Dirk's deity game pt II

[DMOC]

@Dirk & DMOC

My consideration of the 2nd city is good site > blocking value since I'm rather being small but backward. The wine site is also an excellent site for worker/settler pumping. There's no immediate good site south and it looks like jungles there so can be delayed somehow.

Yes I agree. However if he finds irrigated corn along with 4,5 grassland tiles, he better send a settler down south first. COnclusion: more exploration is needed

 

[Dirk1302]

@duckweed,In one of your warmonger games i was forced to be rather small, 5 cities iirc until ~1100 AD. It definitely made me nervous though. I like to expand as much as possible meaning as long as it's save to do so, you can't expand towards ais like Montys and Shakas unpunished unless diplo is firmly in place. Organized trait together with relatively peaceful neighbours and the chance to find more and better land in the south would normally point me to expanding in that direction before going for the wine spot. Mind you the wine spot is only very good when we have col and only if we're prepared to go caste. If not it's still good for whipping/globe but expanding first to the south, then setting up that city won't be too late in that case.

Actually i can't see how this city would be that great as a second city, we can only whip there once it's set up, running 2 scientists ruins one of the food resources immed as happy cap is 4 atm. Even if i settle on the wine (have kossin's dotmap in the back of my head as well, need to scout in the upper north west) there's no hurry to do so now. City's only really good early midgame with happy cap lifted.It either needs caste system or a lot of buildings like forge/market maybe temples to run specs. We don't have stone yet so rather likely no Mids. This doesn't make the super city to be so attractive short term.

@Aoxomoxoa, Can you please put comments like this in another thread. It doesn't spoil that much but it mildly suggests SB is closer than Liz , i don't want to know about these things.As i said before i don't like spoilers and certainly not comments beyond the point i've played sofar.If you want to start another thread to shadow the game that's fine with me. Even better play along but no further than i've played and use spoilers, in this case more to separate the shadow from the main game than for anything else, i do encourage shadows posted this way.

It's not a challenge, it's a walkthrough meant to be played and discussed like ALC's and succession games are. So there's no catching up here, i'll intentionally take a while in order to provoke as much discussion also about details as is possible. I've posted and played lots of challenges in the past. Next time i may put up a challenge again.

 

[Dirk1302]

Since there wasn't so much to discuss from the last save, agreement about further scouting obviously and mining->bw i played some more turns. As i suggested i could calculate the best order to get these resources up. I'm 99% sure without calculation that JammerUno's sequence is best (cow->rice->move and 1 turn road->horse) so i went that way. if it was not best i'd like to hear why and i can also put up an explanation/calculation as to why it's best imo if anyone's interested. I switched capital to barracks. I've learned to distrust warriors, i really like to have better units with promos, now if barracks was 60 H i might have build some warriors instead but a 30 H barrack must be better than 2 feeble warriors with chariots coming online soon. No choice but building a warrior next, i 'll need one anyway to keep the capital happy.

Scouted further to the southeast, beat a hasty retreat here. Don't want to lose my only explorer now if i can avoid it.



As you can see Liz has founded hinduism which is great news again, we'll probably live in peace on our turf and if not i can choose sides and will not be the victim soon.I'm happy with that since there seems to be a lot of great land to settle peacefully in the south. Still no ai border in sight, this is bound to change soon i think.



I really would like to grab the right X, it is obviously a great city once i get IW. If i can get both X's i'll have blocked of a very nice chunk of land, it'll be hard to touch me if i can achieve cities there. I'm interested to see what you think, i think the first 2 cities should be placed there, see about economy later. For a full block i probably need to settle the 2 fp site too, deity ais are very aggressive in settling in between your cities if you leave holes.

Stopped here since some decisions need to be made. We're 2 turns from chariots and i'll build 1 or 2 as soon as i can. Slavery is some way off and isn't desirable with this capital in the first place. Growing the capital isn't interesting as well since we'll work unimproved tiles for now so i think we need to switch to a settler now. I think we should switch back once horse is online. We'll certainly be hit hard by barbs seeing the lay of the land so chariot->chariot->back to settler once we have horses online looks best.We could even build another warrior now instead of settler but that would be a bit fainthearted imo. There's a choice for the next worker move, 1w for farm but probably better 2N 1w fora mine. Getting up that mine will take 8 turns with movement from here, by that time the city should be at size 4. I think 2 turns settler then chariot->chariot->revert to settler sees us hitting size 4 at the right moment.

One thing i actually forgot to mention in the last post, how do we continue with espionage. In faster games i always forget before courthouses but here i actually remembered to focus on SB. But is that best? SB uses espionage a lot himself so maybe i should switch to Liz?

Edit: Another thing not discussed is wonders. Without a commerce resource and no building resources in sight i don't think we're in a position to build any. I fleetingly thought of oracle to get a religion on our conti but now we know Liz has founded hindu it isn't necessary anymore and frankly i didn't know how it could have been achieved without a fair bit of luck in the first place.

 

[kossin]

Depending on whether SB and Liz are close, would a second worker be any good before the settler? It would lessen the commerce hit since you could road ahead.

Liz is usually the best techer so Esp towards her might be more helpful. Then again, if you plan to take some SB cities in the future, it would be helpful to revolt 1 or 2 of his. If you go for a settler, then maybe start roading straight away?

 

[DMOC]

Settler (now) - Switch to a chariot once pasture completes - Complete 1 chariot then go back to settler - Then Settler again unless barb situation deems it necessary for an extra chariot.

You can move the warrior back up north to keep fogbusting. That and having 1 chariot guard a settler should be enough to deter the barbarian threat.

 

[whats a navy]

Explore more to find out where borders are to determine if you want to get the third city in the jungle. Obviously if the AI is more farther away then go for settling the wine or a closer site so you don't drag the economy down. Of course I wouldn't bet a lot on having the borders a far ways away from this point. Maybe send something up north to look into that land. (penninsula, isthmus?) I see some desert so it can't be up north too much.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Nobody has pointed out that there is another AI in contact with at least sitting bull yet? You don't get EP leads on deity AIs (especially not the water poison whore) arbitrarily.

 

[Dirk1302]

^You're right, ratio SB/Me = 67/72 and his ratio to Liz = 2/0. Also Liz 0/2 with Bull and 0/0 with me.So they both have spypoints on someone else as well. Is there any info on whom ais tend to set their spy points? I've heard once they tend to set them on the ais/players they like least but that wasn't confirmed there.

@DMOC, chariot->settler->settler seems a bit risky. Looking again i think we won't get showered with barbs not much room for them to spawn in the north (but maybe some in north west).If i'm going with the chariot to the south i'll have a lone warrior in the capital while building a settler, i would probably lose benefit of the mine as well since i'm still at size 3 at that time, i would have to check that.Chariot->settler->chariot might be possible but doesn't get us 2 size 4 either, need to play until we have the first chariot to make a decision here i think.

@what's a navy, i'm also curious about the northwest, maybe send the warrior there, it's a bit risky though. Would look very foolish if i lost him somewhere there also since it's not likely that knoledge about northwest would have an impact on current decisions.

@kossin, second worker could be best as a road to the south would help in more than one respect. But 'm a bit paranoid about losing city sites if i delay the settler(s) too long.

 

[bestsss]

@Dirk
there it is:

for (int iTeam = 0; iTeam < MAX_CIV_TEAMS; ++iTeam)
{
	CvTeam& kLoopTeam = GET_TEAM((TeamTypes)iTeam);
	if (kLoopTeam.isAlive() && iTeam != getTeam() && !kLoopTeam.isVassal(getTeam()) && !GET_TEAM(getTeam()).isVassal((TeamTypes)iTeam))
	{
		int iTarget = (kLoopTeam.getEspionagePointsAgainstTeam(getTeam()) - GET_TEAM(getTeam()).getEspionagePointsAgainstTeam((TeamTypes)iTeam)) / 8;

		iTarget -= GET_TEAM(getTeam()).AI_getAttitudeVal((TeamTypes)iTeam);

		if (iTarget > 0)
		{
			iEspionageTargetRate += iTarget;
			changeEspionageSpendingWeightAgainstTeam((TeamTypes)iTeam, iTarget);
		}
	}
}

The change function adds the value to the current weight.
---
So first AI evaluates the current spending and tries to keep the weight on a par w/ the rest of the players modified by the attitude. In the beginning it's obviously starts w/ attitude mostly.
Thus you may conclude it's some AI w/ 'different' peace weight.

 

[Kid R]

Nice came so far Dirk - thanks for the detailed comments about your decisions. Just looking at the map revealed so far I really like the way you scouted. I can never resist going right out and along the coast looking for seafood but you haven't done that. I think I understand why from one of the early comments you made. Blocking cities block much more land if they're inland so you're looking to reveal inland land and settle that first right?

 

[Dirk1302]

Indeed i'm probably not going to settle my first cities near my capital on this map so i'm not supremely interested in coast near my capital right now. I like to see where the ais borders are so i know where to settle early and how many early settlers are needed. The gems are very good news, i might scramble directly to IW after bw, the 2 gems will pay for the expansion once i get there. There are mountains in the southwest and i think that the ais are west of these mountains and or even more to the south.

Thx for the info bestsss.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

I missed this game... subscribed!

 

[Kid R]

i'm not supremely interested in coast near my capital right now.

Must get myself out of "great lighthouse" mindset where the first thought is for coastal cities. Land is power. Sea is NOT power!

 

[Dirk1302]

^Well GLH is very powerful and would be great on this map too. However if your capital is not coastal it's extremely difficult to get it on deity, here we are also not industrious and we don't have a commerce resource to speed up sailing. So i won't go for it i think.

Good to see you Ras .

 

[babybluepants]

EDIT: deleted shadow spoiler.

@Dirk,

I would definitely rush a few settlers here. How many warriors do you have now? If it's only two, I'd try to squeeze in a chariot. There is some fog on all sides.

I'm concerned that a lot of the potential city sites look really production-poor, especially early on. Babylon will need to do most everything for a while.

BTW, I really need to start paying attention to espionage in my games.

 

[JammerUno]

@ babybluepants: please put shadows in another thread, like Dirk said, the setup of this game is for a slowplayed game with lots of discussion, knowing things beforehand interferes with the process.

@ Dirk: both x's look like prime sites, and both can't work any decent tiles before IW. The eastern site makes BW -> IW worthwile in my book. If you can only claim one of those two sites, the gems are the obvious choice, a city N-NW of the bananas would be a good fallback location for a blocking city if you can't claim the dye.

 

[babybluepants]

Sorry. I thought shadows that stay with the pace of the game were ok with Dirk. I don't really need to post it, I guess... Removed.

 

[Dirk1302]

I definitely need 1 chariot, probably 2. I think whipping will help with the production issues on this map. So Han is on the map, stopped reading your spoiler there. I'll probably meet him soon anyway. No harm done, we already knew there is at least a fourth ai present from TMIT's espionage deduction and you were not to know . I'll finish reading your spoiler once i've met Han.

@All (future) shadowers, from now on apart from the shadow date also put in some comments above if there's clearly something in the spoiler that i haven't seen yet. I mean lots of land i haven't seen or an ai i haven't met, iron on the map if i don't have iw yet is also a good example. I'll update the intro to that effect.

Edit:
@JammerUno, shadows are welcome as i think they make the game more interesting as long as they're not further than the point i've played and accompanied by the comments i mentioned above. This can make things a bit more complicated but i like comparision between different approaches as long as it doesn't give me insight in things i am not to know at that point. If it turns out later that this format really doesn't work i'll mention it.

 

[Artichoker]

As you can see Liz has founded hinduism which is great news again, we'll probably live in peace on our turf and if not i can choose sides and will not be the victim soon.I'm happy with that since there seems to be a lot of great land to settle peacefully in the south. Still no ai border in sight, this is bound to change soon i think.

But there are countless Barbarians lurking in the shadows...

I think the priority now is to prevent Barbarian cities from appearing where you don't want them to. Definitely try to occupy the center.

 

[Duckweed]

@Dirk

For me it's clear that the wine site as 2nd city is a better choice, all southern spots in sight are garbage before IW. However it is hard to convince you something that against your play style. I might shadow play the opening part for the comparison some day.