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

[Pangaea]

Thanks

 

[Swordnboard]

Been following this thread with much interest for a while, was finally inspired to post and ask for some advice.

Anyways, I'm playing with Sury on a decent (but smallish) island, just reached Astro and finished contacting the AI. Things are looking OK, but this is the point where I usually have difficulty/screw things up.

The tech pace of a few of the AI is already concerning (Mansa has Military Tradition?!), but Pacal and Montezuma seem softer and Pacal has the GLH, so I'm thinking most plans involve taking him out.

Spoiler Screenshots :

What trades would you make? Would you try to keep optics and/or astro away from the AI? Would you change civics now, later, both? Who would you tentatively plan to attack? With what technology? Espionage points? Which victory condition(s) look promising? What would you research from here? Thanks in advance for the advice.

 

[Pedro78]

Took a quick look.

Very weird not going for GLib here -- you could have got it easily, and the extra GS are a huge boost, especially when you're very early to Optics like here.

• I'd immediately trade Optics for Currency+World Map+90g with Mansa
• Put 1 turn into Feuda and trade Optics for it

It looks like Pacal and Monty share an island. Looking at how far backwards the latter is, you shouldn't need Rifles to take him out. I'd probably just beeline Cannons while building Maces/Trebs/Pikes (using Vassalage, no need for Bureaucracy here, capital not great), and take out Monty, maybe also Pacal if he doesn't get Inf/MGs too early.

Can also get 6gpt for Copper with Mansa, I'd take it.

Oh and get the BUG mod


Edit - forgot about the GLH, if Pacal doesn't get Rifles too soon, definitely take him out first. EPs probably on Pacal as he's the most likely target (for power ratio, you won't see his research anyway)

 

[Fippy]

Hiya, i would take Currency +90g from Ramsy for Optics.
He gives away techs slowly (60% must know) and is not friendly with other AIs.
Then it gets a bit more complicated..Zara, Hammy and Mansa are all friendly with each other.
Too bad that Pacal has no Feuda.

Just saw Pedro's post, Ramsy is better for Currency trade..much more reliable with not giving Optics away while putting one turn into Feuda.

Against Monty i would not even wait for Cannons, he has no Castles (or even longbows for now)..actually he has nothing
Probably running around with Jaguars, Axes, Cats..should be a faster solution possible there than waiting for steel.

 

[Pedro78]

Hmm didn't think about the Ramsy thing, but it does make sense.

If you're gonna attack Monty pre-cannons, you really want to start on Engi right now, while whipping Galleons. But when you reach him he will most likely have LBs already (probably no Castles, though)

 

[Lain]

Getting a bit better I feel... random question: bulldoze all towns after Communism or not? They become kind of useless... but makes me wonder why I built them in the first place. Problem is that workshops are just really really bad before Chemistry at least :/ Thoughts?

Spoiler :

Need more production

Also, what's the quickest way to Domination here?

 

[Fippy]

Infantry + Arti looks good for domination?
Could try some SPI diplo tricks, getting the rest of AL from HC for Biology, ~2 turns into Physics and trading Bio to Pacal next after switching Reli and getting him friendly.

Keeping towns while still teching (Artillery after Physics?) makes some sense imo, could wait with bulldozing until you are happy with army techs.

 

[Lain]

Hm good point about teching, but building Factories takes too long without workshops :/. And with production boosts, couldn't I just build Research/Wealth and contribute more? Especially in cities without Libraries/Universities/Observsatories .

Continued a bit. Secured a lot of tech with SPI tricks, switching between religions for friendly relations.

Went with Inf+Arti ... maybe slight overkill

Spoiler :

Both capped after one city :/ no fun.

Maybe my best game so far~~ usually I have to chicken out via UN. Here I want to break Mr Inca.

 

[Lain]

So good and bad news.

Winning Domination/Conquest with 2nd tier leaders now, no marble or stone...

Spoiler :

However, my 30th or so attempt on Mao map remained unsuccessful. Sadness.

Spoiler :

 

[Fippy]

cg on the Charly win

Any new strats you tried with Mao?
An evil idea, Mao map as team game lol..we can lose together yay.

 

[Rusten]

Necro alert.

Anyone still playing the Mao map? I decided to have a go over the holiday period.

Spoiler :

~55 pop over 9 cities before contact (6xx AD).
~75 pop over 9 cities at around 1000 AD.

Settled the island reasonably early (2nd city settled with currency).

Spoiler :

So much land claimed peacefully that 'slowly' teching towards steel and rifling (draft) looks the best play. Should get trades along the way. No need for urgency and whipping away everything -- can rely on matured cities with workshops. Same reason why there's no need to beeline astronomy.

Justinian will be a pain to deal with, but it looks doable. He has vassalized Hammurabi (force) and Suleiman (willingly), but Tokugawa is his own man. Good relations between everyone, so diplomacy is controllable. No real risk of Justinian taking over the entire continent (doesn't plot at pleased), which eases the execution of a later war.

 

[Lain]

Spoiler :

Nice! Thanks for playing this . Did you take any earlier saves? Would be interesting to see how you handled barbarians (Archery yes/no?), tech path in the BCs etc... looks like you self-teched Calendar, Currency, even Code of Laws. What about Aesthetics route with the marble?

 

[krikav]

Nice nice, I have been playing a few old LHC maps offline and should really dive into this thread.
I have started to like isolation more and more.

 

[Rusten]

Spoiler :

I didn't go out of my way to save but I should have some (later).

Yes, I self-teched everything. You get 15+% of the total land area without filling out the top tundra/ice region, so I played it a little bit like I would a semi-iso game (with early neighbour elimination). That's pretty good 15% land too, only downside is of course that it's very slow to start with no happiness. Isolation games with little (bad) land you kinda have to strike ASAP, but here there's a nice base for hammers so I just focused on developing my cities without worrying about optics/astro date.

I went early archery and settled on the hill by the pigs (with the pig tucked away behind) while a warrior blocked the 1-tile pass. All the barbarians suicided on said city, and my starting archer got 10XP for the HE (which was another reason I was happy to sit and develop).
I didn't go aesthetics. Might've been good, but useless if the wonders go early. I also did not get many libraries and instead produced research, so it would be awkward to start GL/NE.

By memory:
Fishing-hunting-AH-archery-wheel-pottery-BW-writing-alphabet-sailing-currency

 

[Rusten]

Adding to the above:

Spoiler :

Maybe you can make a good case for aesthetics+literature because I also had the HE available for failgold -- it could be enough to sway the decision. But it still needs a (for the time being) useless 50 hammer building before you can put hammers into it, 1 city at a time, with a delayed return of gold so IDK. It delays currency which is super important with overseas trade routes. Going cheap granary directly into research is also strong.

 

[krikav]

For the Mao map.
A buffy5 save with barbarian techs added, in case someone wants.

Screenshot of start:

Spoiler :

I think this map is quite a puzzle.
My T0 thoughts:

Spoiler :

It wasn't clear for me where to settle, and what to tech at all.
Settle NW to get the forested PH right away, and get out a quick worker? Probably not since there isn't anything for the worker to do!
Settle 1S, to get a unforested hill in BFC to mine?
Wander inland? (Nothing Juicy shows up with any warrior move.)

After thinking alot, trying out different things and reading thoughts from BornInACantalopue, @Fippy and @Rusten, I think I like the fishing aproach best.
SiP, warrior on 2F1H, pop2 finish warrior, then WB working hammertiles and a worker on clams+forestedPH.
The extra commerce from both clams and lake is quite useful.

Barbs? Archery?

Spoiler :

I think that any play of a map like this one does call for an early archery, to have a slim chance with warriors we have to fogbust properly right from the bat, at positions and in ways that we could only know if we have previously scouted the map.
If we position an warrior to stand guard at the forested PH SW of the pigs, we don't really know how big of a island we are on, and the barb wave could be really massive.
So the path to AH should absolutely go through hunting.
The path fishing->hunt->AH->archery is looking sound imho.

Marble...?

Spoiler :

Doing something with the marble is certainly possible, if you bend over to do it and have some luck.
Getting confu would be huge here, but I feel very queasy about this, since it's something that I would never dare to do "blind", but only when I know how to work the barbs. And even then it requires at least some luck. (To say nothing about how the distant land civs behave.)

I think this is a pity. It would have been so fun to have a marble that was settle-worthy, since we are a EXP-leader.
I stumbled upon this earlier and thought it could be nice to play around with these ideas:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/expansive-abuse-oracle-code-of-laws-fast-gm.429853/
But when we need to tech TW too, and road everything... Hold of archery/bw/AH.. No, I can't do this with a clear consciousness.

 

[krikav]

And a general point about isolation...
There seem to be some sort of consensus that it's best to hold of expanding beyond 5-7 cities.
I have a hard time internalizing this wisdom since I don't quite understand the reasoning, do help me out!

There are basically two types of isolation, one where you have enough land to keep your calm. You can develop your empire and look for an edge to leverage upon much later. The other type being that you are cramped for space and need to hit someone early.
In the case where you are in a rush, I do see the point of getting to astro as early as possible, and then it's worth to put a break on expanding.

But when we are not in that rush, why are we holding back our expansion?
The only key techs that I can see that we need to get is pottery/writing, and for certain all limits are of by the time we have currency, no?

Using @sampsa 's rough guieline of "the 4th city cost me 4gold, the 5th cost me 5gold, etc".
What is the point of settling city 8 at T150 instead of T100?
If it takes city #8 20 turns to start contibuting 8 gold equivalents to the empire, thereby carrying it's own weight and after that contributing...
Why don't we want this positive contribution at T120? Why do we want to wait untill T170 to get this?

Is it that you are seeing astro and overseas forregin trade as another bottleneck that we want to get through even with the calm developing aproach, such that 8+ cities isn't really working out for us?
What am I missing here?

 

[Fippy]

Think i liked Rusten's approach back then (but also now).
This map seems best suited to be played not fully like Iso.
Those cases are rare imo, but with much good land further away + an island for "foreign" trade routes,
nothing wrong with going for currency and creating a bigger empire that costs more but will pay back later

 

[krikav]

With map knowledge:

Spoiler :

Yes, that second island changes things abit. One could probably even make a case for TGL with that knowledge.

 

[krikav]

Barb galleys...
T122, I have bulit 3 galleys of my own (lost two of them already.) and there are 5 barb galleys around.
How do you handle them?
Can't really afford spawnbusting the entire coastline pre-currency.