First Demigod Game. Help?

[Opies]

Not exactly my first, but my first game I've stuck with to 100 turns without feeling totally hopeless. I have no trouble winning all my emp games, but DG is giving me some heartache and woe

Standard pangea, warm/wet, no barbs, no SGLs, no culture flips. conq/dom/space/culture wins are enabled. Preserve random seed is enabled.

I'm playing as persia, and my basic strategy was to do 10% research and just rush to immortals and war/trade for techs. I currently have 2 armies as well as several elites, and a dozen or so cities. All other civs are in the MA, I have a few turns left on construction and then I'm in the MA too. I'm at war with 3 civs (down from 5). I forced the mayans to give me 2 techs, CoL and one other I forget, as well as some gold and gpt for peace. I got polytheism for peace from netherlands, and I've been buying techs from india the whole game.

My current plan of attack would be to make peace with Carthage for 20 gold, then focus both my armies and all my immortals against the impending flood to my north to try to take out all those units and grab that greek city. This would give me a good choke point to defend from the north, and my goal will then become to take out the mayans and the dutch while choking techs and gold out of them.

If some good players could please look at the save and give me some tips, it would be GREATLY appreciated. Here is the current save at 100 turns.

 

[Lanzelot]

Ok, I took a quick look at the .sav, didn't have the time to go too much into the details, like city improvements, builds, workers, but I assume you are doing quite ok in this department, otherwise you wouldn't have gotten as far as you actually did in this game...

But I want to comment on two points, which I think are mistakes on a larger strategic scale:

1. You have almost all non-optional ancient age techs (except for a few more turns on Construction). The only techs you don't have are the optionals, Literature, Monarchy, Republic. And these are the most important ones! First of all, Persia is scientific, so one of it's strong points are half-priced libraries. You completely wasted this advantage up to now because you don't have Literature! Next it is vitally important to get out of Despotism asap. All the AIs already have both, Monarchy and Republic, so you should have gotten one of them a long time ago. Usually even on Demigod you can get to Republic before all AIs have it. Even if you miss the slingshot. Persia starts with Alphabet, so I think Writing -> Philosophy -> pick Code of Laws for free -> min run on Republic has good chances of success. You should be out of Despotism not long after 1000BC and then trade Republic to 2-3 AIs who don't have it yet.
2. You already had your Golden Age! So that means a despotic GA. There are some exceptions, where this is good/necessary, but in general you want to avoid that. So especially with a civ that has a very early UU like the Immortals, it is important to concentrate on Republic/Monarchy first, stay peaceful till then (or use other units for fighting), and then trigger your GA after the revolution.

Ok, I hope these high-level remarks give you a few new ideas. (Implementing them, however, is a different story... )

Lanzelot

PS: don't get me wrong: I don't want to say the game was conducted badly. (In fact I think it's quite ok, and you can probably go on and win from the current position!) I'm only pointing out a few things where I think there's room for improvement.

 

[vmxa]

I wish I had the patience to look this over more, but I have always figured DG or better really do not need advice.

I would crank out a lot more spears and workers as you are way below your support.
I would pop out a settler from Quiri and move a worker in to make a road as I abandon the place and replace 1 tile south.

Holding DG civs towns is a very dangerous thing, unless they are not going to be around long.

I don't like Antioch so close and would prefer it on the grass by the mountain. Then it crowds Sidon, rather than Arebla.

I would not want to make many more spears without a barracks. None, if you do not intend to go to Monarchy. Regular spears are fine as MP, no fighting. In Republic they have zero value.

For sure I want to get vets spears on those frontline towns to defend, rather than Immortals.

I can tell you that AWDG is a real challenge, so you really want to get down to 2 enemies. Did someone drag in Gil or did you get into on your own? They are the best ones to get peace with as you do not have them near.

It is tempting to keep war happy, if they declared, but they could drag in others. Risky for sure. Greece is the one I would want to stay on as they are adjacent and appear to be large.

I would want to slow down their research and prevent them from piling up more troops. Great to take towns from to help with all that. If they are allowed to go to peace, then they get stronger.

Unless you are going to pop out workers and settlers, the towns will be hard to keep control off. You need some infra soon or annexing to stay afloat.