deity aw 4: the three musketeers

[GKey]

For fun and comparison sake I've made Hanni of Japan start. This can be doable (Japan start with Wheel+Fishing and we can see seafood resource from Snaaty's screenshot).

 

[kossin]

Let me open the festivities...

Set 1: to turn 20

Spoiler :

Settled to grab the Stone in the BFC.
Ag>Masonry>probably BW

The Bad
-very poor scouting due to Animals being in my way
-not much consideration into opening, as usual
-flat land capital
-not as much food as possible
-no city can work the Clams
-no room for backfill

The Good
+a forest growth for an easy chop
+no AIs met means some distance
+spotted two islands
+Stone
+Gems
+One of the better production sites for the capital



While Masonry is debatable, I'm feeling TGW on this one more than Oracle [even though it might be much easier to get]. Playing 20 turns is not enough to tell of course so we will see later. Getting the Stone is primordial for TGW because the production/trees are too slow otherwise compared to AW3.

 

[GKey]

And I played Japan and it went quite well. Luck of skirms kind of hurt though (played more then 20 turns). Big question is what's best location for blocking city.

 

[Htadus]

bwahahahaa

I think you should put your text in a spoiler tag as OP asked.

 

[ABigCivFan]

Wow, no river and low commerce. This map will be very very tough...

 

[mehike]

T40

Spoiler :

Got TGW and going for oracle, probably can get a settler in between. (Grow once on barracks then start the settler and oracle after that.)
However no archery yet.
I was thinking maybe get the CoL holy city in capital, then settle the eastern blocking city and get a few skirmishers out asap.

BIG picture in spoilers.

Spoiler :

 

[kossin]

So... is any other musketeer going to post his t20?
Or are we all waiting for t40?

 

[Snaaty]

i managed to mess up and played to t60something before remembering that i should have stopped t40 (or was it t20?)

want me to post up to t60ish right now or prefere to wait till you reach t70 (second stop... ...or was it t60? damn am i lazy... ..cant be bothered to look it up)

screen of starting spot i picked and early scouting (t12):

Spoiler :

the starting spot i picked:
View attachment 299799
in the end, i voted wet corn+rice+gems, because i want to pull of my usuall oracle-col plan... ...with the gems, should work out fine.

View attachment 299798
my scout managed to do well and revealed quite a bit of the map. only ai met so far was hathse of mongolia, coming from 3 of the warrior with a scout, now standing 6666 from my capital (near the lake).

worker stealing wont be possible on this map i fear (at least not for me)... ...things will be hard

research went agri-hunting with the plan of archery soon (very soon).

...

the hill my scoutin warrior is standing upon might be a great blocking spot. another blocking city might be possible on one of the hills in the jungle (ideally 3 turns away from the other city). i decided to stick to said hill with my scout (became woody 3 soonish by fighting of some barbs there) to keep the option of a faraway blocking city there

to the north, i only expect coast, since no ai was comming from there, only a barb here and there showed up

edith for kossin:
obs asked for a bit of a larger timeline due to rl issues showing up, and dirk still is on vacation, so no hurry concerning the next set. play as you wish up to the turn i mentioned somewhere in this thread in as many turnset as you like (i guess i will only play in 2 quite large sets, since im already quite far into the game)

 

[Dirk1302]

I'm back but i'm not really in the mood to start right now. Still it should be possible to play before 10 September. I'm happy that we have a team of 5, AW3 was gruesome, it's won now but i'm not looking forward to playing that out, maybe i won't. Even with 5 players an AW game can be quite a task.

 

[Snaaty]

since i will be away the next 2 weeks, here comes my report in short, up to the final point, so dont read it if you dont have played yet (the report is very short to lack of time right now)

Spoiler :

settled to get gems in bfc to go for oracle. quick helper city east of capital (lake + corn), then a faraway blocking city near the desert + gold spot, on a hill behind a river. defences were 4 skirms in total. the jungle was blocked by a barb city already, so i left a skirm there to see when this city would fall

but then i lost the oracle t62 by 1 turn (would have had it myself at t63) and gave up

no inbetween saves from me, because i played in 1 big set... ...final save i have to dig up (when i find time again), since i played it already some time ago...

...

so it is up to the remaining 4 musketeers to provide a save for this challange, because mine wont be of the 1/3 of the saves that might be won

 

[Habitus]

Set 1, T20

Spoiler :

Decided to settle on the hill near stone as Dirk talked about, Teched Agr - Masonry (4 turns off)

Set 2, T40

Spoiler :

Finished Masonry - Hunting - Archery - Mysticism (3T left) . Decided Monuments for extra happy as planning on going BW next and whip a settle at pop 6. Great Wall is 1T from being finished. Met Louis and Wang Kon so far.

Set 3, T70

Forgot to stop lol

T90

Spoiler :

Storing gold at moment as waiting on the Great Spy (next turn) before i run scientists to help me get to Alpha, break even 30% with 8bpt so need them to tech it Fought off afew mini-stacks and settled a 4th city in the NW for Fish + Cows on a hill. First GG i made a super defender (Drill 4 CG 3) skirmisher. Plan on using the Great Spy to scout until i have some spys to use. Not focused my points on anyone yet as hoping a civ will take the barb city near me so I can use that as my target.

Think i could of played better as kept noticing i missed some micro so hopefully you all have a better save to work with

Looking forward to see what others did

 

[Dirk1302]

Until T90

Spoiler :

ABCF is right there's plenty of good land but it's hard to find enough commerce to really capitalize on it immediately. Still We need that land so i settled as ambitiously as possible, 10 cities most of them strong is possible in this save. Economy is almost crashing atm , can keep it afloat if necessary with fishing in the lakes. In 10 turns we can work a gold near Gao.

To compensate i built the Mids (!?). For fail gold initially but i'm glad i got it in the end. Alpha is 13 turns away and then we can go stealing from our neighbors. Production is not a problem with Walata and Gao contributing soon. It's possible to run 4 scientists then for +60 bpt to complement tech stealing. After currency i plan to build wealth in some cities and settle 11 cities, 2 on islands asap.

In Gao a monument is queued atm complete in 1 turn from overflow. But maybe it should be changed to library as the city is growing extremely fast and we can 2 pop whip at 4. That's probably better but i saved and uploaded before i thought of that.
We'll get to Alpha a bit faster that way i think.

 

[Dirk1302]

@kossin,

Spoiler :

i agree with placing of you capital. My first idea was settling on hill near stone like Habitus did but the location i chose in the end has so much more production that i live with the loss of clam in the south west. Settling coastal is not as important as in normal games since harbors are not as good. Non financial water tiles are almost useless.

Stone screams GW so i went for it as well got it 2480 BC which is reasonable. Didn't fancy to research all those reli techs as well with lack of commerce.

@Habitus

Spoiler :

Too passive for my taste. You can survive from that save for a long time but it's hard to win it as i see no decent future. Early push without phants will be hard but you can't turtle up with ~6 cities.

@Mehike

Spoiler :

GW and Oracle will hurt expansion, you have to be lucky to get oracle anyway. It's a bit early for barracks imo. You don't have archery?

 

[kossin]

Looks like this thread woke up, I'll play some more turns and post results later.

 

[Snaaty]

@ dirk:

impressive play

some details what i did different in the spoiler, and some opinions on the saves in so far (for all those to read that played up to t60 at least = not for kossin):

Spoiler :

going for the oracle wasnt a good plan here obviously, but i simply wasnt flexible enough. with the stones, gw is probably WAY better and easier.

missing the oracle by 1 turns was a logical result of my inflexibility... ...i guess i could have gotten it some 2-3 turns earlier, but i wanted 4 skirms out before starting it + the blocking city near the gold (same spot dirk settled, so dirks and my expansion politics would have been again quite similar)

but seeing no enemy stacks so far, i could have lived with 2 skirms only, but well, i guess afterwards your always wiser, no?

...

i settled my capital a bit more upwards, to get some more of the rives and to get another city down there towards the clams. another mistake i guess, because the short term advantage of having stones in the bfs for gw should always be priorized higher then the long term advantage of getting another ressource with a future city... ...not really my start this was and very poor strat. planning and making use of the map

...

only good we have dirk and some other players this time around

...

concerining the other 2 saves (habitus and mehike):

i only can second here what dirk says:
this map isnt in favour of an early aggressive push since we dont have phants (nor bronze, if i remember right)

so the innitial goal (after scouting the surroundings a bit) should have been to block as much land as possible. a quick helper city 4-5 tiles away from the capital, then blocking near the gold (see the spot dirk settled) and down in the jungle 3-4 tiles away from goldblock should have had highest prio (in my case, i only could settle gold, since a barb city was in the jungle already).

habitus play was a bit to conservative in my opinion with only 7-8 cities left to settle, and mehikes try to get both gw and oracle might result in the same problems (not enough expansion). still, if mehike might get at least on of these blocking cities up and has success on the oracle also, it still might prove a very interesting alternative to dirks save...

 

[kossin]

But I want to read the spoilers

 

[Habitus]

I actually agree with what your saying about my save

Spoiler :

Thankfully there are better saves for you to play Deity AW is beyond my skill at moment, thou i feel i could do it at Emperor and possible Immortal

Looking forward to seeing which save is used and how it all plays out

 

[Dirk1302]

About continuation

Spoiler :

Play went well in my save, i managed to steal 4(!) workers this time and that warrior is woodsman III now, very useful unit.

But it will be hard, in my save there's about as much land as i had in AW3. But almost everything else is worse....

No cottages means i'm way behind in tech compared to that start

No big discounts on espionage yet, in that game christianity spread to me because i hadn't met Wash yet and subsequently i could conquer a barb city, put reli in it and gift it to the tech leader.
Bulbing philo and doing something like that would be great but no guarantees that'll work.

Mids will not compensate for all of that, once we switch to full espionage it'll be rather useless.

There's one + , with all those farms (later workshops) there's more production than in AW3, that may mean a medieval push. Or we may reach rifling and do something then, turtling up as in AW3 may leave us to far behind in tech at some point.

 

[kossin]

I'll try moving my save ahead this weekend, I have to think on how to maximize hammers/balance commerce going forward.

 

[kossin]

Done playing and just read up.

Spoiler :

Well... I got screwed by the RNG. A barb city appeared on the blocking city Dirk settled - out of all places, wth!? - and the Mongols captured it then I threw the towel as my Skirmishers failed to get it.