Deity Challenge #10 - Maya on pangaea

[Browd]

Modern armor < t.211. Nice!

 

[Light Cleric]

Domination victory turn 211.

No ranged, artillery or planes. I massed knights and cavalry that was later uppgraded to landships and tanks, and finally to modern armor.

With artillery it would have been much easier. But I for sure do not understand the debate that ranged units would be so much stronger than melee. The debate is exaggerated and most of you can finish this map using the "no ranged units masochistic challenge" with some training.

Early ranged is still better, but melees surpass in mid and late game. Early conquering in diety is hard without ranged, that I agree with.

But for early defence, melees (pikemans) in Forts and citadels are better. I personally am defending more than conquering in early diety.

In mid game where I do most of my fighting the cavalry/artillery combo is MUCH stronger than equivalent amount of gatling guns or whatever ranged.

Well, that was the argument, really, at least from me. On offense the early-mid melee units are terribly disadvantaged. There also needs to be a distinction made bewteen the Warrior line(which must take damage on the approach before it can even attack, take damage during the attack, and damage afterwards) and the Horse line( which can get in and get out). Even Muskets for me largely get used as meatshields for my siege in early offensives. At least Rifles have some use now(they were worthless in early G&K where Gatling Guns had 36 attack/strength, like WTH?).

Would you be kind enough to post a save? I'm curious to see some of those sick Modern Armor promotions

 

[Old Peter]

Sure, here is the save file

 

[soprof]

In mid game where I do most of my fighting the cavalry/artillery combo is MUCH stronger than equivalent amount of gatling guns or whatever ranged.

artillery is ranged, isn't it? =D

 

[SomeoneLikeHim]

I don't even know what to say. My hat is off to you, good sir!

 

[Tabarnak]

Congratulations Old Peter!

I didn't mention it earlier but i wasn't sure theorically about my thoughts. But you showed that they were actually true

I'm talking about late warfare. With so much moves and retreatable units available in the late game, the modern armor and some few other units can effectively do a great job at taking cities.

I don't have the patience to play long and tedious singleplayer games these days and i'm pretty happy to see someone completed this challenge. What is even better is that you have done this at deity level. I tried at immortal with landsnechts but i didn't dig much into that challenge.

I'm pretty sure that you can win under 150 turns at immortal using landsnechts or maybe another type of melee unit. But it seems that your main ability is to combine heavy science, production and gold until later then push a powerful modern/atomic era fight turning at your advantage instead of me where i prefer early warfare(mainly because in mp games it's often better to expand ASAP than the opposite).

I remember that game i played with Washington in vanilla where i didn't tech writing at all and still won a domination deity game. I think it's impossible to win by domination without writing tech under GnK at deity compared to the immortal level where some players already shown that it's pretty doable without.

What do you think Peter? Is it possible to win without the writing tech at deity?

I understand now why tommynt wants to test you under mp...

 

[Old Peter]

Here is my infamous "turn 87 education" save file that gave 260 BPT at turn 108.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

regarding the ranged unit debate and seeing this crazy Old Peter win, do you think you could reliably win on a deity map on the first try more often with a ranged strategy or with a melee strategy?

i clearly see it's possible to go with all melee but do you think it can be reliable without retries? as reliable as ranged strategy? as it is, deity on the first try is tough. it is often a response to the map and opponents but you usually do some 'standard' paths and strategies at the opening 50-100 turns. so im curious if this can be a new 'standard' without a lot of retries. i'd personally like to see 'several' reliable paths on deity because i already feel like every one of my deity games has the close to the exact same openings just to survive into the late 100s.

thanks for posting saves, Old Peter. I hope to look at them tomorrow but I still wont understand how you get 260bpt by 108, haha.

 

[The Pilgrim]

he had nc done at 55 so if he settles right away (as you should) after its done you may buy grannies and focus growth, there are some very good spots around.

He didn't mention buying granaries, although if he did (and I think you should, if you have the cash for it), it means more money.

also in this game you really should not need to buy workers, just grab them, as in any deity game, you just need the money for something else. i had 7 or 8 for 4 cities so everything was improved instantly, guess peter did that too.

'My' Sully didn't have any obtainable workers. They were running back and forth in the jungle two tiles away from my spearman. I was almost tempted to build a scout just to catch them, but then the DoW came and they walked away to seek warriors' protection. Stealing workers from AI is not my favorite tactics (I play on random maps and often terrain doesn't let you do that and/or diplo consequences are not pleasant, as I'm not thrilled to get double/triple DoW at turn 30 ) but in this case I would have done it gladly. No such luck.

there is so many gold mines, sell each for 240 twice or maybe even thrice till you get to edu, dont even need to DoW abuse.

I totally agree that it's not needed.

last but not least, dont forget the beaker power of jungle =)

Pre-education? What is their power?

The thing is, we all know the theory. Really. I'm most definitively not the best player, I wouldn't even call myself a good player, but I'm not completely clueless either. So selling horses, for example, is a great tip, but you know... won't cut it. The practice is different from theory. Especially on deity. Under ideal conditions everything is possible, however, ideal conditions are not happening 99/100 times.

I just put spoiler tags on screens, I think we can all stop ourselves from reading what we don't want. I just assume it's all spoilers past few initial posts

I really wish people were more conservative with spoiler tags but there is only so much you can do by asking them.

artillery is ranged, isn't it? =D

He meant in his 'normal' games. Not in this one.

 

[The Pilgrim]

With artillery it would have been much easier. But I for sure do not understand the debate that ranged units would be so much stronger than melee. The debate is exaggerated and most of you can finish this map using the "no ranged units masochistic challenge" with some training.

I don't think many have had doubts that you can defeat outteched AI with any type of units. As it was mentioned before, when you're two eras ahead, it doesn't matter what you fight with. The debate indeed was focusing more on early warfare. Although not stated clearly, and I take the blame for that completely. I also admit I wasn't thinking about mounted units at the time I opened the first thread. Matthew was addressing melee units and that's what I was referring to the most. Again, I wasn't clear enough and I'm sorry about that.
But, I'm glad things turned out the way they did. Overall it was very educational. I kinda love to hate mounted units and apparently they are not as terrible as I thought they were. They are far from being great, however they can be almost bearable and they are fun.

Thanks for posting the saves. Everything is much clearer now. It's impressive game and shows the power of science under ideal conditions.
Btw, how is it possible Sully didn't DoW you? His units occupied pretty much every tile of my capital from turn ~30 until I wiped them all out and took Edrine.

 

[tommynt]

i clearly see it's possible to go with all melee but do you think it can be reliable without retries? as reliable as ranged strategy? as it is, deity on the first try is tough. it is often a response to the map and opponents but you usually do some 'standard' paths and strategies at the opening 50-100 turns. so im curious if this can be a new 'standard' without a lot of retries. i'd personally like to see 'several' reliable paths on deity because i already feel like every one of my deity games has the close to the exact same openings just to survive into the late 100s.

I dont see the "new" points here:
domination with advanced units?
outteching ai with great civ, great land and great gold?
NC-->4 city Tradition?

As posted before, if there was the "overall thinking" that fast science = no wars - its just been wrong and I showed this in my Videos all time - warfare gives so much gold influe - with trading gpt/lux before dows more but even without that the gold from pupets from city conquering from pilliging, from peace deals it just adds up.
And Gold just kinda directly transfers into science.

Also there are no "secrets" in big science - its just city pops and specialist slots.
If u got enough gold u can switch from production tiles to grow tiles AND dont have to sell your lux/buy lux to not be happy restricted (thats main problem with peaceful/bad land strategies)
And even more important buying a grow building early gives like double grow speed from 1-4 size

And in end the type of unit really isnt that important against dumb ai, espacially with the new focused fire of ai ranged units arent THAT great as they ll often die from 100-0 in 1 ai turn. U can avaid that pretty well with horses which can pillage after attack and just got the bigger strength. And 100-0 death is really the only thing which a clever player have to "fear" as he ll just have enough masses and will retreat injured ones in time.

 

[The Pilgrim]

It's also been shown that 'no wars' can be translated to fast science just as well if you push RA's hard enough. It does leave you vulnerable though. No doubt. You totally depend on psychotic AI. But not everybody likes wars. Both approaches are viable as they should be.

 

[Moriarte]

Still, the 'war' gameplay has more potential in terms of turn times. The amount of stuff you get for free while warring is incomparable to RA action. Also it is quite possible to mix wars and RA action for ultimate effect. I think, people who don't like to war are simply not very good at it. At least that used to be my story. Took me quite a while to figure out the right dosage of science/culture/army composition, and still there is much to learn there. It's not hard to see that war way is superior, even if not preferred by many.

 

[The Pilgrim]

You're probably right about peacemongers, they aren't good at war. However many of them don't care. Not everybody is bloodthirsty or competitive and want to be good at it in the first place. There are so many builders and role players I'm amazed over and over again every time I check G&D .

I also agree that there is no perfect balance and fighting is superior in more than one way. Especially on higher difficulties you kill many birds with one shot. Spoils of war are great, you trim your opponents down and while having an active military are in much safer place. However, that's not the only way. After seeing 220-230 OCC finishes, it's just silly to say there are no alternatives and the way of war is the only 'right' way.

 

[soprof]

Here is my infamous "turn 87 education" save file that gave 260 BPT at turn 108.

After replaying the map like 38'th time i decided smt like "Ok f* this, I just go and ask for the save file, I'm clearly missing something."
But I guess some people see staff ahead =D

SubChallenge: load turn 85 save with 70 science and make it at least 260 in 20 turns =D

up: checked the deal history, not only no DoW abuses, he even payed AI ~550 gold for declaring a war =D

 

[The Pilgrim]

Check the replay too.

As for beaker jump - it's not surprising. Turn 85 is pre-unis, turn 108 or whatever it was post observatories.

 

[jeespoks]

Nice game, Old Peter. Not only you did it with no-ranged masochistic style, you did it with a civ with no melee UU and a civ which I thought would best fit for early domination with ranged units

Spoiler :

I hadn't played Maya before but gave this a try and they are pretty awesome so far. Managed to grab GL and built NC on cap before settling 3 more cities. Suleiman settled near my cap on T14, to a long way from his other cities and to a spot with no luxes or early resources. What was he thinking? I'm on T72, 1st on literacy and will hit education on T83 (I've never gotten to edu this early with any other civ than Babylon) if all goes as planned. If only I had gold to rush Unis, besides the cap my cities are still small and have poor production. Got GS on T62 and GE T72 (used on CI). Beelining to Astronomy after edu seems tempting since all my cities are next to mountain.

My initial plan was to spam archers and start warring with CBs but the beaker flow is so awesome I think I might as well wait for XBows. A double DoW from Celts and Suleiman is keeping my 8 CBs occupied for now and at the moment I rather focus on science and gold buildings than building more units. I'll start building Horsemen/Knights at some point and try to get Cavalry asap to support the ranged units.

 

[cmorganuk]

Thanks for posting the save. I think its worth buying the add ons so that I can load it up and learn some new stuff!

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

I dont see the "new" points here:
domination with advanced units?
outteching ai with great civ, great land and great gold?
NC-->4 city Tradition?

not surprised. the point was about retries and reloads. HoF and GotM require you to finish a game (the map) on one try. no reloads or map knowledge allowed. (HoF does let you try different maps just no reloads). Most of these challenges have been multiple re-starts. archers aren't more powerful but more flexible AND resource-less. can melee/horse strategies be as reliable for the first-try successes?

I think Old Peter's descriptions are pretty fascinating because he was never a pure archer player. siege/melee all the way for him so his training to play this strategy was a leg up on the rest of us (and by 'us' I mean players much better than me because I havent been very successful at deity since the patch). I got bored with iron rushes in vanilla and even though they werent optimal i tried ranged games. im similarly getting tired of my get-to-Construction path too. but since the patch my combat skills arent really the problem right now so much as the diplo/war planning. t0-t100 are fine but t100-t200 are where I lose something.

 

[pkf]

The thing is, we all know the theory. Really. I'm most definitively not the best player, I wouldn't even call myself a good player, but I'm not completely clueless either. So selling horses, for example, is a great tip, but you know... won't cut it. The practice is different from theory. Especially on deity. Under ideal conditions everything is possible, however, ideal conditions are not happening 99/100 times.

I didn't assume you were clueless! Why would I? I just don't understand all the confusion about Peter's bpt at t87. I mentioned jungle because I assumed he had bought at least 2 unis when he reached Education.

I had Education at t91 with very similar numbers, everything just exploded after Astronomy right after, as it did for Peter. I had only t91 because I got construction quite early (for Istanbul).

These ARE almost ideal conditions, you will hardly roll a better map for this civ. I still think the main difference are workers. I almost never buy one on deity except for secondary cities which are too far away.

As for war vs peace - I think tommys playstyle in GOTM has proved a warmongering style to be superior in finish times (not OCC). On the downside, you need to play well and very focused to make it effective.

Now would someone please tell me if you need to upload the image to imageshack or something first to make spoiler tags work? =)