Deity please! #4

[Mylene]

I started playing without vassal states lately, and iam not sure i'll ever go back to them

The system is pretty much flawed imo, it hugely favors the same mechanisms again and again:
Rush out an army, backstab someone (which isn't really hard considering how bad the AI moves), and use vassals to tech/trade stuff for you, as blocker, and just in general as an easy way to gain power.

In Civ3 or Vanilla i had to work hard if i wanted to conquer the world.
Now it is often enough to just take a city or 2, and whoops you get rewarded with owning the whole AI and everything he has.

It also means super AIs are rare now, they will just cap the weaker ones and not use the cities for themselves. With the vassal often being a sitting duck, as @AZ would say
No iam not happy with this, it should not be this easy to win via simple backstabs.

 

[Gwaja]

@Mylene,

Still though, it is quite funny watching AZ scheming to totally screw up the diplo situation. He is constantly looking for ways to bribe AIs to stop trading and/or declare war, and the window of opportunity to backstab.

I think vassal states have their upside and downside. On one hand, I don't like wars being dragged on when it is quite clear that it is over and that all I am doing is spending more turns. On the other hand, it can be abused as you mentioned. Too bad there isn't a happy medium.

 

[Mylene]

@Mylene,
On one hand, I don't like wars being dragged on when it is quite clear that it is over and that all I am doing is spending more turns.

But, in reality that is the nature of a war.
And it forces you to think more carefully about rolling over AIs that just do a lot of stupid things while under attack

You can make peace and be satisfied with what you gained, no need to destroy someone completely if you only wanted some key cities

Who says it should be easy to take out a nation completely, because you are bored of war?
Culture would become more "dangerous" again, if it is needed to clean it up around the cities you want to keep. Which is only fair, when do the peaceful and creative Civs ever do well?
They will vassalize with all the things they gained peacefully

 

[awilder]

To the end:

Spoiler :

So after the debate about research, I just ended up turning it off completely. I figured my commerce was best spent either as culture/getting border pops for domination threshold and/or rushbuying cavs with my kremlin.

I switched into nationhood and as my musket/cannon army made the return trip from the far side of Egypt (6 turns) I drafted enough rifles to go with my fresh cannons and declare on Alex.

The plan was to cap him during my peace-treaty with France. The timing worked out perfectly!

1 turn left in the peace treaty there. After capping him I got all the techs I wanted:

And then immediately went after Nap/Rosy

Note the defenders... LBs aren't gonna cut it here Napoleon!

A few turns into the war, Roosevelt broke free and so I was able to cap napoleon:

I continued on to Roosevelt and capped him after 2cities.

Then DOW on SB ~1390AD. Even with 6 cities, it took me 3 horrible cities before he would capitulate. Damn protective rifles .

Then...

one city out of revolt later...

Thanks for another great map, Gkey

 

[Dirk1302]

I have seen a lot of war chariot rushes, Elephant/cat rushes etc here the last 2 months on deity. It strikes me that every time the start was very easy i played 2 myself , dpI and III Hatty and Peri respectively. Most of the times there was gold (4 or 5 in the peri start iirc). Anything goes on those starts. This dp iv doesn't seem too hard either with again a prime leader, warmongers who go for peacemongers and loads of lands to settle.

Other threads consistently show strong leaders played. Why not play a leader like Toku for a change and put some nasty ais on the map and then see if all those "i have construction 1000 bc and went for a ridiculously early elepult" strategies still hold. On a map without gold/fp's and a so so leader it's at least very difficult to pull of a success full early cat (or HA) rush. If you're also confined to 4 cities early then it'll really be a challenge to win at all.

 

[Mylene]

It is the mix of settings, leader and capital.
It would still be a big challenge without either tech brokering, vassaling or with a weak leader.

Of course all the guys that beat it did a very good job. It's deity, and you need to pay a lot of attention to things like diplo. Iam not a moaner
But it is not the top of the possible difficulty pyramid, that's right
And sadly it isn't very exciting anymore to follow, at least for me, cuz we know these estabilished mechanics now :-/

 

[gspchamp999]

@Dirk
100% agree here. Though I am just a long time lurker with about 50% victory on immortal, I feel any BFC with gems/gold/silver is overpowered. I actually reload anytime this is the case in my games. Don't get me wrong, I do thoroughly appreciate all the writeups/videos people post and study them rigorously, but I wish at least having gold in BFC would be ruled out for games in open to the forum.

 

[Gwaja]

An inland start for Tokugawa with 6 of the worst and nastiest warmongers with no vassal states and tech brokering on Deity would be one of the biggest challenges on Deity yet!

Thinking about creating a map of this type and see if GKey is interested in using this for one of the future games on Deity Please!

EDIT: I took away the proposed map and save here, because I did not want to derail this thread.

 

[AbsoluteZero]

1. No vassal states makes the game easier not harder. A LOT easier. You don't have to worry about the dreaded peacevassal when you're whooping on an AI. And don't forget the AI can do the vassal domino a lot better then you can because their power ranking is way higher. I think you guys don't take into account the careful diplo management to avoid the stronger AI's getting a vassal and running away with the game. Without vassal states careful diplo management is almost not necessary.

2. I've never played with no tech trading / brokering but my guess is it would slow down the AI's more then it does you, making things easier, esp if you beeline a military tech advantage.

3. Toku is not a weak civ, he starts with fishing and the wheel ( I think ). A weak civ would be one that starts with hunting / mysticism. I guess you could argue aggressive / protective is not the greatest trait combo, but I think the all time suckiest civ has to go to Burger king ( hunting / mysticism and Imp / Protective ).

4. You can do a 500 bc or even 700 bc elephant rush without gold pretty easily. All my rush videos are without gold in the BFC. Gold just spices things up a little.

 

[Mylene]

1. No vassal states makes the game easier not harder. A LOT easier. You don't have to worry about the dreaded peacevassal when you're whooping on an AI. And don't forget the AI can do the vassal domino a lot better then you can because their power ranking is way higher. I think you guys don't take into account the careful diplo management to avoid the stronger AI's getting a vassal and running away with the game. Without vassal states careful diplo management is almost not necessary.

2. I've never played with no tech trading / brokering but my guess is it would slow down the AI's more then it does you, making things easier, esp if you beeline a military tech advantage.

3. Toku is not a weak civ, he starts with fishing and the wheel ( I think ). A weak civ would be one that starts with hunting / mysticism. I guess you could argue aggressive / protective is not the greatest trait combo, but I think the all time suckiest civ has to go to Burger king ( hunting / mysticism and Imp / Protective ).

No vassal states makes wars a lot less rewarding
When you take a vassal, they will immediately be on your side and give you techs/ressources.
That is huge, because assaults without much of a plan what cities you actually want to keep are fine..all that matters is that you become the master.

About the peace vassals being dangerous, can happen of course. But if it would be so hard to avoid, we wouldn't see so many games where it doesn't happen, right?
And if a strong AI takes city after city instead of taking the vassal, that doesn't make them less dangerous. Probably the opposite is true. If Alex takes a city from Hatshi, that city will most likely start spamming units as well. If Hatshi becomes a vassal, she will be that lovely sitting duck.

Tech brokering, it can slow the AIs down. But it also slows the player down.
Not everyone will have the techs you need, the Ais who could trade them might not want to do so.
Diplo matters a lot here as well. I find it much harder to plan, getting a tech simply cuz everyone has it is not happening anymore.

Toku..not the weakest, but compared to what we have seen: Hatshi, Pericles, WvO..like night and day imho

 

[Jet]

In the past, the majority opinion on S&T about No Tech Brokering seems to have been that it makes the game easier. I can't tell. I do like how it slows down the tech pace.

A suggestion that I think would tend to make Deity/Standard/Normal games harder as Dirk1302 proposed, and that I like better anyway, is maps with more ocean separation. To me Hemispheres feels like the purest experience for random games. It puzzles me why people like Fractal, anyway; so often it seems to give you an elongated Pangaea thing, which to my taste is kind of uninteresting.

 

[AbsoluteZero]

No vassal states makes wars a lot less rewarding
When you take a vassal, they will immediately be on your side and give you techs/ressources.
That is huge, because assaults without much of a plan what cities you actually want to keep are fine..all that matters is that you become the master.

That's opposed to me continuously declaring on an AI with like 3 cities in order to extort tech for peace?

Vassal states can make the game faster once you get 2+ granted, but it doesn't make the game easier.

Most of my losses on pangea are from a weak AI peacevassaling to a strong AI making a superpower which then attacks another AI, takes like 2 cities and vassals that AI, then goes after another AI and you've pretty much lost the game at that point. Almost impossible to stop unless you catch it quick with careful diplo management.

With no vassals that AI has to take way more then 2 cities, which takes a lot more time.

I'd rather face 1 AI with 10 cities then one with 6 plus a 4 city vassal.

About the peace vassals being dangerous, can happen of course. But if it would be so hard to avoid, we wouldn't see so many games where it doesn't happen, right?

Oh you have no idea how often it happens. Sometimes there is nothing you can do to stop it too. Insta-loss.

And if a strong AI takes city after city instead of taking the vassal, that doesn't make them less dangerous.

It takes them a lot more time and also they have to rebuild the cities they take.

 

[awilder]

Re: "deity please" starts being easy. I think that was sort of the idea of the series. Get more ppl playing deity by offering a more gentle intro. I sure have appreciated it for my first few serious deity attempts.

I'd be open to gkey stepping the difficulty up a notch or two, but it's his show

As for my threads, I'm going random leader random map now, so I will get a bad leader+hard ai combo soon enough.

 

[Mylene]

Most of my losses on pangea are from a weak AI peacevassaling to a strong AI making a superpower which then attacks another AI, takes like 2 cities and vassals that AI, then goes after another AI and you've pretty much lost the game at that point. Almost impossible to stop unless you catch it quick with careful diplo management.

Oh you have no idea how often it happens. Sometimes there is nothing you can do to stop it too. Insta-loss.

Yip, and that is cool? You loose because of the snowball effect, and cannot avoid it.
I've played more exciting things

And the same snowball effect helps winning if it goes in the players favor.
Taking a vassal doesn't just speed the game up.
There is a difference in managing (often badly placed AI cities) yourself, or just letting them handle it all. They get more bonuses as well, "please research me this buddy, i couldn't do it faster. Thanks!
Oh and while you are at it, give me all this stuff. We are friends, right? I kicked your butt but you like me again now, call 555-Brain-Wash

But imo the point is not what is easier or harder.
I do no think it is the old Civ spirit that all the managing/handling results of wars can be skipped with vassal states now. When war is always the easy way to go, that makes things very comfortable for the player.
Simply cuz it is the part of the game where the AI is at it's weakest.

 

[Dirk1302]

Black is post from AZ.
1. No vassal states makes the game easier not harder. A LOT easier. You don't have to worry about the dreaded peacevassal when you're whooping on an AI. And don't forget the AI can do the vassal domino a lot better then you can because their power ranking is way higher. I think you guys don't take into account the careful diplo management to avoid the stronger AI's getting a vassal and running away with the game. Without vassal states careful diplo management is almost not necessary.
I tend to agree with this, it's playing style as well. I almost never vassalize ais.

2. I've never played with no tech trading / brokering but my guess is it would slow down the AI's more then it does you, making things easier, esp if you beeline a military tech advantage.
Hard for me to say, never played no tech brokering

3. Toku is not a weak civ, he starts with fishing and the wheel ( I think ). A weak civ would be one that starts with hunting / mysticism. I guess you could argue aggressive / protective is not the greatest trait combo, but I think the all time suckiest civ has to go to Burger king ( hunting / mysticism and Imp / Protective ).
HRE, doesn't look strong on paper i agree but imperialistic can be pretty useful with the right kind of start and Rathauses make a difference mid game. Landsknechts however... oh well. Toku isn't that bad either, every civ has it's plusses but traits as philo/creative or financial/spiritual give you a jump start
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4. You can do a 500 bc or even 700 bc elephant rush without gold pretty easily. All my rush videos are without gold in the BFC. Gold just spices things up a little.
Maybe it's possible without gold but you have to have something with which to jumpstart your commerce base. Orcacle sling or very early GS seems to me. Which video without gold let you rush before 500 bc with phants? I'll take a look.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Oh no ! Deity is too easy !! Right ?
(kidding)

Spoiler :

Feat of the game :

Spoiler :

Treacherous Sitting Bull daggered us but, as shown in the screenshot, we could clear his stack of doom thanks to our military presence in the south-west (axemen busy NE, in the process of capturing the 2nd of 2 barb cities).
Some 10 turns later, the situation at hand became a little more compelling as Alexander became involved. Alex's determination to capture cities proved a lot more real than that of Sitting Bull...

 

[AbsoluteZero]

4. You can do a 500 bc or even 700 bc elephant rush without gold pretty easily. All my rush videos are without gold in the BFC. Gold just spices things up a little.
Maybe it's possible without gold but you have to have something with which to jumpstart your commerce base. Orcacle sling or very early GS seems to me. Which video without gold let you rush before 500 bc with phants? I'll take a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-MGF24Q2vE

Fin an cottages for a 550 BC attack date.

Here is the vid where I actually attacked:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa6njGnTqqY&NR=1

500 BC elephant rush is actually not too hard even without financial and cottages. A lot depends on the early techs you have to research. Good starting techs and starting with their corresponding resources will help cut down on wasted time.

I pulled off a 1000 BC elephant rush one time by oracling construction, and it wasn't a late oracle date either, I bulbed math with a really early GS as I was building the oracle. I think that was with SB and without gold.

HRE, doesn't look strong on paper i agree but imperialistic can be pretty useful with the right kind of start and Rathauses make a difference mid game. Landsknechts however... oh well. Toku isn't that bad either, every civ has it's plusses but traits as philo/creative or financial/spiritual give you a jump start

I rank civs based on how quick a start they have and HRE has a poor start. Really poor. Boudica does too but I rank charismatic / agg higher then IMP / Pro. Rathaus are nice but give me something I can use early, that's where the game is won or lost ( at least how I play ).

 

[Dirk1302]

Watched parts of the video, pretty easy to follow what's going on .

Beeline to alpha in this fashion is a pretty good idea on this map. I think i would have inserted AH somewhere along the line as working the sheep early would have helped, ok it's not food but it is a high output tile speeding up workers and settlers.

You say without financial and without cottages a 500 BC rush is still possible. Maybe but you'd have to get up libraries/working scientists real early. A beeline to alpha would be very iffy on such a map so either you'd beeline anyway being without worker techs even longer than here or you go AH or whatever you need and forget about the beeline (as you mentioned yourself in the video). On this map the beeline was a very good idea as you really need this phant rush here. Going for early lib would have meant you'd be confined to a very small space for quite some time.

This is not always the case imo, in dp III i did a phant rush as well but i waited until 200 bc and built a pretty big stack, phant attack doesn't have to be so very early as opposed to an axe or war chariot rush, have to reckon with lb's of course if your'e later. I suspected a lib break out would have been even stronger there and ABCF more or less proved that to be so in his report.

I agree up to a point about HRE. Imperialistic can give you an early advantage as well though if conditions are right. Going worker-> settler(at size 1)-> settling second city before barb problems so it can build it's own defence/worker can be really strong with this leader. But you have to have that early 2 or 3 hammer city tile to make it worthwhile to play in this fashion. Imperialistic can be quite good somewhat later if you have plain hills in the neighbourhood too, quick settlers early game is very nice.

 

[GKey]

OK, I am finally back to my CIV PC.

Regarding "easy" maps we played till now.

1. They were not THAT easy after all.
   Dp#1 contained strategical trap of leaving 1 AI for too long allowing him become Supermonster.
   #2 was pretty ordinary map, you needed to sacrifice some to get these gems.
   #3 start was looking ridiculously easy with 3 golds in BFC, but lucked good spots for additional cities plus we got creative protective neighbor. That map wasn't too easy, at least to me.
   Same could be said about this particular map. Yes, capital looks awesome, but keep playing and you will see: it's not rose garden after all.
   
   
2. Many players around here keep thinking that deity is for eggheads only. Requires some most sophisticated micro etc.
   I just wanted people try, compare approaches and see that it's actually doable.
   
   
3. We have only like 5-6 people play this and post. Many players still stay away of these maps just because it's deity. (On other hand some people tend to leave because it's too easy). Well, I will try to come up with more balanced starts.
   
   

Re: "deity please" starts being easy. I think that was sort of the idea of the series. Get more ppl playing deity by offering a more gentle intro. I sure have appreciated it for my first few serious deity attempts.

^^Exactly this.

I was thinking to come with no tech brokering small size map next time, but AbsoluteZero proved NTB does not make it more difficult.
How about vote? What kind of map/leader do you want in DP#5.

Want try isolated start? Astronomy 300BC anyone? Toku/SB any other leader from the bottom of the list? Archipelago rather then Pangaea? Or should it be just an average random start?

I will roll new starts immediately.

 

[Gwaja]

If we are going for a good leader, I'd say Liz or Darius for the next game.

Shaka or Cyrus for warmongering.

For a bottom of the pile leader, I'd say Tokugawa! Everyone loves our Toku! No... it's not that dude from Ninja Gaiden... ^_^