Looking to improve my early game on Deity

One of the biggest problem with Liberty is indeed space (or you can play a 4 city Liberty game but I do not see the point of playing that). That Siam game will make you feel that since beside the capital the other city spots are meh or crowded and as you said Phitsomething will lack food.
Your best option in that case is to feed that starving city with a route or 2. It's always a better idea to feed cities that can't grow than keep stacking the capital, especially as Liberty.

To be honest I can't make Liberty wide work on all maps because of the space and luxury. What I show in videos is when it works. I can at least suggest you stick with Pangeas + low seas to make it work more often. Or just get the NQMapmod (or extract the map part from my mod) and you'll get many more maps that are liberty friendly. I also remember a celt succession game that was very good for wide in the story section in this forum.
 
Thanks for the feedback, monsieur Acken! Indeed that map is a bit crowded... And, now that you mention it, I screwed up and sent the Petra TR to Muang Saluang instead of the other city. Bit of a fail there... Anyways, I'll replay that one someday using Traditon to see how I fair in comparison. For now, I'll try my hand on that Morocco game, although seeing how the Celts have "boxed me in", a Tradition game seems more fitting... sigh...

I will look for that Celt succession(?) game you suggest. Come to think of it, I've yet to try that Celt Lib-Piety game you did a LP of, which I've watched a few times. :p Do you reckon it's a good candidate for a fast CV?
 
Really for a celt wide CV I suggest the succession game here :
http://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/bugsys-braves-ride-again.557293/#post-14029645
Sadly the first save game available is at turn 15.

It's also the map I used as an example in my guide.

You can also try the DCL celt game.

The problem with Lib-Piety is that it is not that well suited for culture. The main reason is that Culture also needs Aesthetics and as a result trying to complete Lib/Piety and Aesthetics on top of a good chunk of Rationalism and ideology is bound to fail. Ideally you want to be able to use Culture centers to get your operas (especially as celts) and then museums. But the drag of Piety will prevent that. That is why I played Lib-Piety as a domination game since the policy requirement is lower and you can get by with only 2 in Rationalism.
That said maybe you can get by with a late culture centers and replace lower production cost by faith bought scientific buildings. You'd need Jesuit for universities though, not always something easy to do.
Another issue is that Piety is good almost only because of Jesuit Education. There's a nasty dice roll right there.
 
Thanks for the insights! What a great project you guys did there! I'll definitely try my hand on it and, even if this is Deity, I am a bit more optimistic about my progress after seeing your T90 ss from that game - compared to my recent Siam experiment we have similar fpt, cpt and btp so I must not be doing totally terrible! :D

Acken said:
Spoiler :
Click to expand...

Your write ups, as well as the discussion between the four of you, are very interesting and helpful indeed! Did you guys do more of these projects, btw? And, sorry if I'm being too upfront but, perhaps you wouldn't be opposed to doing something similar in the future? Not a full game, if that'd be too much but, perhaps up to T100-150?

About Liberty-Piety, it seems you guys were originally going for this strategy yourselves but you changed gears at some point and went full Liberty. :D I see what you mean about the SPs, though. It does seem like it'd be hard to get through all of them and anyway I just remembered that Gandhi is in that DCL so, he'd be a huge PITA to go against since, in my experience, he seems to beeline straight to Chivalry to get Alhambra.
 
phryxolydian said:
Thanks for the feedback, monsieur Acken! Indeed that map is a bit crowded... And, now that you mention it, I screwed up and sent the Petra TR to Muang Saluang instead of the other city. Bit of a fail there... Anyways, I'll replay that one someday using Traditon to see how I fair in comparison. For now, I'll try my hand on that Morocco game, although seeing how the Celts have "boxed me in", a Tradition game seems more fitting... sigh...

I will look for that Celt succession(?) game you suggest. Come to think of it, I've yet to try that Celt Lib-Piety game you did a LP of, which I've watched a few times. :p Do you reckon it's a good candidate for a fast CV?
Click to expand...
If you want to do Liberty-Piety, consider this strategy.
 
Thanks, man! Very interesting, I will definitely have to try that! But seriously, that is some excellent play by Manpanzee: 7 cities, all with at least 7pop + WLTKD and 10 happiness to spare - not to mention the +200 bpt and +71 fpt by T110! I can only dream of ever becoming as good as the likes of you guys. :please:
 
I played a few turns of that Celt game and ehm... yeah... I don't think I'm doing quite as well as you guys. :lol:

Spoiler :


It's T43 already and I've only just been able to settle Sinai. With all the barbs hanging around there I was actually able to settle the N city first... Looking at your notes I kinda messed up and went for a Shrine while I waited for Collective Rule, should've gone for a Caravan. :hammer2:Didn't get a culture ruin like you did so CR came 5 turns later... Instead, I got a 3rd unit upgrade (wth?), a ruin revealing another ruin, +1 pop the same turn I grew to pop 3 (so instant pop 4) and last ruin I got (the one next to the barb around Sidon) was +60 faith! I guess that makes up for the other 2!

Buuuut, I was not able to steal any workers from Korea so, aside from the one from Sidon, I had to get another one from Ragusa... oh well. I also should've gone scouting up N instead of looking for more ruins down South, maybe I could've snatched a worker from Siam by now... Anyway, I decided to hard build a worker before the settlers came to somewhat make up for this. Now I don't know how too proceed. How bad can I sink into unhappiness with Liberty? I would like to keep building settlers but right now I'm stagnating all 3 cities and I'll be settling a 4th one soon. My intuition tells me to build more workers and at least one Caravan however, I am learning a new strategy here so I don't know if following my intuition is exactly the right call... :rolleyes:
 
Going into unhappiness when expanding as liberty is fine, as long as you will be able to get back positive soon.

A few comments:

Pledge to protect all the city states. It's +5 influence and the only downside is if a civ tributes your cs. If they do so, you can choose to ignore it (-20 influence with the cs and lose the pledge to protect) or you can not ignore it. Choose the latter because it gives a very small diplomatic penalty (it's like +5, for context, denouncing them is +35) which decays over like 10 turns.

I wouldn't steal the worker from the second city state. The diplomatic penalty is fairly significant, especially when liberty has increased worker efficiency and a free worker.

Sell your iron (and horses once you get the opportunity to) individually at 1 iron for 2 gpt. You could be at +11 gpt right now. Note that once a civ has like 4 of a strategic resource, they will value any further at 0 gpt. Only sell to civs have an iron icon next to them.

Your citrus seems to be unimproved, you should probably improve that before the horses/iron (why did you get bronze working before luxury tech?)
 
Iron was improved on that turn (you can see the worker still standing there) and, unfortunately, because this game was rolled with strategic balance (which, I'd forgotten), nobody wants horses. People do want iron, it seems, probably because they're spamming swords everywhere. I also got sugar online this turn, I think. I'd chopped the citrus' forest a few turns before I got Calendar but I'll be right on that next. Tbh, I don't exactly know why going BW before Calendar was Acken's choice, probably to better judge where to settle. I only remembered reading it the day before so I went with it... It does have the advantage of getting the UUs if necessary and, of course, being able to sell the iron for some much needed gpt. However, as I already knew where to plant the cities, I probably should've gone straight to Calendar. :lol: Why is this smiley not back?

About the worker, I wasn't able to get any workers from Korea (Acken grabbed 2 from them) so I feared I'd get too far behind in my build if I didn't. I don't like it but hey, 7 city NC is no joke, we gotta get as many tiles improved as quickly as possible, right? Is the negative resting point for the entire game? That would suck. Luckily, I only saw it affecting 3 CS, the ones I'd DoW'd and their neighbor, Antanabananarivo.

I admit I sometimes forget to pledge CS, I was not around when vanilla came out so I didn't get into the habit of doing so, thanks for the reminder! And thanks again for the feedback, man, I appreciate it. :D
 
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I rolled this map about a week ago and forgot about it but, I think it's a good illustration of how my choices in the early game can be improved. This is Continents (seemed more reasonable for Indonesia) and, since Venice is my neighbor, I don't have direct expansion competition but still, I have problems deciding where to expand!

I went ahead and did a quick drawing of where I think are reasonable spots to settle, spots that might be better choices (X's) and spots that don't look as good but might be worth settling anyways (pinks). I originally spawned where the light blue X is so I didn't know there was salt nearby. I moved anyway to see if I could get a stronger Petra. I'm sad to miss the sheep to the W (3f, 3p) but, had I moved over there, I would not get the much needed Marble!

Spoiler :


The order of settling I think should be: 1) Green (to steal the horses from Venice straight away), 2) Orange (to prevent Dido, who I haven't met but can see her borders, from settling) and 3) Blue. At this point I have no VC in mind, which is why I'm uncertain where blue should be settled. In case of DV it'd be useful to have a city (other than Venice) that can build naval units and it'd make the spot near the cows more interesting - either way I'd miss one salt. Also, note that the sugar is inside a CS territory I forgot to meet!

As always, I'd appreciate any feedback here. This is just one example but expansion face is something that I constantly have trouble with. Also, I hope you enjoyed my amazing Paint skills. :p

EDIT: After playing this map a little more I am heavily disappointed and disheartened with the game. Despite my best efforts to make it work (not just in this game), I simply cannot do it. I changed the settling order after I remembered Hiawatha being on the same continent - I went for orange first. There where many barbarians in the area so I had to avoid getting my settler captured and found El Dorado nearby. In the end, green was settled first anyways because of the barbarians around Medan which, amazingly, not only has El Dorado but also 3 unique luxuries (4 had I settled across the river but I had no money to buy the wonder) in its range. I decided to settle a 5th city to grab that copper and the extra salt. This game can be thrown out the window, though: didn't get a pantheon even after going for a shrine right after the monument, beelined for Petra but it was gone on T65 (1 turn after I got Mathematics) and, because I had quite a bit of unhappiness, my cities are tiny! How you can have 7 cities and NC by turn 85 is beyond me but, anyway, thanks to everyone gave me their feedback and thanks to everyone who read this. I need a break.

Spoiler :
 
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Well, I am a struggling Deity player, so take my advise with a grain of salt.
  1. I would have planted the initial settler on the river hill.
  2. My understanding is that the better Deity players will tell you that you can work all the civs the same. From that perspective, I think your early focus would be on sweeping your starting continent. Forget the spice islands, but the UU can be quite nice! If you kill off your neighbors, you can play the end game anyway you like.
  3. My own strong preference is to play to the UU/UA/UB. For Indonesia, I want all my cities coastal and I must have three spice islands, or the game feels like a loss. This map might be tricky for that!
  4. Given my prejudices, with this map and the inland start, I would have played 3-city Liberty to NC and then started looking for my spice islands. Only after that would I pick a VC. Going Liberty instead of Tradition would free me to get a few more (non-coastal even) cities on the main continent.
  5. 3-city Tradition to NC then 3 spice island expos might be stronger. The map is interesting enough that I would probably play it both ways to compare.
  6. Tradition is so much easier than Liberty! But that means four and exactly four cities. So for Indonesia, I play Small Continents or Islands. But watery maps are easier than Pangaea or Continents, and probably you feel strongly (one way or the other) about that.
I am very impressed by your Paint skills! Those are good starting hex outlines, very nice!
 
Thanks, beetle! Yeah, going for Petra was a gamble (especially on Continents) and it just didn't pay off that time. I agree, settling on the hill would've been a safer option, even without knowing there was salt right next to it... Hell, settling on the salt wouldn't have been bad either with 3 other unique luxuries in range! Hindsight is 20/20, I guess. :p

Funny you mention about the unique traits for each civ as yesterday I was rewatching Acken's Aztec LP and I even commented saying how it's a bit disappointing to play a civ such as that one just like you'd play any other. Definitely with you on that one. Also, about the map, I'd rolled 3 maps prior to this one as Indonesia and they where all in really awful jungle terrain and I had Monty as my neighbor on 2 of them and lovely Dido in the other one barely 10 tiles from my cap so... yeah... :nope:

Decided to just play something different than this Liberty stuff and tried Honor as another leader I haven't played with, Askia, on Continents. I'm doing OK but this map's terrain is just really bad! I captured Palenque on T77 and, after traveling through thick horrible jungle to get to Siam, I notice his cap going from 17 to 28 CS... DAMNEEET!
 
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Well, haven't given up on the Liberty wide play. This map is on Immortal not Deity but, whatever, I finally got a decent-ish map to explore wide play - or be allowed to! Went Trad/Liberty on this one (like in the Egypt game) so everything's a bit delayed. Decided to go Liberty and GE from the finisher after I saw Uluru, was origianlly planning for a Tradition game. First screen is from the turn I got Edu, T120 - a bit late probably but, I think it is OK. Wu went full Honor but somehow didn't attack me until around T110. Dunno.. The siege looks worse than it really was tbh, that's just 1-2 hits from 2 Catapults + SoZ at work. Terrain is very defensible so I was never really in danger. She was offering me her 2nd city for peace but I didn't really think the city was any good, despite the salt so I just took the salt and a bit of gpt. Wu finally decided that 2 cities wasn't going to cut it if she wanted to win on T177. :lol: I don't even...

As usual, I made some sub-par choices like going for Earth Mother instead of OwN or Desert Folklore but anyway, my religion was strong enough and I was able to get all 7 Pagodas (at least 6) when they were just 200 faith + some Missionaries thrown in between, as well.

Spoiler :

T235 CV: Now, I know this isn't early game any more but wth I'll post it anyway. Really struggled at some points in the mid game but anyway, it turned out OK. Only got 11 wonders in this game, sadly. Darius rushed PT when I was 4 turns from completing it in Seville, I think. In the end I didn't even use Rationalism finisher for anything useful (Globalization) as I'd bulbed internet a few turns before and could've possibly started bulbing sooner than I did. Timed the natural GM to be born the turn after Internet and next turn I triple-bombed William. He didn't expect that I bet ya. :D Unfortunately, I still needed a few turns to be influential over the Inca and I wasn't about to sell another one of my cities so I faith bought a 3rd GM and bombed William again... Still not enough.. OK, I'll wait. :p

Spoiler :
 
consentient said:
1. That you take one strategy and practise it until you feel comfortable with it, then move onto another strategy. Try not to learn them all at once. THis might mean that you abandon games, but it's gonna save you time, I think. Have a VC in mind when you choose a strategy. For Science and Culture, see Tabarnak's food caravans thread for early game; and Deau's Culture thread and Acken's Freedom Science thread for late game. For Domination, try Moriarte's Liberty thread and Peddroelm's Honor thread. Even my Domination thread might be of some use to you :p.
Click to expand...

Hey @consentient, sorry to intervene, but do you mind sharing the links to those guides? I can't find them and I would *LOVE* to read those guides, that would really help me.

Thank you
 
phryxolydian said:
Well, haven't given up on the Liberty wide play. This map is on Immortal not Deity but, whatever, I finally got a decent-ish map to explore wide play - or be allowed to! Went Trad/Liberty on this one (like in the Egypt game) so everything's a bit delayed. Decided to go Liberty and GE from the finisher after I saw Uluru, was origianlly planning for a Tradition game. First screen is from the turn I got Edu, T120 - a bit late probably but, I think it is OK. Wu went full Honor but somehow didn't attack me until around T110. Dunno.. The siege looks worse than it really was tbh, that's just 1-2 hits from 2 Catapults + SoZ at work. Terrain is very defensible so I was never really in danger. She was offering me her 2nd city for peace but I didn't really think the city was any good, despite the salt so I just took the salt and a bit of gpt. Wu finally decided that 2 cities wasn't going to cut it if she wanted to win on T177. :lol: I don't even...

As usual, I made some sub-par choices like going for Earth Mother instead of OwN or Desert Folklore but anyway, my religion was strong enough and I was able to get all 7 Pagodas (at least 6) when they were just 200 faith + some Missionaries thrown in between, as well.

Spoiler :

T235 CV: Now, I know this isn't early game any more but wth I'll post it anyway. Really struggled at some points in the mid game but anyway, it turned out OK. Only got 11 wonders in this game, sadly. Darius rushed PT when I was 4 turns from completing it in Seville, I think. In the end I didn't even use Rationalism finisher for anything useful (Globalization) as I'd bulbed internet a few turns before and could've possibly started bulbing sooner than I did. Timed the natural GM to be born the turn after Internet and next turn I triple-bombed William. He didn't expect that I bet ya. :D Unfortunately, I still needed a few turns to be influential over the Inca and I wasn't about to sell another one of my cities so I faith bought a 3rd GM and bombed William again... Still not enough.. OK, I'll wait. :p

Spoiler :
Click to expand...
Could you post the original save for this game? Also, what was your tech order? When going Liberty, Acken advises to go to engineering before philosophy and to metal casting before universities to allow your cities to grow to even work scientist slots.
 
GunnarStahl said:
Hey @consentient, sorry to intervene, but do you mind sharing the links to those guides? I can't find them and I would *LOVE* to read those guides, that would really help me.

Thank you
Click to expand...
I haven't found Deau's Culture guide anywhere. It doesn't help that you can't search for old threads created by their authors before the forum moved . But here are the links to the guides, bookmark them!

Freedom's Science Victory by Acken
Tradition: Three Cities Approaches by Tabarnak
Liberty Domination by Moriarte
Domination (A Noob's Guide) by consentient
Honor/Autocracy Domination by peddrohelm

adcarrymaokai said:
Could you post the original save for this game? Also, what was your tech order? When going Liberty, Acken advises to go to engineering before philosophy and to metal casting before universities to allow your cities to grow to even work scientist slots.
Click to expand...
I'm really sorry but, sadly, my earliest save is from T88 where I took my first break. :sad: By all means, it's yours if you still want it - I guess I was really focused and I forgot to save more often like I usually do. To answer your questions: no, in this game it was really important that I got Petra for Barcelona so I'd plan to use Liberty finisher's GE to rush Petra and not the NC so I went Philosophy => Currency. After that I believe I went Engineering => Edu => Metal Casting => Astronomy. I remember "losing" a few turns researching Guilds instead of Engineering because I panicked as I had a SP very soon and I thought I had to open Aesthetics, then I realized I could get Aristocracy. :lol:
 
Every game you play, no matter how many turns in, you still have the t0 save at the very beginning of saves, unless you started another game in between. Look for the 4000BC save, it should be there.

In any case, I suggest going engineering -> philosophy -> metal casting -> education. The point is to grow your cities to even make universities worthwhile. After Barcelona, you should have founded another coastal city (for instance, on that ivory) and sent a cargo ship to the capital, and vice versa. Also, if you can't still enough workers, then build more workers. You want to improve everything asap because improved tiles give more yields, and you can sell resources to neighbors.
 
I have indeed started (a few actually) more games since I finished that one, unfortunately. I even started a scenario for the first time this morning! Failed pretty bad, I might add (Mongols on Deity 3/5 AIs). :lol:

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, I wondered about starting that coastal city but I decided against it, in the end. There where a total of 6 unique luxuries in my territory so I followed Acken's suggestion to have 6 uniques for 7 cities. Ivory (which, I already had) would've been OK because of the circus but, other than that? It wouldn't have been a good city, imo. Santiago was already pretty bad as it was and I didn't want too many bad cities, you might say. :p I preferred Santiago because I felt I needed to link up my empire but, eveen with cargos, it was still the worst of the bunch. Btw, I did a 4 city NC and then settled Toledo, Santiago and Salamanca in quick succession. The Ivory city I felt would overlap too heavily with both Madrid and Cordoba. Besides, Isabella's LUA is called Seven Cities of Gold! :D

I'm not sure why you mention the workers, though? I did indeed build 2 workers myself, iirc. Also, I built the Pyramids super late (~T95) as nobody but William went Liberty and I thought I might as well. I had too many workers at that point (9, I think) and I really should've deleted them waaaay before the end. I kept them for the railroads but, I never got to finish researching that!
 
Phryx, I am willing to make you a one-time offer. If you generate a map using the NQ Pangaea, NQ Continents or NQ Oval script, on Deity, with any civ that I haven't played in the recent run of CDG games (so excluding Maya, Iroquois, etc.), and you choose the VC (I think you know my preference, but it will be your choice), then I will take the time to play through it with you, and show you screenshots and everything at certain pre-agreed benchmarks. I used to have energy to make LPs, but seriously I can't do that anymore. I think this would be the next best thing, and would be able to help you see where I do things differently, and in some cases, where I do it strictly better.

This offer is open for the next 48 hours since, due to unforseen circumstances, my calendar opened right up.

Send me a PM if you want to take me up on this offer :)
 
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