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

[Rusten]

To your original post/question:

Spoiler :

That's a very good island so no need to rush things. It's a little hard to judge without playing, but as you suggested I'd focus on growing to health cap with monarchy and reaching double-digit cities over beelining Astronomy as early as possible. With so many river tiles military upkeep is not a big concern.
IW seems prudent as you want these cities settled early. They have great potential and scale well turn for turn. I'd only go CoL before monarchy if there is a chance to snag the religion. Although you may want to adopt HR and caste at the same time anyway (order doesn't matter), depending on HR urgency.

This definitely looks like a drafting game. The land available and leader chosen both call for it.

edit:

Spoiler :

And I'd strongly consider lightbulbing Philosophy this game. Especially if you're not first to CoL (Confucianism).

 

[Pedro78]

@Rusten

Spoiler :

I'd only go CoL before monarchy if there is a chance to snag the religion

Yeah I don't intend to adopt CS before HR if that's what you were wondering. But if I am to make a double switch I'd rather get CoL first as it allows to put hammers into Chichen Itza (not a big deal, but Monarchy is useless without HR). I don't think you can justify 1T more anarchy with ~8T earlier HR, right?

They have great potential and scale well turn for turn

What does "scale well turn for turn" exactly mean?

This definitely looks like a drafting game. The land available and leader chosen both call for it.

If I get it right, the overall strategy would be getting a very strong research base and break out with Rifles+Cannons? Drafting always looks like the "pretty" move, but Rifling is 7,1k beakers away from the standard cannon attack (assuming that you can trade for PP). When you can attack with Cannons+Maces, is it worth it to delay your attack by 10-15 turns to attack with drafted Rifles?

 

[Rusten]

^

Spoiler :

Scale well as in they will benefit from putting down cottages early and growing to health cap. They're not "work 1-2 food resources and run scientists cities", which stagnate as the game goes on.

You can draft other things than rifles. Muskets kill everything with cannon support. While not quite as ridiculous as 1 pop riflemen, 1 pop muskets are still incredibly efficient and serve the same purpose.

And again, Philosophy is great this game. On the path to Nationalism and you will get a lot out of pacifism. If you intend for Philosophy you can go Monarchy first, adopt HR, and then adopt CS+Pacifism.

 

[Pedro78]

Hmm

Spoiler :

Didn't think about drafting muskets (I usually don't have Nationalism at this point in the game, and the massive unhappiness tends to put me off). By the way, I've spent a bit of time looking at your saves and I see that you don't delete MP warriors after Astronomy and resource trades in iso games (mostly talking about the Willem game, the first in this thread). This could save you a lot of maintenance. Helps with the whipping/drafting unhappiness but is it really worth it?

I'm really sceptical about Philo here. Mostly because I likely won't be first to it (requires Maths+Alpha first if you want to bulb it). Not sure if I can even get T100 Philo (which would be really good already), and even then it's a big risk.

Scale well as in they will benefit from putting down cottages early and growing to health cap. They're not "work 1-2 food resources and run scientists cities", which stagnate as the game goes on.

Oh yeah I get this. Settling the jungle early wouldn't even have crossed my mind if it wasn't for those rivers

 

[Rusten]

Spoiler :

Maybe you're right, it's a big and risky commitment. Nothing wrong with stopping at CoL.

 

[Fippy]

Well as mentioned, i usually play them differently but not trying to "convert" you to that style
Astro trade routes make all cities good for commerce, so more are a strong option when getting there.

That PH city i.e. has one green cap tile, and 2 others for cottages if wanted.
If Tokyo is not working ocean fish, it's coast fish + hill cottage + 2 scientists.
Doubling that size would not result in double commerce imo..would require more rivers.

 

[Pedro78]

@Rusten And what about the not deleting MP thing?

@Fippy

Spoiler :

I'd be interested to see how it plays out your way ^^

I don't intend to grow Tokyo to become a big commerce city. It will produce workers/settlers in the mid-game and catch up on the GS with Caste scientists. It will then probably be a GP farm during golden age. OTOH the rivers to the south can produce a bunch of commerce.
Astro trade routes do indeed give a lot of commerce, but require... Astro
And settling a bunch of cities will slow you down on the way to it, more than growing vertically.
I'll definitely try the horizontal growth thing in iso.. someday. Do you really think it can be a better option (on this map) than going for the "standard" Monarchy route?

 

[Fippy]

Some more thoughts

Spoiler :

New cities give 2c (trade route + city tile) so if they are close to your Cap they pay for their maintenance if also working a cottage or so.

Would i like Mona, sure..but it's imo just very expensive, myst + 2 reli techs + Mona + Anarchy lies between MC and machinery for beakers spent.
So vertical growth tries catching up with that investment.
When looking at advantages, cap cottages grown are not one of them if you use satellite cities instead.
Cap being bigger already remains ofc

"My" plan relies on getting only what's needed, while it's an annoying way towards Optics it's not that long if some techs are skipped.
While also being in decent shape when finally having Astro, granary cities catch up the missing Mona pop with okay speed and now all settled cities are positive.

 

[Rusten]

@ Pedro: I like to keep warriors around for military police. The upkeep is pretty irrelevant after Astronomy. Think about it, how many turns do you actually play from that point? It will not amount to more than a few hundred gold which is nothing at that stage. 30 upkeep at 1000 AD can not be compared to 30 upkeep at 1 AD. Both in terms of number of turns you're playing and the amount of total commerce you gain.

They're very valuable to reinforce captured cities or giving happiness after drafting.

@ Fippy: New cities also add maintenance in existing cities. They may go even in their city screen, but empire-wide I'm not so sure. It really starts to add up when you reach 7-8 and more.

 

[Pedro78]

Why is your post in a spoiler?

New cities give 2c (trade route + city tile) so if they are close to your Cap they pay for their maintenance if also working a cottage or so.

You're not counting the increased "number of cities" maintenance here. From what I've tested, new cities, even close to your cap, from the fifth city will average 10+ gpt on maintenance from the moment they're settled (depends on your other cities' size). You need several river cottages for them to pay off commerce wise.

Monarchy is very expensive, but its benefits are just huge. If the map had like +3 happiness then I wouldn't say, even maybe +2, but I don't think you can just settle a bunch of cities that will stay at size 4 for 50+ turns.

I understand your strategy, but I don't think settling a bunch of cities before Astro is viable.

Spoiler a few images are worth a thousand words :

@Rusten
I see. I'll keep that in mind next time.
It didn't feel like there's a big jump in maintenance after 7-8 cities, it seems to keep progressing evenly. The only thing is that you keep settling cities further away from your Palace, so the Distance from Palace costs increase more.

 

[elmurcis]

I understand your strategy, but I don't think settling a bunch of cities before Astro is viable.

Only with GLH it would make sense (not great without oversea 2C trade routes but still good with 3C... or 4C trade routes total with Currency)... But after Astro thats 12-16 (Capital might get some better trade route) commerce/city Not resource based and has one of "safest" chance to get it if go for it (although window is early and cities should be coastal.. not always map generator likes to give good coastal spots)

 

[Pedro78]

For a long time I've thought that coastal starts on Iso were very easy because "hey! you just have to build the GLH and the game is won", but this isn't exactly how this works...

GLH is not THAT good on Iso. Before Astro it brings very little and after Astro it will bring ~10 per city. If your land is crap then it's huge. If (almost) all your cities are coastal it's also pretty good. But it's also a high chance of getting an useless early GM. Of course if your island has room for 10+ cities all coastal then GLH is a no-brainer, but it's pretty rare.

And GLH doesn't help with pre-Astro expansion (unless of course you can settle 3 offshore cities). +2 commerce per city is basically negligible.

 

[Pedro78]

Hey!

I've just played another iso game, Toku, same settings. The land wasn't nearly as good as in the last one but here it resulted in...

Spoiler :

760AD Optics

What I think I did wrong -

Spoiler :

Settling the fifth city before Monarchy was probably wrong, but it can't be the only thing... there's gotta be some way to reach Optics pre-500AD on this map

Micro wasn't perfect but not bad either so it's definitely not the main problem

6th and 7th city settled a little too soon were just me overestimating my tech pace

So any brave souls that are willing to open the saves and continue the autopsy are very welcome
(Oh and the saves are with Buffy 004b)

 

[Fippy]

Did you not settle for stone cos it's too generous by the map?

 

[Pedro78]

Yeah, forgot to mention I avoided the Mids. It's a useless wonder anyway

 

[Fippy]

Hmm i think Kyoto on the map edge was your biggest problem, almost never doing this but i would have considered chopping the Palace into your middle city oO

 

[Pedro78]

Hmm that's interesting. This would have been possible pretty early given the number of available forests. Not sure by how much it would have reduced maintenance, gotta test this.

Do you see any other "obvious" improvement to this game? Because not every iso map allows you to get 760AD Optics and win easily

 

[Pedro78]

@Fippy I've experimented with the "moving palace" move, and it appears that it has a fairly little overall impact : less than 5gpt average between T100 and T150. With infinite worker turns it would definitely be a good move, but here it's just too costly to move the Palace early on (need workers for basic stuff) and in a perfect world it would only give 1T earlier Optics.

Later on the benefits won't be that big as these forests would be better invested in building units. Plus Kyoto will get Observatory+Bank (probably no OU thou), so the commerce from the Palace will get more multipliers in Kyoto than in Osaka. It really looked like a good move, but just as most early big hammer investements it's probably not worth it..

The main thing is that moving the Palace only reduces the "Distance from Palace" costs, which are pretty small (<15gpt with 5 cities before Optics).

I think the biggest problem was 5th city settled too early (should've waited for Monarchy) and 6th and 7th cities mistimed (real bad). Changing this coupled with slightly better micro could probably shave 5+ turns off Optics date, maybe more..
Will try harder next time

 

[Fippy]

Was expecting a bit more gold saved, yup.
I found no other obvious points nope, but thinking that you are still in good position with later optics if cities are so nice and large already.

 

[Pedro78]

I kinda felt that the last two maps I played didn't give me the whole iso experience, so I rolled another one. Posting it here because motivation is picking up and the write-up might push me to finally play an iso game to the end.. plus I've heard some people have a particular taste for super-poor starts. I've even heard someone mention the "one-clam-challenge"

Playing with the best leader in the game as usual, and here's the start:

Well not quite a single clam start, but not far from it.. As you might have guessed, the island isn't wonderland either. And demographics tell us Mansa is in the game... should be easy.

Now in case anyone is interested in following me into the darkness, the starting saves are attached. I'm offering an ice cream to anyone beating this before T200