Post a (tough) Deity map for me to play

[Bibor]

I agree with @Wrathful here and...

@Lain I also vote for the Suleiman map here (since I'm not logged into YT atm). One thing you got really covered is how to dig yourself out of the - by now your standard - "desert peninsula next to Shaka" start. As Wrathful said, it's much more educational at this point to see how you handle an abundance, not a shortage, how you balance very early research vs conquest vs expansion. And later, how you turn that early power advantage to a fastest possible finish.
I'm not dissing your previous accomplishments, it's just they are hard to apply to lower difficulty levels, at least for me at this point in time.
That's why that map with Pacal was so educational for me (the one I made a video series for). The first 100 turns are basically about dealing with abundance and I'm grateful to deity players that stepped in and played with different approaches.

 

[sampsa]

I understand, but don't agree with all of the conclusions. The game might be educational for less experienced players no matter how easy it is for Lain, but the more there will be difficult situations the more educational it will be. A great start doesn't guarantee an easy game, but it raises the likelihood that the game will be easy. And if the game is easy, the technical phase (starts when you know you will win) is long and boring.

 

[krikav]

@sampsa I agree alot with that.
I have a very hard time becomming engaged in games that are too easy. It's difficult for me to find motivation in microoptimizing a won game to get the victory date a handful of turns faster.

And @Lain 's videos, I remember watching every minute of the Pacal game where we where squeezed by Kublai and eventually crushed by Fredrich.
In many other videos, I have just causally clicked around abit in the video to get a broad view of what was happening.

Reading through the youtube-comments, it seems that there is a very wide variety in taste though.
Alot of people who dont't post on CFC seem to like funky settings of all kinds.

 

[Bibor]

I understand, but don't agree with all of the conclusions.

This what I mean: if you have only one good food tile that has to be shared by 3 cities and you have only horses, although the micro is awesome, you're pretty limited in what you can do - in a broad sense.
But if you start with horses, copper and ivory, or if you are philo but start with lots of floodplains for cottaging (new Alex NC), suddenly you have more early game options.

That abhorrent Kublai start is a good example - Lain had no choice but to go after Justinian, Lain had no choice but to build up the way he did. It was magnificent to watch the execution, but the path he has to take was clear.

His starts so far have mostly been a complete mess (with the exception of perhaps Darius game), either a peninsula, no decent other city spots etc. What I'd like is more variety. And sometimes the variety is of a wrong kind (Hatty fantasy map ... yuck, dry highlands maps - yuck).

Just give me "a normal start I can relate to", you know

Not every game needs to be like this, but a few will be a welcome addition to his collection.

 

[sampsa]

Yes, having several strategic resources gives more choice, but often that only means that there are several strong paths. Then it becomes a matter of personal preference or picking a different strategy than in the past games just because you can. I agree though that it's fun to see different strategies.

 

[krikav]

I want to see as normal starts as possible, just so that they are relatable.
4 seafood+gold+ivory is not something that I can relate to.
Most starts I roll randomly do have 1 food source, a lone 5-yielder such as wheat, dry corn or wet rice.

Ofcourse it's fun to see many different strategies, but they should unfold naturally from the map in my humble opinion.

If there is too much, we are more in a sort of "sandbox" mode, where we can do whatever we want.
This could be made even more extreme by setting the difficulty to settler mode.

Absolutely not my cup of tea.
What I love to see, is the calm ability to read the map and listen to what it says.
Most problems I have, and why I lose so often as I do, stem form the fact that I still try to enforce my faulty ideas when the map doesn't call for it.

 

[Bibor]

Well Lain's new first video is out and it turned out to be exactly as I expected it - educational

Spoiler :

isolation, no tech trading, interesting starting area

 

[krikav]

Spoiler :

isolation, no tech trading, interesting starting area

Spoiler :

Oh nice, isolation! Will certainly watch that.

No tech trading should simplify quite abit in isolation I think, since the AIs doesn't have 4000+ years of trading done before you join the game.
Will be very interesting to see how the AIs fare post-optics.

 

[Lain]

Suleiman game to play along

 

[Fish Man]

Spoiler :

Oh nice, isolation! Will certainly watch that.

No tech trading should simplify quite abit in isolation I think, since the AIs doesn't have 4000+ years of trading done before you join the game.
Will be very interesting to see how the AIs fare post-optics.

Spoiler :

At the same time...no trading for entire medieval era with just astro . Better consider if you even want to make contact early, with plenty of happy on your continent (+7 with mids, +4 even without), and crazy options like libbing steel well on the table with AI being that stunted.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler :

At the same time...no trading for entire medieval era with just astro . Better consider if you even want to make contact early, with plenty of happy on your continent (+7 with mids, +4 even without), and crazy options like libbing steel well on the table with AI being that stunted.

Yes, I do not think it makes sense to beeline optics with NTT.
In many iso-NTT situations I think it would be better to go for CS instead, even though it messes up bulb possibilties.

Getting the astro traderoutes and resource trades is still golden though, so I'm not certain.
Going for currency first I think would make much more sense in NTT.

 

[Bibor]

Getting the astro traderoutes and resource trades is still golden though, so I'm not certain.
Going for currency first I think would make much more sense in NTT.

I guess it depends on how many cities are coastal. The more the merrier with Astro. Too bad early astro equals running into AIs with banking...

 

[krikav]

If cities are coastal or not doesn't matter at all, unless we are talking GLH.

In most of my iso games, there is a rather long period between me aquiring astro, and the AIs reaching full saturation when it comes to banking.
I think this period would be even longer with NTT enabled.

And also, the resource trades can be ridiculously profitable given right circumstances.

 

[krikav]

buffy5 save, with barb techs.

 

[Bibor]

If cities are coastal or not doesn't matter at all, unless we are talking GLH.

It does matter, because coastal cities get dibs on most lucrative intl trade routes with harbor.

 

[Wrathful]

Yes, I do not think it makes sense to beeline optics with NTT.
In many iso-NTT situations I think it would be better to go for CS instead, even though it messes up bulb possibilties.

Getting the astro traderoutes and resource trades is still golden though, so I'm not certain.
Going for currency first I think would make much more sense in NTT.

It's also about figuring out what's going on in the rest of the world. It wouldn't be good if you avoided Optics only to find that a 20-city Shaka has just capped Gandhi. In the Suleiman game we already know that

Spoiler :

Mansa is in the game

so it's important to see the impact he has had on the map. You also want to find isolated civs as soon as possible, because they make good targets.

Of course, you can't really bribe people when tech trading is disabled. Still, the sooner you meet everyone the sooner you start making friends. Also, the circumnavigation bonus is a big deal.

But really, it's the Astro trade routes and resource trades that matter most.

 

[Bibor]

Quick question because I couldn't verify this info no matter how hard I tried, but it's somewhere in the back of my head: is it true that harbors double the effective city pop (size) for determining city trade route attractiveness?

 

[Kaitzilla]

Quick question because I couldn't verify this info no matter how hard I tried, but it's somewhere in the back of my head: is it true that harbors double the effective city pop (size) for determining city trade route attractiveness?

Main answer is here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/trade-routes.159047/

Editing for BTS:
BTS explains it a lot better in that there are 2 components to trade
1.= Base value
Base Vaue is the SMALLER of
Population of Other city/10
AND
Distance to the other City * 15%->40% (Huge->Duel)
but Base Value has a Minimum possible value of 1

2. Modifiers, these are all +% and are added together and then the total is used to modify the base value.
Then the Base Values have % modifiers added, the % modifiers are
+5% for population of the Receiving city over 10
+25% if the receiving city has a connection to the Capital
+3% per turn since your last war with the civ (if it is another civ) [max 150%]
+50% if you have a Harbor
+100% for the ToArtemis
+100% if the other city is on another continent
+100% if it is another civ on another continent AND you have a Customs House

That seems mostly right.
Bigger cities over size 10 that give more than 1.0 before multipliers is where the big money is at.
Especially domestic island cities that every mainland city can connect with.
Foreign AI cities can only connect to 1 player city.

The distance cap on base trade route gold is usually tiles / 10 in my experience.
15% for Huge and 40% for Duel?
I'd have to test that to be sure.



If you are curious about obscure Civ 4 knowledge, Tachywaxon's bucket list thread is where a lot of it is kept.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...arification-of-certain-game-mechanics.464503/
I would point out that post 90, the one detailing how to force an AI to form a colony that had almost no use in 2013, was used 5 years later to win a gold medal in the latest 3-month long team game.
Infinite espionage points -> 150000 in 30 turns!


If you want to know Civ 4 down to the microscopic level, like why barbs cities interrupt trade routes and how trade routes actually form, there is only 1 resource.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/members/danf5771.138225/

Spoiler :

 

[Fish Man]

Main answer is here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/trade-routes.159047/

That seems mostly right.
Bigger cities over size 10 that give more than 1.0 before multipliers is where the big money is at.
Especially domestic island cities that every mainland city can connect with.
Foreign AI cities can only connect to 1 player city.

The distance cap on base trade route gold is usually tiles / 10 in my experience.
15% for Huge and 40% for Duel?
I'd have to test that to be sure.



If you are curious about obscure Civ 4 knowledge, Tachywaxon's bucket list thread is where a lot of it is kept.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...arification-of-certain-game-mechanics.464503/
I would point out that post 90, the one detailing how to force an AI to form a colony that had almost no use in 2013, was used 5 years later to win a gold medal in the latest 3-month long team game.
Infinite espionage points -> 150000 in 30 turns!


If you want to know Civ 4 down to the microscopic level, like why barbs cities interrupt trade routes and how trade routes actually form, there is only 1 resource.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/members/danf5771.138225/

Spoiler :

Where'd he go? He's been inactive for almost 5 years now .

 

[sampsa]

I'm liking these small alterations to standard settings, like no tech trading in the current game. The game turned out to be interesting, though that is mainly because the starting area outside of capital wasn't very rich.