First Deity game ever, and I'm still alive after the Acient Age!!
As in the previous GOTMs the first question was again: move the settler or settle on the spot? A lot has been said about that in the pre-game discussion. In the end I settled on the spot for the following reasons:
- Against lots of deity opponents, the extra defensive bonus of the hill may be handy. (Even good players -like Piú Freddo in GOTM69 or megistatos in GOTM70- have lost the game in an early attack.... Didn't want to share that fate.)
- Obviously this is going to be a war-mongering game. So we can hope for a great leader which can complete the FP. Therefore there will be no need for a Palace jump, which means the capital should be turned into a production powerhouse. And for that the river is essential, as we don't need an Aquaeduct.
4000BC Found Karakorum, start the Wheel at 10%. (The Wheel turned out to take the full 40 turns! Even when I had two towns and set the science slider to 100%! I guess on Deity the tech costs are much much higher?)
3750BC Warrior
3600BC Meet Japan, trade one of my starting techs against their Ceremonial Burrial.
3450BC Meet Arabia
3250BC Meet England, trade Bronze Working, finish first Settler
3150BC Found 2nd town (Ta-Tu)
3000BC Warrior
2850BC Meet Korea
2800BC Archer
2710BC Worker
2470BC Meet Spain, trade Masonry
2430BC Ta-Tu finishes Granary --> 4turn settler factory (though for quite a while it took 5 turns per settler, as Ta-Tu's production was one shield short... Bad planning on my side! Only after my borders expanded and Ta-Tu got another bonus grassland inside it's boundaries, it became a true 4-turn factory.)
2270BC Meet Persia, buy contact with the Chinese
2230BC Buy Iron Working from China, Persia builds an embassy in Karakorum. From here on my relations with Persia are very friendly! I also notice that my F4 screen now shows Germany and Russia, but I never met them. Probably one of the other civs sold them contact with me?! Finish another settler.
2150BC Discover the Wheel, trade it against Mysticism (I think with Persia).
1910BC Found 3rd town.
I stopped taking notes here, as everything was developing in such a slow motion and I wanted to make some fast progress. So I recollect the rest from memory.
When I decided to go for the Wheel first, my plan was to try an early horse rush, do some conquering and then use those horsemen to upgrade them to Keshik later. But that plan didn't quite work out, as the Japanese beat me to the horse resource in the west and the Arabs to the one in the south...
So I switched the plan to an early swords rush either against Japan or against Arabia, depending on circumstances. Fortunately I was able to trade Iron Working and secure an Iron resource quite under the nose of a Japanese settler... That was a close shave!
But first I needed to setup a few more towns to get a solid production base. This initial expansion phase took much longer than expected -- on Deity everything is really slow motion! Feels like a different game!
Oh, by the way, some time around 1000BC I switched to Monarchy. Had only 4 turns of anarchy.
So by the time I finished a couple of Granaries and Barracks and a stack of 20 swords, the rest of the world had already reached the middle ages. I had already built roads to both possible fronts, the Japanese front and the Arabic front, and had positioned my forces in such a way that they could quickly attack both targets within two turns. I noticed that Japan had already protected everything with pikes, but Arabia had not yet connected a source of Iron to the capital; only to one minor town, which had built one or two pikes so far. In addition I had some good deals going on with Japan, so my choice was easy
I declared on Arabia and quickly took the planned objectives: their horse source (so I will be able to build Keshiks in the future), their iron source (to weaken them for the next war...), one unimportant mountain city (which obstructed my road into their core) and one of their size 8 core cities. Then my forces were a bit shattered around, so I decided to make peace. (They were willing to give me the Republic for peace.) While this war was still going on, I had also reached the MA and bought Feudalism. Then my first Med Inf units were able to play an important role in the final stages of that war. It's really fun to kick spearmen butts with Med Inf...! Never thought I would be able to do this against a Deity opponent! And the good news is: now that I've taken their iron, I can do it again in the next war
What has happened in the rest of the world? I noticed at some point, that the remaining 4 civs had also bought contact with me. But even with 13 contacts my attempts at tech trading were quite unsuccessful: only two or three times I was able to buy a tech that one other nation did not yet have, so I could sell it to someone else. Not like in lower difficulty levels, where you can buy a tech and then sell it to five others and get more than you had payed...
There had been quite a few wars going on, and Spain has already been eliminated. Fortunately it was conquered by a coalition of five civs, and each of them got one or two cities, so no one has yet turned into a super power. Same with the Japanese: they have lost about two thirds of their empire, but also to a coalition, so no one got too strong here. And of course I have taken a good chunk out of Arabia (4 towns out of 14), and after some regrouping and consolidating I will hopefully take over the rest of their core. (And I hope, this will finally produce my first MGL, so I can immediately plant a FP in Mekka...!) Just need to make sure to get ready for the second war, before they discover Gunpowder and hook up Saltpeter.
To sum it up, I'm doing better than expected and keeping up with the average AI. There's a handful of civs which are more powerful, but there're also a few who are much weaker. In the beginning I had to pay a lot of tribute to almost everyone, but that has stopped lately. And I was fortunate that no one picked an early quarrel with me. I guess being on the edge of the map (and paying all those tributes) really helped in this regard. Thanks a lot to civ_steve for creating this wonderful starting position. So far it has been a lot of fun! Not sure whether I will be able to win this in the end, as I'm quite behind in tech, culture and World Wonders, but I feel quite confident that my aggressive military strategy has a good chance of succeeding.
Cheers, Lanzelot
. But whether the shield bin is emptied once or twenty times is no difference: it's already empty after the first time, so there was no real harm done here... And I had just started a new project the previous round, so I only lost the shields of one turn. I was much delighted that the stack of 20 didn't continue to the next city (the capital), where they could have done some real damage!
