Rhino - Deity Hatty - Random Personalities

[ahcos]

For my taste your cities are too far spread out here. Gold wasn't worth it, you can't even connect it to your cap early on, and it costs incredible tons of workerturns sooo far away, can't share tiles and everything ... #1 city would've probably been right on the sugar, minimum workerturns, instant connection, good short-, mid- and longterm potential, alot of shared tiles and some forest. #2 Cow/Wheat, and #3 somewhere around the copper, but i wouldn't have settled the gold. With 4 cities like that a catapult war is absoluty possible, those are decent/good cities and have everything you need: food, production, forest, cottage potential ... Yip, i'd guess that this start should be winnable. I'd play it myself, but Marathon is a huge pita, so i'd rather not shadow this one

Nonetheless, this looks like a rather tough start, and the expansion speed is high even for deity standards (although i'm not familiar with the expansion speed of deity AI on Marathon, i'd guess that it's roughly the same..?), and with AGG and PRO leaders around war would be hard in any case, but at least no one declared on you early on nor where you boxed in to less than 4 cities, which is the minimum to have a chance @ war.. Maybe you'd have even get 5 cities if you hadn't taken the Goldcity and realized that the AI is spreading like the plague, after all Yekatarinburg is a more than decent city, even for a third city it's absolutely okay as long as it blocks (which it would have done in this case). And with 5 cities, you should be able to kick someones ass with Catas in almost any case.

 

[Mylene]

Wonders = losing cities if not being careful, it's the same or maybe worse on normal speed Deity.
You are not that far off thou, 5-6 cities is my average. Sometimes i only had 3 ~~

Coastal starts are often slow thou, and you only have 2 directions to settle.

 

[obsolete]

With no barbs to worry about, and marathon bonus to boot, I felt your play was far, far, too slow. However, since you felt very sure of yourself on how well you optimized your lighthouse, I don't know... maybe I just can't see everything that is outside the images so I can't judge too hard.

I think I have to agree that you wasted so much blocking potential (at least from what I see), though keep in mind people will always want to judge games in hindsight.

 

[ahcos]

Ofc people will judge the game in hindsight, isn't that for what Rhino is here after all, getting better with the help of the forumers (beside that he wants to entertain and provide some insight on how to play the game)? Personally, analyzing the gameplay of other players and what they did wrong helps me improving my own gameplay, so critique isn't "i'd have done that way better!" rather than "Let's find out what you could do better the next time, and if i find myself in the same situation some day hopefully i've learned a lesson...".

Maybe try to play out that start once again. Even if you have all the information you have now, it's good to see for yourself if a better plan would work out.

 

[Seraiel]

I'm not an experienced Deity player, as I've only won my 2nd Deity game up till now and am using imba Huanya Capac, but I say the start is under average and starting besides Protective and Aggressive AI's is something that forbids any rush and is very bad in any case. I don't think Axerush is possible at all on Deity, at least in 95% of all games, Axes are too easily counterable with cheap Charriots and cultural defense is the next problem of that aera, with HC I only rush till 2000 BC because then cities get 40% cultural defense (or have walls) and after that wait for Cats. Rushing PRO with Hills Cities is impossible even with HC.

Expansion speed of the AI seems normal to me, even with an Imperialistic Leader I wasn't able to get more than 6 Cities till the whole land around me was settled, at least your empire isn't stretched in a line crushed between several neighbours. The tech tempo however seems slow to me, at 1500 BC you should already be researching Aesthetics to get Alphabet by trade, as AI normally has it by then, at least in my games with 17 AI's.

Imho your play wasn't that bad, at least noone declared war on you yet and you are still able to compete in score, thats better than I'd have done. Again learned something reading here, and think I will try a normal Leader after winning some more times with HC. Reloading however is something I can only understand, as you are practicing Deity and normally don't play it, imho replaying with superior knowledge is lame.

 

[Um the Muse]

One thing about Marathon: you can whip a defender and get a second one on the next turn even with a single pop whip--kind of like the whip-a-warrior trick on other speeds, only it works for all of the really early units (up to Swordsmen, iIrc).

My point is that you have to worry a lot less about your defenses at this point in the game. Especially once you get access to HR.

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

Another Try (Turns 82-216, Years 2770-1340 BC)

Many thanks for judging the game in hindsight, everyone That is indeed what I was looking for.

In summary:

• This map isn't particularly easy.
• The reach for W Gold was bad, because it didn't seal off land.
• With a better opening, the map would be challenging but winnable.

I'm going to give this another go from 2770. Doing it right (or closer to right) should provide some good insights and learning.

Step 1: Redo my dotmap:

Spoiler :

I take the advice to settle on the sugar, and to seal in my 1-city backfill.

For techs, next is Animal Husbandry, then Pottery, followed by Sailing and Masonry for a Great Lighthouse shot. AH is partly my nod to not abusing my information advantage, but it's also a good move, with 2 cows nearby.

You know how some people can watch a movie again and hope it turns out different? When AH came in, I went back to my capital expectantly. But no luck, not a horse in sight.

(Other techs: I started with Agriculture and Wheel, and already teched Bronze and Fishing).

2420: Sugar founded. This one is first because it's the most immediately threatened. Saladin might reasonably expand to take up this space, whereas I can't see anyone settling my backfill quite this early.

Spoiler :

2260: My settler is ready to seal off the backfill. But wait: With Creative, can I grab the gold too?

Spoiler :

Let's do it. After all, what's the point of taking Creative if you only settle right on top of your capital?

Spoiler :

For now, it will just work the gold. Once I get Iron, it gets wet rice and some grassland.

Now we just have to hope Stalin doesn't walk a settler in my front door before the borders pop.

2130: SE Copper founded. Saladin settled nearby, so I had to move it 1N. It loses the dye, but that's no big deal. I'm pretty happy with the results of my settling order.

Spoiler :

2090: Gold's borders pop, and my 2-city backfill is safe. Total of 6 cities. If that's Mylene's average, I'll call that a win for me.

Spoiler :

Thebes is working on GLH stuff: Granary, lighthouse, and growing to size 4 so it can whip. My other cities make another couple of workers, and some workers start cottages in the overlap between Thebes and Sugar.

Also, at some point this turnset, Hinduism spreads to me. I'm smart enough this time to hold off, but no one ever asks me to swap. By the end of this turnset, I'm hitting happiness caps, and just swap to it myself.

1750: Saladin plants Basra in the same ******** spot he did last time:

Spoiler :

The pressed borders will probably make him dislike me, but nothing I can do about it.

1740: Masonry completes. Next is writing. Thebes grows to size 4 to whip a lighthouse, then starts on the Great Lighthouse.

Spoiler :

1570: Someone beats me to it. I get a few hundred failgold, but miss GLH by a significant margin. Still, I'm happier with the cities than I'd be with no cities and the wonder.

Spoiler :

Total is 600 hammers. So 365 is a long way off.

1510: Saladin builds the Pyramids. I'm guessing it's his capital, just knowing where the AI tends to put early wonders. Between that and the Hindu holy city, Saladin is my #1 target.

Spoiler :

1430: Wheat founded. Since coastal doesn't mean anything without GLH, I moved the dot 1W, to free up another grassland and grab the hills.

Spoiler :

1340: Inner Silk founded, completing my 6 cities.

Spoiler :

With two cities pressuring it, Basra should flip, though I'm not sure I even want it. But between holding borders with Saladin and snagging the extra city (Gold), Creative is turning out to be pretty good

Also, Thebes and Sugar finish their libraries, and I turn research back on. Iron in 14, with a bunch of gold saved up for whatever comes next.

End of turnset shot:

Spoiler :

Compact is the way to go.

In all, once I dropped the far-away settling, the game went much smoother. No AIs boxing me in, no huge drop in the economy, and enough cities to make it into the middle game. Thanks for the advice, guys.

Goals for next turnset:

• There's an island to the NW, between me and Stalin. I doubt it's still available, but if it is, I intend to grab it. That's why Thebes is working on a galley.
• Build a military so I'm not a sitting duck for the first aggressive AI.

 

[coanda]

So... trying to match up personalities here. Saladin looks like a wonderspamming zealot; Stalin a unitspamming expansionist atheist? Or is 10 units in border cities that early and settling so aggressively normal on Deity?

 

[Mylene]

Random Pers. + Agressive sounds counter-productive to me
One of the interesting aspects is figuring out/guessing who is likely to go to war...i'd think with agg. everybody is in the mood quick.

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

@Coanda I agree, Stalin is expanding quite aggressively. In particular, spreading out and not bothering with culture reminds me of Shaka's normal behavior. I don't think his unit stack in my earlier attempt was unusual for deity, but it wasn't tiny either.

Saladin seems like a teching / wonderspamming zealot, but not an aggressive one. My power ratio with him is 0.2, while it's 0.1 with Stalin and Shaka.

And this game's Shaka seems middle-of-the-road, he's got an in-between number of cities and came up as #4 in the world on techs in the last turnset I played.

@Mylene They kind of are, but there are still definite personalities. AggAI really means "Build a larger military, be slightly more likely to declare." It makes someone who's normally a pushover grow a spine, and makes a normally aggressive AI really dangerous. Every game I've posted has been with AggAI on, and you can still see the personalities.

 

[Mylene]

Build a larger military, be slightly more likely to declare."

Not slightly from my experience ~~
In the Shaka Imm. game here on the forum i had Lizzy, Asoka and Hanni all declare war on someone early. While Hanni isn't as rare as the other 2 normally, he went over half the map with a relative weak stack and only 5 cities, before settling his land fully..

 

[Um the Muse]

Do you consider Stonehedge + Creative as worthwhile in Marathon? I mean, in this game, you're too pressed to build cities quickly, but I like how the numbers work out. The first border pop occurs after 30 . Cre gets that after 15 turns; SH on top of that cuts it down to 10, which could make a huge difference.

Also, you went for the GLH again? Just because Hatty wears a beard, you don't have to treat her like Ramses.

 

[ahcos]

Hmm..

By switching around the citysides, you actually "gained" nothing but lost alot of mid/longterm potential on the cities:

Gained:

- one plain hill, a tile you won't be working too much in Wheat as that city will mostly either use specialists, whip, or work cottages for the capital.

Lost:

- Health bonus in both cities, in one case even the potential fresh water bonus
- Full potent chops with the forests west and east
- The ability to work the best food tiles (namely the farmed FP below Wheat) all the time right from the start. It'll be quite some time until Wheat can use all it's food tiles permanently
- several shared hills with the capital, while Inner Silk actually has less production tiles
- Another potential Cityspot in the western hills which would've been "okay" with shared cows

I'm also not quite sure that Gold is worth it. Sure, early happiness is great, but OTOH you have a city far away that'll be hard to defend, needs quite alot workerturns and has rather weak short term potential. Dry rice is a bad foodtile, it'll be a while until the city grows to size two to work the gold again and even out in terms of cost/use ratio again. It also makes you border Stalin, although it seems like you share less than 7 bordertiles.

It's not a gamebreaking move or a move i would strongly disagree with, rather a move i'm not truly convinced of.

Edit:

To above: Really? SH with CRE? Not in a hundred years, lol ... and if there was a gamespeed that'd require 100 culture for the first borderpop, i'd still not build SH when i'm CRE

No, really, there's no point in building SH when you're CRE. First of all, you can save the research for Mysticism with CRE, and that's pretty awesome by itself (just like you wouldn't tech Archery when you have Bronze/Horses). Secondly, on Deity you need those hammers in the earlygame, there's simply no time to do the detour for SH. You'll be boxed in with 3-4 cities... Yes, they'll have a faster borderpop, but there won't be anything they can pop into left

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

@ahcos For me, on moving Wheat, it was the center tile that tipped the balance. Settling on desert instead of grass, and getting the +1 hammers from the plains hill with Silk. I thought about the health, but with all this overlap, I don't expect it to come up for Silk. Wheat maybe. I'll keep an eye on it, though, and see if they would have been better in the initial spots.

Edit: Looking at it again, I think you're right about the extra city on the plains hill West of Wheat. It could have been useful for making spies or something while Wheat worked cottages and specialists. Thanks for the notes.

On Gold: I wish I was good enough to be convinced of any of my moves My general rule is "grab more land," but I can see where that would be a bad move sometimes. Also, the rice is wet.

@Um I don't even make Stonehenge with non-Cre leaders. Couldn't imagine doing it with Cre outside a silly variant like always peace / culture crush.

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

Let's Be Greedy (Turns 216-273, Years 1340-770 BC)

Something is nagging at me. Am I really sealed in yet? Isn't there a bit more space to the West of Gold?

Spoiler :

Turns out there is. (Yes, that's a worker scouting. That's how little military I have right now. But everyone is pleased and no one is preparing for war, which says to me, "Keep settling"). I can fit one, maybe two more cities in there. And with Creative, I should win the border contests.

I played this turnset before reading ahcos' comment. I didn't do it to drive him crazy, promise

I'd already started a settler in Copper, since I could see there was space, even if I wasn't sure exactly how much. We'll get back to that in a bit.

1210 BC: Iron Working completes. Turns out I built Silk on top of it.

Spoiler :

At least it gives me another hammer in the center tile. And Shaka, it turns out, has no metals.

Spoiler :

Next is Math to Currency, since I have a fair number of cities.

Spoiler :

1160: Banana founded. It should also claim the cow from Stalin. The happiness from religion should more than make up for the border crowding.

Spoiler :

It takes the gold, letting Gold (the city) grow, first on silks, then on farmed wet rice.

1060: Math completes, and I've burned through most of my excess gold. I start Currency, but spend all turnset building up the gold I'll need to research it.

1050: South Wedge founded. Up to 8 cities now.

Spoiler :

It doesn't need a road for trade routes since it uses Saladin's roads. Thanks for the worker turns, man.

Terrible right now, but it should steal the cow from Saladin, and eventually the banana from Stalin. Plus it gets some grass hills. I'm warming up to Creative.

Yes, I'm aware these cities are hard to hold on to right now. If I get declared on before they get any space, I'll simply abandon them. But the continent seems pretty friendly, so it's worth the risk.

1010: Thebes is finally on military. It stays on units, except for one worker to delay growth until the whip anger fades.

Spoiler :

990: Top 10 militaries. Saladin is 2nd to last, which makes me feel better about crowding him. Maybe he got Mansa Musa's AI?

Spoiler :

930: Our Hindu island of brotherly love is disrupted when Shaka founds Confucianism in a city named after a spelling error. He swaps religions in 810 BC.

Spoiler :

Fortunately, we don't share any borders. So I'm all in favor of everyone hating him.

Remember that island I spotted earlier? Turns out it's a tiny archipelago, nothing to worry about:

Spoiler :

And shots of the rest of the land:

Spoiler :

Saladin:



Stalin:



And his Northern cities:



The rest of the land is probably filled in, I don't have many scouts yet. Also, what I thought was an island to my NW was just a peninsula of Stalin's land.

Shaka's mainland:

770: Stalin starts preparing for war.

Spoiler :

He's pleased with me, neutral with Shaka. He shares a lot of borders with both of us, but very few with Saladin, who's probably safe. Also, the fact that he hasn't declared until now suggests his AI is a peaceful expander like Caesar, not a psycho like standard-AI-Shaka.

Of course, I'm hoping he goes for Shaka. But at this point, my production is under way and I could defend if needed. Doubt I'd gain any land, but it wouldn't end the game either.

If I'm exceptionally lucky, I'll get Currency in time to beg 10 G and a peace treaty. Wouldn't count on it, though. My only course of action is to build up a stack and prepare for war. But with a bit of luck, I can join Stalin in a war on Shaka and get him to friendly with me, which would make my diplo much easier. We'll see.

Domestically, the game is going well. Most of my cities are online. Breakeven is about 30%, which is low but not terrible. Wheat is running 2 scientists, Sugar is working a bunch of cottages on Thebe's land, Thebes and Silk and Copper are making troops, and Gold is finish a barracks and about to join in troop production. As long as I don't get double-teamed, I should be fine.

Goals for next turnset:

• Get the new Western cities online.
• Research Currency, get my economy back on track.

 

[JammerUno]

South wedge is incredible, see how much that city costs you, and not just in direct upkeep, but in the extra upkeep in other cities as well as well as civics costs, then think about wether it will ever pay for itself. Grab the cow? That tile's not even in Damascus' outer ring, so he's already getting the extra 20 cpt on it. I'd be amazed if you ever got that tile peacefully.

So what's your long term goal here? Peaceful space? Otherwise you should've skipped the last two cities, because any kind of teching will be slower because of them until very late in the game.

edit: they also nicely covered any border between Stalin and Sal, and if I'm not mistaken, put you over the 7 tile shared border wardeclaration landtarget thingy.

 

[Keilah]

S wedge might take the cows but there's basically no way you're getting the bananas from Stalin's inner tiles.

 

[vranasm]

no expert on deity too, but from the start ss it looked like the game will be tough for your leader thanks to the start position and coastal starts are slower even with fishing already teched.

I wonder if cats+something 4 city break out would be best solution here...

btw I don't like this super ambitious settling in the middle of AI's. You don't have compact empire and basically are offering cities to AI's for take.

 

[CaF]

S wedge is pretty ambitious LOL. There is certainly some use to get a 2nd cow and a 2nd banana once astro is out. Doubt that you will get the cow against a madrassa without a theatre.

Post a save then, please. I want to start guessing who is who. Stalin certainly looks like Charlie, Izzy or Zara.

 

[jihe]

The thing about water starts is that your production is really slowed down. What I found optimum is:

Research fishing + produce worker
Build work boat + research up to BW.
Worker starts chopping immediately for settlers (or archers if barbs on).

Building second work boat and lighthouse are all too slow. You need to get your settlers out there.