[BNW] Enjoyable Deity Games

[Grendeldef]

While waiting for the next CDG I started the Korea game with lazy TD in mind to make something compareable with Genghis but I got sidetracked as usual.

WiP

Spoiler Early game :

T9 DoWed Genghis for a worker and Ganja-man few turns later for the same reason. Got a 2nd worker from Genghis as well but was forced for a white peace not to lose it & a Spearman but then I got a proper barbarian invasion. 4 nearby camps and I thought the Raging Barbs was on and I had to get the 2nd Scout back to defend, buy an Archer asap and build only Archers for a while. Very odd and equally cool. I also made a quick peace with Indonesia in hope of TRs but that was way too optimistic.

After initial scouting and the FoY I disbanded the idea of efficiency and expanded to 6 cities before NC which apparently seriously pissed off the neighbours so Genghis broke our DoF and DoWed on T69 with carpet of unit and the support of Ganja-man who's army luckily was smaller and I didn't even have CBs yet. Bloody awesome.

Without much of a preparation I had to buy Walls and a Spearman to keep the city closest Genghis while the Indonesian front was fairly quiet after pillaging his Iron. Sadly I had Archer and Scout tied for 30+ turns to block Chinese settlement at the same time. The wars themselves weren't going anywhere and I made peace as soon as the horizon was filled with Pikes around T90.
Happiness is under control but money is a real issue.

 

[Nizef]

While waiting for the next CDG I started the Korea game with lazy TD in mind to make something compareable with Genghis but I got sidetracked as usual.

Thank you for trying it out! And at least for me 6 city NC is not an every day event. Wow!

 

[raider980]

I'm about to start the Shoshone game. I'm still playing the Korea game but its near the endgame and a lot of next turning.

Wow, what a start; never played with really advanced setup so had to download the mod. SiP will get you next to a 3-food Flood Plains Wheat.

But I'm tempted to move the settler to the Gold next to the mountain. Can still get DF from there but fat chance on Deity so that shouldn't factor in, and you have a good Gold and Silver pantheon too. I think I'll do it.

 

[beetle]

Wow, what a start; never played with really advanced setup so had to download the mod. SiP will get you next to a 3-food Flood Plains Wheat.

But I'm tempted to move the settler to the Gold next to the mountain. Can still get DF from there but fat chance on Deity so that shouldn't factor in, and you have a good Gold and Silver pantheon too. I think I'll do it.

I am also unfamiliar with the RAS mod. From the name, I assumed it called for SIP, but that was a mistake I think. Reload to abuse map knowledge!

 

[Nizef]

I am also unfamiliar with the RAS mod. From the name, I assumed it called for SIP, but that was a mistake I think. Reload to abuse map knowledge!

I use RAS mostly for two things: 1. to make the starting location better and/or add a NW in the vicinity and 2. deselect some opponents (I want my opponents to be random but there are still some of them that I don´t want to appear in a certain setup). Once or twice I have tried something very different (like copying Marbozir´s setup from his Netherlands game including added fallout, randomly distributed over the map).

 

[raider980]

I am also unfamiliar with the RAS mod. From the name, I assumed it called for SIP, but that was a mistake I think. Reload to abuse map knowledge!

Spoiler Map knowledge and first settle :

Yea, I almost restarted too after seeing my plan of moving to the Gold next to the mountain was not the right move. But I had gotten DF from a ruin so I didn't want to take the chance of not getting it next time. It turned out to be ok though since there are quite a few nice city spots and I still got Uluru with a later city.

I think the ideal move was to move to the south and settle on the coast (I don't have the map right now but I think there's a Gold hill on the coast). And then settle another city on the Gold hill to the north of the mountain. But there is a lot of plain desert to the south if I remember correctly so this might not have been better. I'll be interested to see what others did.

Edit.

deselect some opponents (I want my opponents to be random but there are still some of them that I don´t want to appear in a certain setup).

Spoiler Opponents :

You did that and Shaka is still in there! My heart sank a little when his greeting page popped up on my screen. I was like, "crap, I was doing pretty well too". At least he's not right next door... until he took out Venice, doh.

 

[Nizef]

Spoiler Opponents :

You did that and Shaka is still in there! My heart sank a little when his greeting page popped up on my screen. I was like, "crap, I was doing pretty well too". At least he's not right next door... until he took out Venice, doh.

In my game he didn´t do that well. Even with his UU he was on four cities (including Venice) and struggling against the united front of Polynesia and Babylon. But he was still the reason for me stating that there is a snake in every paradise. Heh. But seriously I had much more trouble with the Babs.

 

[Nizef]

Spoiler About opponents :

Shaka is mostly a threat midgame in my experience. Late in the game he can sometimes fall far behind. But I usually quit games where he is my closest neighbour. Keeping him busy is taking away much of the limited resources and thus some of the fun of the game. When I use RAS I usually disable Monty (he somehow tends to be the closest neighbour every f^^ing time) or Attila and sometimes AIs like Bismarck (tends to do well), Maria Theresa (just look at GotM175) or Shaka. And Pocatello is not some one you want close either: Just the other day I had a nice looking start with Pedro (Salt and Marble) only for Pocatello to settling his second city on t8 so close that he took all my valuable tiles in the second ring.

 

[Grendeldef]

And at least for me 6 city NC is not an every day event. Wow!

It isn't for much of anyone due to the built-in map scripts but I'm well beyond the point where style is more important than speed of VC and generally more interested in what I can get away with than doing things (even close to) optimally.

The Game itself: T248 TD without probs after the initial Mongolian attack when I was in danger of losing a city.

Some money issues throughout the mid-game but happiness was decent even without help from religion.

Spoiler :

T89 Liberty GS planted, T92 bribed Ethiopia vs China which was the only war I paid for as even this was next to impossible as eveyone but Ganja-man & Genghis had DoFs with everyone else including me - stupid hugfest, T104 NC, T111 opened Commerce for a change as I in short of money and the road network was long & becoming longer, T114 Oracle, T116 Education, T117 Pyramids and still not a single CSs wanted it, T121 Renaissance by Byz ans she was 6 techs ahead of Haile who was the true powerhouse,

T126 Jakarta and the others started to turn against me even though I left with Indonesia & Mongolia with one city, T145 DoWed China and all my XBows took range before logistics, T153 Industrial, T157 FP for happiness, T158 denounced by all, T169 Order as I had to hard build all the factories and obviously took wrong perks by muscle memory as usually at this point happiness is what is needed the most, I also DoWed Venice as he was about to take Singapore, T172 DoWed by Siam & Byz and Ethiopia a turn later so I was in war with everyone.

Haile removed China from the map soon after that and I Genghis on T184, T192 Dynamite which helped against Haile as I think I've won dom games with less units in total than he had Mehars and those with Cover 2 aren't exactly fast to kill and he was behing the GW, T199 peace with Byz which resolved my monetary problems, T203 rip Indonesia, T206, Brandenburg, T207 PT, T213 Flight which helped with Haile but the rest were out of reach, T219 WF win & Addis Abeba, T236 rip Siam, T240 rip Haile & FoW Theo, T242 Neuschwans, T244 Kremlin, rip Venice & T248 Constantinople. Theo had GWBs but I managed to pillage her oil fields so didn't even lose any Arties.

Policywise I was all over the map basically hunting for money & happiness and on the other hand avoiding deep Rationalism to keep the tech pace slower - with Korea it's ridiculous anyway and apart from the Liberty one all GSs were left unharmed and I think I had 7 in the end, I also had a GE and 3 GAs while all GWs were used at some point.
Apart from the 6 own cities I annexed 2 Chinese ones, razed quite a few as I only kept one puppet on top of capitals. The war part could've been much faster had I used more than one GG bomb but I wanted to keep on positive happiness the whole time so the number of cities burning was limited to three any given time. Few more CS allies would've been useful but I think I found 4 of them when I was DoWed and I didn't have money to buy them apart from Milan just before the end to keep Theo occupied for a moment.

After the CDG 38 it seemed nice to do another TD but the map is too good to see the real problems with a TD even with few self-set handicaps. This was obviously the case with the CDG 38 as well.

Spoiler pics :

 

[raider980]

Wow, total domination with Korea. I couldn't imagine doing it without those awesome Keshiks. I also need to start taking notes to compare the timing of my advances, etc.

I actually won my game too. T331 Science Victory. It was a fun game and my second legit Deity win - both with Korea.

Spoiler T331 SV :

After I peaced out with Mongolia around T210, he never attacked me again. Might have had something to do with China hitting him hard from the east (a war I bribed Wu into). Some interesting or fun highlights:

• I was 6th to ideologies and took Order despite it not being the best one for Korea and SV. Both Theo and Halle had taken Freedom which I was going to take at first. But I went with Order because both Indonesia and China had taken Order and they were the nearest neighbors so I didn't want them attacking me. It worked pretty well; and eventually Genghis even took Order.
• At some point my two crucial CS allies, Antwerp and Singapore started fighting each other. I have no idea why because I was allies with them the whole time. But I couldn't afford to lose either one and I needed them to not kill each others units, so I had to put my units in between their cities.
• Late in the game, while Antwerp and Singapore were still fighting, Genghis attacked them both in force. Singapore was almost taken, I was barely able to save it by totally surrounding it with my own units so Genghis couldn't get a melee unit in there.
• I messed up toward the end by mistiming some things and it took about 15 turns longer than it should have. I didn't bulb my scientists at the right time and ended up with 4 left after I had gotten all the spaceship techs. And I also didn't start Apollo program or spaceship factories early enough so I was sitting there waiting for them to finish after I already had the spaceship techs.

Spoiler Genghis attacks CS allies :

Spoiler The Korean spaceship blasts off :

 

[Nizef]

I actually won my game too. T331 Science Victory. It was a fun game and my second legit Deity win - both with Korea.

Congratulations! This was indeed the idea with the map - to be "easy for Deity" but still legit Deity. I mean, in the context and spirit of the first post in this thread.

 

[Grendeldef]

Wow, total domination with Korea. I couldn't imagine doing it without those awesome Keshiks.

Korea is a fine civ for TD which doesn't necessarily need a front loaded approach - one can turn a decent sci game into a TD. While happiness is usually the problem Korea can keep up with tech pace by running gazillion specialist and that will also help with money issues. Korea will keep up with much smaller population and Hwachas are so good that by the time of Arties those usually are well promoted. For a generic civ SB/XCom combo can resolve any problems in the late game in relatively short period of time. TD itself is an interesting concept dealing with happiness and money and few practises will help or make it a lot more difficult depending on whether one chooses to use them or not.

1) Trade & DoW - this is a something that can break a game hence it was originally banned in the challenges we played
2) pillage & repair - another moronic concept but would be extremely helpful even if it wouldn't be used for healing the tanks but just as money making scheme

Both have been in the game for ages so it's a fair assumption that they're working as intended, I just disagree with the developers but at least they gave me the option for ignoring them.

I also need to start taking notes to compare the timing of my advances, etc.

I keep track just with Notepad as I usually multitask while playing ie I do something else and then roll on a turn or few and come back half an hour later so I don't necessarily even remember what I was doing 10 turns earlier nevermind 2 days ago on turn 57. Makes life so much easier besides, as always comparing stuff is far more interesting than remembering out that I won at some point.

 

[Nizef]

It isn't for much of anyone due to the built-in map scripts but I'm well beyond the point where style is more important than speed of VC and generally more interested in what I can get away with than doing things (even close to) optimally.

After the CDG 38 it seemed nice to do another TD but the map is too good to see the real problems with a TD even with few self-set handicaps. This was obviously the case with the CDG 38 as well.

You are just so unbelievably skilled! Wow! Maybe you would need an isolated start on a fractal map, where your continent is only ice and a few tundra tiles, no luxuries and without any CS? Heh.

 

[Grendeldef]

Hardly, I'm just comfortable enough with the game so I can usually slack my way through a game any way I like instead of trying to make consecutive ad hoc solutions to survive but then there're the truly good players shaving every possible turn from the VC. I get distracted for something cool way too often to belong to that category but it tells something about the game that it can be played in several ways which are somewhat contradictory to each other.
I've played this way since Civ 2 but partly the blame/credit belongs to MadDjinn & his early Let's Plays - awesome entertainment but hardly a showcase of efficiency. Too bad he quit & even removed the videos from YT.

-----
A minor elaboration in regards to MadDjinn. I wasn't implying that he was lacking skill as a player - quite the opposite - he was excellent but his relaxed play style occasionally resulted unnecessarily losing units, odd scouting etc but it never seemed to bother him nor change the general outcome. Sadly missed as a YTuber.

 

[raider980]

The Shoshone game is going pretty well so far. Its been awhile since I played them and I'd forgotten how nice it is to start with the expanded territory.

Spoiler up to T129 :

I ended up moving to the Gold next to the Mountain to the north and settling there. After I settled I saw the Gold on the other side of the mountain with a coastal location and two tiles from Uluru; darn, that would have been a sweet spot for a city.

I only got 4 ruins from my Pathfinder, and a Venetian scout stole one right before I got to it. I took Culture, Population, Faith - got DF, and a unit upgrade.

Policies were: Opened Tradition (I almost always do this now, I have read its not optimal but I seem to do better when I take this route). Then went full Liberty and planted the GS for an academy.

I stole one worker from a CS and didn't have enough workers all game so far; so much land with Shoshone. And I forgot to build roads; its T129 and I'm just now building a road, doh.

Shaka asked me to go to war with him against Venice early and I said, sure why not. Whatever you want Shaka, just don't attack me. Then later Polynesia asked me to go to war against Shaka. I saw a bunch of Polynesian troops heading my way so I said yes. I figured better to 2v1 Shaka than wait for him to attack me alone. I had grand delusions of taking out the Zulu early - not happening. I was within range of Venice (which he had just taken) but saw an Impi so I peaced out.

Now, at T129 I see four Impis plus four other units heading for my new size 2 city with 14 defense. Well darn, there goes the game I think. I tried to bribe Shaka to attack Babylon; whew, he accepted for pretty cheap. Then on a lark I tried to bribe him to attack Austria and to my surprise he accepted that too, for even cheaper. I stopped there, so hopefully Shaka turns around and doesn't attack me at all!

Spoiler Map T129 :

 

[Nizef]

The Shoshone game is going pretty well so far. Its been awhile since I played them and I'd forgotten how nice it is to start with the expanded territory.

Spoiler up to T129 :

I ended up moving to the Gold next to the Mountain to the north and settling there. After I settled I saw the Gold on the other side of the mountain with a coastal location and two tiles from Uluru; darn, that would have been a sweet spot for a city.

I only got 4 ruins from my Pathfinder, and a Venetian scout stole one right before I got to it. I took Culture, Population, Faith - got DF, and a unit upgrade.

Policies were: Opened Tradition (I almost always do this now, I have read its not optimal but I seem to do better when I take this route). Then went full Liberty and planted the GS for an academy.

I stole one worker from a CS and didn't have enough workers all game so far; so much land with Shoshone. And I forgot to build roads; its T129 and I'm just now building a road, doh.

Shaka asked me to go to war with him against Venice early and I said, sure why not. Whatever you want Shaka, just don't attack me. Then later Polynesia asked me to go to war against Shaka. I saw a bunch of Polynesian troops heading my way so I said yes. I figured better to 2v1 Shaka than wait for him to attack me alone. I had grand delusions of taking out the Zulu early - not happening. I was within range of Venice (which he had just taken) but saw an Impi so I peaced out.

Now, at T129 I see four Impis plus four other units heading for my new size 2 city with 14 defense. Well darn, there goes the game I think. I tried to bribe Shaka to attack Babylon; whew, he accepted for pretty cheap. Then on a lark I tried to bribe him to attack Austria and to my surprise he accepted that too, for even cheaper. I stopped there, so hopefully Shaka turns around and doesn't attack me at all!

Spoiler Map T129 :

View attachment 519111

How far before you reach machinery? That is a problem of mine (with six cities), that I can´t grow them fast enough to be competitive in science. There are better players who can comment on the number of workers, but with all that land you will probably need about 10! I remember that I had 7-8 and that was not enough. Defending against Impis will require XBs. But at least Shaka has other things on his mind. For now. Forts outside Washakie might also be helpful. In my game I actually built 3-4 forts between Washakie and Agaidika for melee units and a road directly behind for the XBs. Turned out I didn´t need them at all because Shaka was so weak in my game.

But, is it not nice to have all that room to expand? At least I enjoyed it.

 

[raider980]

How far before you reach machinery? That is a problem of mine (with six cities), that I can´t grow them fast enough to be competitive in science. There are better players who can comment on the number of workers, but with all that land you will probably need about 10! I remember that I had 7-8 and that was not enough. Defending against Impis will require XBs. But at least Shaka has other things on his mind. For now. Forts outside Washakie might also be helpful. In my game I actually built 3-4 forts between Washakie and Agaidika for melee units and a road directly behind for the XBs. Turned out I didn´t need them at all because Shaka was so weak in my game.

But, is it not nice to have all that room to expand? At least I enjoyed it.

Actually I already have XB. I just haven't upgraded my CB yet. Shaka had just asked me for all these trades so I didn't think he would attack quite so soon. I should've known. I'm still in the middle of this turn so will upgrade them now.

That's a good idea about the forts. I have been building more forts in my games lately. I've got a few pikemen on the way too.

And yes, it is awesome to have all that room to expand. That's one of my biggest gripes about Civ 5, expansion is punished too much and everything is so cramped. I come from Civ 2 and when I first started 5 and people were talking about playing tall with 4 cities the whole game I was like, what?, that ain't no civilization. 4 cities is just the ancient world.

 

[beetle]

I think the ideal move was to move to the south and settle on the coast…

Nah, N to the coastal gold hill on the mountain river! T3 to settle, T5 pantheon.

 

[raider980]

Oh yea, I keep forgetting the UA, you would get Uluru in range immediately. What pantheon did you pick though? There's no desert up there right, so I assume the Gold and Silver one, which is fantastic on this map too.

 

[Nizef]

Oh yea, I keep forgetting the UA, you would get Uluru in range immediately. What pantheon did you pick though? There's no desert up there right, so I assume the Gold and Silver one, which is fantastic on this map too.

I used the Gold&Silver pantheon to get some culture as well.