Deity Challenge 3

[JustAnother]

Well, I will amend my previous statement. I don't think the map is impossible with these restrictions, just very very tough. In fact, I don't think that the restrictions are the main issue. The map would be ideal for these conditions except for one thing...

Spoiler :

The main issue is Rome. In every attempt so far they are an early runaway since they are basically left untouched by the other civs. I have signed a DoF with Askia (who is second strongest and right on the other side of Rome) every time, but I can't bribe him to war Rome for anything. So DoF is pretty worthless.

In my third attempt I had a really good start (comparatively):

Spoiler :

I settled up next to the mountain, which lost a few turns, but gained a sugar, bananas, horses and silver (which offset the lost silver). So a very good trade-off. I waited until 4 pop then settled a 2nd city to my west (2 silver site) to block Rome from spamming cities down into my territory. I built the NC by turn 60 or so, then I settled a third city in the awesome river/coastal growth site to the south (3 sheep, 2 cattle, 1 horses, 2 fish and another silver!). I settled city 4 a bit later to the SE as Egypt was starting to encroach from that direction. This sealed off my territory nicely.

I beelined to Theology, built Hagia Sofia and was going to use the free GE to build Chichen Itza, but I was 5 turns too late, so I used it for PT after researching Education. My plan was then to bulb Astronomy with the free GS from the PT and get an observatory into my capitol ASAP. Plus this would allow me to take Freedom as my next SP (I finished the Tradition tree sometime in the 90's and the timing was looking perfect). Was a great plan until Uncle Caesar decided to crash the party.

Rome DoWed me on turn 92. Luckily I had Quebec City as an ally from rescuing a couple of their workers earlier and this slowed Rome down quite a bit as they attempted to take the CS. In addition, I used 750 hard earned gold to ally Almaty and they also helped kill a few Romans. I held them off at Quebec City for about 24 turns and then this happened:

Spoiler :

Apparently Caesar spent his first 92 turns hiring and trucking in cheap labor from Mexico. I had to make a retreat and likely both CS are lost. I bought iron from another civ to keep my swords strong when I lose the iron from QC. I have 5 turns until I can upgrade my archers to crossbows (but no cash currently to upgrade them) and I still have 3 super pikes (upgraded from Immortals). Plus I have a good defensive position with both cities. So we'll see what happens.

If not for Rome I could really start to rock with my current cities. My capitol is going to be a GS super factory.

Edit: I have one other thing going for me. I will go into GA right about when Rome gets to my cities.

Did you try to get a GL settling at the mountain? What was your starting build order?
I made a big mistake on my game at the start...I wanted my free culture building in capital to be temple but I totally forget to make a monument...I went scout - worker - worker(did not finish) - GL - NC - finish worker.

 

[RedRover57]

Rome is insane this game, kind of reminds me of Germany from the last LP Deity challenge. Tons of room to expand without much pressure from other civs early. I dont even think the DoW restriction hurts us that badly as I dont think an immortal rush would slow him down much, he just gets too big too fast. Was a fun attempt but I think my science is losing me the game, I might give it another go going for the mountain settle but then again I've yet to win a Deity game yet so maybe I shouldn't be playing the Deity challenge at all lol.

The Deity Challenges are all about the learning. You don't learn much when easily rolling over everything. So definitely keep giving them a try. I haven't beat Deity yet after the patch either and I've failed pretty miserably at my own challenges so far. But it's making me a better player.

 

[RedRover57]

@JustAnother

Spoiler :

I decided to not try for the GL. In my previous 2 attempts the GL went to other civs on turns 34 and 43, so I thought it would be a real gamble to try it after the delayed settle. My build order in capitol was scout - scout - worker - start library - switch to settler at pop 4 - finish library - NC - archers/immortals (until Theology finished) - HS - water mill/stoneworks/stable - PT (rushed with GE) - university (or something close to that order). I bought a granary as soon as I had the cash (very important since it allowed working more hammers without starving - I bought a granary for city 2 as well). Between my first 2 cities I ended up building a total of 4 archers and 4 immortals, but it may not be enough. Because of being peaceful to start they aren't well promoted yet.

Oh, and I took the 4 free monuments from the tradition policy. It really helped to get the other cities going. My policy order was Tradition - Aristocracy - Legalism - Oligarchy - Monarchy - Landed Elite.

 

[formivore]

Yeah so no liberty then . I tried a game but quickly got far behind and gave up. I will try again with map knowledge . I think the old faithful city location with cotton, fish and silver is quite strong if you can nab it.

Is it possible to win a deity game with only 3-4 strong citites? Because I'm just not sure if its possible to win against rome. Maybe with rifles?

 

[RedRover57]

I think the old faithful city location with cotton, fish and silver is quite strong if you can nab it.

It would be a great site, but too difficult to defend IMO. It could be attacked from the N and E. Instead I opted to keep my cities in a tight grouping so the only attack point from the E is through the one-tile pass. Plus the tight city grouping allows me to quickly move troops around to cover all my cities with fewer troops. My strategy may still not work (still playing), but I thought it would give me the best chance.

 

[frenzykoala]

I think it is not possible to win this game. The reasons are:

1. Persian is the worst civ for that map. I'm sure almost any civ will be better especially aztecs or babylon.
2. Unit maintance. With 3-4 cities it is not possible to support decent size army and without it rome will consume you very fast.
3. lack of happiness therefore no goldenage and all persian bonuses. I was forced to sell my all resources even uniq one to withstand the rome warmachine.

155 turn screenshot

My reseach sucks i got all reseach agreements and PT (but not rationalism) and it still sucks.

I was able to built HS, PT, Notre Dam. Got cannons as fast as i could.

At the same moment (turn 60) rome dow on me i made alliences with both quebec and almaty so they hold him a little. Then on 145 turn or something i declared war (broke the rule i know doesnt matter already really) on almaty to prevent capturing it by rome.

By the now i'm still able to hold the rome but probably in 20-30 turns he is going to get infantry and i'm done.

I bribed askia to declare war on rome but ceaser quicly overpowered it got couple cities and made peace.

The complete honor tree could help a lot but i need 2 more policies to complete it, too late.

btw i like this 9 pop city mediolanum without any food source around.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Victory. Space, turn 213 (1515 AD).

Spoiler :

Lucked out and Rome left me alone. Pretty sure that this resulted because he didn't settle the spot to the south that I see on your maps. Loading him up on luxuries and taking out a loan on turn 16 for a Worker probably didn't hurt either.

Tabarnak is right; the Sugar is the spot for the second city. Even if Caesar declares, he can't get a line of sight with a Ballista. If he wheels one up to the gates, it's dead. If he doesn't, promoted Immortals plus some Archers and Oligarchy will eat Legions.

Start was two city NC, going Scout -> Scout -> Settler in the capital, then Granaries and Libraries in both cities, then units and NC. Bought a Worker on turn 16 after borrowing from Caesar. Tech path was Mining -> Writing -> Bronze (Immortals for Caesar defense) -> Calendar -> Trapping -> Theology. SP path was straight Tradition (Legalism fourth for two Temples), then left side of Rationalism.

I chose to ignore the GL and go for the NC instead. The GL hung around for a while and I finally went for it using the second city once I had finished the second expansion wave, but lost it by a few turns. Got Hagia, used the GE on the PT. The only other Wonder I got was The Louvre for the endgame GA, though I built most of the National Wonders.

Got Education via double RA around turn 87, and bulbed Astronomy around turn 100 once Compass finished out. Rationalism took a while to land after that (got the sixth policy a couple of turns early and had to finish Tradition), but I didn't have any RAs pending. Only was able to take out three RAs in the first wave and four in the second because I was crazy broke. Not having the GE for Notre Dame hurts.

Eventually I was able to max out two more waves of RAs (less Egypt, who DoW'd), manufacture six GS and bulb my way to freedom. Rocketry turn 193, Apollo finished nine turns later, 11 more turns for parts in three cities. Settling the fourth city turned out to be an error; no parts and no GS. It would have been a much better decision if I'd been able to get Freedom, as I would have been able to get a GS easily.

The slow start kept this from being a truly optimal game; a leader more suited to the task, Liberty and a better early cash situation probably would have yielded a sub-200 game.

Save is right before the victory so you can generate a replay if you want.

 

[Silverfuturist]

I think it is not possible to win this game. The reasons are:

1. Persian is the worst civ for that map. I'm sure almost any civ will be better especially aztecs or babylon.
2. Unit maintance. With 3-4 cities it is not possible to support decent size army and without it rome will consume you very fast.
3. lack of happiness therefore no goldenage and all persian bonuses. I was forced to sell my all resources even uniq one to withstand the rome warmachine.

155 turn screenshot

My reseach sucks i got all reseach agreements and PT (but not rationalism) and it still sucks.

I was able to built HS, PT, Notre Dam. Got cannons as fast as i could.

At the same moment (turn 60) rome dow on me i made alliences with both quebec and almaty so they hold him a little. Then on 145 turn or something i declared war (broke the rule i know doesnt matter already really) on almaty to prevent capturing it by rome.

By the now i'm still able to hold the rome but probably in 20-30 turns he is going to get infantry and i'm done.

I bribed askia to declare war on rome but ceaser quicly overpowered it got couple cities and made peace.

The complete honor tree could help a lot but i need 2 more policies to complete it, too late.

btw i like this 9 pop city mediolanum without any food source around.

Irony - Martin_Alvito posted his win right under your entry.

Congrats Martin_Alvito on a nice finish!

 

[JustAnother]

I guess the key on this map is how Rome reacts. On my 2nd attempt , Rome destroyed Askia and went on to Dow me. His score is already above 1k at around turn 110. Maybe the super fast sugar site is the trigger to stop rome crazy rex? And I have no idea how in the world rome lets you finish the spaceship and not dow you at all.

 

[Martin Alvito]

The AI's decisions on who to attack when definitely impact your game.

Consider Deity Challenge 2. DaveMcV and I basically did the same thing; the only difference was that he went horizontal for a third city where I went vertical with a Granary. Both of us had the same gameplan: spam Jaguars, get Iron, upgrade, attack. We were in more or less the same position on turn 54 judging by his screenshot; I think I had an extra Jag or two at that point.

In his case, he got DoW'd by a single AI and thrashed it. I got double DoW'd by advanced units, lost a couple of units saving the second city and another keeping my Iron from getting pillaged, and was unable to go on the offensive in the early 70s as a result. That's a huge change in outcomes.

Spoiler :

Getting declared on by Caesar isn't that bad here if you set up shop on the Sugar. The tricky bit is pushing through the tech tree fast enough that he can't bury you in Rifles. That's where the two city NC start really helps; getting a decent early tech rate enables you to start signing RAs earlier, get Education earlier, and start resolving full strength RAs earlier. Then you can keep up with Caesar's melee tech rate and stay alive until Dynamite.

 

[JustAnother]

The AI's decisions on who to attack when definitely impact your game.

Consider Deity Challenge 2. DaveMcV and I basically did the same thing; the only difference was that he went horizontal for a third city where I went vertical with a Granary. Both of us had the same gameplan: spam Jaguars, get Iron, upgrade, attack. We were in more or less the same position on turn 54 judging by his screenshot; I think I had an extra Jag or two at that point.

In his case, he got DoW'd by a single AI and thrashed it. I got double DoW'd by advanced units, lost a couple of units saving the second city and another keeping my Iron from getting pillaged, and was unable to go on the offensive in the early 70s as a result. That's a huge change in outcomes.

Spoiler :

Getting declared on by Caesar isn't that bad here if you set up shop on the Sugar. The tricky bit is pushing through the tech tree fast enough that he can't bury you in Rifles. That's where the two city NC start really helps; getting a decent early tech rate enables you to start signing RAs earlier, get Education earlier, and start resolving full strength RAs earlier. Then you can keep up with Caesar's melee tech rate and stay alive until Dynamite.

Ya , I learned from long ago that for deity games, luck does play a huge part esp at the start of game.

In my 2nd attempt , at turn 170+ , Rome is twice as big as the 2nd civ. The lucky part is that during the early war with Rome , I manage to successfully attack his city west of Almaty and let Almaty take the city. After Almaty degrade to friends with me , his units blocked Rome's advance on me. However at some point ....Rome allied with all the cities less 2 that were allied with me. I tried not to kill any Almaty units so that they will continue to block Rome. 5 GS and another one out soon. All I need to do now is finish up about 8 more tech so i can pop all the way to the end while holding Rome. This crazy guy has been at war with me since turn 70 or so and refused to peace. Egypt also dow me at some point but he peace after a while.

I need to try out the early 2nd city build next time. Haven't play for a long time and just came back to play again on this new patch. How are RAs calculated? If i have a bunch of low tech that I didn't research , is it still worth getting RA early? In my recent games , I normally only start signing around 70-80+turns. Right now I'm lending them gold to sign RA with me.

How good is getting a loan from AI to buy early worker? I've never try that before.

 

[RedRover57]

@Martin - Very impressive! I knew that someone would figure out this map. I'm kicking myself a bit because I had the right idea in my first attempt (settling in place, then 2nd city up near the sugar to block Rome), but my execution was off. I didn't settle city 2 fast enough and, importantly, I didn't get granaries early enough. Borrowing to buy a worker was a great idea so that you could settle city 2 even faster (using settler as build 3 rather than worker). Question - Do you think it would also be possible winning a cultural victory using your strategy, or would this take too long? Rome with nukes would be scary! Also, when did you research Philo in your tech path?

@JustAnother - RA's are calculated using the median science cost of techs that can be researched at the time of maturity. So you need to clear all of those early techs to bring up the median. It looks like Martin started signing RA's shortly after the NC was built, which would allow him to clear all of the early techs before the RA's matured. It took him 2 RA's to clear Education since his base multiplier was still 50% at the time (no PT or Rationalism). When you have PT and Rationalism it is similar to the pre-patch RA's and you can start clearing a tech per RA in the late game, so they are still OP.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I need to try out the early 2nd city build next time. Haven't play for a long time and just came back to play again on this new patch. How are RAs calculated? If i have a bunch of low tech that I didn't research , is it still worth getting RA early? In my recent games , I normally only start signing around 70-80+turns. Right now I'm lending them gold to sign RA with me.

It's calculated by the median value of your techs. I find that they aren't worthwhile until sometime in the 50s. You can reasonably anticipate when you're going to have the minimum necessary conditions set up (Wheel, Metal Casting, Compass, Education as the unresearched techs) and sign accordingly to clear Education, then leave yourself a break to slap up the Porcelain Tower, clear Compass, bulb Astronomy and take Rationalism. The remaining five RAs will clear Medieval and leave you able to clear Renaissance with another wave, as long as you juggle the tree right.

It's a common misconception that you can only get one tech per RA. I got three late Renaissance techs with a single RA. A more normal rate is 1.25 to 1.5 techs per RA.

How good is getting a loan from AI to buy early worker? I've never try that before.

Very worthwhile. It pays for itself in a tremendous hurry, and it lets you build the Settler/Granary that you need at the moment with .

Question - Do you think it would also be possible winning a cultural victory using your strategy, or would this take too long (Rome with nukes would be scary)?

There are a ton of Cultural city-states in the game, so I don't think it's out of the question. The problem in my eyes is that I don't see how you get the critical Wonders (Stonehenge/Oracle, Louvre, Sistine, Sydney, CR if possible) in this position. It's essential that you settle the Sugar right away, and you've banned Liberty, so you have to build an early Settler. That pretty much precludes Stonehenge.

I think that you need the NC, which is more or less going to cost you the Oracle because your second city is going to have to build Immortals and Settlers. You can probably GE the Louvre, hard build Sistine in time and make another GE for one of the late Wonders.

Only Askia had hit Modern by the time I launched, so I probably had plenty of time, but it's a crapshoot on whether Caesar gets the better of Askia or the reverse early on. If Caesar gets a lot of dirt over there, he's going to have nukes fairly early.

 

[DaveMcW]

The AI's decisions on who to attack when definitely impact your game.

Consider Deity Challenge 2. DaveMcV and I basically did the same thing; the only difference was that he went horizontal for a third city where I went vertical with a Granary. Both of us had the same gameplan: spam Jaguars, get Iron, upgrade, attack. We were in more or less the same position on turn 54 judging by his screenshot; I think I had an extra Jag or two at that point.

In his case, he got DoW'd by a single AI and thrashed it. I got double DoW'd by advanced units, lost a couple of units saving the second city and another keeping my Iron from getting pillaged, and was unable to go on the offensive in the early 70s as a result. That's a huge change in outcomes.

I actually got triple DoW'ed by Hiawatha, Alexander, and Bismarck. But they split their forces among my three cities and I only needed to divert a couple swords to defend.

 

[formivore]

I gave this another shot. This time I got no early DOW from Rome. He did finally declare on turn 146, but I've allied with Quebec and Almaty and have tech for cannons and rifles and I'm pretty sure the game is in the bag.

I really like this map, it's a good example of what the CiV pangea generator can produce. I think it would be interesting to try to win a domination victory here, with all of the restrictions except the no DOWs.

 

[JustAnother]

It's calculated by the median value of your techs. I find that they aren't worthwhile until sometime in the 50s. You can reasonably anticipate when you're going to have the minimum necessary conditions set up (Wheel, Metal Casting, Compass, Education as the unresearched techs) and sign accordingly to clear Education, then leave yourself a break to slap up the Porcelain Tower, clear Compass, bulb Astronomy and take Rationalism. The remaining five RAs will clear Medieval and leave you able to clear Renaissance with another wave, as long as you juggle the tree right.

It's a common misconception that you can only get one tech per RA. I got three late Renaissance techs with a single RA. A more normal rate is 1.25 to 1.5 techs per RA.



Very worthwhile. It pays for itself in a tremendous hurry, and it lets you build the Settler/Granary that you need at the moment with .



There are a ton of Cultural city-states in the game, so I don't think it's out of the question. The problem in my eyes is that I don't see how you get the critical Wonders (Stonehenge/Oracle, Louvre, Sistine, Sydney, CR if possible) in this position. It's essential that you settle the Sugar right away, and you've banned Liberty, so you have to build an early Settler. That pretty much precludes Stonehenge.

I think that you need the NC, which is more or less going to cost you the Oracle because your second city is going to have to build Immortals and Settlers. You can probably GE the Louvre, hard build Sistine in time and make another GE for one of the late Wonders.

Only Askia had hit Modern by the time I launched, so I probably had plenty of time, but it's a crapshoot on whether Caesar gets the better of Askia or the reverse early on. If Caesar gets a lot of dirt over there, he's going to have nukes fairly early.

In your game , none of the AI got ahead of others. Maybe there's some trick to this but most other games from other players get into the situation where Rome just overpower everyone else.

I managed to finish my game because Almaty blocked Rome's units with its 2 cities and tons of units(I did not kill any of them and lets them retreat). But the timing is alot worse than yours as I have to make so many units to defend.

I think AI doesn't piroritize stonehenge , in every deity games i've played in the new patch , it seems to go off very late.

 

[peddroelm]

I think AI doesn't piroritize stonehenge , in every deity games i've played in the new patch , it seems to go off very late.

turn 26 Stonehenge
turn 26 Stonehenge
....
turn 26 Stonehenge

like clockwork in my games ...

 

[JustAnother]

In vanilla , they do go off very early for me as well. Dunno about the in between patches as I've never played them but so far for me in this patch...they go off as late as in the 70s.

 

[RedRover57]

SH went very early (mid-20's) to Rome in all 3 of my attempts. They also got HG in the late 40's in every try.

 

[Johan de Witt]

I was doing quite well on this attempt, trying to go for a domination victory but then the Romans just refused to declare war on me...

Spoiler :

I did get Askia to keep the Romans in check a bit.

And then the Egyptians declared war on me...

Spoiler :

Too bad for me, their first city is in an impossible spot to siege. Also, perhaps I have already lost too much time in this game. I do have four City States as allies though.

P.S. The Porcelain tower got built two turns before I got education. Then I got my engineer one turn later only to find that someone just built the Notre Dame...