[Deity] Co-op da Whoop

[Fleme]

Imma firin' mah lazor

Me and Silu have been playing Multiplayer for quite some time now and came to thinking that maybe it'd be time to post one of these games up on the forum to get some feedback and show our format to those who might be curious about it.

We actually started like a year back when I first brought Silu to CIV and started playing on Monarch (His first civ game was on Monarch) and have come to a level where we pretty regularly beat Immortal with all sorts of artificial handicaps to ourselves and aspire on Deity (with some success!)

For our first featured game we've chosen to play on Deity against five AI teams of two on a Large Fractal Map. Most settings are random but there's a twist. I'm what you call a "Marathon Noob" and for our MP games I drag Silu to my level but that's pretty much it about settings. Our chosen leaders are Gilgamesh and Pericles. Without further ado, here's my start:

We both decided to settle in place and play on for 10 turns to avoid a discussion on how and where to settle and move our scouts.

Initial tech to pursue is AH.

And here's t10, not much to look at but something to discuss nonetheless:

Spoiler for a screenie about the settings. Hardly interesting:

Spoiler :

Silu will hopefully post his stuff after mine

 

[Silu]

Team Marathon Deity is a fun step up from solo Immortal/Normal. Sometimes it can be just a bit higher difficulty and sometimes it can be a beast. Like our last game, where our second worst rival team peacevassaled to our worst rival team... Due to Murphy's law I especially expect everything to go wrong now that we're reporting.

So here's the flipside:

The start surprisingly isn't rerolled, I was already prepared to do that once or twice (to avoid massive whine in team chat mostly ). And yeah there was a hut next to Athens which popped a Scout.

Even though Greece is bare of livestock, going AH is almost always the way to go if either of the team partners have a 5+ food livestock tile.

Initial scouting shows this, not complaining.

I was starting to think we're in isolation with turn 10 nearing without meeting anyone; finally we met Joao & Hannibal from the east. Ominously their meeting scout appeared on the Sparta hill (yeah, it's godly).

With my two scouts I got quite a bit of scouting done. The whole coast and southwards until I hit a jungle. 3 more huts, all cash giving a nice nest egg to expand. The tentative dotmap basically drew itself:

So, that's the kickstart of the game. Hopefully things will turn out to be interesting both for us and the possible readers.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Nice guys!

Due to Murphy's law I especially expect everything to go wrong now that we're reporting.

Me too

Spoiler :

What I find amusing is the difference in posts count between you two... someone can't help but talking (yes, I have the same disease ). This thread will be my first finnish class as well

edit: @Silu: I would wait for AH and a bit more tiles unfogged to dotmap, the site down south on marble and the eastern one could be moved maybe function of what you see. Sparta seems a no-brainer.

 

[ABigCivFan]

This is Sparta!!! lol. This should be fun, teching should be fast, and looking forward to some awesome double team military action.

 

[bobbyboy29]

Looking forward to this as i've never played a team game before, quick question, which starting techs did you start out with? Was it Gilga's, Pericles or both? If it was both then did you guys consider picking two leaders who start with completely different starting techs to avoid overlap?

 

[Fleme]

@bobbyboy29: It's both techs and that's why it always pays off to select a team with different starting techs. If we start out to handicap ourselves we don't mind the overlap but that's for Immortal

@RRR: Hah, we always speak to eachother and yeah I'm about to make a complete ass of myself in this game with all the gibberish I'm going to write and then he's going to post it. Ugh.

@ABCF, It's actually pretty common for us that one of us does the military heavy lifting but that's usually due to terrain restraints or some such. The immediate lands here do suggest that we'll be going at it together but time will tell. If there's one thing we hate, it's Joao and it's of course him that has to be right on the doorstep.

 

[Masnie]

Really looking forward to this game, as I regularly play co-op games with a friend. Diplomacy can be really difficult if you end up with two different religions within a single enemy team. Curious how you handle specialization.

 

[Meiz]

Will be interesting to see how you guys handle teamed Deity AI's. "Sisu" strategy might come in handy!

 

[McThomas]

Lol! this is sparta! xD

looks like a great start

i think Jfleme should go for pottery and Silu for Masonry and bth go for priesthood, Silu goes Oracle and JFleme goes REX and make Ziggurats... but i am not familiar with Diety...

 

[Silu]

The research is combined so it always pays off to research the same tech

@RRR: we just love to put up city signs even with little scouting and then proceed to redo the whole thing every 2 turns

If Joao doesnt threaten my beloved Sparta I don't mind him that much this time. Really nice that neither in that team will declare at pleased and Joao has an easy civic.

My biggest fear here is the combination of deity, marathon and that big empty south. That together means an insane amounts of barbarians.

 

[codewarrior]

I wonder if you can play a OCC cultural victory by playing a team of 3 in hotseat multiplayer...

 

[Silu]

I wonder if you can play a OCC cultural victory by playing a team of 3 in hotseat multiplayer...

Sadly, even in a team all the 3 legendary cities have to be on the same Civ. Though it would be massively imbalanced (in relation to the AI) in a team if this wasn't the case (multiple capitals, hermitages etc).

 

[Edzako]

Interesting idea for an AAR.

I too, occasionally play MP with 2 of my buddies, though not in team mode. We prefer bash Monarch/Emperor AI and then have massive fight between our empires. Good luck with Deity.

 

[Silu]

To 2500BC...
Pericles: "This is blasphemy! This is madness!"
João II: "Madness? This is Guimarães!"


So, a lot happened during these next 90 turns. On turn 11 I notice Joao is very close, 9 tiles from Athens and could well have planted his second initial settler on my Sparta spot.

So, getting the Sparta spot looks grim at best. I decide to take something of a gambit. I have an unirrigated Rice, plains hill Gold, plains hill Marble and 2 FPs. Conventional wisdom for improvement would be something like rice->fp->gold. However, I decide to go for a Settler at size two, and aim for that by mining the Marble after improving the rice. Much slower growth and commerce, but much faster second settler. These turns count a lot on Marathon, where distances don't mean a thing.

Well what happens? This of course. Joao happily plops his 3rd (on our beautiful sign no less).

Scouting efforts aren't going much better.

So anyway I decide I was committed to the fast settler and plan on using it to the southeast to block land. My gambit sort of paid off massively, as you can see here with his Axe being his city spot marker unit (after much debate I settled 1N of the settler's current position due to having an immediate block and other minor issues like a faster trade route and FP culture protection). Nice to shove a finger into Joao's face for a change:

And that pretty much wraps the set up for me. Here's a tentative plan to block the %#%#(%&¤%& off from our lands (mainly the purple signs).

To the south there are 2 nice-ish teams beyond the jungle, SB&Hatty and Hammu&Biz. Hammu just built the GW so that will channel all the more barbs for us. You might notice we teched Archery after BW and I am building double Archers with a chop no less. Barbs seem like the biggest threat here by far, I'm anticipating a choo-choo-barbcher train any turn now from Babylonia's direction. Our land situation looks pretty good otherwise despite losing the right Sparta.

Stay tuned for tales from the west! When the land gets developed more our reports might actually have something to do with each other's empires

 

[Fleme]

Not much to add on my part, shame about the original Sparta hill.

My terrain will support up to 10 cities through peaceful expansion and there are a few gems to fund the expansion in addition to the Ziggurats-to-be so all in all I'm in a solid spot.

My settler is off to claim a spot that will put pressure on the Barb city north of Hammurabi - we'll see if I get lucky on it.

Core:

My Jungle Peninsula:

Uruk:

Just finished a settler and whipped an archer. Will grow and probably build a worker after the second archer and then chop my way to the central locations - namely the copper.

 

[dualmaster]

Fun to read. Co-op play adds a new dimension to the game.

Thanks for posting.

 

[Inso]

This looks like an interesting game, never seen a team one before, I shall be following

 

[McThomas]

go Leeroy on Joao... he nothin but trouble...

Allso; JFleme, why did'nt you go settle Sparta faster?!

 

[Fleme]

Because I'm way back in Sumeria.

 

[McThomas]

Because I'm way back in Sumeria.

Oh sorry, i meant Silu xD

but, consider a combined effort to defeat Joao, that Gold is way to valueable