Learning Deity II : Montezuma

[vranasm]

mined pigs will be good tiles.

too bad those corns are non-wet.

will be interesting to watch

 

[Jester Fool]

You have a chance (against barb archers) with aggressive warriors but you'll need production. I'd go Agri->Mining. Farm the corn and mine both pigs. Depending on how many spawnbusters you can crank out, I'd then go BW to chop out a settler or Archery if the barbs are giving you trouble.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

-Utilise whipping to its full potential because of Monty's UB.

From my limited experience with Monty and provided a fair supply of resources, the Sacrificial Altar is too powerful to allow FPU (Full Potential Use) under Slavery alone: drafting is needed as a hard counter.
Defying Apostolic Palace resolutions and a high level of war weariness are welcome as well when happy caps are in the 15 to 20 range.

Conclusion is:
If you're just whipping, maybe you don't need the happy boost from the Altars... Or maybe you can cut some other boosts.
It's very tempting to overbuild with Monty. I always do.

 

[Revent]

From my limited experience with Monty and provided a fair supply of resources, the Sacrificial Altar is too powerful to allow FPU (Full Potential Use) under Slavery alone: drafting is needed as a hard counter.
Defying Apostolic Palace resolutions and a high level of war weariness are welcome as well when happy caps are in the 15 to 20 range.

Conclusion is:
If you're just whipping, maybe you don't need the happy boost from the Altars... Or maybe you can cut some other boosts.
It's very tempting to overbuild with Monty. I always do.

Well, let's try to get this game to rifles then Whipping and drafting should be a heck of a lot of fun!

You have a chance (against barb archers) with aggressive warriors but you'll need production. I'd go Agri->Mining. Farm the corn and mine both pigs. Depending on how many spawnbusters you can crank out, I'd then go BW to chop out a settler or Archery if the barbs are giving you trouble.

Thanks! How would you suggest ideal positioning of Warriors to avoid the barbs from forming at all?

mined pigs will be good tiles.

too bad those corns are non-wet.

will be interesting to watch

Thanks! Yes, I was considering mining the pigs. May need that production probably until writing or so.

Agri - mining looks better now yep..lots depends on how comfortable you are with agg warris vs. barbs, how fast you meet AIs so you can judge how much land around you for barbs..archery after mining might be needed, you will have no chance connecting copper before the rush.

How good are Agg warrs against barbs?
Yes, could skip archery if I see that I get packed in fairly quickly

The wine site should not be your second city. You are going to want to push out a little more than that at first. Although if you went Agr -> Bw and it has copper I would settle it ASAP. Hmm with the second corn Agri -> BW -> Pottery seems a lot stronger.

Yeah, will only settle as 2 if it's got copper or horses.
Will I have enough time for Agri->Mining->BW and set up copper city before barbs?

I would not be debating where to settle the second city yet! You have not even explored the local area yet.

Oh yeah, my bad! I plan to settle that city pretty quickly (post pottery) However, I very much doubt it will be my second city!

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

Yeah, will only settle as 2 if it's got copper or horses.
Will I have enough time for Agri->Mining->BW and set up copper city before barbs?

Hmm with out The Wheel no. So I would suggest going Archer after Mining, and then settling that Wine site as your second city for the extra commerce.

 

[Doshin]

Agg. warriors can stave off barbs if you know what you're doing. You need to get in fog busting positions fast (really fast) and have backup warriors to immediately replace those that will invariably die. If you're boxed in, it's much easier to do this and avoid Archery.

Tech path: Agri-Mining-Archery-Wheel-Pottery. Forget about Archery if you're boxed in. Normally I'd go for BW over the Wheel and Pottery, but the start lacks for commerce and has high & s.

 

[Jester Fool]

Played a bit...~1760BC

Spoiler :

The first time went Agri->Mining->Archery->The Wheel->Pottery. Big mistake. Even mining the pigs just couldn't build units fast enough to fend off barbs (huge amount of land to expand into). Expansion roughly zero.

Raging barbs...take two. Went Agri->Mining->BW->The Wheel->Pottery. I farmed only 1 corn and mined both pigs. This time I could build units fast enough (with chops) to get a stable position with 3 cities but economy is tanked (will recover once gold/copper site online and cottages get put down). A little behind in expansion compared to the AIs but I have 3 more city sites spawn busted with plenty room for additional cities. Total barbs killed...7 warriors and 11 archers.

Seems counter-intuitive, but chopping out aggressive warriors instead of building archers gives better odds of not being overrun by barbs.

 

[Mylene]

Took a look, this map is so silly oO
In both directions you have so much (AI empty) land, i can see why this feels like raging barbs
If an AI started here in your place, they'd be unstoppable...25 cities easy lol.

 

[Revent]

Well, it should be a fun map to play then in that case My

You should totally play! You'll have some fun and I may learn something from you

Okay, so tech path is Agri->Mining. Will post update in a few

 

[Revent]

T0-T10

On turn 8, I met Willem. This seems a bit worrying because he is pretty damn far to me and it looks like I may have a lot of trouble with Barbs.

Okay, turn 10, I see a lot of city spots early on. Good news is that I should be able to delay Monarchy a bit because of Phants and Gold to run a happy Cap at size 7. (Not to mention other potentials!)

Tips on how to go? Barbs are going to be a lot of problem I'd imagine, so thank God for Agg warriors at least. Mining->Archery seems to be the way to go.

I want to settle those Gold sites ASAP because it looks like I have room to expand so they should be able to support me until currency hopefully

 

[pigswill]

You may be building quite a few warriors. Is it worth building a rax early on so they start with cover?

 

[Revent]

You may be building quite a few warriors. Is it worth building a rax early on so they start with cover?

Good point. Also, Agg means cheaper rax as well. I think at the cost of 25 hammers, it's just under 2 warriors and it means that the warriors will also survive more.

 

[Manco Capac]

^
I generally never go for a rax because more earlier warriors out is equal a bigger fogbusted region and you are trying to neutralize the barb earlier. Another trick; by T10-12, human barbarian start to spawn; then start to move your scout one tile at a time. I understand some people are advocating the fastest early exploration, but I often play in a manner to preserve that free fogbuster.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

You'll have the choice between improving:
- Corn, corn, pigs, pigs or;
- Corn, pigs (northern), pigs, corn.

Second approach delays growth (which is almost always bad) but yields almost 3 times the production of the corn, corn, approach. I tried to calculate the thing but messed up my numbers... Growth to size 4 is delayed by 5 or 6 turns, I believe, improving both pigs before the 2nd corn.

Going corn, corn, gives an incentive to stagnate the city at happy cap (growth comes out ahead of improvements; depending on future tech path, a case might be made in favour of 2nd worker before settler).
With corn, pigs, settler at size 4 makes a lot of sense (need to work some floodplains to skim a couple turns on growth: improvements come out slightly ahead of growth).

Not to say maximizing production is better, but it is certainly safer.

 

[shakabrade]

Ok, finished this one 1505AD.

Spoiler :

Absence of scouts and contacts on Pangaea was weird and I listened to the game while Agri was still researched. It told me: There is so much land between you and AI that scouts are being eaten. You also have some desert and tundra near, that means lot of barbs. I didn't want to fight barbs all the time so I went for easy cheesy way of preventing barbs getting best of my nerves. Great Wall was beelined and built and 20 or 30 barbs were on my border for many years. GW is very good wonder for GSpy also, there is no better scout in the game, and later, he steals techs.

After GW, heavy but sustainable REX was done and this is where I got 100AD:

Spoiler :

I blocked land first and then filled with cities. Gold on the Dutch front helped a lot.

I didn't think I could make it to Liberalism but I did get it first with double bulb on education and took Nationalism although Sitting Bull had it for some short period. I had Marble while he didn't. I had good production city with resource bonus, forge, OR and one forest to chop. I happily lost Taj Mahal. It'd be smarter I took PP.

But didn't care. Game was easy because of all the land I had. I always go for military victory but many times change my mind and decide to play ''pushing the end turn'' victory types. Lazy, the hottest day in history here. This time I chose UN. Peaceful UN. Half of my cities didn't have military protection. Not even a warrior.

Most aggressive move in my whole game was setting up a trap city named Trojan which I gifted to Willem with 7-8 spies with 50% bonus, used two Gspies I got for 6000EP on him, and then stole from him: Rifling, Corporation and Constitution or maybe Economics. Quite a lot of beakers. Forgot that I actually captured Anasazi from barbs.

Was pretty advanced most of the game. 12 cities on Pangaea afterall. Even had highest score in the end. On Pangaea, with REX. No wars. First time in my life.

Spoiler :

 

[Jester Fool]

@ Shakabrade :

Spoiler :

Good job on the win.

I actually could fend off barbs without GW. I try to avoid GW like the plague (serious flaw in my game on Deity) which in this case is the best way to *play* the map. Having to devote so many hammers to fend off barbs really killed any chance I had to be competetive. I did get ~7 or 8 cities but they got set up too late to matter (and Willy got like 14).

I see you signed up for SGOTM 16. You'll probably love it. I played SGOTM 15 and it was a blast. I'd wish you luck but I am on a rival team.

 

[Doshin]

My shadow game, done at 1460:

Spoiler :

The early barb wave was probably the toughest part of this map, but my scout (who killed a barb warrior!) and copious aggressive warriors fog-busted well enough. Initial tech path was Agri-Mining-BW-TW-Pottery, I think. Wilhelm had beelined alpha too, so I lucked out and was able to trade Pottery for Archery.

I eventually managed to expand to 10 cities, snagging the all-important stone and marble resources along the way. A barb city and my own stone settlement had helped to restrict Wilhelm to 11 (!) cities. Bismark took most of the free space in the east. At Aesthetics:



I built TGL and NE in Tenochtitlan, and received tons of fail gold from other wonders. Five GSs got me to Lib in 760 AD: one for an academy, one for Philosophy, one for a GA, one for Edu, and one for Lib. I self-teched Nationalism in the mean time and took MT for free.

With the fail gold from the Taj, I was able to upgrade some horse archers to attack Bismark in 940 AD:



The stack was a little small, but I knew it would take Bismark 4-5 turns to swing his own forces round to my front and I was producing Cuirs at a decent rate. After I had taken three cities his troops arrived and, well, they got owned:



I lost one cuirassier, which shows the importance of attacking the AI out in the field . Bismark had nothing worse than elephants and maces. His tech path had been a little screwy (for the AI at least), since he had MT and Nationalism but no Guilds or Gunpowder. He got cuirs a few turns later, but by that stage I'd decimated most of his forces. I capped him in 1170 AD without needing to take his capital:



Joao was next. I ran my troops around his stack towards his core and attacked in 1200 AD:



Speed was important because he was researching rifling. He got it too, but on that turn, in 1240AD, I took a fourth city and he folded:



This left Boudica, who had taken Sitting Bull and Charlie as vassals. I attacked in 1260 AD and employed Sun Tzu's famous "Hot Knife through Butter" stratagem:



It was fun watching her capital switch five times in five turns. I capitulated Boudica in 1340, Sitting Bull in 1350, and wiped Charlemagne off the face of the earth in 1410. I turned the culture slider up and, with a few border pops, victory:







My capital:



Score and stats:







Who needs cannons or cavalry when you have cuirs and sacrificial altars?

Fun game. I even went into Police State for a while.

 

[shakabrade]

@ Shakabrade :

Spoiler :

Good job on the win.

I actually could fend off barbs without GW. I try to avoid GW like the plague (serious flaw in my game on Deity) which in this case is the best way to *play* the map. Having to devote so many hammers to fend off barbs really killed any chance I had to be competetive. I did get ~7 or 8 cities but they got set up too late to matter (and Willy got like 14).

I see you signed up for SGOTM 16. You'll probably love it. I played SGOTM 15 and it was a blast. I'd wish you luck but I am on a rival team.

Thank you.

I built TGW for fun actually since I never build it and because it was OKbad move for this map. However, it is better to fight barbs. But it is exhausting. It is better because you can unlock HE and don't waste beakers on not so very useful wonder as TGW. Those barb defenders are later put to use under HR so they are not such a waste. That first GSpy you get should be used to steal as soon as possible, since it gives 3000EP no matter what year it is. Stealing 8-10 techs early is much greater boost than stealing 2-3 techs later (imagine you steal currency, CS, MC; huge huge boost). It merges well with medieval war too to keep you in the tech game until your newly conquered land recovers. Especially if you steal from advanced wimp like Willem. If you use TGW the way I did most of this game (explorer) it is bad.


Yes, I am looking forward to the SGOTM. You could wish me fun at least. I wish you fun and that you don't have ''unluck''. But no luck.


@Doshin

You must be really proud of yourself, right?

You should be.

Like a glove!
No no.
Like Mylene.

 

[Doshin]

@ shakabrade

Spoiler :

You must be really proud of yourself, right?

You should be.

Like a glove!
No no.
Like Mylene.

Haha, thanks . Good game on your part too. I started this game thinking the Aztecs were a weak civ, but the Sacrificial Altar is amazing when you have a solid food-base. Maybe the best UB for a rush.

 

[Revent]

Hi,

Sorry all, have been a bit busy to give this specific game too much thought and I accidentally deleted my turn 10 save by mistake! However, will be posting an update soon although the map may look slightly different as I lost the t10 save!

But, do you suggest me going for the great wall? I know it will be REALLY helpful and the spy in the beginning of the game will be very powerful as I'd be able to steal lots of techs