Deity cookbook I: Gilgamesh from Sumeria

[obsolete]

Well the 17'th is here. So do we wait for an official voting announcement?

RRRask I'll take a look at your save in a few hours.

 

[Dirk1302]

Don't think so, i strongly encourage playing it out especially me and silver who made the strong statements, i'm sure ABC or Snaaty can "surprise" us with a win too.

I'd love to have a new map up by friday,early saturday but Munch has to agree he's up to the task so soon and several of us have to cooperate by getting up some good "make it harder" ingredients fast. I've also laid down some arguments for discussion in the discussion thread, some agreement is needed here too. So we'll see.

 

[obsolete]

Well I played to 940AD when it becomes clear that the situation is lost ...

I guess the situation was too bad in 1AD (I played from my save)... I let the save if someone is kind enough to take a look and give pointers...

It's not lost.

1. Trade Education to Pacal for monarchy, etc.
2. Trade Education to the Green Giant for Feudalism & DoW on Shaka.
* You could now upgrade bowmen to Longbows if needed (but you probably don't need to)
3. Use next G-Sci to finish Liberalism, --> take Nationalism.
4. Revolt to Nationalism & theocracy (or other civics if desired).
5. Trade Nationalism to the Green Giant for GunPowder
6. Draft & retake back your city you lost with muskets.

 

[ABigCivFan]

1500AD Report.

Spoiler :

1100AD: Completed Trade mission netting 1900 gold


1100AD: Mass producing Mace and Trebs, can upgrade maces to Grenadiars in5 turns. Gren+Trebs combo is enough to take Mutal and gain Iron.

Got Chemistry from Pacal, he is helping me to facilitate his own doom.




1180AD: Souted Mayan defenses in Mutal, rather weak, not much of a threat offensively against my forces. My invasion force comprised mainly CR2 Trebs and maces + a few Grenadiers as stack defenders.





1220AD: Attacking Mutal, upgraded a CR3 vulture to Grenadier, it was a mistake as it costed too much gold, is much better later to upgrade CR3 maces to Gren, Theo+Vassalage gives 7xp CR2 maces, most can gain CR3 in 2 mop up fights.



1220AD: Pacal rushed some reinforcements into the city. Battle log, I suicided 5 Trebs.



1230AD: Mutal spoil, gained AP and Sistine.





1240AD: Pacal built a fort on the Iron, allow me to access it after Mutal fell.

As planned, upgraded 13 Trebs to Cannons for only 1040 gold (80 gold/treb). This sealed Pacal's rapid doom.




1240AD: 5 Maces made to CR3 after the first battle, Upgraded them to CR3 Grenadiers (110 gold/Mace).




1240AD: Military summary.




1240AD: Lagash the HE city, the biggest contributor to the swift military build up. Building a knight to attach to a Medic3 GG.




1290AD: Lakamha spoil.




1290AD: Vassaled Pacal, left a few cities to him as they are not useful to me but can help him research some techs for me. His tech rate is simply amazing.

I got 3 great cities (Mutal, Lakamga and the penisula city) out of this 9 turn war, got some great wonders, Iron and lots of matured cottages. The long-term planning has paid off immensely.

Asked him to switch out of Free Religion and adopt FM and Theo to be able to trade with me and stay in budda with me.




1290AD: got some nice resource boost from Pacal. Gifted him some too. I hope to get him friendly again to get his techs, but at least he will cheapen some techs for me later.





1310AD: Saladin is eating up all the land around Lakamha, I decided to forgo Sulei and turn on Saladin. I need Lakmaha to be immediately useful. Besides, Sal is a lot weaker than Sulei who has cavs and near infantry.




1370AD: Mecca fell free all land around Lakmha just as it got out of revolts. Mecca has 4 Military instructors.


1370AD: War is almost over, taking 2 turns to switched back to research mode adapting FS/Emancipation/OR, will cottage spam the new core cities.




1390AD: Vassaled Saladin. Now all great cities I took from Sal and Pacal will have no culture pressure around them and fully productive. The entire Expansion war took less than 20 turns.


1500AD: Empire view. 1 turn to assembly.




1500AD: Lakamha, 2 shrines and future Wall street city, also building Forbidden palace. Sulei has Ves (maint reduction).




1500AD: Mutal, with 18 river tiles, can you imagine the potential for this city after building Levee?




Sulei is quite advance and had Assembly line a while ago. From now I just need to mass build Levee/factory/Coal plants, and destroy Sulei and Shaka with upgraded veteran CR3 Infantry + Artillary. And go for a Space/Diplo win.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

It's not lost.

1. Trade Education to Pacal for monarchy, etc.
2. Trade Education to the Green Giant for Feudalism & DoW on Shaka.
* You could now upgrade bowmen to Longbows if needed (but you probably don't need to)
3. Use next G-Sci to finish Liberalism, --> take Nationalism.
4. Revolt to Nationalism & theocracy (or other civics if desired).
5. Trade Nationalism to the Green Giant for GunPowder
6. Draft & retake back your city you lost with muskets.

Tx Obsolete...
Will give it a shot tonight or tomorrow

Cheers

edit: really impressive game ABCFan! with retropect, I think my bad early exploration was my first big mistake, I didn't rex enough land, and allowed my neighbours to become too powerfull... your Suley and Pacal seem really more manageable than in my save...

 

[Munch]

Hmmm mind if I pop in and ask a question?

I've been interested in using the UU's of Sumeria for a ruch on a smaller map, and a good capitol-capturing raid on some lager maps. However, I've not been able to pull it off very well...
strangely, I am able to pull off early rushes very well with serveral civs, just not Sumeria.

Am I just suited for medieval warfare (as my namesake implies), or is there some unseen tactic that I'm missing with these UU's???

I don't think there's a strategy for Vultures which is distinct from that of ordinary Axemen: build several (plus a spear for chariot defense if needed), find a close rival (preferably with no metal hooked up), invade and pillage. Don't necessarily go for the throat immediately, just pillaging everything and making a mess should allow you to come in again in the next war 10 turns later and take the cities easily. Also, it's sometimes handy to have Vultures/Axes with Woodsman II if your unlucky rival is hanging around in forest or jungle, so you can pass through the trees and 'surprise' attack on the same turn.

 

[obsolete]

Since I wasn't here for the earlier phases of this cook-book, I decided to start with Dirk's save...

Spoiler :

1000
Ughh… We have some problems here. Not so nice civs, and too many hurtful cottages. Also, some other problems.

Lets start off with killing 2 GP’s for a golden age. Now use the extra input to get the military facilities online.

Also stop researching Corporation, and head straight up for rifles. Go go go go go!

It’s the AI’s job to built cottages, not ours. We’ll just take them.

-ni

BTW

1010
Stop fighting from AP succeeds.
Also, there was a SoD from Sul next to one of my cities. Even though we are at Friendly status, the vassals tend to bug that whole diplo thing up. So I agreed to a Def Pact with him for now as a fail-safe.
-ni

1080
Traded MT to Darius for theology and HR. Now time to switch civics on our last round of golden-age.

BTW, my bug-mod doesn’t work well with the current version, and the notes reminder of course doesn’t work so I missed the revolt by 1 turn, so had to reload the turn to swap civics.
-ni

1290
Alright, we are ready now to start unleashing hell. Sul is the most powerful guy in the world right now, so if I can smash his deity units to pieces, I should be ok for taking over the rest of the world.

BTW, I have more stacks than this one here, and plenty more rifles and cavalry are going to be coming, believe you me. The only problem is all spy points are targeted at Pacal right now, so I”ll just have to RAM into his cities with their full culture defense still intact. But no gain without no pain!

1310
Phew, next thing we do is also capture his forbidden palace city northern of that. So far, 2 decent cities taken, but I want to go after 1 more before bringing my forces to bear on Pacal.
-ni

1330
Just an update. Reports show that Sul hasn’t even moved his very large SoD even 1 tile yet. It’s staying 1 tile away from his capital. I don’t know what’s going on, but I like it!!!!

And we get another Great General from all the bloodshed.

BTW, Unhappiness in some cities is approaching -30. So I have to start turning up culture slider. Unfortunately this is nerfing our cottage system… Well, it wasn’t my idea to build them!
-ni

1350
Another G-Sci pops. Keep him in reserve with the other one for now.
-ni


1360
Alright, Sul is ready to agree to peace. But.. I just can’t resist. One… more… city.
This may look like suicide, I’m about to ram another stack of cavalry right into a stack of fortified rifles with a machine gun and 60% cultural Def. Ahah!

Damn that didn’t go as planned. I did take the city, but now Sul doesn’t want to talk to me. Hmmm! I’ve noticed this thing happen before with AI’s, they stop talking for a turn when you take another city.

1370
Alright, and now we make peace…
He doesn’t much but a little bit of gold each turn is better than nothing.
-ni

1390
Finally! Shaka is ready to talk. We make peace so he gives me 1 gold a turn and 30g with WM.
-ni

1410
Alright, I was going to attack a round earlier. But all my spies failed to revolt city. Argggh. I sent more in and I’m actually glad they failed last round because look! Pac just finished Kremlin, and what do you know, here comes 2 stacks of my cavalry just like the Doctor ordered. And I got more cavalry on the eastern flank which will take the other city next round too.

1450
Sal declares on Shaka. I figured so.. Noticed for a while he hand enough on his hands.
-ni

1460

Ugh… we are a turn late here. We did get screwed pretty bad by the RNG. It’s not so much losing the 50/50 battles, but then losing every 67% battle, then every 85% battle, and then every 95.7% battle. Argggh! I had to re-hit for a second round to finally wipe out his units and move into the city.

Good news is… we captured Spiral Min. and removed what would have surely been some immense culture pressure.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Alright, that will do it!
Pacal capits to us, and we get 90g with 8g a turn and a world map.

I really was thinking on pushing on to the double-holy city. The problem is it would take more time, and there is a risk Pacal could vassal to someone else anyway. And then I’d have too much culture pressure etc with that city next to Sal’s capital.

I think later on I’ll start a war with Sal, let him capture that holy city, and then I’ll obliterate his stack there, before I push on and keep it for myself.
-ni

A bit later…

Hmm, suddenly Shaka vassals to Suleiman. Now Saladin has to fight both of them.

1490
My vassal completes the media wonder. Now I get my Musical hit.
-ni



1500 AD

A city has fallen from Sal to Sul. I moved a spy over to see if that’s where his SoD is. I see a bunch of cavalry in it, but it’s not the typical deity stack you’d expect. So either it’s hidden somewhere, or for some reason he’s really nerfed.

My worry now, is delaying an attack on Sul any longer may cause him and his vassal to vassalize Saladin! Time to just rush in again I think with what I have, just… one more turn to heal the little bit more of my cavalry units (two stacks with a Level III medic in each!

Unfortunately I can’t seem to be able to use the strategy layer unless I zoom far away from the map, so I’ll just explain my plan. I will send all cavalry to the city North of Sul’s capital. Then I will heal my units there, while a gigantic SoD of my rifles march straight to his capital. I’ll time things so my healed cavalry meet up with them upon their arrival outside the capital, then do a 2-pronged attack to nail the capital and his Lighthouse (or is that the colossus) city at the same time. And hopefully around then he’ll be in TALKATIVE mood, so I’ll do an insta-vassal.

And then……….. I’ll have to worry about Saladin again.

So far… Power Graph.

And… my units.

 

[ABigCivFan]

@Obsolete

Spoiler :

This may look like suicide, I’m about to ram another stack of cavalry right into a stack of fortified rifles with a machine gun and 60% cultural Def. Ahah!

I dont know if anyone has suggested this to you: try use siege weapons sometimes.

Against a tough Deity AI, you can lose your entire army and not causing a dent on them charging your Cavs into certain death.

 

[obsolete]

There is a couple things I noticed in this game. Maybe it's a BTS issue but, for one I was allowed to draft from captured cities as soon as they went out of anarchy. I thought that was impossible. Do culture specialists DURING anarchy now actually count for contributing culture during those rounds?

Also, the military advisor is counting less enemy units revealed, than I can currently see in plain sight. What then, is the point of this MA screen if these stats are so horribly inaccurate?

 

[shyuhe]

You can draft if a city has >10% of your own culture. So if the city you captured was on your border, it's quite possible that you've pumped enough culture into it to draft immediately. Or if you kill off the motherland, then you can draft in all of the former motherland cities immediately as well.

 

[silverbullet]

Played my save until the end

Until 1550AD

Spoiler :

This have developed a bit differently than I expected.
I will let the picture explain:

Spoiler :

I started mass building elephants but then Darius was generous enough to give me iron (for stone, marble and some surplus resources - no cash).
I swtiched to build knights and a few turns later cuirassiers.

1100 AD I have rifling and an army of mounted units. I have 2400 gold (1700 from GM, the rest from trades) for upgrades.

The original plan was a quick cuirassier/cavalry war with Pacal, but he decided to beeline rifling, so the new plan is to kill Suleiman first.
He is only 2 techs away from rifling, so I need to attack fast while he still has mostly knights.
Even if he does get rifling soon, I will probably be able to take at least 3 cities and kill most of his army.
In a few turns I will get cannons to help clean up.

Tech status before the war:

Ready to declare:

And 1 turn after th war:

I lost 1 cavalry taking this city. Janissaries are a bit tough with their 25% vs. mounted.

Overall it didn't go as smoothly as I expected. Suleiman gifted some techs to Joao, including astronomy in exchange for a war on me. I wasn't so afraid of Joao at this stage, but we had traded a large amount of happiness resources so it was painful. Also, I had to start whipping rifles in my coastal cities and have a frigate scout the shore. Eventually I made peace with Joao without a single invasion.

For 200 years Suleiman had sent his outdated troops to be slaughtered by my cavalry. Eventually I decided to capitulate him when he was reduced to these 4 cities:

I had captured the mausoleum, and I have a GE+GS waiting to start a 12 turn golden age once all the cities come of of revolt.

Pacal is getting annoying with his free speech culture.

Tech status after the war:

Spoiler :

Pacal has infantry so I need infantry+artillery against Pacal.
1490AD I start a 12 turn golden age. I liberated Magyar so that Suleiman will take over Bursa's tile from Pacal (and give them to me). There are some great mature cottages there and I want to work them now.

During the golden age I research scientific method and communism. Traded assembly line to Darius for physics and researched Artillery.
I built factories and coal plants in all my production cities getting ready for the war buildup.
In the mean time I sent my cavalries to get some more target practise by killing Saladin. Unfortunately Shaka became a willing vassal of Pacal so I am squeezed here for culture from both sides.

Tech status at the end of the golden age:

I decided to go for combustion next. I will use transports to land a big SOD near lakahama.

After 1550AD

Spoiler :

A very boring military buildup and elimination of rivals with huge SODs. Pacal went first, then Darius, and eventually I reached domination limit in the middle of war with Joao.
I hardly tried to optimize at this stage, in fact, I was drunk when I played it , but from the 1550AD save it is REALLY a can't lose stage.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Very nice ending SilverBullet!

Spoiler :

I hardly tried to optimize at this stage, in fact, I was drunk when I played it

 

[Dirk1302]

Very short report, it was rather easy but lengthy

Spoiler :

Go ahead as planned, cottaging and settling the remaining spots. Get AL ~1300 AD and begin building the hammer multipliers and health buildings, switch to units once ready.

1630 AD i'm ready to declare on Sulei who i consider to be the main thrat (Pacal is already in culture mode). My game has revolved around the strength/weakness of Angle, see how much it helps me now.

I had scouted Sulei, he has a lot of units, he hasn't got artillery/tanks at the point i declare. So i take the 2 cities that i can reach through my culture. I withdraw all my units to Angel however after having taking Gaziantep. Sure Sulei takes it back. I kill all the units he sends over my borders and all the units he sends to Gaziantep, scouting with airship every turn how many units he's got left. I do this for ~5 turns. Now his resources are depleted and i take all his cities but one in 17 turns. 1740 AD we agree to peace as his only city is far away on an island.

I could turn on Pacal immed but it's not necessary. So i tech on to robotics/laser , upgrade to mobile artillery (the strongest unit in the end game imo).Declare 1824 AD. 1840 AD Pacal's gone, 1860 AD Sal and Shaka are no more.

Darius is going cultural but not doing too great a job in this respect. Joao gets outcultured badly by him and i'm surprised that he's able to maintain a reasonable techrate. I could have gone for him much earlier but i was in the mood to build something big.

I also have some 40 stealth bombers in persian cities, Joao can't get at them since i got Darius to cancel trade with him.

Sure my stack gets colleralled by some 10 joao MA's, also flanked by gunships and i even lose a mech inf to a gunship but after that it was over for him, dom victory at the moment he capitulated.

 

[obsolete]

God damn Dirk, I never make a stack that big because the GUI starts to REALLY lag down when ever I try to do something in the stack like fortify a unit or something. Anyhow, I"ll be curious to see your warmongering in our other current game.

As for my finish, things didn't go so well as I planned, so it took me many more years to finish than expected, but nevertheless, it was an overwhealming victory as well. I'll post it up shortly.

 

[Dirk1302]

Yes i only assemble them in something like this when i'm really ready to go since the GUI lag is very very painful indeed . I also wonder why it is, i know the python code for fortifying a unit and i don't see why it should take ages to do this.

 

[obsolete]

The reason, is typical piss-poor Firaxis workmanship. I guess if you want some decent engineering you have to STILL order for Europe.

Anyhow, for my 1500+ continuation...

Spoiler :

1515
We charge into a city from Sul and have a large stack marching towards his capital.
Another Great General pops.

……..
And after too many turns go by, where he wouldn’t talk to me after I had taken out his capital and other cities! And then… even when he talked to me again, and I had clobbered his units and raped his cities, he STILL didn’t want to capitulate despite he had barely anything left. I simply didn’t want to waste anything attacking his USELESS food poor coastals. So I waited.. Again.

1580
Finally, Sul decides to vassal after I took another city. What the hell was up with that?
Anyhow, now I was really late in my planned schedule. What an un-necessary delay.

1625
We unleash deity hell again.
A bit late, but that’s how it goes sometimes.

1700
Alright, captured Saladin’s capital etc., and we vassalize him.
I was so tempted to just finish him off, however I guess I was just lazy and figured it was time to play catch-up in tech.

1842
Manhattan Project…

I built it and then started to build tactical nukes and subs. I had delayed this project for a while, hoping that someone overseas would build the UN and then I could attack. Unfortunately no one bothered building it so I finally gave up after all this waiting and waiting and waiting.

1852
Let’s start off with a big BANG. Inter continental war, and despite we are losing a lot of icbms to the pesky SDI, we will just keep sending them over and over and over. And there is not a damn thing they can do about it.

1894
We win without any diplo votes. Simply through domination. This picture should tell all. I nuked and nuked all over on the two of them. Poor Dari’s capital still stuck at 2 population haha!

Needless to say, I made sure their uranium tiles were always eradicated. And after obliterating stack after stack after stack, finally Darius decided to capit to me, despite I never even had so much as a single unit in range to take a city.

Stupid AI, as this immediately put me into a domination victory. There really needs to be a rule against the AI being so ******** into taking actions that guarantee an immediate loss.

This one really was too easy.

 

[DMOC]

Obsolete

Spoiler :

Nice game, but why is there some weird culture display surrounding the city of Susa? It has some greenish culture and then some bluish??

 

[Dirk1302]

@Obsolete, i agree about this one being easy. But the standard on the forum is also improving. Knowledge has generally increased, you see more and more people moving up in difficulty rather fast, not only from immortal to deity but also on the other levels. So things that may seem easy now certainly weren't a year ago (at least not for me).

Don't worry, if it really becomes too easy we can always implement a suggestion of DanF (he actually suggested this to make immortal more difficult): give the ais an extra settler. You probably won't find that too easy.

@All, since i gather most of you are rather busy right now i propose we go on with the next DC in the new year. I think it's rather pointless to start again now only to see the thread sink to page 4. Unless there are fierce objections we'll implement a new rule as proposed by ABigCivFan, everyone starts from the winning save or his own each round. I have explained in the discussion thread and the IMC already why it think this is an improvement.

 

[obsolete]

Obsolete

Spoiler :

Nice game, but why is there some weird culture display surrounding the city of Susa? It has some greenish culture and then some bluish??

I noticed it doesn't make sense either. Well, part of the problem is it was Darius' city first. And just now when he capitulated he gave it to me. But I am not 100% sure why my inner ring is weaker than my outer ring!

Possibly a another bugged mechanic?

 

[Gliese 581]

Yes i only assemble them in something like this when i'm really ready to go since the GUI lag is very very painful indeed . I also wonder why it is, i know the python code for fortifying a unit and i don't see why it should take ages to do this.

If you don't use this trick already, try alt+tabbing or alt+escaping out of the game and back now and then assuming you run it in full window. This helps my game run faster for whatever reason after a long play-session, I don't know why, I think I read something about it once but can't remember.