Deity Isolation Workshop (Stan/Norm/Fractal/NH/NE)

[Pedro78]

There's no official ban on the Mids, but I usually avoid them when playing for practice as in many cases they "carry the game and there's not much learning to be had"

(Although optimizing a "mids economy" isn't necessarily obvious, once you get it right it does actually make most games really easy)

Oh and on this map the Mids would of course be insanely overpowered

 

[Lain]

What is the best way of optimizing a mids economy? Grow happy cap, hire scientists. Anything less obvious?

What annoys me the most about isolation at the moment is the fact that after Steel I hopelessly fall behind in tech, whipping and fighting for a chance to take at least one AI out. Can never manage to get back into the trading game after that and end up self-teching everything. Best case later is fighting with Artillery vs Tanks and stuff... just so unconvincing. Usually UN win as the only way out (enough land, just too far behind). Not very fun. Have to play better.

 

[Pedro78]

A lot to say about your game, Lain.

Spoiler :

T25

- Why not SIP? Riverside ivory is a very good tile, especially when you start with hunting and need early warrior production. Only thing that would’ve made me settle 1N is if my scout had revealed some seafood that would’ve been ruined had I SIP’d. Not to mention that settling 1N gives you less land visibility (the hills 2S allow for good fogbusting from T5), and loses one riverside hill.

- Workboat first was very bad here – you have grass Pigs and river-jumbos in BFC. This means you have good commerce and AH is not too costly. Settling 1N didn’t help you with the timing either. Getting AH as late as you did was a big mistake.

T50

- In your T50 save Athens is working an unimproved riverside grass tile, even though you have 2F1H tiles available and are far behind in production (at that date I didn’t even have Pottery, but I had three cities and the fourth one was settled on T54. In your game you get very early Writing but it doesn’t do you any good as you can’t start on libraries for a very long time.

- Sparta is settled in a weird spot – I’d much rather have these first ring forests than being able to borrow Athen’s (only) ivory – especially as the latter has so few good tiles

- Building a worker in Sparta is pretty bad – very slow, you don’t need a second worker yet, the city needs to grow otherwise it won’t get granary/library for a very long time and Athens has plenty of production (would be better with earlier AH)

- Why are you building a wb in Athens? I guess it’s for your third city, which is in a very bad spot imo – you don’t need double food and it has no good tiles apart from the food res. And even if you settle there, it’s better to 1whip a wb in the new city after improving the pigs than to waste time and hammers building one in Athens (might have been different without a happy res)

T75

- Settling your 4th city where you put it is good if you’re going for Alpha, but it doesn’t make it worth it to go for Alpha on this map imo. You have plenty of riverside and are PHI, which is an incentive to run cottages and scientists. Plus you’ve got a great cottage capital in which you’re going to build an Academy – but it won’t produce big beakers later on if you don’t actually grow cottages there.

- This is partly a consequence of funky city placement, but you’re working horrible tiles. Yes it’s ok to work forests / unimproved river grass for a few turns (even an unimproved non-riverside tile can be worked for a turn or 2 if somehow the timing doesn’t fit), but you can’t be working unimproved plains tiles for 10+ turns!

- You’re settling a 5th city, which is questionable – the only spot that I can see for a fifth city is the small island to the West as it gives you 2c TRs in every city. And you’re settling it in a weird spot aswell: it’s 1 distance unit further away from Athens than 1N (more maintenance, distance is always “floored” down), cannot share Athen’s clam and makes it impossible to later share the crab with another city

T101

- Considering your previous city placements and tech pace, your tile choices look reasonable (except for that god-ugly plains non-river cottage 1N of Argos).

- What about GPP??? You’re only running scientists in two cities! On this map, you can easily get 5-6 GS by T150, but you’re set to get only 2 GS for Astro and nothing more.

- I totally disagree with settling a GS when you have this much commerce, doesn’t matter if you’re playing a PHI leader. Optics date is certainly not a bottleneck in this game. 1.6k beakers into Chemistry or a golden age while teching Rifling would be so much more useful!

- Looks like you’re playing as if it was the Sally map. But here you have great commerce so you can afford to divert more resources towards production. As it stands you’re going to get Optics very early – you should be getting ready to settle 2-3 more cities as soon as Optics is in (still have a bit of time for that but not much). Starving all your cities to 0 food in order to squeeze out every last beaker can be good in a game like Saladin where Optics date is a bottleneck, but here not working the food will most likely hurt you.

Hope this helps

 

[Pedro78]

The only difference between Rep-economy and HR-economy is that with Mids you have a much stronger incentive to run scientists. It will often make it worthwhile to tech CoL, run more specialists and get more GP. Thus it also affects how you place your cities early on. Once you've figured out the GPP part, it's easier to think of it as a bonus that gives you 0F6C tiles available in any city with a library (or simply in every city when running CS).

You also have to keep in mind that you have Police State available and that it's very powerful, so you have to time your civic switches right with your military buildup. That's why the combination Mids+SPI leader is so powerful.

And yup, the trickiest part in iso is the first war -- it's usually tricky to both "win the war" and remain in the tech game.

 

[Lain]

In many iso games, Steel for Rifling/SciMe is the last tech trade I ever make . After that either I win the war and slog to a victory with production/land advantage or... crash and burn. Just have to improve as a player and using your feedback will be a big part of it. For example, I think you had 4 cities and no roads. Kind of an eye opener. When my cities aren't connected it triggers something, have to get over that .

Not sure about drafting though... I kind it could be more viable than we think so far. If you have to tech all the way to Rifling, there might even be enough time to build the GT in some appropriate city. More importantly, where are the Rifles going to come from otherwise? We already upgrade Trebs and upgrading Muskets etc is inefficient. Whipping "fresh" Rifles takes forever. Drafting means we can immediately get 3 Rifles for the first wave. Means we can go a bit easier on the whipping before... focus on Trebs, some cannon fodder and infrastructure.

Definitely trying the draft thingy next time. Seems like a good way to fix the troubles we spoke about (overwhipping, big enough army)

I lost the Alex game by the way. For the reason check the religious situation in my save. Story of my life.

Spoiler :

5 civs in Buddhism. 125 AD Optics for everyone. Defensive Pacts later. 1200 AD Artillery. GG.

 

[Pedro78]

Hmm without CRE I'd very rarely build the GT in iso (before the first war). It's a very big hammer investment (600h) that could be spent on units. The places where I draft the most are the cities with low food that can't really whip and therefore aren't really hurt by whip anger.

The really good thing with Nationhood is that the +2 happy from barracks allow you to draft (almost) every city twice before war -- it's a quick and cheap 10-15 Rifles in 4-5T.

Going for Rifling does indeed make the whole timing a lot easier: can whip all the ships and a few maces/muskets before Steel, then all the Cannons before Rifling and then add in Rifles. It also makes it less important to have 5XP units -- in some cases you just want to attack earlier.

However, you can't know what you'll attack with before Optics. In some games you can't even trade for PP after Steel -- makes teching Rifling extremely painful. In this case it's much better to attack with cannons a lot earlier. Therefore in every game you have that production problem.

For example in that Alex game, if I get a Guilds trade I'll have Cannons around T150-155 -- no way I'll get a RP trade this early, so I'll have to stress out production as much as possible in the newly settled cities (most likely no forges) in order to land with cannons ASAP.

For the next practice map could we get something without PHI and with less rivers? (Agg is fine, though -- I hate having to go for Archery). We haven't played Stalin yet, right?

Edit - I won't play out the Alex map, have played a few more turns and it's the easiest one this thread has seen ever since the Hannibal game. If the next game is a tough one I'll definitely play it entirely though (I don't feel mentally ready for the Kublai map lol)

Re-edit - about the map

Spoiler :

Are we talking about the same map? In mine no one had compass when I met them. The ottomans didn't have MC lol. Three civs at war. Plus isolated Pacal up for grabbing if things go out of control (which they probably won't).

Re-re-edit

Spoiler :

I just checked WB in your save, lots of happy faces lol

But couldn't you take out Pacal? Really looks like a weak target and has good land.. There's also a few islands to settle, after that you can win diplo somehow? Or domination if you're quick enough, but looks tough.

 

[Pedro78]

Gonna play a new practice map. If anyone wants to play along..

 

[Fippy]

This one with Pyras & stone?

 

[Pedro78]

Yup there's stone but it's not totally dry so I'll avoid the Mids (building them would ofc be stronger)

 

[Fippy]

There's not much point thou in avoiding them, even without stone IND should be good enuf for getting them or failgold.

 

[Pedro78]

Without stone I'd almost never go for Masonry early, even with an IND leader. You need 110 just to pay back the cost of Masonry. Then chopping takes a lot of worker turns, and you're chopping some forests that would otherwise go into libraries. During this time you're not expanding and not building cottages, and Writing date is delayed by a lot. Plus there's always a chance that Mids are gone on T60 and you get nothing in return. I don't like it.

 

[Fippy]

Well i like this setup (even if missing GLH), shows some nice IND power.
Imo we are draining the fun out of those maps if not using traits, i would always go masonry here.
You can get lucky here and there, including wonder dates, but what's the point in playing if not trying some stuff.

 

[Fippy]

In the end i got GLH and 300+ gold from Pyras, makes for let's say relaxed playing afterwards.
Seeing those goodies west now, would be an easy map but i guess that's not what we are looking for here..

..and i wonder anyways, what are we actually looking for now in this thread.

 

[Pedro78]

Playing around with wonders and traits is certainly fun (and in this case more powerful than the "standard" path), but I don't feel like doing so would teach me much about the game -- I want to be able to win every iso map. And by that I don't mean winning every single game, which is impossible, but being able to get a domination victory on any iso map, no matter how crappy the island is. And while wonders make this particular game easier, I don't think it helps me much in that direction.

Of course we have different views of things and I respect that


(Oh and I didn't know about the goodies on T0 -- only checked for iso and not OP starting location)

 

[Pedro78]

..and i wonder anyways, what are we actually looking for now in this thread.

Depends on the "we". I'm here to improve as a player while having fun and interesting discussions, and it has worked very well since this thread was created. What are you looking for?

 

[Fippy]

Well in this case we should get an "universal" Optics save on a hard map, something that all who are interested use from this point, and then start comparing some games after that point (different military approaches and so on).

I doubt it's useful playing around with stuff until Optics by now, we should know how that works, and it's also boring and wasting time.

I dun believe you fully on this sorry, you were "disgusted" with Iso maps at some point until you even uninstalled Civ.
Neither do i believe Lain when he says he's having so much fun with those maps, and then starts getting a bit depressed.

 

[Pedro78]

I dun believe you fully on this sorry, you were "disgusted" with Iso maps and some point until you even uninstalled Civ.
Neither do i believe Lain when he says he's having so much fun with those maps, and then starts getting a bit depressed.

TBH between April and September I didn't reach T150 in a single game, and didn't make it to 1AD in most games. Just couldn't find the motivation to play. Since then I've finished a couple of games and have no problem playing to the Renaissance era, motivation's only getting better and better

It happens that I need a break after a tough map, but I've never really been disgusted by Civ. I did uninstall it at some point because I was beginning to lose concentration in games, and because I had some RL stuff to get together. But I'm certainly having a lot of interest (and usually fun aswell) in playing those maps.

I'm not in Lain's head, but to me he looks very motivated to play these maps -- maybe he simply overreacts a bit when he loses.

Anyway, we're not here to discuss psychology, are we?

Well in this case we should get an "universal" Optics save on a hard map, something that all who are interested use from this point, and then start comparing some games after that point (different military approaches and so on).

I could roll a (fairly) crappy map and play it to Optics, would you play on from there?

I do still believe that the Pre-Optics phase is the most important and that most mistakes come from here, but practising the war phase is certainly useful aswell.

 

[Fippy]

Maybe, but it's more likely that i retire from this thread.
Have fun

 

[Pedro78]

Retire? Really? Then I guess I'll have to find another horrible deserted island to bring you back

 

[Rusten]

I'm with Fippy on this one. It's partly why I stopped participating in the thread and something I've been wanting to say for a while. Rather than trying to make the best of a random isolated start this thread has become obsessed with finding a set path to isolation victory. That's not how the game works. Making arbitrary decisions like no Pyramids with stone etc makes little sense to me. There will always be something to leverage. Where do you draw the line? No failgold whatsoever? No traits? No drafting? No getting lucky with trades?

IMO just play every map as well as you can. Take advantage of the single luxury, the multiple health resources, the marble, the charismatic trait, the whatever. That's how you learn and get better -- even if it's an easy game. If you do that then you will also beat the hardest maps when the time comes, because you will have noticed patterns on what works well and what does not. Forcing the worst possible conditions will only limit your playstyle.

That said I might play the infamous Mao game this week as it's been haunting Lain for so long. And a large reason for that is that everything goes -- just make the best of the start generated.