homeyg and Deity

[Unconquered Sun]

Great thread guys - I haven't even tried to tackle Deity yet so kudos to all of you. One of the things that jumped out at me in comparing your screenshots is the teching rate comparison (I picked ones where you were all running 100% science):

HomeyG - 660 AD - 89 science/turn
BurN - 1460 AD - 204 science/turn
USun - 600 AD - 259 science/turn

About economy, etc, continuing from my last post on game strategy

Once I had my goals, I had to find the way to achieve them. I immediately looked for synergy:

- Spain starts with Mysticism.

- Capital is forested. Capital has food. (need Bronze)

- Izzy is expansive, so granaries are great. (need Pottery)

- Wheel from hut

- tech advantage over the AIs by 1000 BC.

- BtS AI will settle aggressively around and try to culture press, might even bomb GA



Answer: Oracle

- already have Mysticism

- have forests to chop Oracle

- Metal Casting is a very expensive tech peacemongers would love to trade me Alpha for / warmongers would love to kill for

- Metal Casting happens to require Bronze and Pottery

- early Oracle will quickly double its base culture and create a large area of dominant Spanish culture that will press/flip annoying AI settlements

Metal Casting has the added bonus of Forge, which has multiple benefits for capital, the most important being running an engineer together with Oracle for 50+% chance for a GE in 20 turns, who can in turn hurry Mids or GL

Metal Casting has the added bonus of Collossus shot on a map where Astronomy is not a priority, but quality land (or quality sea) is

Mids, GL, Collossus add even more culture and generate GS, GE, GM:

That's synergy. Now, synergy comes in many forms.

It may be imperialistic + horses for chariot escorts + gold resources that allowed me amazing REX in Justinian's University.

It may be the Oracle in this game that allowed me to dictate foreign relations and build a very early GL.

Synergy is what lies beyond mindless following of strategy A/B/etc. REXing is good, building the Oracle is good, but best you only get from a good strategy that has synergy with the map.

Building the Oracle was one of the two important decisions in my game.

The other one was deciding on the specifics of reaching Liberalism first while having only three cities for most of the early game; or in other words the design of the superscience city/GP farm. And finally, the plan on getting enough production for expansionist wars, a.k.a. how to develop the rest of my cities. More on that later.

 

[Rusten]

@U. Sun: Impressive thinking! Displaying what I mentioned in a recent thread somewhere debating rigged starts (HoF style).

The start is supposed to be random, it's different every game for a reason, and your strategy is supposed to be finding the best answer to that random start. By tweaking the start in your favour you effectively drop the difficulty. By always making the same type of start you show no overall knowledge or insight, you simply play by formula like the AI.

You do it exceptionally well too. I don't know whether you came up with that instantly or not, but I would have to give it some serious thinking first and even then I might've missed it.

Knowing how to make the best out of every situation given is what makes the great players great, major kudos.

 

[homeyg]

You do it exceptionally well too. I don't know whether you came up with that instantly or not, but I would have to give it some serious thinking first and even then I might've missed it.

That's exactly how I am, Rusten. I would sit there for like a half hour thinking about things I could possibly do to make the most out of a start, and then I still screw it up.

 

[iamnleth]

Impossible under the current AI code. I had no worries with my game, in fact most of it I only had 1 warrior in capital.

Quite a handy piece of information to have, that.

Edit: What happens when peace breaks out? I'd personally panic.

Also, U Sun, I appreciate that you help us lesser players so much. You've quickly moved to one of the most respectable posters on this forum (in my opinion). My thanks goes out to you for repeatedly answering my questions!

homeyg, you can probably count me in if you lose and begin with another leader. I'd like to see how I fare.

 

[Squarg]

Ya it turns out I realy was reading an article that was 2 years old. D'oh.
Anyways I would love to start as another leader on another map.
Have you tried to play on another game speed like epic or marathon?

 

[SnowlyWhite]

What happens when peace breaks out? I'd personally panic.

safe play: bribe again
with... I don't know, with enough playing, if you know you won't be targeted asap, wait abit and then bribe again. From what I've seen, continuous war, while safest, has as main problem the fact that, even as how inept the ai is at war, one side will end up by winning. Which... is unpleasant to say the least. Sometimes you don't even have to bribe, you know they'll redeclare, however those are usually the crappy situations where one side has the upper hand.

 

[homeyg]

Alright guys, I think I have basically dug myself as deep a hole as possible and I don't think I'm going to be able to get out of it. I believe I'm way to far behind in tech to keep up. Check the save. I think I'm going to retire from this particular game, watch BurN's and Unconquered Sun's finishes, soak up extremely valuable information and then start a new one with random leader and everything. Anyone is welcome to play along, of course!

Unconquered Sun, I really appreciate all the wisdom and information you are sharing! I have not learned more about Civ4 anywhere besides your posts!

 

[Squarg]

maybe you should try an EE next game since i heard that after all the decreased EE%'s you get more per steal (also you never seem to have the tech lead anyways). Sumeria is good for EE if you happen to try it.

 

[homeyg]

Espionage economy is something I have not even tampered with yet..

 

[Squarg]

I've tried it once but it was on monarch so I got the Mids and was able to tech myself the lead after stealing so I wouldn't consider myself an expert.

 

[Winston Hughes]

@ Unconquered Sun

What you've written in this thread is the single most coherent explantion of good strategic thinking in civ I have ever come across.

(In an odd way, it reminds me of Edgar Allan Poe's The Philosophy of Composition - something every aspiring writer, composer or lyricist should read, imo.)

Would you consider expanding it into a full strategy article?

 

[BurN]

Hmhm I'll try to continue my game this weekend I hope. Too bad to hear you fell too much behind Homeyg. I have doubts about if I can still get back in the game myself though. The war against Augustus went good but at what cost.

Sun's game looks promising at this point and I have to say hats off to his diplo. I'm interested in what path he will take. Especially where he's going to get his hammers for war, which was quite an obstacle in my game. Whipping went good hammer wise but killed of my tech rate by quite a bit.

edit: I was thinking about oracle too Sun. But I didn't dare to take the shot. I was pretty scared I would get built in even more.

 

[homeyg]

I just played an offline game, and I completely forgot how important Organized Religion is for this type of game, but when it was too late, I remembered.

 

[homeyg]

About economy, etc, continuing from my last post on game strategy

Once I had my goals, I had to find the way to achieve them. I immediately looked for synergy:

- Spain starts with Mysticism.

- Capital is forested. Capital has food. (need Bronze)

- Izzy is expansive, so granaries are great. (need Pottery)

- Wheel from hut

- tech advantage over the AIs by 1000 BC.

- BtS AI will settle aggressively around and try to culture press, might even bomb GA



Answer: Oracle

- already have Mysticism

- have forests to chop Oracle

- Metal Casting is a very expensive tech peacemongers would love to trade me Alpha for / warmongers would love to kill for

- Metal Casting happens to require Bronze and Pottery

- early Oracle will quickly double its base culture and create a large area of dominant Spanish culture that will press/flip annoying AI settlements

Metal Casting has the added bonus of Forge, which has multiple benefits for capital, the most important being running an engineer together with Oracle for 50+% chance for a GE in 20 turns, who can in turn hurry Mids or GL

Metal Casting has the added bonus of Collossus shot on a map where Astronomy is not a priority, but quality land (or quality sea) is

Mids, GL, Collossus add even more culture and generate GS, GE, GM:

That's synergy. Now, synergy comes in many forms.

It may be imperialistic + horses for chariot escorts + gold resources that allowed me amazing REX in Justinian's University.

It may be the Oracle in this game that allowed me to dictate foreign relations and build a very early GL.

Synergy is what lies beyond mindless following of strategy A/B/etc. REXing is good, building the Oracle is good, but best you only get from a good strategy that has synergy with the map.

Building the Oracle was one of the two important decisions in my game.

The other one was deciding on the specifics of reaching Liberalism first while having only three cities for most of the early game; or in other words the design of the superscience city/GP farm. And finally, the plan on getting enough production for expansionist wars, a.k.a. how to develop the rest of my cities. More on that later.

This is all amazing thinking.

I've highlighted in bold what used to describe me, and this is exactly what I'm trying to get away from because I know that it is what's preventing me from being as good as I could be.

 

[BurN]

Well, played till 1876AD.

In a nutshell what happened in my game:

I took 1 more roman city, the last one fell to Shaka. Bull declares war on Mao, Shaka declares on Bull.
I'm just building stuff and trying to recover my economy. I beelined computers, in the meanwhile bull signed peace with shaka/mao. I bribe Zara into war with Bull with computers ... 1876AD I build the internet. I get techs from Bull and Mao or Shaka, I can't tell. (I left Mao/Shaka behind me in techs when my economy was recovered)

Eventhough I got quite some free techs trough the internet. Zara is still miles ahead, there's no way I can catch up to beat him to space imho. I wish I got Zara as my internet target but alas.

I think I'm left with one option and that is: Forget about my economy and build/whip/draft an army to take out Zara's main cities. The internet should keep my techs going. Hopefully bull and Zara stay at war for a long time so I can fight a 2v1. I hope I can raze his main cities to delay his space victory. I'll transform some cottage cities to prod cities. I'll still need 1 or 2 cottage cities to pay unit upkeep I'd guess.

University starts again so I'll have to wait till next weekend to continue this game.

 

[homeyg]

I played a quick 'offline' game today to see if I could work on strategizing and getting to Liberalism first, and I made a little journal entry in a notebook when the game started (the random civ was De Gaulle). I failed to get to Liberalism first, however, but I missed it by 12 turns. Here was the start:

Here's what I wrote

Okay, I'm relaxed and firing up a game of Civ - nota care in the world except strategy

De Gaulle
Industrious - +50% wonder production, double speed of forge
Charismatic - +1 per city, +1 from monument, -25% xp required for promotion

I have a 3 clam start. Shields are going to be hard to come by so I'm considering moving settler 1 east. 1 east much better, even out food consumption with extra grass hill. I select fishing, I pop pottery from a hut.

I have the option of going for a straight shot at the Great Library after sidetracking to mining -> bronzeworking. What do I do with this low income start? Food economy, with a plains hill or two mixed in. At level 5 I will have 8 food surplus if I irrigate 2 grasslands and work all 3 clams.

How do I get to Liberalism? Obviously, I need to build up my cities infrastructure (granary, library, National Epic).

I'm getting ahead of myself. I need to figure out how I'm getting to Liberalism and then build up accordingly. I want to be able to get a good research base and be able to pop techs. With this low income start, I have no research base. I need to build one before cottaging the 4 cottageable tiles. To build this research base, I first need scientists. I obviously need a library to get the first 2 scientists, and I need the Great Library to give me 2 free scientists (and also 6 GPP + 2 GPP, 8 free GPP). With National Epic, this is 16 GPP, this willl be around the time of 200 GPP required, so less than 20 turns will be needed to pop a GS. Put together with scientists I add, and Pacifism, this will be alot of GPP. The Great Library will be built by chopping/whipping, so I need Bronzeworking. The main reason I am wanting to try to get the Great Library is because we are industrious, so we automatically have an advantage. I can't forget about Organized Religion. I may want to bulb Philosophy to possibly get Taoism, and a tech to trade with, and also to be able to use Pacifism when using the capital to produce GS's, then switching back to Organized Religion to build.

I ended up building the GL, worked my way towards Liberalism, bulbed Philosophy and founded Taoism. Used 2 GS's to research Education. Missed Liberalism. As you can see I made a few huge mistakes, things which I completely left out of my notebook and obviously my thoughts.

The first thing was expansion. I only had 3 cities, and they were being heavily pressed by other cultures. I did what I could when it came to whipping cultural buildings in these cities, but the other cultures were too overwhelming. I did not use settlers to expand quick enough.

The second thing was not growing my cities (or at least, my capital) large enough. I think my capital reached a maximum size of 8 once before I whipped it down again. I think that if I had grown my cities to full size (to happy cap), and then whipped, it may have worked out better. I would have had more production, more commerce, etc.

I gotta work on these two things. I also have to work on balancing the rest of everything else!

 

[martin026]

Did you consider moving the settler one North? Yeah, you lose the forest and the turn, but you also trade out more water tiles. That would have been my first thought, but I play Monarch. I usually do not move my settler unless I can either gain river access, or minimize water without losing seafood.

 

[vicawoo]

You have no land, and no long term plan for acquiring the land, so you'll inevitably lose the tech race. Happy cap should not be a problem, you can get monarchy. If you get a tech lead (say bulbing or whatnot), you should be either using it yourself or coaxing a war to slow people down. Multiple clams means you can trade for health resources.

Your city has +15 food available with civil service (13 without), you should be able to run 5-7 specialists. You could have plopped down an academy or a shrine in your little border cities earlier to increase the culture, or build a wonder if you can.

For synergies, you're charismatic (like stonehenge) and industrious (build stonehenge quickly). Mining mysticism bronze working should make that easy. Also stonehenge allows for good border popping. With 4 hills, you can switch back and forth between running scientists and building useful wonders.

 

[martin026]

With 4 hills, you can switch back and forth between running scientists and building useful wonders.

I was curious why two of the hills weren't mined yet?

 

[homeyg]

I was curious why two of the hills weren't mined yet?

I never allowed the city to get large enough to work those two hills, so I just didn't mine them yet.