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

[Fippy]

Botm 145 was a good "training" map for me (actually rather hard), where i used most unit types.
I would recommend that one for a hard deity game under competitive conditions ~~
(it's ofc not isolated )

I might play your save after the Toku map, yup..i think it's time that i finish one here too.

 

[Fippy]

This is so funny, even if not working in the end lol.
How often are we doing stuff like this

Spoiler :

He started plotting at some point and those guys tech and trade like crazy, but Mao was bribed in and can get really interesting still.
Adding save before DoW, i really wanted to sink some of his navy in Angora and fights did go well.

edit: and the save after our sneaky first attack.

Oh goodie, you have to wonder if AIs consider enemy ships at all

Spoiler :

 

[Fippy]

Another save, my time running out for today sadly.
Maybe you feel like continuing from one of those, i believe Justi can be taken down but it's looking scary for the other continent.
Ofc ideally i would have started without Trebs and some beakers into steel But was a lot of fun already.

 

[Lain]

oo Interesting. Is this like an exception because of Ragnar (naval attacks)?

Just wonder if we should beeline Rifling more often... Hmm. But cannons are really needed when enemy gets Rifling, right? Until then we could bring a few trebs to hurt top defenders. Bombard with Frigates, CR2 Rifles, goooo.

But if enemy has Rifling, just beelining cannons doesn't help aswell... Cavalry vs Cannons -> not so fun.

Ok let me ask like this: You know that you will fight vs Rifles, what do you tech?

 

[Izuul]

Yeah, cannons vs rifles in cities is really no problem, it's cannons getting attacked by cavalry in the open. Even grens are weak defenders against that.

 

[Fippy]

Berserkers keep their naval promo when upgraded, so yup it's a bit special for Ragnar.
I actually forgot giving most of them CR2 before upgrading, bad mistake.

You can get naval attacks with any agg leader thou, but units are then stuck with c2 only.
It's useful to catch them weakly guarded, i had some bad luck in your game with that:
Justi started plotting, and suddenly instead of 3-4 weak units there were Cuirs added in most cities and stuff like that.
He had all his galleons (probably loaded) in 1 city, when i was ready to attack some moved out (but came back, as seen in the free XP pic ).
It's even better if you can kill their main stack sitting in galleons, he must have lost 40-50 units by now.

Those are great first strikes after declaring, Justi already offers a bit for peace.
I think aggressive is good on Iso maps.

Good question, what to do against larger AIs with Rifling + Cavs.
Hmmm
You mean if all will have Rifling? Probably steel and hope for trades towards my own Rifles, lol.
It's just all about numbers then, makes it so difficult with all that sea transport stuff.

 

[Fippy]

Some more success for our Marines..oops Grens

Spoiler :

Put your weird stack somewhere else, Mao

Spoiler :

Towards Adria now, prepare our fleet shouts Admiral Raggy.

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Galleon chaining, yay?

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Can we attack that, Admiral? Many units..no excuses, our ships totally took out their defenses!

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..and Raggy is right, how about those odds without any siege

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Justi starts praying to rng gods, and wins 2 94% battles..but cannot save Adria

Spoiler :

Time for pause & thinking, cease fire and waiting for cannons (inner cities) now? Also wondering what we should do with tech trades, in 2t Justi got Replaceable Parts and SM..bad game for that lol.

 

[Lain]

Looking great . Can trade spices for cow for a bit of health (Egypt). Might be worth it buying the gems from Hannibal soon? You probably did enough damage and with more cities to whip from + cannons you can finish him. Mao next? Cease fire seems good. Probably want to trade for Communism path?

Hm, how do C2 Grens perform navally vs Longbows and Muskets in cities? In few numbers probably possible.

And yup, every "successful" isolation game I have seen in this thread had attacks vs AI without Rifling. Which means cannons can pretty much defend our stack

But when I attack vs Cavalry etc and need numbers like you say, it never works . Needs too much cannons etc and then transportation becomes a problem. Hard.

 

[Fippy]

Yup i think communism for SP would be best, steel should get SM.
I was wondering about Edu from Hannibal for MS..if only he would not ask for 200 gold too, i started hoping to get gold instead but ofc only Willy has decent amounts.
Would hurt a bit if we get nothing from him.

C2 grens are ~60% against good longbows from what i remember, after ships have bombarded everything. Muskies are harder, maybe only ~30% if they have CG2. Probably can be 50% if not well promoted.

 

[Lain]

Well you made a really good case for Military Science > Steel. I thought about Rifling, but... we need Chemistry for Frigates. So just beelining Rifling is probably not enough? Sniping some shore cities is often possible (but only with AGG leaders?) .. cease-fire, add cannons and go for the kill. But when enemies have Rifling... meh, with 7-8 cities there is just not enough production for a meaningful Rifle/Cannon/Galleon/Frigate army... maybe if we whip everything to the ground, but... feels like I don't know about some tricks maybe.

What to do about little islands we find after Astro? Settle? Just distractions? It won't do anything for the first attack and game could be lost after that.

 

[Izuul]

If forced to choose between the Rifling path and the Steel + MS path, i would definitely go for the latter. I think it's easier to find a way to defend your stack against some cavalry than it is to try to take cities with rifles. Rifles against rifles doesn't work so you need Steel in that case anyway. Rifles or cavs + airships works pretty well, but that requires Physics...

 

[Fippy]

Against Rifling it's imo step by step, first we can limit the amount of cannons in favor of more city & stack defenders and try creating a small landing base (or use Mao land here?).
For ships we should probably look at a couple line ships only, around 4 should be able to protect galleons cos they will mostly have Frigates.
Leaves us more whipping and upgrading for Grens, they will suffer losses but if we can survive a larger stack they can also strike back with help of a couple cannons.

Then generals come into play, big advantage for us cos AIs usually use them in stupid ways.
While we can create a couple formation grens for example, if we fear their Cavs.
We have to be very careful and pick our positions and fights until we have gained some form of advantage, stuff like just walking towards a city early on flatland with cannons is ofc not possible anymore against Rifles & Cavs

 

[Lain]

Yes, great advice. Usually after Optics etc we throw games away and start new, so no opportunity to practice wars like that very often . But would help a lot.

 

[Fippy]

I like that otherwise dismissed leaders like Toku suddenly become a big help in difficult wars ~~
Very nice to gain c1 and protective bonuses too for Grens (or Rifles if going that way, but steel just works much better for trading too, here with Raggy they would have been very good ofc cos he's faster with FIN and it's less likely that all AIs already have Rifling too).
Imo that means there are no really bad leaders in Iso, sure somebody like Charly might be meh while being alone but the faster generals and protective are really nice later.

 

[Lain]

So, how does the Frigate thing work... are you not afraid to move a stack of galleons (+2-3 Frigates) and then boom, 10 enemy Frigates snipe everything? Hard to scout the ocean.

 

[Pedro78]

Kinda hard not to read this thread, even without having Civ installed

Usually after Optics etc we throw games away and start new, so no opportunity to practice wars like that very often . But would help a lot.

Only wanted to say that I strongly agree with that. In most iso games, getting to Optics is the easy part -- converting the game into a convincing win (or a win at all) is much more complex than simple tech-grinding.

I'll probably get back to civ when the Sgotm starts.. Can't wait to give that Mao map a shot

Btw Lain I've watched your Toku LPs. I think you're not building enough workers, are not chopping enough early on and are not growing your cities fast enough (grassland should be cottaged before plains, you really want to grow at least to health cap ASAP after Monarchy). I know it's tempting to build less workers as it "slows you down", but from my experience it really doesn't (depends on the map ofc), especially when you have good land like in this toku iso. Also, when getting to writing isn't the bottleneck, chops should be privileged over cottages early on, you really want to setup your core cities ASAP. Same thing with reaching Monarchy -- no point in getting it very early if you cannot use it yet. It's all about timing

 

[Fippy]

Well if you use cannons, MS gives 2 great support units (and sometimes can be traded too).
I think our Raggy game covers that option, line ships and no more fear of Frigates

If using Rifling, you can look at their cities before declaring and attack their navy port first.
Since it's an "overwhelm" tech with str 14 units, your first stack should be good enuf to do some serious damage.
When you need reinforcements, cease fire let's your galleons move free again.
I would not recommend staying at war and hiding galleons for long, need a battle plan and make use of AI weaknesses like accepting cease fires

 

[Fippy]

Okay let's look a bit more at Admiral Raggy, first i took Lain's great advice for resi deals (gems > dye with forges, some other changes made), funny how we sell Justi spices for 9g after cease fire why not

Spoiler :

This possible trade had been bugging me for some time, we need Edu for Communism but we also need gold urgently for steel

Spoiler :

Sadly it's not possible for now, attacking Justi again takes priority (and other AIs getting steel before trades would also be ugly).

Looking at war strats:

Spoiler :

The way towards his 2 big inner cities looks best imo, Loadicea can be left for Mao it's corn already shared by 2 captured cities.
So most of our Grens are in good place at Adria already, some city defensive ones left in captured cities and galleons work on bringing reincorcements & prebuilt Trebs into Adria.

Tech wise there's not much we can do now, if Hanni had Willy's gold i would trade that for MS (or if Mao had for chemistry) but as things are we are out of options for this turn.

Spoiler :

Most cities set to wealth, -162 now and we have 290g hmm..hopefully we can get steel in 3t somehow.

Spoiler :

Angora coming out of revolt next turn, yup it will ofc have no tiles but with 13 pop we can whip a couple Trebs & Cannons so it's useful.
Nice buildings kept too

Spoiler :

 

[Fippy]

Next turn Justi gets MS (why not, 3 techs in 3 turns? -.-) and i have enuf of that trade situation lol..at least Hanni has some gold for steel and i can go back to focusing on units

Spoiler :

As you can see he will not trade now anymore, not with me at least and would probably get MS somewhere else. I also sell it Cyrus for 100g, sounds questionable at first but Justi would sponsor him anyways. if you wonder why HR (switched to Vass actually after taking that pic, getting him out of Bur) for Hanni..well he has to pay some price with Anarchy

Nice bit of city micro, if we put less than 5h into the Treb and whip next turn we get a cannon in 2t.
5h cos 2 pop whip with forge = 75h and Treb costs 80

Spoiler :

If you wonder what Mao does, brilliant things..

Spoiler :

Worker shall work as war scout soon, not what he imagined i guess.

Some turns later we reach steel and nobody else but Hanni has it, yay.
It's interesting that Cyrus would trade with me again, and i could get any of his techs..

Spoiler :

Need Willy's gold for sure, but do we want Cyrus getting cannons (and most likely Justi too then). I think not, what would you trade here?

 

[Lain]

Don't think I would give away Steel yet .
It leads to bad stuff like Machine Guns and Artillery for the AI.
Chemistry for RP with Mao would be nice when he gets it. Then hold on to Steel for Rifling/SM/Education as long as possible.