Deity Challenge #10 - Maya on pangaea

[soprof]

If my capital is not in the jungle i try my best to make it NOT scientific.

Same happens here, but as a result I can't get impressive bpt's early, but, I guess, I get it going later on, have my 900 science/turn at turn 200 =D

 

[Old Peter]

Actually no AI abusing at all this game

No wars, the only agressive one is Suleiman, and I bribe the others to have him fighting.

But the amount of gold in this map is extreme. I produce 150 gold/turn and the capital is alone producing more than half of it! How? Hmm, commerce and early mint I guess. Edit, 40 gpt from religion also.

The things I bought: Very quick pyramids in all the three cities I settled. Later Water mill in two of these. I produced library in these, not bought.

Rush bought university in capital (to get rationalism in exacly right time). Bought universitiy in 1 of the other, other two produced it.

Then I bought 2 observatories in other cities, produced it in capital.

Bought 3 public schools.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I don't understand then.
2 settlers (you mentioned buying settlers while building NC, so there were at least 2) = 1000
3 pyramids = 750.
2 watermills = 400
2 universities = 1320

All in all 3470. Without mentioning workers, tile purchase, buying and upgrading units and bribing. All this by turn 89.
You need another 1560 shortly after for two observatories.

I can't see where all this gold is coming from. I didn't reach or was anywhere close to these numbers even with overselling luxes, which you obviously didn't. Peter, please put us out of our misery and tell more.

 

[Old Peter]

I don't understand then.
2 settlers (you mentioned buying settlers while building NC, so there were at least 2) = 1000
3 pyramids = 750.
2 watermills = 400
2 universities = 1320

All in all 3470. Without mentioning workers, tile purchase, buying and upgrading units and bribing. All this by turn 89.
You need another 1560 shortly after for two observatories.

I can't see where all this gold is coming from. I didn't reach or was anywhere close to these numbers even with overselling luxes, which you obviously didn't. Peter, please put us out of our misery and tell more.

Only 1 university bought at that time . No workers bought. No roads built. Education was reached at turn 86 this time. So, yes 3470-660 = 2810 gold by turn 86. Yes, this was accumulated without any abusing of AI.

I had Oracle, so early commerce, mint, market, religion must have been enough

Edit: Also 1 merchant used for La Venta. That is another 500.

I also bribed other civs to war with Suleiman so I used even more gold! This was maybe after turn 86 though.

 

[soprof]

I imagine how can you "farm" 3k for 100 turns(don't forget you can sell horses! =), but i don't understand how can 4 cities with pyramids, libraries and unis give 260 @ turn 108, if 3 of them were build after NC.

Hmm, I wonder where is that city to the left, (this screenshot)

 

[pkf]

great starting location! couldnt resist playing this one

was unsure whether to focus on sci or dom, went ahead and dowed suleiman early to get a lot of workers.

trad 3 city nc (bought libs/grans), t90ish edu, everything went really fast after that, ~t135 schools, delayed them a bit for machinery and pisa.

first time i managed to open ratio with oracle on deity =) free thought was up ~t125 then.

got stonehenge, hs, hg and pisa, missed pt and sol thanks to crazy runaway harun. i dowed him right before i hit ren era so he would stop building oracle. unfortunately we had dofed before so everyone hated me and dowed soon after.

first time i survived a (world) war against all but one deity ai. terrain was very much in my favor, managed to grab istanbul and edinburgh.

t170 now with 1k+ beakers, rat finisher will be late though and i delayed dynamite a bit to defend against harun and celts (istanbul had the great wall, was a pain to take it down). with edinburgh i should hit 1,5k pretty soon and mb get sci vc sub t220.

really really easy map id guess if it wasnt for harun, so much gold and strategic locations for cities around.

 

[cmorganuk]

I imagine how can you "farm" 3k for 100 turns(don't forget you can sell horses! =), but i don't understand how can 4 cities with pyramids, libraries and unis give 260 @ turn 108, if 3 of them were build after NC.

Hmm, I wonder where is that city to the left, (this screenshot)

I raised the same questions in the Arabia challenge when he had 360bpt at turn 136, with no observ. in his capital, only 8 cities, at least 3 of them crappy.

In one of his screenies from his first attempt, his 12 pop cap was pumping 93bpt, with a lib, uni, observ and working a GS tile, thats fair enough. In the reload he had 14 pop, still one GS, so with two additional peeps this could be 100bpt form the cap? But that means his other cities, (3 or 4 of them?) are pumping 160 between them.

His science standing alone is extremely impressive, but not only this, he's able to do it in the context of actually playing the game, keeping tabs on millitary, happiness, gold per turn, culture, faith. In my playing around this last week or so, if I focus everything on science, I still don't get that close, but also completely suck at everything else.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Question: when do you need to finish Theology in order to get GP in time? If I finish on 71, I don't get any at 72.

 

[Browd]

You need to finish Theology two turns before the next Long Count GP (e.g., turn 60 for the turn 62 GP, turn 70 for the turn 72 GP, etc.).

 

[Mystz0r]

@Grend:

Spoiler :

You say that a "sub-200 domination win could be possible". Can you try to elaborate a bit on this? How many cities, what policies, what early techs and when you would you go on the attack?

Thanks!

 

[The Pilgrim]

You need to finish Theology two turns before the next Long Count GP (e.g., turn 60 for the turn 62 GP, turn 70 for the turn 72 GP, etc.).

Thanks, I learned by trial and error.

Back to Peter's last game t89 screenshot analysis : to generate 125 bpt you need a size 11 capital, and 3 cities at size 7. Two universities staffed, 4 libraries, 4 shrines.
I have no clue how that's even possible. If 3 cities settled after NC, they won't have enough time to grow to size 7. Not to mention Suleiman units everywhere won't let them grow. And since the capital at t124 was at size 12, it's obvious it was smaller than 11 at t89.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I imagine how can you "farm" 3k for 100 turns(don't forget you can sell horses! =), but i don't understand how can 4 cities with pyramids, libraries and unis give 260 @ turn 108, if 3 of them were build after NC.

Actually, you need more than 3k, for units and tiles. You also need workers to improve all resources and you need them fast. And settlers to grab additional resources.

Hmm, I wonder where is that city to the left, (this screenshot)

Looks like Boudica ate it.

 

[pkf]

Thanks, I learned by trial and error.

Back to Peter's last game t89 screenshot analysis : to generate 125 bpt you need a size 11 capital, and 3 cities at size 7. Two universities staffed, 4 libraries, 4 shrines.
I have no clue how that's even possible. If 3 cities settled after NC, they won't have enough time to grow to size 7. Not to mention Suleiman units everywhere won't let them grow. And since the capital at t124 was at size 12, it's obvious it was smaller that 11 at t89.

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.

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.

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.

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

 

[Maxym]

Yeah, I'm trying not to give away TOO many details when I post without spoilers; I've just ranted about one guy settling stupidly and that seemed like a pretty minor detail so meh

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

 

[Grendeldef]

@Grend:

You say that a "sub-200 domination win could be possible". Can you try to elaborate a bit on this? How many cities, what policies, what early techs and when you would you go on the attack?

There're probably myriad of people more capable than me answering this but since I was addressed here it goes.
Purely speculative obviously and I'm going into too much details but something along the lines like 'The Easy & Safe Warmongering 101 in Vanilla'. One used artillery & SBs - both units that AI couldn't (still can't but much higher city def helps a bit) defend against. I use my game as a reference, others' games might have taken a different path altogether but that's RNG.

Up to Universities roughly the same or it doesn't really matter that - just to get bpt high enough to catch the AI and then beeline artillery. The Celts & India were having a war of their own so let them be & if possible try get Harun involved. Sully was easy enough to take practically without an army so throw in few units & attack the Dutch - shouldn't be a problem as progress doesn't have to be fast - just don't lose units. Meanwhile build catas/trebuchets & ally at least one of southern CSs so you don't have to march between two Harun's allies. Or one could just take Lhasa or Zanzibat out at that point. With 6-8 artillery a city will fall in a turn or two as long as the arties can stay alive so get them before Harun learns to fly. At this point one has ~50 turns to get to Mecca which seems like plenty. Others were technologically backwards so the army one should be doing fine with xbows/gatlings etc with the Dutch as he should be easy to bribe war against Siam or vice versa and the map helps out quite a bit here. Plenty of time to get the two capitals.

The Celts & India are something of a dessert after Harun - shouldn't take more few turns to wipe them both in the end.

Spoiler :

The main problems would be lack of money to buy/upgrade enough units if Harun has already allied next to every CS but religion should help a lot here.
The other one is Harun himself but as he oddly didn't seem to have to much oil pillaging those keeps him grounded and the AI's handling of artillery/R.Art. is so bad that those shouldn't cause too many problems even as numerous as they were.

 

[Light Cleric]

Yeah, that's my problem with Artillery on Deity. You can steamroll the AI pretty hard with it, but there is a very small window before the AI starts hitting Flight(which they LOVE because they ignore the Railroad line even after they restructured the tech tree so they AI WOULDN'T ignore it ) and rush-buy a bunch of Great War Bombers which trash normal Artillery.I often feel compelled to push hard for Triplanes. Honestly I think planes in this game could use a nerf because of how much damage they do and once they get Air Repair you can just forget about killing one without Mobile SAMs. Stealth Bombers are ridiculously OP still but you can't expect something that comes about the same point in the tree as GDRs to be too balanced

 

[Grendeldef]

You can steamroll the AI pretty hard with it, but there is a very small window before the AI starts hitting Flight(which they LOVE because they ignore the Railroad line even after they restructured the tech tree so they AI WOULDN'T ignore it ) and rush-buy a bunch of Great War Bombers which trash normal Artillery.

Yup, the window isn't that long so one should use it to it's maximum effect besides artillery is so good vs cities that one should take cover I & II promos as soon possible. Accompanied with few meatshields with cover II and AI tendency of bombing a city even if @ 0 hit points over units should be enough to kill loads of GWBs with minimal losses and when anti-aircraft comes the GWBs start dying like flies.

This dom vc actually starts sounding more interesting by the minute but after the extremely long DC8 I was very keen on staying peaceful and I'm very reluctant to replay maps so I doubt I try this.

 

[Light Cleric]

I think part of the problem is they way they just have flat +% bonuses vs land units the same way ships do with their promotions so they can just drop massive damage on units. Ranged land units vs water units is just ugly.

And yeah, I love warmongering but I have no motivation to even try and finish DC8, it's SO grueling...

 

[Grendeldef]

I'm too lazy these days to do proper warmongering - I like faster turn times & I'd love if I could just outsmart AI in civ building. I probably played too much Civ2 where one could build all the wonders so the mode is sort of sticking in me besides DoWing was extremely difficult in democracy.

The DC8 was a trip on a memory lane but very time consuming so I haven't played anything else but this and I'd rather do different type of games never mind the actual winning turn. I get distracted too easily (and willingly) to get the optimal vc turn anyway.

 

[Old Peter]

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.