Post a (tough) Deity map for me to play

[Berks]

Hi BiC,

Re: your save - Thanks for the more detailed explanation. I thought your save looked good as it made my best effort look like I was an emperor player.

Spoiler :

(4th city not yet settled @ same turn, 2 workers, no wonders)

Even so, I launched an attack around 300BC which led to a 425AD cap, something you are not in position to do in the SH save. Points taken!

Re: your explanation on expansion in this game:

Spoiler :

I agree the fifth city is not needed that early. In my game, Liz took your Ankara spot on T22, or maybe T23, so it wasn't available to me. How would this have changed your plans in a non-SH build?
I seriously considered switching to a 3 city HA rush at that point, but my third city was where you put Eridne, because of barbs killing my 2 fogbusting warriors on the turn my settler popped. So then I am waiting about 20 turns for a monument, border pop, and hookup of Horse

 

[Berks]

@bic

Spoiler :

I did get the Cow+Clam+Wheat city as my 2nd city, I settled it 1E of cows to block Liz and allow the possiblity of using the Wheat for a second city before IW.
I think my game is dead, I am teching 66 BPT@100%, and around 30BPT stable at 425AD.........

I like the idea of going for Alpha to unlock IW and moving south!! I think I was too fixated on the elepult/engineering rush option

 

[Snowbird]

As far as I recall it was tough enough for me on immortal (some time ago). Overall pretty straightforward (it is what you think at ~10turn mark), not sadistic (like desert islands), not cooked (upped the difficulty to Deity of course, but the map is naturally generated as fractal) and nice starting position.

It's with unrestricted leaders -- human starts as Mansa of Holy romans.

 

[Lain]

Sounds good, would also be a change of scenery with the unrestricted leaders. Thanks for the suggestion @Snowbird

==

So here is the first game that won the vote. Sitting Bull on a Pangaea with warmonger-only opponents. Thanks @Fippy for the idea. This is your start:

Spoiler :

Feel free to play along. It's definitely something different.

 

[Olafeson]

Well as far as i am concerned i would really like to see someone make a LP video on Deity/Immortal with the K-Mod.

Only heard good things about the Mod, and i really like the balance changes.
If you say uncooked maps, does that mean that you do not want older NC games from the 2nd and third circle?

Andy yeah thanks for the map, gonna play alongside you and wait for your LP and compare your style to mine once again

 

[Fippy]

It's a different game with K-mod.
Better AI sounds good on paper, but when i last tried i got Archer rushed before t40 by a normally friendly AI like Lizzy or Hatshie, cannot remember which.

While some might find that exciting to defend against such possibilities, friendly nature AIs are not supposed to do that imo..it's unrealistic and not fun.
It's copying mp more than sp, with AI personality being almost meaningless.

Might be worth trying isolation games thou.

 

[Lain]

@BornInCantaloup

Spoiler :

Thanks for the comment! Yeah the start is really slow. The only thing I can think of is skipping Animal Husbandry and mine the pigs. But it's hard to justify with the cows also being there. Would probably still do it in isolation. On a Pangaea the first concern is surely to grab enough land. Having early power tiles helps with that. Skipping Bronze Working and sitting with warriors against Tokugawa seems too risky though.

Such a big difference to have Pottery available 2400 BC or something compared to when I got it. But it's possible to come back from that with a good tech trade or two.

It's a good challenge, because I have to balance expansion, commerce and production. Switching off with just warriors like in most games is not really an option. Neither is settling in someone's face. On the brightside, this crowd is unlikely to run away with the techs either.

I did realize the inland-sea thing later. Probably later than necessary.

 

[Fippy]

Not sure how you guys played this start, here's mine at t46

Spoiler :

Did SiP, i thought the corn can be left for another city down the river and seemed highly likely 1s would be settling on a resi (being copper, that worked nice lol).
But also saved 1 turn for the worker moving on pigs, without that little gain i am not sure what i would have done.

Then i teched wheel, or the worker would have nothing to do with BW before..met 3 AIs early with their units wandering around me, so just warriors seemed fine. Built 2 settlers at size 3, getting the horsies spot south became a huge priority with seeing Rags close already. Now i already feel a bit boxed in, barb city west and where to settle next..
did not scout nw of cap yet, fogbuster was not needed cos AIs constantly had 2+ units there.

 

[Lain]

@Unit Maintenance: Is there a spreadsheet somewhere of how many units you can afford with x population without paying maintenance? Seems important for the early game. Especially in isolation etc I think I would use it. Right now it's just guessing.

Also: We all know that some AI can plot at pleased. But how likely is that actually, are there any numbers? For example I read somewhere (from you @Fippy I think), that Willem is more likely to declare at Pleased than.. Shaka, for example. Who is the biggest threat @Pleased?

@BornInCantaloup

Spoiler :

Yeah I agree. Don't like my play there either. Luckily I got a grip a bit later and made some better decisions. Whipping 2->1 like that in a new city is not really something I like to do. The barb damage and loss of worker turns somehow threw me off. But growing on spices/floodplains would have been better than what I did.

Probably I was paranoid about losing the city sites, so I wanted workers out asap to chop settlers and all. Well, some questionable moves there no doubt.

Shame about that barb city in your attempt. Why didn't you settle next to the ivory for wheat in first ring? And aren't you worried about a dogpile from the likes of Montezuma, being in a war and all?

 

[Fish Man]

Sorry if I'm interrupting anything.

I think this is a pretty hard map. It was posted several years ago. I've seen several youtubers fail at it, including chris and TMIT - have yet to see a playthrough of a successful attempt. Perhaps some of y'all here would fancy giving it a shot?

 

[Fippy]

You are looking for this chart, Lain

NoWarProbs at Pls (pleased) = 80 are the most notorious backstabbers.
Shaka has only 40 at cautious, but 90 at pleased.

Ofc Shaka builds more units than Willy, and if he's not pleased with you it's veeery likely he will attack at some point, but he's an "okay friend" which explains why he appears as passive in some games. Shaka also does not care much about different Relis, but gives a strong shared bonus.

"DecWThem" shows the bribing, Cathy with her famous at friendly while some AIs cannot be bribed on you if they are not annoyed or cautious.

Overall the most dangerous ones are Monty and Alex, no surprises there
With Cathy always being unreliable and aggressive too, but she builds less units (or she would be even worse than Monty).

Ragnar stands out with surprisingly tame numbers, but then why do we always see guys like him at war..most AIs plot fast at annoyed, and the peaceweight between warmongers and let's say Gandhi are so bad that they might even start as furious

Hmm i will add the peaceweight, it's rather important as connection.
Those AIs at 0 will always attack peaceful AIs, and their relations will never improve.
While you had Shaka & Ramsy on one continent in the Toku game, and they never were at war.
2 vs. 6 peaceweight, still somewhat okay so the charts were nicely reflected in that game.

 

[Berks]

Hi Lain,

Quite like Sitting Bull, tempted to give this a shot also. Maybe I should play some sets and then watch to the corresponding points in your videos

Hi Undefeatable,

Spoiler :

I re-read the last few pages of the thread you linked. it looks like AZ posted a win 2nd try around,and Gkey beat the map with cannons. Pretty sure Snaaty's game would have been a winner too. Not disagreeing that it isn't a hard map though.

Edit: Played a rushed set to 50BC. Going to watch Lain's videos to that point now.

Spoiler :

SIP, Cows first. Teched AH -> Wheel -> Pot -> Writing. Masonry next, bulbed Math. Teched Construction using saved up gold. Everyone had math before me though, only got Sailing off Ghenghis (couldnt get IW). Traded Construction to Ghengis for HBR. Settled 2nd GS.

Built 4 cities, captured one near the Horses with Cats and Dogs (just me, or is that funny? )

Added Mysticism and Hunting, chopped out an elepult army, with a few spears and dogs.

Monty was curbstomping Ragnar and had 10 cities, so I decided to go for Toku. Alex declared on Toku the same turn I planned to, so I waited an extra 2 turns. Couldn't wait any longer as I was bleeding money @ 0%.Took 3 cities while limping to Currency. Took Toku's capital, then 10 turn peace for Alpha.

Going for Compass as trade bait. Will build up the army and finish off Toku in 10. Not sure what I should do after that. Probably adopt Monty's religion and try to stay safe while teching towards Cannons.

Hi BiC,

Re: your save:

Spoiler :

I had a barb city in the same spot as you, but was able to capture it. Shame you weren't able to get it, you are in great shape if you have that city as well!

Think I would trade for Construction, Currency and Monarchy and try for elepult. You have decent pop and quite a few forests. Toku seems fairly weak? Maybe Monty? Ragnar has longbows already. Shame Alex has Music, or you could have teched it and used an Artist GA to get some more GS'

Can you get Med and use Philo bulb to bribe someone onto your target in the meantime?

I took some inspiration from your post about early writing and libraries, and delayed mining until after writing. It helped my commerce and GPP significantly. Production at size 4 was decent enough to secure most of the backlands.

 

[Berks]

I played another set, to 475AD. Doubt my game is winnable now, things got weird:

Spoiler :

Toku capped to MONTY, who declared on Ghengis and Alex. Monty took a city off Alex, his stack was about 30 units, as I saw it with my boat. Shaka joined in on Monty's side, this really hurt. I didn't have any techs to bribe him in or out with! Alex and Ghengis seem to have about 10 cities between them, so I built some defensive units and redeclared on Monty. If I dogpile Alex, I can't kill a 13 city Monty with 2 vassals, with my economy.

Toku was indeed broken. He gets Longbows late, but I take all of Toku's lands except 1 crappy silver city. I lost Poverty point for 1 turn when Ragnar's lone Horse Archer won 3 battles at stupid odds. Monty sent 1 stack my way, but was repelled by my CGIII archers and WE's. Take peace with Monty once I get Toku's good land.

I have 11 cities now. My game now revolves around recovering the economy and killing Monty before he wins Dom. The other guys are all tiny with 5 or 6 cities, and all hate each other. No threat.

Tech is in the pits. I plan to use the rest of my gold to tech CoL and then run some scientists in a few key spots, so I can bulb my way back into the race. I need to hope Monty doesn't cap Alex in the meantime. Alex has Pikes and his other cities appear to be out of reach of Monty, so I am hopeful he can hold on long enough. Shaka and Ghenghis seem to be fighting to a draw.

Now to finally watch the rest of Lain's videos!

 

[Lain]

Was out with a cold for a few days so couldn't really comment much. The diplo charts and stuff helps, but I still have a question maybe you can answer @BornInCantaloup

Here it says that Montezuma, for example, will only peace-vassal to a player at Friendly: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civ-illustrated-1-know-your-enemy.478563/page-2#post-11931773

But can he peace vassal to other AI under different requirements? Is Pleased enough? Does relation matter at all?

Cool that you are playing along, will check your games later.

 

[Lain]

So based on that sheet, Montezuma is not able to peace-vassal unless he is Friendly towards an AI? Stuff like that is good to know. Usually I am too scared about peace vassaling when I see a "Pleased" face and take the capitulation. Even though I could take more cities without danger in that case?

Hm, but for Pacal it also says "Friendly" and I'm almost 100% sure that I've seen that weasel peace vassal before when he was merely pleased towards his future master.

 

[unas876]

It might be interestng to see you replay maps that AZ has lost on video. He never used to lose easy games in his earlier era (I'd say up to Deity 52 or so) and there are a few NC games that he lost that should still be around. Have you ever thought about that?

 

[Fippy]

cg Lain, i would say this map was "friendly" for that setting overall
The lake blocked some AIs, Shaka & Genghis were far away so imo half of the warmongers did not matter.
Still a great result ofc.

 

[unas876]

But isn't what you're saying here kind of what Lain asked for? Something a bit unusual. I didn't play the map myself (had to send in my computer to get it fixed, can't play atm...) but obviously I looked over the map in WB to see if it was gonna be an interesting and (at least rather) tough game to win. Otherwise there would have been no point in me posting the map and he could have just rolled a random one himself.

Anyways, in my experience donut maps are usually on the easy side because of how much land you can grab in most cases, so the goal was definitely to choose a map thats a little tricky in other ways.

Who knows if this map will even end up being played on video, but I would definitely be interested to see what you made of it @BornInCantaloup !

 

[elitetroops]

This map is not edited in any way, but I did swap your starting position with an AI (your settler and AI stack swapped tiles). Is this okay? The reason is that it is a lot easier to find a map where some player starts in a certain kind of situation than to find a map where the human player starts in such a situation.

Anyway, Stalin should be presented with some challenges on this map.

Spoiler :

Edit: forgot to mention - Fractal, no huts/events, otherwise all standard settings.

 

[Fippy]

lol BiC

Spoiler :

i think choking is highly questionable yup, but why not a real Axe rush with bfc copper?
It's true that you need dozens of Axes (including reinforcements), but imo nothing wrong with trading your Cap hammers (forests) for new ones.
Normally AIs will not stack like that and send most units out instead for expanding if not declared early, and cease fires after taking a city are so good they are almost broken