Iso: How can I do better?

[floydmcw]

My latest game is fractal, emperor, NHNE, Brennus. It soon became apparent I was on my own.

I went AH -> Mining -> Fishing -> BW -> TW -> Pottery -> Writing.

Then Med -> PH -> Monarchy (wines and HR) -> Alpha -> Sailing -> Math -> Curr.

IW -> MC -> CoL -> bulb Philo -> Masonry -> Poly -> Mono (for OR) -> Aes -> Lit

Then finally Compass -> Mach -> Optics. Now it's T162 (1020 AD) and I have two caravels (upgraded from prebuilt triremes) ready to set sail. Also I have the National Epic and am running Pacifism with religion in most of my cities.

Is this a reasonable way to approach iso? I tried to stick to the basics -- cottages, spawnbusting then minimal military, build wealth, build NE. No marble/stone so didn't bother with wonders.

I founded a religion more for the OR/Pacifism bonuses then for the happiness (cheap temples were nice but I've had more trouble with health than happiness). Also I was able to bulb Philo with a GS (first GS became an academy).

 

[Swordnboard]

Over the past year or so, there's been a lot of work and thought put into isolated games by some strong deity players. Most of the information is in an S&T thread called "Deity Isolation Workshop": definitely worth a read.

Anyways the summary is that in most cases, your idea of sticking to the basics is correct, but even more so than you have done it. On Deity especially, streamlining everything towards researching astronomy is key: Monarchy is the only detour from an optics beeline I would make on this map (so no currency, alphabet, COL, Philosophy, Aesthetics, or Literature). Then, you should have 2 great scientists ready to bulb astronomy soon thereafter. I'll play through until that point and upload a save for you to take a look at.

EDIT: Save attached, not perfect but a good bit closer to what you're looking for. Let me know if you have any questions about my save.

 

[floydmcw]

This is great feedback! I am trying a replay from T56 (after founding my 3rd city/researching Pottery), dropping all the non-essentials and focusing on an Astro bulb. When I have that I'll look at your save.

Also I found that thread to be very interesting.

 

[floydmcw]

Here's my T117 (AD 50) save. I'm still ~10 turns from Machinery. 150 hammers stored into Colossus failgold, hoping I can make use of that for Optics (and trireme upgrades).

I have 5 cities and 2 great scientists, will have (at least) 2 triremes. 4 workers, a 5th would have been helpful at a few points.

Camulundum (the city in the NW near pigs, Vienne in your game) was probably a mistake (I founded it late and will probably cost me more in maintenance than it contributes).

I didn't bother with a helper city because the capital had only two river grass, but now I can see that it would have been helpful.

Just curious, why is Gergovia 2W of the pig? Would it have gotten a faster start on one of the tiles between copper and pig?

 

[Swordnboard]

That save looks quite good! Camulodunum is totally fine, already basically paying for itself even with only 2 immature cottages. Your economy is plenty robust to even settle 2 more cities, especially since emperor is more forgiving than deity on maintenance.

Anyways, I founded Gergovia 2W of the pig because it immediately connected a trade route and had plenty of good tiles (copper + green river cottages) to work right away while I built a monument. Building closer to the pig could be good too, but no fresh water. I was really focused on things that payed off early to get the fastest optics time optics (and even chose to forgo monarchy, although that one could go either way).

A couple more comments about your save: You've left way more forests than I would have, the .5 health each one gives is definitely not worth a 20h payout towards earlier workers and settlers, plus those tiles can be cottaged. Also, you have a lot more infrastructure than me (forges, colossus partial builds, lighthouse/harbors in progress), which I guess can be attributed to aggressive whipping. I think I would have spared the whip a bit more to grow and work cottages, this alongside the monarchy detour can help explain why your optics date will be a good bit later. Wouldn't trust the emperor AI to trigger your colossus failgold too soon, but certainly they will eventually. Overall though, this is a really big improvement and you should be able to win many different ways from this position, maybe even move up to immortal in the future.

 

[gaash2]

Standard play is monarchy and then optics bee-line w/saving scientists to bulb Astro. HOWEVER, i've sometimes gotten astro "too" early (on IMM difficulty), where the trade value wasn't that strong without having to wait and research some tech myself that I would have liked to be able to trade for. It could be worth investing a little bit in infrastructure at the cost of maybe 1 GS or some astro turn dates, in some situations, particularly if commerce is good.

 

[Fippy]

Looking at your save Floyd, i noticed you avoided putting cottages on brown river tiles.
Plains river are good tiles in Iso, and i consider a city 3E or 3e1n of Bibracte not as helper city but an important commerce source on this map.
Basically on all rivers i try squeezing in as many cities as possible in Iso

Mines can pay towards Optics (research building) if you tech Alpha early.
(plains cottages also support that a little bit)
Otherwise they are not great, Infra like Forges can be delayed and Granary + Lib usually whipped.

I would prefer teching Alpha over Monarchy probably with CHA,
cities are then limited to size 6 (or 7 for Cap), but as mentioned i would share the long river among more cities so they dun need high happy caps.

 

[floydmcw]

Thanks everyone for the feedback!

In my revised game (Monarchy only then Optics beeline) I got Optics on T136. It then took me a couple turns to accumulate $$$ to upgrade triremes.

Unfortunately my two GS can't bulb Astro till I get Math.

I am putting 10% into various techs (is that the threshold to avoid a penalty while trading?). I've heard that it's helpful to give newly contacted civs $10 (and turn off state religion before contact, but that's moot here).

Should I trade as soon as I meet people or try to judge the political situation first? There have been a couple GG notifications so there must be some infighting.

 

[sampsa]

Don't upgrade triremes, whip caravels (load with scout/missionary/GS for land scouting) and meet AIs asap to get math via trade so you can bulb astro and gain trade routes + resource trades.

Putting 10% into various techs is moot, you can get them via trade anyway.