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

[Lain]

Alright, Rifles+Cats... but how do we take out culture defense? I mean it works nicely with Cuirs, because we can fork and outsmart the AI .

But with Rifles they have time to put defenders in... and hmm, CR2 Rifles with Cats VS Rifles in a (hilled) city with 60% culture defense, is that going to work? Even with some cats.

Can't even build Frigates for coastal cities unless we trade for Chemistry .

But I like your approach and will try it next time. Very impressive what you did with Ragnar, without cannons.

 

[Fippy]

Hmm create a random start and simulate an attack with CR2 Rifles against their Rifles, checking what Cats do for that.
Or wait, i will save Charlie and do that

Hill cities should ofc be avoided if possible, if we can only find AIs with Rifling and (important) hill cities hmm..
but let's see the test first.

Save added, it's working okay..i gave this city 500 culture (no cat bombard or so).
In my battle result we miss some cleanup units cos 2 Rifles lose, but ofc we would try to bring more guys than that especially if we can fully focus on Rifles (+ those Cats).

Results can be different, but you can push your chances up enuf without cannons.

 

[Lain]

Working better than expected... of course CR2-Rifles are also expensive (upgrades) and losing them really hurts.

Access to Frigates would help a lot with coastal cities + then push inland with Cats for tough fights.

oo if you get a chance to try it with Charlie, I am excited to see it. Maybe some saves with build-up and war plan discussion~

 

[Fippy]

Will try with Charlie yup, but not sure yet when..feeling like switching to Baldurs Gate 2 for now lol, those Iso maps are energy draining

 

[Pedro78]

Temptation was too strong during an awful 3h lection of financial accounting, so I downloaded Civ and played the Charly Map

Much easier than I remembered... Maybe the tech pace was slower this time but only one AI had Optics when I met him a bit before 600AD. Could also be that I didn't know how to play Civ correctly a few months ago.

Spoiler :

Went for Monarchy, built an Academy, got T141 Astro. Everything a little delayed but definitely worth it because now I'll have a very good tech rate once capital is up. Trading was good after Optics and it happens that I can trade for iron. Can go for Rifles or Cannons now, but either way I'll most likely catch Zara before he gets Rifles..

Only thing I regret is that Huayna got PP right after I hit the WFYABTA with him. Would've traded less if I knew I could get PP from him.

@Fippy looks like you've skipped Monarchy. I really don't like the minimalistic strategy on this map because you have some incentive to grow (good health cap and lots of green). Looks like trades were not quite as good in your game as in mine, but even without any trades I think going for Monarchy was the right move -- here you'll be stuck with very low bpt for quite a while.

I don't think I'll play on, because this game isn't different from any others right now.. would be a whole 'nother thing if the AIs were more advanced.

@Lain This map is certainly not an Alpha map -- very low extra hammers and low initial commerce meaning late Alpha. Don't feel discouraged -- I think getting to win on every iso map simply takes a lot of practice, and we're getting there steadily


I still don't see the point in skipping Cannons when you have access to iron, but I'll try your test game. From what I've tested before, Rifles+Cats works against anything up to Grens, but completely sucks against Rifles. Upgrades are also way to expensive and inefficient imo. I think I'll "cook" an iso map -- select custom AIs and make sure they're setup so that everyone is strong and has Rifles by the time I reach them, and upload it here. Also have to play the Mao map but I don't feel ready for that kind of punishment yet


Edit - Tried the test game. It does kind of work, but Asoka's rifles didn't have any fortify bonus and every rifle you had had CR2, and they were Toku-rifles, which are the strongest in the game. I don't can't think of any scenario where you can take rifle-defended cities with culture defenses with "Riflepults"... Was certainly worth a try though, I had never thought of this combo before

 

[Lain]

So with Monarchy, did you only grow the capital pretty much? Because "normal" grassland cottages are too slow, right? Aren't you a bit concerned about enough production for breaking out now? I mean, 5 cities and one just settled, so won't contribute much.

I don't know what to believe re: Cannons anymore. Take my current Tokugawa game... I already played further and checked WB later... I had 11 Rifles + 11 Cannons. My opponent had 16 Cavalry, 30 Rifles and 8 Cannons at the same time. Only way to keep up with this is whipping everything into the ground. No fancy 11-pop-cities with Observsatories and Banks. Which means even if I win everyone will have Infantry while I am stuck with 10+ whip anger in all cities. Any advice how to keep up?

I don't know how that's possible to deal with. And since we are so weak in isolation... it's really hard to actually capitulate someone. So much opportunity for peace-vassaling and stuff...

Would love to see more isolation attacks, looks really tough to me.

 

[Fippy]

Well they had 5% fortify (not much yup), but full culture defense which can be reduced a bit before attacking really hard cities.

While you cannot get CR2 on all you can get Pinch with every Rifle & leader (without upgrades).
Pinch = CR2, you trade CR1 for combat (without agg leaders) so they are not that much weaker.

You can also create a bunch of accuracy Trebs (6% against castle), for hard cities.
Those can be kept, so no big difference if it's Trebs or cannons for your "bombard stack".
(Cats do 4% against castles, so if you cannot afford Trebs..still better than nothing)

If you are not playing Toku, you get some other trait benefits.
His Rifles are strong, but his attack date could be slower than with other leaders.

 

[Pedro78]

So with Monarchy, did you only grow the capital pretty much? Because "normal" grassland cottages are too slow, right?

I had every city at health cap upon reaching Optics (Capital size 10 and other cities size 7). Non-river grass cottages don't get you much faster Optics but they put you in a much stronger position later on, so I'd say they're worth it at least until health cap when you have Monarchy, especially when you don't have Alpha.

Aren't you a bit concerned about enough production for breaking out now? I mean, 5 cities and one just settled, so won't contribute much.

Given my current setup I'll most likely attack Zara with Rifles+Cannons. It gives me some time to develop city #5-6-7, which will be great production cities in 20-30 turns, and I'll be drafting a lot. Unless Zara gets Rifles before I attack him (which is highly unlikely), I don't see production being a problem. Worst case I'll just take out weak Wang and grab the island for myself (Hannibal will control it but AIs have very few units in offshore cities).

You can also create a bunch of accuracy Trebs (6% against castle), for hard cities.

Cannons get 12% against castle

If you are not playing Toku, you get some other trait benefits.
His Rifles are strong, but his attack date could be slower than with other leaders.

True, but it doesn't make Riflepult more viable. What's the point of an early Riflepult attack if you get ~30% odds?

But my real question is: why do you insist on skipping cannons? 15 Rifles+15 cannons is a much better stack than 25 rifles and no cannons as you'll lose much less units. And getting Steel+Rifling really isn't much slower than getting Rifling alone.

 

[Fippy]

We are running in circles here, Pedro..
Lain is asking for some other strats or possibilities, i am not insisting on skipping cannons.

You can trade for stuff with steel, but you also keep advancing some AIs where you might dislike that if you do so.
If it's all that easy, we would not have those talks.

15 Rifles+15 cannons is a much better stack than 25 rifles and no cannons as you'll lose much less units.

Until you get attacked by more than 15 units.

 

[Pedro78]

We are running in circles here, Pedro..

True

Until you get attacked by more than 15 units.

If the AI has more units, then add more rifles to your rifles+cannons stack. If the AI you're attacking has a stack that can kill 15 rifles then you won't be able to take his cities with Rifles+Catapults anyway.

I've never said this was easy, I'm just arguing against skipping cannons, at least when the AI you're attacking has Rifles.

 

[Pedro78]

Okay so y'all wanted a tough first attack? Wanted to take a step into the Rifling/Infantry/MG paradise? I think I found the gate...

It's a natural, 100% organic low seas fractal map. Leader and land not bad, but probably needed.

AIs are not your friends, barbs aren't either

 

[Pedro78]

Looks like I've underestimated some games I've played to Astro and said "Can stop playing here, I'll win anyway". In other words my position in the Charly game is probably not quite as good as I originally thought it was (winnable but not anywhere close to easy or "won") I've practiced some more and when I don't have a super-weak target to attack (like Joao in the Boudica game or Willem in the Toku-skywalker one), I found it very hard to build a decent army before DoW. So I gave it a bit of thinking.

What do we usually do? Reach early Optics with 4 crappy ungrown cities that have no infra. Then settle the rest of the island after Optics. I'm not sure what happens in your games, but in my games the newly settled cities almost never contribute by Steel time, so I have to wait quite a bit after reaching Steel before I can launch an invasion (in most cases). This does often lead to overwhipping and massive unhappiness... bad. It's A LOT better to attack @1100AD after reaching 1050AD Steel than to attack @1100AD after having reached 900AD Steel (also because it's much more common to trade for Rep parts @1050AD than @900AD)
The answer to this problem? Assuming you're not attacking a total pushover, you want to start the build-up ~20 turns before you reach your main military tech (unless you have very high food and a great happy cap). This means you will often need every city to have forge and barracks by Astro time or only a few turns after. And this means that your last cities should be settled at least 10 turns before you reach Optics (unless you can develop them extremely quickly ofc). An ocean-fish city settled when reaching Astro is completely useless..

Of course, this all depends on your commerce/production situation, but I'm now 100% sure that we're too focused on both getting early Optics and on reaching very high bpt ASAP. Isolation is not about settling 4 cities, reaching 1AD Optics and calling the game "won".. there's so much more to it...

Another big advantage of spreading the buildup over time is that you can later take full advantage of drafting: you will already have a solid unit base & low whip unhappiness, which will allow you to keep teching while drafting cheap Rifles.

Yesterday I felt ready to start that Kublai game, but now it looks like I'll need some practice first, otherwise my winning streak will most likely go "kapoof"

Edit - In a "normal game" we tech to a huge military advantage (Cuirs vs longbows or similar), whip everything to the ground and snowball -- so the research drop doesn't matter. In isolation the 2 differences are that we don't have a big military advantage (if at all) and that we can't have a big production burst -- no snowball. In a "normal game" it's common to use a lot of bulbs, in iso we barely use any, and no one questions that, aren't we doing something wrong? Considering that Chemistry and GP can be bulbed, isn't it better to simply stay isolated for much longer, not trade for anything and attack only a few turns after first contact?

 

[Fippy]

I think winning streaks on deity are just illusion (or competitive talk).
We love this game and diff. level cos of it's crazy possibilities with things going wrong, why would we aim at taking that away and "winning them all"
This makes sense for HoF (where i know i will win, just depends on when), but..i played this game for more than 8 years now, only on deity, and i still like doing so cos i know i will lose some games without reloads & stuff going wrong.

You cannot avoid this if you play fair, and it's good that way.

 

[Pedro78]

Edited my post above.

I was just kidding about the winning streak thing -- it's just that I've "won" the last few iso games that I've played and considered tough. But of course I don't intend to win every game.

Not sure what you mean about reloads & stuff, but I do reload quite often in my practice games -- because I've forgot to do something I had planned, or simply to try another strategy and compare. Ofc reloading for stuff like barbs or DoWs or all RnG-based stuff is cheesy, but I'm of the opinion that reloads are good for learning if used the right way.

And yeah I agree that sometimes the most annoying and unfair RnG stuff can be the most fun to fight against

 

[Fippy]

No special things intended or suggested, i just felt like saying that
I am proud to play a game where i can still lose despite of knowing all (or most things), i really struggle finding new games like that.
I ofc appreciate all efforts from you, Lain and others, but i know i would not want to beat them every time.

 

[Lain]

Looks like I've underestimated some games I've played to Astro and said "Can stop playing here, I'll win anyway". In other words my position in the Charly game is probably not quite as good as I originally thought it was (winnable but not anywhere close to easy or "won") I've practiced some more and when I don't have a super-weak target to attack (like Joao in the Boudica game or Willem in the Toku-skywalker one), I found it very hard to build a decent army before DoW.

Yeah, this is exactly my problem. Settling cities before Optics so they contribute in time is nice and all, but... what if you settle those ocean fishies, reach Optics 10T later and everyone has it. But you went from 4 to 7 cities and your economy is tanking now, you need Astro, but have to tech Calendar etc yourself. Game over?

Also yup, your Charlie game looks really nice, but I could still run into problems with production later... and screw up the attack. So I'm happy we are talking about this problem now . Doesn't seem that easy after all.

Your suggestions to fix it sound nice, wonder how it's going to work in practice though. For example, would you play that Saladin map any differently now? You went Alpha -> Optics with 4 cities and basically no infrastructure. But how else could you play that?

 

[Pedro78]

Yeah, this is exactly my problem. Settling cities before Optics so they contribute in time is nice and all, but... what if you settle those ocean fishies, reach Optics 10T later and everyone has it. But you went from 4 to 7 cities and your economy is tanking now, you need Astro, but have to tech Calendar etc yourself. Game over?

Game over if you have 100bpt.. but what if you're in a golden age and are doing 250bpt? Sounds crazy, but now that I think of it, there's several games where this kind of stuff is possible. I've just played a game where everyone had Astro @500AD (It wasn't me trading it away) -- what do you do in this case if you don't have a strong research base?

In every game that we are playing, we rely heavily on trades -- in most cases it pays off, but in a few cases it just doesn't work and we're screwed. Isn't there a way to ditch that stinky RnG from iso wins?

I'm happy we are talking about this problem now . Doesn't seem that easy after all.

Seemed easy to me for a long time because I didn't play past Astro in most games, and when I did play past Astro I always managed to maintain a good tech position and had a weak(ish) AI to attack. But it indeed isn't always that easy..

Your suggestions to fix it sound nice, wonder how it's going to work in practice though. For example, would you play that Saladin map any differently now? You went Alpha -> Optics with 4 cities and basically no infrastructure. But how else could you play that?

Well first off I'd use the marble in the Saladin map if I really intended to win it. GPP would solve most of my tech problems and I could focus on production. Failgold would also allow to settle two more cities before Optics.

But without marble... Right now I would most likely play it the same way, and stress production as much as possible right after Optics. I can't imagine how this map can possibly be winnable if you can't trade for maths/calendar. But even after Astro you're doing 120bpt and have to self-tech Guilds and GP... On the toku "hard" map I got Astro around the same time, had ~160bpt after Astro, traded for GP on T136 and still only got Steel on T169... Sally map will be T185 Steel, maybe worse...

Gotta think and make a bit of maths..

 

[Fippy]

For some reason the Kublai map only spawns barb warriors for me (turn 52 already, not seen 1 archer).
Happening for you too, Pedro? Made it very easy just building barracks first & warriors only, and teching pottery before BW.

(thou it's still painful later when they keep coming..)

 

[Pedro78]

After checking, looks like I forgot to add the barb techs (made a wb save cos I was running Buffy when generating the map). Edited my post, the save is now fixed.

Sorry for wasting your time

 

[Pedro78]

By the way, I was wondering.. @Rusten did you keep some saves from the Willem and Boudica games from last year? I'd be very interested to see how you handled the wars & the late game (the saves you uploaded stop at Astro for the Willem game and at Steel for the Boudica one).