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[DeAnno]

The main reason I want to go not as far is that later turns are already natively longer, like T91-T135 will be about as long as T0-91 was in all probability, especially for anyone who wars during that time. That being said I'd be fine with "after you pick your 12th policy" (not impossible to see a mashup in the middle trees, lots of topheaviness.)

IIRC Proposals are by who has the most votes when it triggers, but the human wins all ties so having even 2 votes is sometimes sufficient.

 

[looorg]

As I said previously I think it's hard to find a good solid point. End of 2nd three, start of the 3rd. It could still be a very big difference in Turns whichever one is picked just due to how you chose to play it. Since the save will have Terracotta if you go to war you'll get more culture then if you don't so you'll get there a lot sooner. It might in some sense perhaps more sense to just say that play in whichever way you like until T140 (or some other arbitrary chosen number). Then we compare to see how much you could accomplish, and how, in the about 50T or so that you got to play. That might be easier to do then to find some sort of single event to occur which could be very far apart, from the first save we noted there was about a 10T difference between the founding of religions which was surprisingly large really.

 

[amateurgamer88]

Here's my suggestion. First, we look at the turn that the save we're using and called it turn X. The 2nd playthrough will end at turn 2X. Next one will end at turn 3X. That will be consistent and seems more straightforward than trying to find what policy we want to end it at.

 

[tothePAIN]

Here's my suggestion. First, we look at the turn that the save we're using and called it turn X. The 2nd playthrough will end at turn 2X. Next one will end at turn 3X. That will be consistent and seems more straightforward than trying to find what policy we want to end it at.

Good enough.

It's been a week.

It sounds like using my save has the consensus. Let's begin the next chapter.

 

[Milae]

I think going for freshwater settles is okay to go for and i couldn't find that many hills with freshwater. Anyways, I think converting food into production isn't that hard for many of the cities, so food seems generally equal in value with production?

The thing with going for the early dip in tradition means i'm going to run out of border expansion space real fast. so that means less yields from borders in the future. there's definitely a trade off im doing

Couldn't disagree more here honestly.
There isn't really much benefit to having outer cities on freshwater or not if it is on a hill.
And production is worth much more than food as well. Then there is the benefit of being in a better defensive location and having extra defense from being on the hill which is worth even more than either of these imo.

That said I would rather go with Kawyua's save personally. The borders will still be growing for quite a while and the bonuses from border growth scale with era as well

 

[looorg]

Here's my suggestion. First, we look at the turn that the save we're using and called it turn X. The 2nd playthrough will end at turn 2X. Next one will end at turn 3X. That will be consistent and seems more straightforward than trying to find what policy we want to end it at.

The problem there is that the longer the game goes the longer the turns become, usually. So you probably want to have a smaller interval later then you had at the start and not just multiplying it upwards. I think it was around 85-90 (or something such) for the save, so next would then be 180 and then 270 etc. That is probably to large a span of turns for each game if you want to do any kind of suitable and interesting comparison, during those turns two many things can and will probably happen. It might just be easier to have many smaller parts then doing one large.

 

[chicorbeef]

I think end of second tree is a good spot, personally. Gives each player a bit of wiggle room to use one completed second tree freely.

 

[Cokolwiek]

Anyways, I think converting food into production isn't that hard for many of the cities, so food seems generally equal in value with production?

I would really like to read what you guys here have to say about it. Instinctively, it sounds as a blasphemy for me, but there's plenty of better guys than me in this thread.

There isn't really much benefit to having outer cities on freshwater or not if it is on a hill.

I usually specifically make my cities one tile from rivers, so they would not lose that production from hill, will have more good farms and triangles, and not have to wait until jungles or forests are cleared to make farms if most of the riverbed is forested. Watermill and baths are the only freshwater advantages I remember. Baths are usually only important for tradition, for progress or authority they are nice to have but only in capitals or the few strongest cities.

 

[stii]

I think there is a bit of an over reaction to this food is bad thing. Food is much less powerful than the base game but it is hugely important in the base game because it gives you science. So without the pop = science food is less important but you can still trade food for production resonably easily. Mines produce more production than farms produce food so working more mines and getting food from other sources is useful. This does assume forges but I don't think that is a huge ask.

Baths are pretty unexciting, I wouldn't make any real effort to build on a river, resources and defensibility is far more important.

minor on topic spoilers from the game

Spoiler :

Siam has the food faith and it is real hard to prevent it spreading to you, so you will get to see its effect on high production cities

 

[CrazyG]

Well there's no unanimous agreement, but it looks like ToThePain's save is the most asked for, and that the next ending point would be at your 12th social policy?

Should we start round 2 officially?

 

[CrazyG]

I would really like to read what you guys here have to say about it.

For secondary cities I'll happily take the hill, because in general I prefer production to food.

But for the capital my preference is flat freshwater, food is really good when your next citizen only costs 15. The city starting at 3 food instead of 2 can get you to 4 population a lot faster for pushing out your first settler. Usually it delays a monument/shrines by at most a turn. I think baths are good for the capital for all social policies.

 

[tothePAIN]

Well there's no unanimous agreement, but it looks like ToThePain's save is the most asked for, and that the next ending point would be at your 12th social policy?

Should we start round 2 officially?

Let's start round 2. If we don't start, there might be a new patch before we finish up this game.

I've played ahead, so the save I submit might be from the choice for the 3rd policy tree.

 

[stii]

Yeah I wasn't exactly guessing with my policy dates either, I have a lot of games to try out
Many different ways you can play this so it will be very interesting to see what other people do. It is also lots of fun and very confusing playing someone else's game. I spend quite a while working out why we were doing some things. I figured out most of them by the end but a few still baffled me. I'll put up a longer game log in a bit under a spoiler tag

 

[stii]

Lots of options here , will be interesting to see what others did.

Spoiler images :

Spoiler :

So yeah I did figure out most of the confusing things in time, most of them were due to religion. Having to work multiples of two on forest titles was rather awkward, but pretty powerful here with a huge forest I took the science from pop followed by production from pop for religion. I prefer the static buffs as we aren't that good at faith generation, although I was tempted by orders. Took the sci/faith/gold for each policy as it was hard to turn down due to a policy being one turn off and us being Poland. Religion was rather hard to keep the pressure from Siam was huge and getting your cities half flipped would be awful. I just let him flip my citties early and then when I got the 3rd GP flipped them all back

I teched towards metal casting first as I wanted lumbermills pretty bad, we have a lot of forests we are working anyway. I did love the turbo workers, improving everything so fast. But overall I didn't like progress at all. It felt so much worse than tradition or authority, more happyness issues. It can be a bit hard to tell with the bonus yields. Although I guess it is better to take it first if we going into authority later.

I went into authority as Portugal was a nice juicy target and I don't like the 2nd tier policies much anyway. I then declared war on them pretty early to avoid defensive pacts and then very slow pushed them. Pretty much a holding action until xbows then picking off units and pillaging things, wearing them down over time. They have been unhappy for ages now and very unhappy sometimes. There is lots of good defensive terrain to park attacking units on. I'll probably start taking cities in ten turns but just killing all their units is producing a lot of culture. I did also get three legions from the close military CS which was nice as they upgraded into double cover terricos eventully and they are nice and safe to hold the line with. Lost one knight to killing a great general and miscounting a forest hill but otherwise no losses.

Stupid persia flipping the CS on the otherside of me and taking my horses was a pain but it is only taking me 5 turns to flip it back and I mostly have skirmishers who often dont' take damage anyway. There is lots of nice land for them to pop over a hill, shoot and then move back. On the plus side Persia now likes me for some reason. I did down vote a sanction Persia as Siam offered me money to do, this is a bit glitchy as they are now annoyed at me for down voting their own proposal, should have checked but I assumed they wouldn't do something so silly as to pay me. They are still m friend so it isn't really an issue. Plus they are probably next, 7 techs ahead of me but I don't think they can possibly be ahead on military tech. Persia is also an option but the front there is a bit narrow.

Overall this has gone pretty well and it is interesting to try something slightly different.

​

 

[tothePAIN]

Yeah I wasn't exactly guessing with my policy dates either, I have a lot of games to try out
Many different ways you can play this so it will be very interesting to see what other people do. It is also lots of fun and very confusing playing someone else's game. I spend quite a while working out why we were doing some things. I figured out most of them by the end but a few still baffled me. I'll put up a longer game log in a bit under a spoiler tag

Tothepain's game

Spoiler :

So yeah I did figure out most of the confusing things in time, most of them were due to religion. Having to work multiples of two on forest titles was rather awkward, but pretty powerful here with a huge forest I took the science from pop followed by production from pop for religion. I prefer the static buffs as we aren't that good at faith generation, although I was tempted by orders. Took the sci/faith/gold for each policy as it was hard to turn down due to a policy being one turn off and us being Poland. Religion was rather hard to keep the pressure from Siam was huge and getting your cities half flipped would be awful. I just let him flip my citties early and then when I got the 3rd GP flipped them all back

I teched towards metal casting first as I wanted lumbermills pretty bad, we have a lot of forests we are working anyway. I did love the turbo workers, improving everything so fast. But overall I didn't like progress at all. It felt so much worse than tradition or authority, more happyness issues. It can be a bit hard to tell with the bonus yields. Although I guess it is better to take it first if we going into authority later.

I went into authority as Portugal was a nice juicy target and I don't like the 2nd tier policies much anyway. I then declared war on them pretty early to avoid defensive pacts and then very slow pushed them. Pretty much a holding action until xbows then picking off units and pillaging things, wearing them down over time. They have been unhappy for ages now and very unhappy sometimes. There is lots of good defensive terrain to park attacking units on. I'll probably start taking cities in ten turns but just killing all their units is producing a lot of culture. I did also get three legions from the close military CS which was nice as they upgraded into double cover terricos eventully and they are nice and safe to hold the line with. Lost one knight to killing a great general and miscounting a forest hill but otherwise no losses.

Stupid persia flipping the CS on the otherside of me and taking my horses was a pain but it is only taking me 5 turns to flip it back and I mostly have skirmishers who often dont' take damage anyway. There is lots of nice land for them to pop over a hill, shoot and then move back. On the plus side Persia now likes me for some reason. I did down vote a sanction Persia as Siam offered me money to do, this is a bit glitchy as they are now annoyed at me for down voting their own proposal, should have checked but I assumed they wouldn't do something so silly as to pay me. They are still m friend so it isn't really an issue. Plus they are probably next, 7 techs ahead of me but I don't think they can possibly be ahead on military tech. Persia is also an option but the front there is a bit narrow.

Overall this has gone pretty well and it is interesting to try something slightly different.

@stii I can't see your images.

Spoiler Response :

Progress definitely has a lot more difficulty on deity than lower difficulties, because happiness is much tougher and Progress' happiness policy is stuck behind a 10 population requirement. I struggled with this in my game too, but the extra happiness can be worth it, if I can get through it. I think there's a specific policy tree that somewhat compensates for this, for Poland at least.

The save that I have is from T 191 I think, so I'll hold off on commenting more and explaining my strategy and plan until then. I did not go with Authority as my 2nd tree, I'll say that much. I think Authority is strong but not needed here, given the terrain and the choice of renewal.

 

[DeAnno]

I kinda got wrecked. I don't have much experience with middlegame Deity yet and it shows.

Spoiler :

Started my religion with Orders and Elders, figured I needed the quick hammer steroid but the lategame effects of Orders would help keep me going. From the start I quickly got three horses and promoted the warriors to solve the barbarian problems. Persia taunted me soon after that and I waved the sword, but he wussed out, and this made me decide to move to infrastructure because I felt safe. I proceeded to set my cities up on the specialist job system fairly well.

Mainly made friends with Gandhi and Austria, and tried to make friends with Greece but never quite succeeded. Early on I denounced GK to try to help on that front as he warred Greece, and a bit later did a team declare with Gandhi against him that was pretty fake on all sides from what I could tell. A little after that I declared an opportunity war against Persia to eat a Great Diplo and some caravans, but it didn't go so hot. More on that later. I sold some Iron over the course of the game, but only when the AI would accept more than 1 at once without reverting it to 1, I feel selling the 1 strategic is an exploit right now since the AI doesn't know to say no to it.

Religion game punished me bad. I went Fealty to try to dig out of the hole but never managed it, didn't even Enhance to this day. On the plus side I do have Monestaries and Orders everywhere and also 2 Pagodas. Nobody exactly was bombing me with missionaries, but there were little incursions from Siam and Portugal over time and it was just rough. At one point before the Persia wars I tried to convert him but only ever managed two cities, I just didn't have the steam and didn't get my temples going for too long. With the Orders all operating that might turn around but I think it's too little too late.

My infrastructure is actually pretty reasonable. As I said I have cities on the job system, 2 Writers Guilds and 1 Artist Guild, all fully staffed, tons of good ancient buildings and also Banks everywhere (I stole banking from Portugal on really good timing). At one point I had 3k gp waiting for Banks and Forbidden Palace to finish but over the last few turns I've burned through it investing everything and gaining bonus sci. I've been neglectful towards military, Capital is an amazing Knights factory that I've used off and on all game though, makes level 3 Knights out of the box. Got to 34 techs myself, dunno if that's good or bad, but remember the Banks are in so Instant yields on science will be nice.

Siam has been being pretty ridiculous. He is only 2 1/2 Policies and 9 techs ahead of me, but he's Influential on me already and check out this crime against humanity:



My DOF with him is set to expire fairly soon I think, I'm making good returns trading with him and I don't feel like I can touch him yet. I went Chivalry and then for Theology, wanting to get a wonder with my Engineer, but he beat me to both before I even got to Theology (engineer became a manufactory.)

The war with Persia didn't go well, I barely was getting 1:1 exchanges with my Knights vs his Knights & Immortals & Heavy Skirmishers. In hindsight I think it was pretty crappy terrain for Knights to fight him with, I should've let that war be fake and attacked Portugal sooner. Eventually I did attack Portugal and it went better, maybe 2:1 or so against Tercios and Cannons, would've been better than that likely if I'd gone earlier. The war with Portugal is still on and I just lost some more Knights in a bloody battle but my capital rocks at making Knights, that's not a huge deal. Eventually I think we might be able to take Porto without too much trouble, pop out a cannon or two and call me Friday. India was DPed with Portugal when the war started but that was a super fake side of the war and I peaced out with him last turn, he should be back on the friends train in no time.

Overall though I feel as if I stalled out, I wanted to make religion good and failed at doing so, and I also failed at war for a long time. 34 techs and Banks and Orders everywhere is the only real compensation. It was a learning experience at least, I know better what a terrible Knights front looks like now. I also assumed my cities would be better at production than they ever really were, only the capital has been able to produce more than the occasional unit.

 

[Cokolwiek]

Siam has the food faith and it is real hard to prevent it spreading to you, so you will get to see its effect on high production cities

What do you mean? Problems or, inversely, lack of problems with distress (I still don't grasp how it is calculated)? Or do you mean positive effects? From your and Rhys' screenshot it looks like tradition state for me. Only five cities but high population, very well developed, close to each other, and in defensible spots. From my experience, cities are needed to stand a chance against AI population more than before, so five or even six tradition (to get national wonders and not be thwarted by AIs production), ten or twelve (counting late cities) progress, even more authority. Lack of expansion room cut off wide benefits in this one. I think you should consider conquering Kabul in the meantime, allying it would be a waste of resources, it yields as friend are nothing compared to yields from imperium for gaining it and having another city, another lux, position to attack Siam from, and experience gained for troops. It looks to me that destroying Portugal is number one requirement to even staying relevant. From there maybe there's a chance to anything. Stii is tackling the issue very good, and terrain is amazing for sieging Porto. I object strongly to taking authority as a second policy tree, especially since most of borders are already gone before finisher, and there's no tradition policy, Angkor Wat or border growth pantheon (or is it?) to make it worthwhile. Maybe you'll prove me wrong. With taking nearby city-states (maybe I'm wrong but I feel that in this situation chanceries and diplomatic units are waste of resources, while a city is a city and science and culture from impreium is strong) and non-stop war required for survival maybe it indeed is a best choice.
What Siam's did in Rhys' game is just pure middle finger to this world and the underworld.

I finally got a little free time so I was able to catch up with everything in this thread. I love every part of those reports. I am twisting inside cause I can't play this when I look at those second checkpoint screenshots. Middle game, establishing religion, developing cities and specialists, second policy tree, first conquests and diplomacy, things before industrial are the sweetest and most interesting part of this masterpiece mod.

 

[tothePAIN]

What do you mean? Problems or, inversely, lack of problems with distress (I still don't grasp how it is calculated)? Or do you mean positive effects? From your and Rhys' screenshot it looks like tradition state for me. Only five cities but high population, very well developed, close to each other, and in defensible spots. From my experience, cities are needed to stand a chance against AI population more than before, so five or even six tradition (to get national wonders and not be thwarted by AIs production), ten or twelve (counting late cities) progress, even more authority. Lack of expansion room cut off wide benefits in this one. I think you should consider conquering Kabul in the meantime, allying it would be a waste of resources, it yields as friend are nothing compared to yields from imperium for gaining it and having another city, another lux, position to attack Siam from, and experience gained for troops. It looks to me that destroying Portugal is number one requirement to even staying relevant. From there maybe there's a chance to anything. Stii is tackling the issue very good, and terrain is amazing for sieging Porto. I object strongly to taking authority as a second policy tree, especially since most of borders are already gone before finisher, and there's no tradition policy, Angkor Wat or border growth pantheon (or is it?) to make it worthwhile. Maybe you'll prove me wrong. With taking nearby city-states and non-stop war required for survival maybe it indeed is a best choice.
What Siam's did in Rhys' game is just pure middle finger to this world and the underworld.

I finally got a little free time so I was able to catch up with everything in this thread. I love every part of those reports. I am twisting inside cause I can't play this when I look at those second checkpoint screenshots. Middle game, establishing religion, developing cities and specialists, second policy tree, first conquests and diplomacy, things before industrial are the sweetest and most interesting part of this masterpiece mod.

@Cokolwiek I was hoping that you would have joined us for this playthrough, given your talk of peaceful authority. Also, given your talk of sacrificing units to take cities. I suspect that my style of war is different from yours.

I've played ahead - I think my closest save is when I had to pick the 3rd policy tree. I'll avoid posting that save and my recap until this Friday so that others can play ahead unspoiled. It's really fun and interesting to see how others approach the game. I'll probably start a Byzantium contrast journal when there is a new patch.

 

[Cokolwiek]

@Cokolwiek I was hoping that you would have joined us for this playthrough, given your talk of peaceful authority. Also, given your talk of sacrificing units to take cities.

Basically all of guys who went authority went peaceful authority so far and some of them used that to get more faith which is also what I practice. From what I saw not a single city taken. So this is basically very my style. And the most promising save until now is taking authority as a second policy tree. That speaks volumes of authority's power.
I would love to but was forced to retreat to March version, as CTD in the current one are still not resolved. I pray to Sid Meier we can get a new stable version before you start a new contrast photojournal, so I could play along.

 

[stii]

What do you mean? Problems or, inversely, lack of problems with distress (I still don't grasp how it is calculated)? Or do you mean positive effects? From your and Rhys' screenshot it looks like tradition state for me. Only five cities but high population, very well developed, close to each other, and in defensible spots. From my experience, cities are needed to stand a chance against AI population more than before, so five or even six tradition (to get national wonders and not be thwarted by AIs production), ten or twelve (counting late cities) progress, even more authority. Lack of expansion room cut off wide benefits in this one. I think you should consider conquering Kabul in the meantime, allying it would be a waste of resources, it yields as friend are nothing compared to yields from imperium for gaining it and having another city, another lux, position to attack Siam from, and experience gained for troops. It looks to me that destroying Portugal is number one requirement to even staying relevant. From there maybe there's a chance to anything. Stii is tackling the issue very good, and terrain is amazing for sieging Porto. I object strongly to taking authority as a second policy tree, especially since most of borders are already gone before finisher, and there's no tradition policy, Angkor Wat or border growth pantheon (or is it?) to make it worthwhile. Maybe you'll prove me wrong. With taking nearby city-states (maybe I'm wrong but I feel that in this situation chanceries and diplomatic units are waste of resources, while a city is a city and science and culture from impreium is strong) and non-stop war required for survival maybe it indeed is a best choice.
What Siam's did in Rhys' game is just pure middle finger to this world and the underworld.

I finally got a little free time so I was able to catch up with everything in this thread. I love every part of those reports. I am twisting inside cause I can't play this when I look at those second checkpoint screenshots. Middle game, establishing religion, developing cities and specialists, second policy tree, first conquests and diplomacy, things before industrial are the sweetest and most interesting part of this masterpiece mod.

I meant it in the sense the lots of people seems to strongly dislike the food religion so probably never pick. But in this game it is likely it will spread to your cities anyway. It certainly did to mine, before I got my 3rd GP 4 of my cities were Siam's religion.

I do agree that Authority 2nd is a lot weak but all the 2nd teir policy trees are also unexciting so you have to pick from a bunch of less exciting options. We really want to race to a 3rd tier policy and to an ideology so take advantage of Poland's ability. As we have Terracotta we almost certainly want to war so Authority seems like it will generate most. This makes doing a slow push very appealing andl iek you said the terrian around Porto is great for that. there are multiple spots within 2 of the city that can't be hit by the city itself.

I'm really not a fan of conquering CS as it will really drive up the warmonger penalty. I'm only aiming to take two cities off Portugal before making them my vassal for the same reason. We probably have to take out Siam next as the front for Persia is rather narrow so I want them to have as small a bonus as possible.

I do have the save from my own game without any war and I'm starting to contest Siam on wonders again so I don't need war is required to win it is just the most powerful and easiest way.