Let's Play: Deity BC Space: Strategies from a 10 year veteran

[LowtherCastle]

Another reason to early-gift a city to a distant AI is for espionage tech stealing. Before they have 4 cities you can gift a city near your capital, with your culture in it, re-capture when appropriate and you'll get max discount techs later on. The AI will always accept it as a gift after having owned it, so you can gift it with a fully fortified spy, steal, re-capture. Rinse and repeat.

Not so good with Creative AIs, though because you don't get the full 50% discount for your culture in it.

 

[WastinTime]

MarbleStart Turnset T95 - 104

Here's another good reason to gift a city. (Fred got Orleans last turn)



Berlin sends a defender towards Orleans. (green lines)
The red X marks the spot where he will die

T97 DoW Fred:
I only get 6 for destroying the Hamlet. Regret? maybe

T98: Ambushed archer dies on schedule, on the X.
Berlin's one defender causes one casualty. 118 nice. Terrace survives (I now can forgive Fred for chopping 2 of my forests.)
It's now size 2. It's going to cost me a delay on my research to hold this city.
Option: City is in revolt for 4 turns. Then I could keep it 1 more turn to get culture. Then I'd have the option to give it away and recapture without losing the Terrace or the population. 2 Warnings: 1) I'd have to give it to someone who doesn't have slavery--washington currently, 2) I'd have to make sure Fred is DEAD before recapture cus then his culture would make the city revolt/lose buildings. I think I'll just hang onto it.

Munich Still at size 1, I can't take it yet or it will auto-raze. I don't really want it yet anyway--too expensive. Also, the worker needs to do the cow pasture for me.

This war has also caused Darius, Roosevelt, Mansa and Washington to be annoyed with me . Darius should be cautious again T109 when we get +1 for OB. Roosevelt will be T114. That is assuming I don't upset them further. I believe I will be able to DoW Justinian without adding any -diplo except from Suleiman. Justinian is the lone Hindu and not really part of the old boys club of peacemongers anyway.
Be a bit more careful with all the DoWs/CFs. I should probably have one less on Fred.

Watch for the fist icon on the scoreboard:
Another thing I didn't mention was that Vicky is in war prep mode . Has been for quite a while. I thought her target was her worst enemy, DeGaulle. But when he died, she didn't change her plans. I'm now hoping she is targeting her close border neighbor, Roosevelt and not me either way, I've got a Q over there spying on her troop movements while de-fogging her and Roos.

Darius is now in war prep too. I'm his worst enemy, so that's not good. I'm not too worried yet, but these situations will need to be watched carefully.

T104: Mobilized for Justinian DoW next turn.

I've got almost 3 full turns left on Math and about 1 1/2 turns worth of cash. I'm at -75gpt. Worst case, I get some $ on T107 from Justin...so probably T108 Math.

End of report

 

[Metaslab]

Nothing useful to add here, just want to say thank you to Wastin for the effort in playing this game and explaining it to us mortals. I think this is the first time I've caught one of these massive expert let's plays while it's actually developing, looking forward to being amazed by what happens

 

[elitetroops]

Luring archers out in the open by gifting cities is my favorite trick when fighting early wars on marathon. It works so well, and unlike using workers/units as bait, it always works. Usually they even send two archers.

In a recent game I tried luring a defender out with a worker. An archer left the city towards my worker, but actually walked right past it, because it was heading towards a gifted city to defend. It could have killed the worker and made it to the city just as fast, but still it didn't attack. I seem to recall reading some thread where someone discovered that an AI unit with the city defence script heading towards a city to defend would never attack you. I think that player even placed workers on roads in front of archers to force them to take a detour to unroaded tiles and delay them. I haven't tested this myself. Anyone knows if it works?

 

[rah]

Yeah thanks for this thread. Nice to see a few tricks I haven't used before. Opens my eyes to a few additional strategies. And it's an entertaining read.

 

[WastinTime]

Luring archers out in the open by gifting cities is my favorite trick when fighting early wars on marathon. It works so well, and unlike using workers/units as bait, it always works. Usually they even send two archers.

Fred would probably have sent 2 archers....if he had them Berlin is now defended by only 1 archer..
And he's building a settler.

 

[georgjorge]

Very interesting. So basically you don't conquer the city to get the usual profits (production + research + resources from the land you work) but to pre-emptively kill defenders, lure out units from other AI and re-distribute cities between AIs. Plus some gold from conquest. Is that it?

I take it these things become a lot less valuable on lower difficulty space races because you don't have high city upkeep there and don't need to take care of many AI units anyway?

 

[DrCron]

I don't think this strategy of gifting cities to the AI in the early game is really profitable in normal speed, is it? If it is, how does that work? Just curious since I hardly ever play Marathon.

 

[WastinTime]

I don't think this strategy of gifting cities to the AI in the early game is really profitable in normal speed, is it? If it is, how does that work? Just curious since I hardly ever play Marathon.

@georgjorge: sound like you've got it. Still useful, but less valuable on really low difficulty.

It might not be too profitable if you give the city away for very long, but if you capture a city at size 1, you're not losing much by giving it away briefly and having it be in revolt again. You will profit by saving your army since ambushed units are sitting ducks and reducing the # of fortified city defenders, sometimes behind walls, etc. saves many units. Speeding up conquest is one of the most profitable things you can do in any game at any speed or difficulty.
But the easiest way to answer all your questions/doubts is to give it a try! (and report back )

 

[WastinTime]

MarbleStart Turnset T105 - 115
Attacking Justin. Getting Alphabet. Ending the Early Game.

T108 I get Math

T110 Darius gets Alphabet
Math (~1350) is not enough to get Alpha(~1650) in trade.
My original plan was to get Poly (for ~600). Or I often wait for another AI to get Alpha. Possibly use Sailing, etc. But this game, I had to adapt to this evil plan:
Justin is the Hindu founder...ergo, he has Poly. So I'm going to beat on him until he offers it to me free for 10 turns of Peace But I can't get Poly for Peace until I have Alpha, so I put the 600 beakers I was going to use for Poly right into Alphabet.


Here's what happened to Justin:
I roaded NE to Willy. Left him alone so I could get trade rt income.
Hindu Holy city, had 1 defender which the AI tends to do on a hill city.
Capital had 2 defenders.



Back at the homefront. Notice I gave Munich and Orleans to Washington-purple (killing Fred). While Fred had Orleans, I parked a Q on the Pig for a while, but then I let him work Pig a few turns--keeping the city just short of growing to size 2 and at the same time just short of building an archer.

Oporto and Hamburg both have about 5 turns left before they're gifted away too. They'll each get whipped twice more.
I'm probably done with the Q-whip overflow trick after these two. I need some cash to transition to the new economy and get Priesthood.
So the extra gold trick (as mentioned earlier) is to chain the Axe and Q whips:
Hamburg:
whip Q (overflow into Axe)
whip Q (overflow same Axe)
start another Q, then to finish up in the next 5 turns the city will
whip Axe
whip Q (plus Axe overflow)
Then I'll build one last Q with the overflow and gift the city to erase whip anger



T114 I trade Math for Alpha
I get peace with Justinian for Poly.
to get Poly, you need enough WarSuccess or else he might not offer any tech or only offer Hunting.
With the Aggressive AI game option, you should also threaten a city which is what I did to get the extra boost needed for Poly.



In the tech overview above, Justin is off the bottom (can this screen be configured for more rows?). He is the only AI with Priesthood)
I should attack him again when peace wears off in 10 turns and get free Priesthood.
So I'll do 0% research while I transition my empire to the new economy system.
- As usual, Mansa is the only source of Masonry.

I revealed most of the mainland several turns ago:



War Plans:

In the past, I might have just sat around for 10 turns, then hit Justin again. But this game I want to keep moving.
I'll send some new troops for Justin and pick a new target. Fortunately, it looks like Lincoln, Suleiman, and Roosevelt will still have only archers.
Sule is the closest and has double gold in Edirne. This is also why I gave Nicaea to Sule as his 4th city. I can re-take that.
Sule actually has horses, but doesn't have AnimalHusbandry yet. Nor Mining! so he doesn't even use those golds
I like to leave the jungle AI for last anyway, so even tho I could have denied metal to Willy, I didn't. And Vicky has a ton of axes already.

I still have Vicky and Darius in war prep with Darius aiming for me for sure. I'm monitoring troops which I assume will now go for Justin's old cities.
Darius has only horses, no metal, so I'll need a couple spears (need Hunting yet). I should have hunting as soon as I decide how to tech trade.
one option is to gift Darius a city, then capture it and get a peace deal before he can get his units to me. That should cancel his plans, but he'd be annoyed with me for a while. A better idea might be to let him DoW me (no -3 diplo penalty) as long as I have my spears, etc.

Looks like Darius could be about 6 turns from a DoW on me. He has something like 4 Immortals and 2 archers thinking about coming my way. Not sure yet how they will stack up. It's currently only 2Immortals+1archer in the lead stack. I can get 3-5 spears ready in time, but I might want 2 spear/1 Axe so I can attack the archer first, then the horse units.

 

[Izuul]

Very nice.

Have you mentioned which tech you plan to Oracle?

 

[georgjorge]

With that amount of cities, I'd bet a lot on Currency being the chosen tech.

I already learned quite a lot from that writeup! Thanks!

 

[WastinTime]

Very nice.

Have you mentioned which tech you plan to Oracle?

Historically, it's usually Currency. It depends on what Mansa is doing. Otherwise, I've picked CoL or MetalCasting.
I'm also considering stepping outside the box and try something different.
I'll get into a discussion when the time comes.

 

[Izuul]

Currency is definitely the obvious choice, but with the mysterious new economy and all...

I'm also considering stepping outside the box and try something different.

Interesting. CoL or MC to trade with Mansa if he's teching Currency obviously makes sense. The outside the box one though? Aesthetics for 150% fail gold multiplier on the marble wonders (and i guess SP)? Takes awhile for that investment to pay off though.

Sorry, i just enjoy guessing.

 

[salty mud]

Let me get this straight. OP is trying to win a spaceship victory in the BC years?

Consider this a subscription post!

Regards

 

[elitetroops]

Hmm... outside the box Oracle... Theology? It has even more trade value than MC and unlocks Hagia Sophia, which is a pretty huge wonder on marathon.

Then there's this mysterious economy you've invented. All I know is that after you invented it, you played SGOTM without CS. Could you bypass CS in this game as well and go through Theo to Paper? I have no idea what role your capital will play in your mystery economy.

(Like Izuul, just enjoy guessing )

 

[WastinTime]

For anyone who missed it, there were some fun guesses starting at post #775 on this page about my mysterious WB Economy.
That was GM-144, where I used it for the first time to get to Sushi Corp faster than I ever imagined.

The MarbleStart game is at the point where I can't hardly discuss my plans without first explaining the WB Economy, so the wait shouldn't be long. Unless I switch to the StoneFish start

 

[Izuul]

I'm gonna laugh if "WB" has absolutely nothing to do with the new economy and just stands for something like WastinTime's Broken economy.

 

[Bandobras Took]

I also like Whoah, that's a lotta Beakers.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Wine Barrel economy. It's all about vineyards.