Rolled another Miracle Start

[Izuul]

Play pangaea it is a lot easier to learn how to handle deity on. You will learn how to never be attacked again very quick.

There are limits, right? What can you really do about a pre-1000BC attack when you have no diplomatic options? I know those are fairly rare, but they do happen.

 

[Grashopa]

900 bc

Spoiler :

here is another oracle col like in the necro'd iu 58 i just did. I picked up cs this turn in that game so i am behind by 7 turns or half of cs because i had to research pottery after starting on the oracle. Only the japs have alphabet unfortunately. But pacal will start trading calendar happy so bpt will be high again growing the capital.

Still need 3 gs for bulbing into mt/cuirs.. Without marble perhaps this is worse than a normal start with more cities running cheap libraries for GSes.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

There are limits, right? What can you really do about a pre-1000BC attack when you have no diplomatic options? I know those are fairly rare, but they do happen.

You should be putting everyone into a war after you trade Aesth for Alpha. The real name of Pangaea is world war 24/7.

 

[lymond]

Just so were clear, I wasn't stating that it was in any way a bad start. Just saying that I don't consider it some whopping miracle start...geez...

 

[pepe26]

@Grashopa:
Funny that you would actually risk the northern area to be taken by pacal and settle to the south instead of picking up quick horses and blocking a lot of land. I had lots of barb troubles from the east and from the northwest (jungle area).
On another note, you didnt settle Utrecht on a PH, which would be considerably superior in my mind.

Also, I'm curious as to why you chose an oracle opening with a strong financial leader who thrives on early cottaged FPs. Admittedly, I'm a noob, but I dare question the logic Maybe you can cure my noobness or at least shed some light on your decision process.

@Zero:
Interesting to hear you say that. I hadn't thought about sacrificing trade value to secure my civs peace and putting the other at war... it make a lot of sense to me now, though. But still there are a lot of situation I vaguely recall that wouldn't allow for this kind of manipulation. Civs that wouldn't be bribed on cautious, idiots like Toku, religious love fest and such, to name only a few problems. Not to speak of our avatar-hero's little player-hating piece of crap rushes

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

By making the AI war you slow them down so your trade value tends to actually go up as you will have more techs to trade them. But yes there are times when you can only make 3 people fight a war, but this is very much still worth it. Because they will hate each other more than you, I don't play to be liked more than the other AI. I play to be hated less. But even when you are hated less you can still get to pleased by say mutual wars, gifting a health resource, selling crap like Myst for 20 gold, and so on. Also I have been rushed by Shaka less than I have just had him back stab in a war for no reason. Gotta love sharing a war when all of a sudden Shaka makes peace, and declares on you for no reason at all.

 

[BurN]

here is another oracle col

Just wondering at what turn did you build oracle in both games? It can go at a ridiculous early date.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Get lucky is how you get oracle. The MEDIAN time for it on deity is manageable, but in some games you'll be screwed.

However, IMO it's a top 3 early wonder and therefore it's reasonable/expected that a lot of players pursue it.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

Get lucky is how you get oracle. The MEDIAN time for it on deity is manageable, but in some games you'll be screwed.

However, IMO it's a top 3 early wonder and therefore it's reasonable/expected that a lot of players pursue it.

Top 3? It's by far the best early wonder. The Mids aren't even close to the leap the Oracle gives.

 

[Izuul]

You should be putting everyone into a war after you trade Aesth for Alpha. The real name of Pangaea is world war 24/7.

It's possible to get attacked before you even get Alpha. Not very likely, but I've seen it happen.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

It's possible to get attacked before you even get Alpha.

Pre 2k BC attacks are extremely rare, and if that happens you lose no matter what on Deity. So not sure what your point is.

 

[jihe]

I'd settle 1W, gold is overrated

 

[pepe26]

*lots of crap that has been edited away*

 

[Mylene]

I will always take Pyras over Oracle
Most powerful wonder besides GLH, and it's not just cos of Rep. but also Police State which makes any war so much easier.

 

[Doshin]

If you're attacked in 2000 BC, there's nothing you can do. If you're attacked in 1000 BC, you at least have options, although it's still rough.

Pangaea and Continents maps pose different challenges, IMO. Pangaea is a better script for learning diplo management. Continents range more broadly in difficulty, depending on the mix of AI and number of continents.

I will always take Pyras over Oracle
Most powerful wonder besides GLH, and it's not just cos of Rep. but also Police State which makes any war so much easier.

The Pyramids are more powerful, I think, but they're also far too expensive to build without Stone or an Industrious leader. Plus, they can be captured.

The worst sight in the game is Genghis Khan in Police State, in 1800 BC

 

[klonoklown]

The worst sight in the game is Genghis Khan in Police State, in 1800 BC

I have yet to see this happen... and hope I never do!

 

[ben-jammin]

I'm at 1460 right now, 24 cities, first in score, steel just in:

Spoiler :

Fantastic land for Willem. A lot of good high commerce spots but with Pacal so close and Joao guaranteed to expand like crazy I decided that getting out settlers as quickly as possible was more important than anything. With all this commerce I briefly considered an oracle+math-bulb fueled HA rush but Pacal is not a particularly tempting target for this so I nixed that idea.

Here's my 7-city empire at 1AD:

Eventually expanded to 9 as I captured the barb city to the west and settled another one north of that. There was room for 2 more cities with access to fish and not much else, I didn't bother. Early tech path was a bit unusual and I thought it might set me way back. I teched Aesthetics, but then only Toku teched Alpha which of course he never traded, and I ended up self-teching all of Alpha as well, and was able to trade it for IW which means I guess neither Pacal nor Joao went for it at all. Strange. Didn't end up hurting me, though.

And the tech situation at 1AD:

With all the gems/gold/calendar resource commerce on top of all the riverside cottaging it was easy to keep ahead and make a lot of good trades. Tech trades fell into place almost too easily, in my experience the AI doesnt want to trade calendar for a long time, here I got it immediately and that was a huge boost.

With Pacal and Joao both having HR as their favourite civic it was easy to stay out of trouble. Even after Joao decided he wanted to be hindu, breaking up the jewish love-fest we had going on.

Standard Mil Trad lib in 720:

At this point contact has been made with the other continent, none of whom were anywhere close to Lib. Traded education for nationalism the turn before Lib to open up MT, and had so much cash lying around I was able to mostly buy some techs (music, guilds, engineering i think) and trade on of them for banking as well. So it was a pretty quick ride to cuirs.

Toku had inevitably declared on Joao after plotting for a few thousand years, totally boxed in at the far end of the continent. This made Joao the obvious first target, I declared in 1040 with maybe 20 cuirs on his border and took his first city the next turn:

Insta-Colossus, pretty sweet for a financial civ even if the bonus was short-lived (I took astronomy with capitulation 14 turns later).

With Joao's stack still at the other end his second city was also lightly defended and yielded a nice prize:

4x settled GG, suddenly not having built the Heroic Epic yet doesnt seem so bad. By now he had the next cities heavily defended so I waited 2 turns for rifling to be finished and upgraded most of my cuirs before continuing to minimize waste. Turned out to be a smart idea i think. I took all but 2 of his cities to relieve culture pressure and then took him as my vassal.

Just a few turns to regroup, whip more and heal and it was Pacal's turn. He turned out to be a pushover, barely defended and had teched to democracy instead of rifling or military science. He was ready to cap after two cities fell, but his land was so good and he had so few units that I took all but two of his cities before capping him. He did bribe Toku in on me, but he was so backwards and had such a lower power rating that I killed a handful of units and he gave me a whole pile of gold for peace.

For all the many great people Pacal had produced I got one measly settled artist and no shrine in EITHER of his two holy cities, both of which would have been worth about 30gpt. Though for some reason he had built multiple scotland yards, I'm sure I'll find a use for those.

So that brings us to 1460 where right after finishing with Pacal, Ragnar has for some reason just declared on me and taken one of Joao's two remaining cities:

I actually kind of hope he takes both 'cause he's pretty useless at this point as a vassal. And those cities are nice, I only left them to move on to Pacal sooner. Ragnar was pleased with me and the AI he shares borders with on his continent is in a different religion, so I was really expecting him to do the obvious and help me out by stirring up trouble over there. In any case steel is just in and with 24 cities to Ragnar's 9 (well, 10 now, technically) I should have no problem dismantling whatever stack he manages to bring over and get something for peace.

I suppose the only place to go from here is to infantry and combusion to cap the other continent. This is looking like my first Deity win but everything was too easy, I am actually wondering if Pepe had this on Immortal by accident?

 

[pepe26]

oh jesus, I tried to farm scientists in pacifism (no national epic) and forgot to switch into a state religion then ragnar of all people took lib in 680AD, just ONE TURN before I got there ^^ (nobody would trade me compass)
I immediately switched into beelining cannons. when my first cannons were on the way, Mao invaded me near my capital and took it out. I had oxford and a market in it, so I rage quit another solid game that I could possible have wone. My weak diplo stills cost me again. I refused to gift him education on the way to lib. education was a monopoly tech at the time. Immediately after, he started plotting on me at cautious (-2 diplo rating)

 

[Manco Capac]

The worst sight in the game is Genghis Khan in Police State, in 1800 BC

I saw this once.

 

[Grashopa]

Just wondering at what turn did you build oracle in both games? It can go at a ridiculous early date.

I think 1720 this game, not sure about the other but it was comfortably early for immortal.

And I'm not recommending my start, I'm just saying I decided to oracle CoL into CS from the start and did what I had to do for that. It is definitely not a great idea to delay cottages as you can see how I'm so far behind my attempt from IU58 where the starting techs allowed pottery early. I was comparing the two attempts.

Missing oracle would not have bothered me as I'd still have went up the religious techs to CoL anyway, nor does an AI taking some land as I think with a high commerce capital BFC focusing on developing it will still get you enough of a tech lead to break out at cuirs/cav. But still need to play it and compare against everyone to see how things turn out.