[GS] Finish Faster on Deity Standard

[Fluphen Azine]

Deity with Tamar
Standard Settings
Low Sea Level
Pangaea Map

I have currently played this game up to turn 116.
Videos should be uploaded within 24 hours.
I did get the first 15 minute video uploaded.
I am uploading larger videos now but it takes a few hours.

To make the game a bit more interesting I have decided to record games again.
Over the years I have watched many videos of Civ Games.
I picked up a bunch of bad habits from many of those videos.
I decided to make videos because it can make SP more fun.
I was also hoping better players could watch and could point out the mistakes I am making.
The videos you find over the internet hardly showcase fast spt or cpt.
My first goal is to get faster spt and cpt and have 100 of each or more by turn 100.
I plan to use all the Civs but starting with lower tiered ones as it seems more difficult.
I haven't adjusted the video/mic settings as good as I would like so you will have to suffer a bit.
This first game with Tamar went a bit slower than I had hoped in the way of spt and cpt.
I fell into some bad mistakes of hard building and other issues.
I also got hooked on the one more turn addiction and got lazy in the later turns as I got more sleepy.
So I am hoping to get better at faster stats by turn 100 and start to shave turns off my finish time.
The second goal would be to finish before turn 200 and less.
Any and all negative or positive comments are welcome.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

The videos you find over the internet hardly showcase fast spt or cpt.

I agree, and I will upload some material as well when I feel more confident in my gameplay

 

[Fluphen Azine]

I agree, and I will upload some material as well when I feel more confident in my gameplay

Sounds good.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

For some reason I played this game different than usual.
I never sent any delegations to the AI.
I ended up stealing a builder early from Rome.
I didn't expand very much and I didn't focus enough on higher spt/cpt.
These videos will get you to turn 90.
Basically, only 5 cities at turn 90 with a few settlers on the way.
I sort of got forced into war but my two neighbors were weak for a long time this game.
I was getting sleepy and didn't explain my thought process very well.
The game is complete... I just have to compress and upload.
Should take a few days to get all videos uploaded.
The game is raw and unedited so you can see all of the abuse to the AI.
My plan was to focus around Colossal Heads.
I didn't realize they gave Tourism after Flight as I never realized how strong they are.
I probably would of built more of them earlier and made a beeline for Flight instead of playing with Tanks.
I played an older style where I researched Combustion before heading over to Flight this game.
A good learning experience for me and I am starting to see how powerful builder improvements can be.
Part 3, 4 and 5 are now uploaded.
I am not monetized or affiliated with anyone so you shouldn't see any commercials or ads.
Don't hesitate to post your gripes!

 

[The Highwayman]

Thanks for posting these. I'll follow the video series and post any constructive feedback I have.

@Fluphen Azine

I've watched the first two videos and I see good, solid play overall. Tough exploration per the hills and jungles, but it is what it is. I would have recommended waiting a few turns for extra gold to buy the middle jungle tile and putting Gori's campus on the cattle to the west for +3, especially if going for science.

One thing I would consider is beelining either early empire or state workforce for the early governor promo. It seems an early magnus would've helped the chops in the cap or even a Liang for extra builder charges. You seem well versed enough to where improvements are only going to come from little details and maximizing the math. So far a good job with switching techs/civics and awaiting the boosts. Hard teching drives me crazy unless it's simply unavoidable.

It's hard to add anything else without knowing what your endgame goals are though. Map pins would be a big help from a viewer's standpoint. I often use them since it can help me see something better potentially. I'm also forgetful . I look forward to seeing the rest - I'll check it out when I have the time.

EDIT: rearranged some text I forgot to adjust earlier. Hopefully my post makes more sense.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

@Fluphen Azine
I've watched the first two videos ...

I decided to do this because I am tired of Small Map 6 player LPs on Youtube.
What happened to everyone playing Standard/Standard and leaving videos unedited?
I am certainly not an optimal player but I think uploading these will help me shave turn times off down the road.

I am sure you can find many more mistakes.
I have watched some of the playback myself and I noticed many things.
I settled Poti too close to the Capital which hindered the tiles in the Capital.
Should of settled it at least one more tile to the West.
This would of made Farms more viable for the boost along with freeing up Tiles.
Do you always rush State Empire over Foreign Trade?
That would make sense to get up a faster Governor.
I've been playing a lot of Ping x 2 for Culture lately.
Seems like the easier play with less thinking.
During gameplay I react instead of thinking most of the time.
Perhaps I need to start thinking if Magnus and Early Chops is better suited.
Once you read the chop example by @Victoria it really makes you want to wait for Feudalism.

Later in the game I decided to build Terracotta Army for no apparent reason.
It seems I just built it because I could and had an Army as I was War Focused.
I tend to forget everything once I start in on a War.
After all these years I still have not been able to use a 2 or 3 Front War with multiple Civs.

You are correct that I need to city plan earlier and better.
I just randomly do things as they pop up like this game I built Kilwa Kisiwani in the Capital.
So here I am building Wonders like a goof.
I built Pyramids, Colosseum, Terracotta Army and Kilwa Kisiwani with no Theater District Plan.
I can never get my mind set on an early Victory Condition.
I tend to go Science First into Domination with a mix of Faith Generation and constant Trade Abuse.
I need to start focusing on one path throughout the whole game but I have been saying that for years.

Thanks for the input as it really does help.

 

[The Highwayman]

I almost always go Foreign Trade (easily boostable most of the time) to Early Empire (easy boost I can control).

• This opens up the opportunity to divert to Mysticism if it looks like I'll only be a couple points shy of a golden age and the envoy will give me an early suze. This is of course very situational as it requires a first meet and obtainable quest from a city state, but it can come into play. The early Diplo favor is good early money too.
• Early Foreign Trade gives opportunity for road between expands, or envoy for CS, or to kiss up to a neighbor. The ability to quickly feed a city builders from supporting cities early on is huge.
• Early Early Empire (that's intentional) opens up the colonization card to expedite the 3rd or 4th settler in an attempt to maximize production. I always build first settler ASAP, maybe even second. But it may be best to sneak in a monument while awaiting this card - the time loss can be partially made up with the +50%.
• Get Magnus settled if chopping Pyramids and/or Oracle. I don't doubt the math of waiting but these wonders can easily be gone after T60 on Deity. I agree wait to chop for everything else though unless it's blocking an early district spot.
• I've also gone Foreign Trade -> Early Empire (establish Liang) -> Craftsmenship (build/buy 4 charge builders) -> State Workforce (establish Magnus, use aforementioned 4 charge builders to chop your wonder or settlers if you desire) -> Mysticism (if going for Oracle - should be finished before Magnus established) -> Political Philosophy. this can be T50 - T55 without much luck, such as first meets on culture CSs or culture resources.
• Not all maps or situations will fit the above, but it can really fit together nicely like Legos. This is more designed for peaceful expansion, so if you wish to spam warcarts with Gilgabro this isn't the method to use. Also if under duress getting Agoge may be the only thing to save the day.
• Early Pingala isn't bad, but I'm not sure it's the best fit for single player. The early culture and science sure is nice but I usually don't have a problem catching back up between turns 80-100. I would start ranking up Pingala with the gov. plaza/building or Defensive Tactics and Recorded History civics.

I find this path gives me ample time to build a first district for state workforce and improve 3 tiles for Craftsmenship while maximizing the benefits of the civics. I also like closing my borders ASAP because the AI, including city states, are a bunch of trolls with their starting units.

Kilwa is amazing, but I don't think I'd value it too highly without suzes over multiple culture or science CSs. That's the only time I would say it's not great value.

It sounds as if you're on the right track with no help, as you're breaking down the film and seeing your needed areas of improvement. I'm certain I could benefit from the same.

 

[KKirrin]

Looks really good overall, i agree with a lot of the above, especially sneaking the monument between the second and third settler. the lack of early culture really hurt. only watched the first two so far, but:

general stuff (with the aid of hindsight, obviously):
i don't think I saw you use the settler lens while you were exploring, only to check city sites. After looking at your map I doubt it would have made much of a difference given your area but it's definitely spam worthy
the campus chop was early for me but if you really wanted to chop it, you probably should have checked the chop production against the production remaining. seemed like you were surprised/disappointed it only shaved 3 turns but i could have missed where you looked at it. i don't remember if you used a second chop but if I'm just throwing 1 in I almost always wait until the chop would finish the district/get it down to 1 full turn to get the most out of my tech progress/chop escalation
you were correct about the 1 builder charge thing

picky things:
I probably would have slammed the campus next to that inactive volcano for the +4. you already had great adjacency going so the campus card would have tilted things towards putting it there for me. I could see preserving the tile though, and i might have built a pasture there first with that builder you stole for the eureka. at the same time i've definitely gone with the safer option when i didn't feel like bothering with possible repairs. All the adjacency also makes me think that that early chop could have waited, with the campus card + spreading out you would have snowballed really hard if you'd kept up with expansion and chopped your districts in around feudalism instead
given the geneva quest and the pearls I'd probably have gone sailing and dropped a galley pretty early on. might have helped with general exploring too with how challenging that was in your area

if i had to point to one thing that seemed like it threw you off it was snagging the builder from rome. you didn't have much of an army so that forced you into building some warriors/slingers for defense when you could have been using the settler card to expand more rapidly, which probably would have resulted in you befriending him with his land agenda. And if you're using the settler card you're getting a ton more free production than the +1 all cities is giving, particularly with only 4 cities, most/all of which have decent tiles. plus the ~220 or so gold you saved from the free early builder was almost certainly less than you would have gotten from trading pearls/jade/diplo with trajan/saladin (i assume that -15 with sal was from grievances even though you hadn't met him yet?). Just seemed like you were very focused on expansion until that point, and if you ended up at 5 cities at t90 that might be a good part to look at. Always tempting to go for the steal, though, and going pure greed/settler expansion easily could have backfired if you procced some camps and didn't have troops/couldn't get there in time

anyway, all small stuff and yeah, you critiqued your own play really well as you went along. fun watch!

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Thanks for the insight @KKirrin and @The Highwayman.
Thanks for taking the time to view as well.

I'm pretty sure I don't plan enough or well enough.
I need to work on that along with picking better city locations.
I made some bad early chop decisions and I always have problems moving Magnus around.
I am pretty sure I can get most of my games under 200 on Deity Standard/Standard if I focus and learn more.
I finally got around to uploading another video.
This one is 2 hours long but plenty of trade screen and areas where you can easily skim through.

 

[TheFinalChiTown]

@Fluphen Azine have you gone under 200 turns on Immortal yet? I found that once I did it on Immortal it took only a few adjustments to do it on Deity.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

@Fluphen Azine have you gone under 200 turns on Immortal yet? I found that once I did it on Immortal it took only a few adjustments to do it on Deity.

I've won Domination and Culture under 200 turns but I can't do it very often.
If I focus on Domination I can get under 200 turns more consistently.
I have yet to set up a Space Victory under 200 turns.
I think settings have something to do with it but I only enjoy everything on standard for the most part.
I've read that map and settings shouldn't be a problem for getting SV, CV or Dom under 200 on standard nearly every game.
It is clear that I just need to plan my games out more.
One of the reasons for this thread and recording my games.
I find that it helps me get more efficent.
I also need to focus on more abuse but that can get tedious.

You have to realize I am trying to do this more consistently with bottom tiered Civs.
I suppose if I play Top Tiered Civs it would be more easy or consistent.
I notice the main culprit seems to be All Golden Ages.
That really makes a significant difference.
I really struggle at getting a Classical Golden Age consistently.

Another thing is the art of Early Pillaging.
I have to get better at that.
You can get great value for those early 8 units from pillaging.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I finished SV on Turn 184 with Rome. Not on Hall of Fame settings at all, just playing a game on my preferred ones.

Large map / 20 CS / one less enemy Civ / Standard Speed / Lakes

Victory screenshot (well, one turn before actually). I was very unlucky with chops and having too little aluminum/not planning energy in my chop city, couldve been a sub t180 victory for sure. the map seemed insane at first but turned out to be mostly okay. I could have settled like 30 cities here, but I think I would've finished slower. So much free space, but I don't think it would've been worth it. Even some of my cities were just straight up bad, like they only had one or two good production tiles. I think I really pushed the boundary of how many cities you should settle in my last 2 games. Settling ~15 cities and then focussing on military seems like a better strat.



Short writeup, will do a more detailed one in the benchmarks thread:

Got forward settled by scotland twice. Forward settled them in return, then got the settler pantheon. After Ancestral Hall I spammed settlers forever. I went Dark age into Heroic which was amazing. Settled I think 16 or 17 cities (I think 22 in total, but please count if you want to, minimap is there! ). I got these wonders in the following order: Pyramids, Angkor Wat, Mausoleum, missed Forbidden by 3 turns, Potala, Ruhr, Oxford, Big Ben, Amundsen. Focussed on science the majority of the game and should have put a little more into culture. Rome bonus is not enough to foregore theatre squares, especially after ~t120 culture went very slow. In the end though most things worked out pretty beautifully. I took out the scots clean, took out england clean, and took 3 korean cities and pillaged them in the late game. I think pillage wars are incredibly and can shave off 5-10 turns depending on the intensity.

 

[The Highwayman]

@yung.carl.jung Nice game! The AI will occasionally build Forbidden around ~1 AD on Deity. I can still get it most of the time, but I get super salty when sniped. Actually I get salty when any wonder gets sniped to be honest.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Finally got around to posting the rest of this game.
Videos 9, 10 and 11 are up.
It only took me a month to get it all uploaded.
I got to fix everything from the mic to video to the sound.
Looking forward to doing another one with the new content.

 

[Casualty of war]

I've watched about half. My favorite part is when your wife hollers at you! Been there....

Interesting strategy, building the minimum army to promote through the maximum Eurekas and Inspirations. I haven't seen yet if you also do triple Quadriremes into Privateers. I probably overbuild my military but I also use it to swipe other Civ's stuff; I also go down the Horseman path often, which doesn't promote into helping with Eurekas and Inspirations. Having to have Knights for the Eureka for getting to Cavalry makes me so angry.

A lot of streaming YouTubers do a low risk-low reward opening, largely because they don't want their stream to go down in flames after 30 Turns. Builder start is high reward but it's also high risk; minimal early military and a close neighbor will end you, and also inconvenient Barbs can swoop in and undo all those Builder charges.

I was impressed that you got 4 cities founded before the end of the Ancient. That was nice work and focus. I'm looking forward to finishing the viewing.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

I've watched about half. My favorite part is when your wife hollers at you! Been there.....

Thanks for the feedback!
I rarely remember to do anything with the Naval Eurekas.
I'm trying to switch now to the 3 Warrior First Build Strategy instead of Builder/Settler.
This game was an unusual Builder, Settler, Settler as my first build order.

I like my videos to be unedited.
I'm surprised you could suffer through my audio problems.
Wait till later as I listen to the sounds of Trains and Thunderstorms.
Darn Videos sound like hours of static while I grunt into the microphone.
I figure players can skim through the videos.
I wanted players to see what I may or may not abuse.
I play the game blind but I was abusing 1gpt trade through this game.
I didn't chop very well or move Magnus/Governors around this game.

I uploaded the first few videos before I finished the game to lock me in.
I didn't want to upload perfect games as I'm trying to get feedback to learn what I am doing wrong.
I usually over settle and build too few troops but I have games where I do the opposite.
I don't really have a solid plan.
I need to work on that.
If you notice I only had one Army.
If I had two or more I could of sped the finish time up.
I built more Wonders in this game than usual for me.
I think I build too many districts.
I have a hard time getting out of that habit.
This game could of been a complete disaster.
I feel like I got really lucky in many aspects.
Levy seems to be very powerful in my games as of late.

 

[Casualty of war]

Hey, Deity doesn't always work out. That's why it's Deity.

Spoiler :

 

[yung.carl.jung]

were these all cases where the AI rushed you? when did you get declared at and with how many units? I always have trouble dealing with super early double camps or an early AI declaring on me, but it happens super rarely. not even one out of then games. then again I have a very small sample size because my games take so damn long

 

[Casualty of war]

These are the ones where it was close but didn't work out. There are many others where my neighbor's entire army showed up before I even got a third unit built and I just called it a day. MANY others.