Low Sea Zara (Deity Isolation)

[soundjata]

T42

Spoiler :

Bronze first, size one settler.
Chop a couple of forests, build a couple of mine and a farm (Agriculture second tech) Gondar has wheat
Then Wheel + Pottery.
Build 5 warriors and eliminate threat from the South East.
Barb invasion incoming...
Might need to delay city 3 instead of chancing a dicey fight.
I don't fear pillaging of my improvements at least

Skip both AH and Fishing ?

 

[krikav]

@BornInCantaloup I was inclined to go AH first before you talked me into fish.
Problem with Ah first is imho that you pretty much are forced to go BW after that. There are no other hills to mine!! And since commerce is so crucial in iso, i was not willing to delay pottery that much.

 

[soundjata]

Frankly there are only barbs in this game - such fun

 

[krikav]

Im not at all familiar with the whip warrior for gold feature, i thought overflow was simply lost.

And barbs where completely brutal in my game... I expected so much with deity iso lost sea level though.

 

[Qactus]

Pretty sure you'd need the BUFFY mod (HoF/BOTM) for the excess overflow into gold thing to work.
edit: never mind, this is a BUFFY save.

 

[Implo]

There are elephants...
Can't we share tiles and stay small?

Edit: love your Gondar placement

On the need of monarcy:
It's a valid question.. but I would think you would get your beakers back in time and then some with maybe a academy in Cap and this glorious land. You would also develop the land better so when you meet everyone you would be able to keep up the tech pace easier.

Non Monarch gives the cities 2 tiles (food tiles) and 2-3 cottages/GSs.
With monarchy you can grow into health cap and work and mature 4-6 river cottages + GSs. and you could slow build warriors all day.

But then again.. what do I know.. maybe optics rush is the best possible play here!

yeah.. after your comment i really started to like Gondar placement aswell.. it got a lot of things going for (cottages, happiness, 3x food, share tiles, fogbuster etc.) it and lategame it will be a great city

@BornInCantaloup I really like your crazy scheeemes ! Which i had the guts and creativity to try something like that. I wish you the best of luck!

 

[krikav]

Thats nice @BornInCantaloup
Do you have a plan for a possible GProphet, or do you plan on letting other cities speed ahead?
I got confu pretty late in my game, perhaps you can do the same? Not sure how many cities you can cram into this island, but it could be that a shrine is ok.

Someone mentioned CoL being redundant with creative.
I don't really agree with that, having CoL can be very nice since you can run much more specialists and getting the great persons easier.
Also.. with ORG, maybe half price courthouses can be OK, especially if you go for a larger empire.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

It did feel good, Krikav !
I like CoL, here. It isn't just border pops, it's cheap Courthouses on a large island and unlimited specs. Setting up infra early is valuable to the long game.
I do not plan for a Prophet, no. I'd much prefer an Academy. Need Writing fast, now and a Library in Gondar, for example (anywhere, really). Trouble is I'm paying maintenance, now, maybe I'll whip+chop another warrior
Also, I went through Meditation for speed, so I've fully opened the Philo bulb. Can't escape that one but Philo makes sense to me if I consider CoL in the first place.
I kinda think that Bureaucracy is a real option, too, with a potential size 20 capital I don't know if that would be overdoing it. Lib -> Astro, that is.

 

[krikav]

Hard to tell... CS and a quick lib->astro I remember having done some time but I think that was in semi-iso. But with an exceptional capital like this, it could very well be an option.
Last thing I remember before saving the game yesterday was that I regret chopping all of the capitals forests because health was quickly becomming an issue.
But with such massive food surplus, ironing through the unhealth for quite some time is certainly doable too.

 

[krikav]

@soundjata & @Implo
Regarding monarchy...

The ivory does give one happines, so skipping monarchy (and myst, and poly, and priest) is a valid idea.
It's something that I usually reserve for maps that are more constricted though.
Here we do have lots of green lush riverside, and it's really a shame to let it all go undeveloped.

ORG makes you afford more cities though, so maybe that path has more merit than I first thought.
You can settle a cluster of cities just before or shortly after writing, then save cash for a long time, perhaps even getting an academy and certainly alot of libraries before doing the optics sprint.

ie, you get the population required to mature cottages AND run specialists by loads of cities rather than large cities.

 

[Implo]

Spoiler t97 :

here is the t97 monarchy route. 135 beakers @ 100 % running a -37 deficit. 0 % slider gives 57 gold. Would be cool to compare if someone gets the urge to not go monarchy! Status is 11 cottages, 7 hamlets. 5 village. I can se that my research power increases ever other turn from development

yeah maybe CoL is ofc usefull.. cheap courthouses extra Great people etc. is nice! But nessisary on this map? I'm currently aiming for 3 GSs.. 1 academy, 1 Asto bulb.. and maybe save the last one (im not sure he will be in time.. for a Golden Age.)

But ISO.. I dont know. Optic and Astro bulb is just so strong and CoL migth be a detour on this map.

I'm using ORG in a way that I can afford the 5 city. Will maybe plot down a couple extra when I have grown into max health cap.

Would btw be really cool if everyone posted their turn 50 and turn 100 save. And maybe even we have a numberchruncher among us to we compared them up against eachother.. Fun to se how different the games develop and how broken some players make this kind of a start.

Maybe gold @ slider 0 and beakers @ slider 100 % is a fun comparison.

Like that "best of series" that was run before.. was it @Fippy who hosted it? Where everyone voted and picked the best save I dont recall the name of it.. But it was really interesting to see how quick and different the games progressed.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Would btw be really cool if everyone posted their turn 50 and turn 100 save.

That used to be a thing. 2000 BC, 1000 BC, 1 AD landmarks.
I like the way you cottaged the hills. Is the southern land too poor to be of use ?

Last thing I remember before saving the game yesterday was that I regret chopping all of the capitals forests because health was quickly becomming an issue.
But with such massive food surplus, ironing through the unhealth for quite some time is certainly doable too.

You're probably right about the forests. Harbours are +2 health is what I want to say.

 

[krikav]

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/cookbook-1-sally-immortal.638637/

 

[krikav]

OOooO, cottaging of hills! Didn't even think about that. Makes total sense with this food surplus.
T50 and T100 save, will try to get those up.


Here is the saves. I just loaded the autosaves and took screenshots. Cant' remember what builds I had so I just assigned something.

Spoiler T50 :

Spoiler T100 :

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Here, I give you t50 & save :

Spoiler :

HR revolt last turn. Lalibela settled this turn. Instant connection thanks to river network.
Nothing to build, not much to improve, now researching Fishing before The Wheel/Agriculture. Southern worker is mining. Both northern workers are following Master of Ideas tip and will execute a double chop when size 3 Aksum whips its warrior. That will give me some 50 gold to, hopefully, carry me to Pottery. R.I.P. forests, you served me well.

Eastern warrior is being cheeky and sneaks by the barb archers, it will advance before others can spawn. Anoth wounded warrior snuck its way straight to the south.
Those archers now have some 10% odds against Gondar (full fortification), so they're not too much of a concern.

 

[soundjata]

This is my tee fifty

Spoiler :

@krikav are you trolling or what (75=/=100)

 

[soundjata]

Also Galleys.
Fear barb galleys!

 

[Implo]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1L_tRSncljqpBlwK08CV6uOMz8eP5lwJmVf42n1vsrcc/edit?usp=sharing

Here is a link. Maybe people can post their numbers there?
I set up everyones t50 game as an example and I will put in my numbers now
Hammer (total) is a roughly estimate of produced hammers. Inkluding workers in production etc.
Research (total) Is the beakers of all known techs + whatever you are researching.
Probably room to add more variables as well..

And now i see that my turn 50 is long gone from the autosave.. But ill give my t100 when I get there.

@BornInCantaloup That oracle t50 into monarchy.. the more I think about it the more i like it. Seems really powerfull. Now you can just grow, whip cottage in a nice pace. The GPPs is nice aswell for a golden age guy!

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Honestly, it felt good but... I don't think the Oracle was worth it, as much as I love 1-turning that wonder.
The delay on tile improvements was way too big. I didn't think I could crash the eco in floodplains heaven. But I also didn't realize I would be paying 5+ gpt on units most of the time (this is what skipping Archery does to you, apparently). That makes backfilling techs really awkward. Now I understand why people self-research Monarchy
I've played to T64 Pottery (16 turns research from Oracle completion !). Writing will be about T70 and I am barely starting to develop tiles. I think Soundjata and especially Krikav (earliest Pottery) are likely to have caught up / be ahead by the time I reach 1000 BC. Will post pictures later.
There's no need to be fancy, we should just set up granaries (I don't regret AH->Bronze, though, I just should have headed for Pottery next).



Painful turns with pictures (T50-T68) :

Spoiler :

First, thankfully, because I'm bleeding way too much gold, I do burn 2 forests into gold and that gives me some amount of research power :

Spoiler :

Warrior goes check settling site. From this point on, I do my best effort to raise the pop count and decrease unit upkeep. It will reach a new high when the settler and 2 workboats are completed.

Spoiler :

4th city. So, as far as Monarchy is concerned (Oracled). I didn't realize, originally, how packed I would settle. There are a lot of shared tiles, here, that decrease in a big way the value of a higher happy cap (which I'm not even taking benefit from, at this point).

Spoiler :

T64 Pottery
Mostly delaying stuff and slow-building everywhere. Aksum has a workboat 1 turn from completion.
I forget to set Lalibela and Addis Abeba on Granaries.

Spoiler :

This is where I am. 5th city, yes, 4 workers and only 2 cottaged tiles.
Not sure what I build in Aksum, maybe it whips the Granary, now.

Unit upkeep is finally under control, at 3gpt, but managing the unit upkeep is no way to improve the economy
No Agriculture is researched. Can't afford.

 

[soundjata]

T82. Is that cheating?

Spoiler :

Island was fogbusted T64.