Deity Toku

[soundjata]

Probably a good time to start researching Aesthetics

 

[krikav]

I tried workerstealing a few times. I'm almost certain thats the best strategy on this map, but that you cannot know from the start though.

Spoiler T65 :

First worker stolen T8, woody2 guy aquired ~T30 (from attacking a damaged barb warrior). Spammed quite abit of barracks-warriors, had up to 3 woody warriors a while but got greedy and wanted to pillage the gold+mine and lost a pair.
Just made peace this turn because Justiy was close to a unguarded city.
Roaded to Monty early on to get his religion, but no luck with that.

 

[drewisfat]

@sampsa Status quo right now is I'd suffer a relations hit with Genghis, Zara and Shaka if I DoWed Monty. And right now, Monty being behind due to the constant war is one of the few silver linings. I can do a very late HA attack if he's even later to Feudalism. I think it's important to not panic. I've already invested in adequate defenses, so Shaka may just be free exp. The risk is of course that the AI grows a brain and Monty hits me in Satsuma at the same time Shaka hits me in Kyoto. That's not going to happen this wave though. Monty's got two stacks by Kyoto, one of which has stalled in place staring at me from across the lake. As long as that holds, he's unlikely to bring a big enough stack to break Satsuma.

 

[krikav]

I found another way to play this map too!

Spoiler T53 :

Agri->Mining->Hunt->AH, stall abit on barracks and wait for the mine to get overflow hammers into a quick pop3 settler.

Not a settler for me though!

I might have missed montys fist, but I think it showed up right when he converted.

Well... that will keep featherhead preoccupied for a while.

Kyoto was a beast with 3 mines+cow+corn while building settler for Osaka.
Not boxed in completely yet either.
Economy isn't too bad, since compared to previous runs, I had to settle city2 w/o road to stake out the land. Now I could block off the rice/silk/horse spot with Zaras culture.
Will get ivory spot, and can backfill two more it seems.

Neat!

*edit*

Spoiler :

Well.. abit fishy too ofcourse, really have to rush things to get a gift city before Zara reaches 4 cities (or he won't accept it). Also have to meet Zara too ofcourse which isn't guaranteed to happen.

*/edit*

 

[drewisfat]

Finally got enough time to play.

Spoiler T82-91 :

Spoiler Meditation :

Genghis is Hindu and has two islands giving me enhanced trade routes, so we want good relations with him. Meditation pushes us towards Monarchy, gets us pleased with Genghis, and heads off any bribe.

Spoiler OP Archer :

Shaka's stack includes impi and archers. The top line archer does unbelievably well with first strike magic. Actually a bit of an issue hogging all the exp away from my GG . He not only beats Monty's stack, but it's not until Shaka's 8th attacker that he even takes a hit
I'm not stuck in a war with Monty and Shaka, they're stuck in a war with me

Spoiler 0 Upkeep :

After that performance, it's clear I don't need many more archers. My cities swell in size preparing to whip HAs and I'm able to get unit upkeep down to 0, while at war with psychos.

Spoiler Sury vs Zara :

After a very long plot Sury finally hits Zara, who had DoWed Genghis. This is very good indeed . Every AI is now hampered by war exception Justinian.

Spoiler Prebuilding :

There's no point in having HAs until I have a lot of HAs. My capital is running ahead of the other cities so it prebuilds spy/chariot/HA and even goes for a stable. I want my HAs to have 2 promos and I can't cover them all with a GG. I've been saving my rainyday archer for so long he's started to decay (Don't worry, I swap into appropriate tiles after).

 

[drewisfat]

Spoiler T91-115 :

Spoiler Math :

We're second to currency and I get amazing trade value out of it.

Spoiler Priesthood :

Nice bit of gold

Spoiler Monarchy :

After this I rush Feudalism for longbows and vassalage. Monty's on MC, so I should have time.

Spoiler GG#2 :

HA rush against a psycho is dubious because there's fewer archers and more AGG spearmen. Why do I roll with it?
When I have PRO I think HAs, when AGG I think Axepult. How to decide when I've got both? I do also have elepult, which is better than axepult. However, Samurai do not work well from a timing standpoint with elepult, and they don't play well with the siege either.
The reason I think HAs when PRO is partly because archery is a prerequisite. Mostly though, it has to do with the HA gameplan. They're really good at rushing down weak cities, but they have 0 defense ability. It makes sense to me to combo them with the unit that's pure defense ability. One way to fight is to attack the nearest city, move in archers to defend, wait until he suicides into archers, take the next city, rinse and repeat. You're always kinda attacking into a halfstack at his nearest city though, and you rarely get the full defensive bonuses you did when defending your own turf. Against a psycho like Monty it's prohibitively slow and expensive. Alternatively, and since we're already at war, when his stack attacks our city we can race our HAs to the back and gobble up a few unprotected cities before he knows what hit him. The problem is once the AI loses cities, it'll start sending troops in that direction instead of into our base. Generally the plan is to peace out at that point, hoping that the first phase of the war between accumulating warscore and slowing their techs down means we can peace out for less than a city, if not for downright profit. Then we just redeclare after the treaty's up.
Unfortunately here I've waited til the stupidly late t105 to attack. There's little chance of a second HA war. I do have a resource in abundance that I don't usually have this early: exp. The tech situation isn't bad either due to some great early tech trades. I can see what Monty's teching and he's behind me. So the plan is to race to Feudalism and put another gg on the superarcher, get 2 free upgrades to longbow, and give them both Morale. Now they can keep up with the HAs and defend the counterattack so our HAs don't just bleed out to spears. Supermedics cannot revive the dead.
Here we use the GG to also bring 8 HAs to their 2nd promo.

Spoiler Master Plan :

Monty moves his stack to Satsuma where my 3rd superarcher is waiting. He's nearly finished construction, so his attacks will soon be more deadly but his defenses weaker. I've got a solid stack of HAs almost all with 2 promos, 2 uber longbows, and an M-I chariot. It's finally time to move out. The absolutely necessary goal is Tenochtitlan for TGW to sling me forward economically. After that, I want as much as I can get. Buddhism's holy city is Teotihuacan.
I lost my 3rd superarcher defending Satsuma, which is sad and unexpected, but the city holds.
Shaka finishes construction, so after his 2-mover stack suicides I make 120g on a peace treaty. No more complications while I go all out on Monty.

Spoiler Moment of Truth :

The plan works, I catch Monty completely spearless in the back. Promotions are nice. I get great dice rolls taking Teotihuacan, so I greedily rush down Texcoco as well which had foolishly rushed a catapult for defense. This is it though, the real test is the counterattack. All my other units are dead or healing up north. Monty's stack juked me out a bit and I feared an attack on Teotihuacan the turn prior, so only the top archer has any fortify. It's not a huge stack, but it would be absolutely deadly against just HAs. I expect some losses here, but this is the GGs time to shine. All I really need is for the city to hold to keep winning chances alive with TGW.

Spoiler ... :

Why was I even concerned? I've got magical first strike luck on my side. He's working on Feudalism now so I keep up the aggression.

Spoiler Lady Luck Leaves :

South of Tenochtitlan Monty has moved his spare defenses out of the city to guard a worker. I pounced on them and then the city. My luck finally gives out and I take very heavy losses in the multi-turn battle for Tlatelolco. My stack of reinforcements comes in from my core and is able to overwhelm Tlatelolco despite all the spears. Turns out he has even more spears on the hill next to it though. I franticly throw everything I have from the original army stuck on the left side at them and succeed in knocking out all but one half health spearman. Against a full health shock HA I figure it should be fine. But the spearman promotes, retakes the city and in pops an archer . Meanwhile Monty all of a sudden has horses from expanding into nonsenseland, and one of them threatens to flank the back cities, which I've left completely unprotected. HAs are immune to first strikes, so I have to sacrifice hurt HAs into him until Artemisia can finish the job with good odds. But with my longbow going back left, this means after I take Tlatelolco again, I don't have archers defending. Monty empties his last proper city into it and kills off several more weak HAs.

 

[drewisfat]

Spoiler T115-150 :

Spoiler Tlaxcala :

Sury DoWed Monty, forcing me to attack this turn. Regardless of the cost, HAs' window of usefulness is over so I'm happy to try. I win and peace out with MC leaving Monty with 2 corner cities in a hopeless war against Sury.

Spoiler Tenochtitlan :

I've finished Philosophy, entered pacifism and rushed a missionary over to Tenochtitlan, which whipped out a courthouse to run a spy at size 3. I've said many times how I consider TGW absolutely broken because gspies are broken. They just don't play well with winning Liberalism. You know what else doesn't play well with Liberalism? Tokugawa. He leaves such things to the ivory tower folk.

Spoiler Production Shift :

Especially since we lost ivory....
I begin building for the next phase. I just save up gold, because I'm planning to steal my way to Samurai. A small fortune will ensure I can make war bribes.

Spoiler Prebuilding :

I get samurai as ready as I can while I wait for the gspy to finish, 2 tile being intentional.

Spoiler CS :

I had a few spies get discovered, but still able to get this off in time. I can't pillage the horse at the moment, but Justinian has still not gotten guilds yet, instead going for Mil. Tradition

Spoiler GG#3 :

CR-III is an awesome promotion, especially with gunpowder coming out any turn now. So I use my third GG to bring four samurai to CR-III. Samurai are a crazy good unit with 2.5 first strikes and AGG. They're so good in fact, it's actually inefficient -wise to throw siege away to start off the battle with collateral. Fortunately, since I infiltrated Justinian already I can just use spy revolts in lieu of siege.
I also steal Nationalism off Justin and use it to throw Sury at Zara again. Then I drag Shaka into war on Friendly Byzantium

Spoiler Adrianople :

I cut through Adrianople like a hot knife through butter, not a single loss. CR-III means the fighting starts at 85%+ and only gets better.

Spoiler GG#4 :

Only now, with my 4th GG, do I finally get a supermedic, and look she's able to reach there quickly with no loss in potential heal time. I had managed to get the chariot to 8xp so I can also bring a fresh samurai to CR-III. I think one GG misplay people make is making supermedics too early, instead of focusing on bringing a lot of combat promotions to the fight early, while unit counts are still low.

Spoiler The Fall of Constantinople :

Adrianople and Constantinople have a dozen wonders between the two of them and the game has become easy.

 

[sampsa]

The expectations were high, but OMFG

edit: saves plz?

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Edit: answered.

 

[sampsa]

How did you obtain a peace treaty with Shaka? We can defend with archers when there are only melee units but once they get catapults it's gg.

It is mentioned there. Once Shaka made it to construction, peace for 120g. I'm assuming the human player is the one receiving due to war success.

 

[krikav]

Spy revolts and CR3 samurai.

 

[soundjata]

Warmongers

Spoiler :

Shaka to Monty :
"Hey buddy sup with this game?"
- Deity pangea full of warmongers
- Chill game then. Who's the player ?
- Drew Run away!

 

[Gwaja]

I didn't click on Drew's last few spoilers, but judging by the reaction, I reckon he is having some success, which is not a surprise given his previous track record. ^_^ I mean.. he DID ask me for a tough map, and this time, it is not a "doctored" one, so I think it is much more fair. ^_^ Though something about dogpile tells me Mr. Featherhead isn't the only problem.

@krikav: I really liked what you did there. Pretty slick!

 

[Gwaja]

@drewisfat Let me know if you are interested in.... Prepare to Die #2. ^_^

You, Jata, and Fippy are itching for it... I just know it. ^_^

 

[soundjata]

@Gwaja "economy exercise" was my best
No interaction with barbs or AIs.
No Wonder.
No Randomness.
Pure torture for the mind

 

[Gwaja]

@BornInCantaloup

You are right. After your post, I also went back and re-read this entire thread. I personally have never been shy about reloading and trying again for different results. I suppose for the purpose of BOTM it may not be suitable, but Civ 4 has always been a learning experience for me. It would be awesome to have the input of all those past participating players once again after all these years though.

I almost never worker steal. It isn't due to any personal beliefs that such method may be considered cheesy. I just never liked doing it, to be honest. And I would be really ticked off if an AI did the same thing to me.. that would be truly unfair anyway.

Early DoW, in any situation, is definitely not a desired situation. I guess some people weren't okay with the fact that such undesired event could be due to pure luck and randomness. But then, the beauty of these Civ games is that even with the same map and start, everyone's results may play out differently. I felt bad for GKey, like you said, that he literally had to apologize for not being DoWed. Same thing happened when Lain attempted my Prepare to Die "doctored" map. Some comments on YouTube made it seem as though he was simply lucky for not being DoWed by Shaka. Just as Dirk went out of his way to ensure an early DoW, I also admit that I pretty much did the same thing. Luck or not though, Lain's play was masterful.

As for the 3 important questions: I would love to be someone that would only think the Question #2. At that point, it isn't about just winning any more. Winning sorta becomes a form of art at that point. Unfortunately, I am still nowhere near that.

@soundjata

That "economy exercise"... even I forgot about it until you mentioned it just now. The idea behind it was interesting, but I ponder if there have been more improved equivalent version of maps done by other players over the years. I would love to attempt those if they exist.

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I've been playing this one particular map the past few days, and I will share. Not anywhere near approaching the concept of "Prepare to DIE" though. ^_^