sethryclaus
Chieftain
Pangaea, standard size, abundant resources, legendary start.
I re-rolled my start a few times but nothing extreme - don't really need to with those settings
With certain Civs that are sometimes considered not deity-worthy, I mess with map settings and later-era starts as there aren't really any bad Civs if you do that.
Pantheon
I had previously tried Religious Settlements (free settler, border expansion) for the fast start on the IZ triad but I wanted to try Oral Tradition (+1 culture from plantations) and the Urban Planning (+1 prod in cities) policy from the start, getting my pantheon late via plantations, many of which provide faith.
This worked really well and made up for a lack of monuments and cultural city-states but it also accelerated my culture to the point that I only just made the district discount for my 2nd IZ and didn't take advantage of some early game inspirations.
Originally, I was going to get Fertility Rites (10% growth, free builder) because I needed to rush Observatories (unique campus) for discounts and they don't do anything without plantations. Additionally, you feel like you're losing with Maya for a while until you suddenly shoot past the AI and the 10% growth would've made this even faster.
This would've been the better option because I got too much culture from Oral Tradition and missed discounts for 2 commercial hubs into 2 theatre squares because I was forced to research theatre squares.
District Discounts & Build Order
I ignored scouts and went slinger -> builder -> settler -> settler (got lucky for a free builder too), buying 2 slingers and upgrading them to archers. This got a bit dicey at times with barbarians but that's really where you want to be going tall IMHO. Anything else and you're overbuilding units.
I teched pottery -> animal husbandry -> writing -> irrigation -> bee line to aqueducts (hard research).
Animal husbandry was opportunistic because of the sheep that you can see my city thought was a great tile.
District builder order was:
Bits and Pieces
I didn't build enough farms for the feudalism eureka. This is possibly another reason not to get the Oral Tradition pantheon, you actually want your culture to be slow with these guys. After feudalism, farms kept my cities on their ecstatic Mayan shag-fest.
Because my remaining cities came out staggered, I was basically able to use Liang & a domestic trade route in each new city to hard build high adjacency IZs quickly.
I saved all my envoys as I had no science or industry city-states near my start (or culture). I used alliances to discover the map then dumped my envoys into 3 industrial and 2 science city-states.
I bee-lined Education and then Industrialization, only dipping into other parts of the tech tree to get better chances of the eurekas I wanted from great people. Likewise, I did a few quests and eurekas here and there.
Later in the game I used spies to gain suzerainty and a bunch of theatre squares and the policy that denies rock bands to prevent the AI getting a culture victory. I finished about AD1600 I think (deleted my save while getting screenshots for this derp - had too many Maya games lol). Not sure what turn that is.
A random thing was that there's actually a 3rd big lake in addition to the 2 in the screenshot. I got both Huey Teocotl and Auckland before my last 2 cities which was pretty exceptional for rocketing them into the game.
7 cities for most of the game but I got another 4 later in the game from culture.
I spent a substantial amount of the game spamming campus and IZ repeatables since ecstatic + Mayan capital yields + IZ city states made everything finish super quickly.
All in all, diplomacy and the whole delegation first turn, open borders, gift a resource getting friendships right from the get go is a bit OP.
Money is good, having 3 archers and a warrior when you can build modern armor is better. On the other hand, it'd be pretty hard to do deity with Mayan otherwise. You really need to be able to catapult because of the enforced limitations.
Diplo point trading is dumb too. It's mostly because there's such a high chance that the election options won't be the right ones or will come at the wrong time that it isn't worth saving the points, at least IMO.
I re-rolled my start a few times but nothing extreme - don't really need to with those settings
With certain Civs that are sometimes considered not deity-worthy, I mess with map settings and later-era starts as there aren't really any bad Civs if you do that.
Spoiler Starting position turn 28 :
Pantheon
I had previously tried Religious Settlements (free settler, border expansion) for the fast start on the IZ triad but I wanted to try Oral Tradition (+1 culture from plantations) and the Urban Planning (+1 prod in cities) policy from the start, getting my pantheon late via plantations, many of which provide faith.
This worked really well and made up for a lack of monuments and cultural city-states but it also accelerated my culture to the point that I only just made the district discount for my 2nd IZ and didn't take advantage of some early game inspirations.
Originally, I was going to get Fertility Rites (10% growth, free builder) because I needed to rush Observatories (unique campus) for discounts and they don't do anything without plantations. Additionally, you feel like you're losing with Maya for a while until you suddenly shoot past the AI and the 10% growth would've made this even faster.
This would've been the better option because I got too much culture from Oral Tradition and missed discounts for 2 commercial hubs into 2 theatre squares because I was forced to research theatre squares.
District Discounts & Build Order
I ignored scouts and went slinger -> builder -> settler -> settler (got lucky for a free builder too), buying 2 slingers and upgrading them to archers. This got a bit dicey at times with barbarians but that's really where you want to be going tall IMHO. Anything else and you're overbuilding units.
I teched pottery -> animal husbandry -> writing -> irrigation -> bee line to aqueducts (hard research).
Animal husbandry was opportunistic because of the sheep that you can see my city thought was a great tile.
District builder order was:
- 3 Observatories
- Government plaza (w 2 researched) -> ancestral hall (before settling the rest of the cities around my capitol)
- Entertainment (w 3 researched) -> Arena -> Colosseum (since I could only discount the first 2 IZ's, I juggled Liang so that my capital would build the 3rd IZ and in the meantime get Colosseum)
- 3 Aqueducts
- IZ (rush with Liang to compress delay as I had 5 districts and 5 researched at this point)
- 2nd IZ
Bits and Pieces
I didn't build enough farms for the feudalism eureka. This is possibly another reason not to get the Oral Tradition pantheon, you actually want your culture to be slow with these guys. After feudalism, farms kept my cities on their ecstatic Mayan shag-fest.
Because my remaining cities came out staggered, I was basically able to use Liang & a domestic trade route in each new city to hard build high adjacency IZs quickly.
I saved all my envoys as I had no science or industry city-states near my start (or culture). I used alliances to discover the map then dumped my envoys into 3 industrial and 2 science city-states.
I bee-lined Education and then Industrialization, only dipping into other parts of the tech tree to get better chances of the eurekas I wanted from great people. Likewise, I did a few quests and eurekas here and there.
Later in the game I used spies to gain suzerainty and a bunch of theatre squares and the policy that denies rock bands to prevent the AI getting a culture victory. I finished about AD1600 I think (deleted my save while getting screenshots for this derp - had too many Maya games lol). Not sure what turn that is.
A random thing was that there's actually a 3rd big lake in addition to the 2 in the screenshot. I got both Huey Teocotl and Auckland before my last 2 cities which was pretty exceptional for rocketing them into the game.
7 cities for most of the game but I got another 4 later in the game from culture.
I spent a substantial amount of the game spamming campus and IZ repeatables since ecstatic + Mayan capital yields + IZ city states made everything finish super quickly.
All in all, diplomacy and the whole delegation first turn, open borders, gift a resource getting friendships right from the get go is a bit OP.
Money is good, having 3 archers and a warrior when you can build modern armor is better. On the other hand, it'd be pretty hard to do deity with Mayan otherwise. You really need to be able to catapult because of the enforced limitations.
Diplo point trading is dumb too. It's mostly because there's such a high chance that the election options won't be the right ones or will come at the wrong time that it isn't worth saving the points, at least IMO.
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