.

 

[ziopuc]

i'm still at post #32 but i wanted to congratulate with the author for his exciting thread! (and for his courage, too )