Sampsa's Huge/Epic/Deity/NTT/novassals (+no fail gold)
- Thread starter sampsa
- Start date
in 3rd and 4th city... At least there is nice river and lots of chops. Just got the academy, which I think is pretty good under these settings, even if it is antisynergistic with cat attacks and suffers from no fail gold. There is pillage/conquest gold, at least! Purple beast to the east is still cautious (and I'm a land target!), but should go up to pleased very quickly. Zara declared T108 on Liz, Monty has been plotting on her (I think) for 40T, so my war target seems clear. Oh and the war will be started with cats+holkans, maybe adding elephants later (Isabella has them for trade). Also Naps to the south is super weak. Things look dandy to me, but of course it can go wrong.
floydmcw
Prince
How do you enforce "no fail gold" anyway? I don't remember that being an option.
Spoiler :
Spoiler :
Self imposed. Don't put any
towards a wonder you are not intending to finish. I think it's allowed to make a run for say GLib and lose it.Spoiler :
-slider at 100%. With an academy you want to be at max slider as much as you can.MassRiflemen
Dr. Draftingstein
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2022
- Messages
- 113
Distance to Palace costs.
MassRiflemen
Dr. Draftingstein
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2022
- Messages
- 113
Basically this. Common wonders that you may try to get, and fail, are the oracle, parth, gl, If it happens it happens.Self imposed. Don't put any
Spoiler :
The real issue is when someone chops the mids in 6-7 cities, and then let's them all fail. You can out tech deity ai's in NTT if this is allowed on HUge Marathon.
MassRiflemen
Dr. Draftingstein
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2022
- Messages
- 113
I'm actually going to try Organized+Imperialist as Sumeria, or Holy Rome with a marble start to oracle CoL for teh Rathaus, might be be doable. I predict I still die on Deity in the Reinassiace.
You can out tech them also by building cottages. Just watch me, a mediocre deity player do that. Watch that Lain game. I don't understand what you don't understand. You are massively overvaluing fail gold.
I can't find the link in this thread, can you please post it? Sorry if I'm just being dense, but I went so far as to search all your recent posts.
Theory crafting a Deity win with no tech trading (huge Pangaea): Elizabeth of Sumeria Great Wall EE
***Golden Rule: No fail gold allowed*** *Map Settings* Huge, Pang 11 civs, No tech trading, Marathon*** Unless someone can vouch they've won deity on a huge Pangaea with no tech trading, it is completely impossible using, improving or fine tuning any method that I use on emperor or immortal...
forums.civfanatics.com
Worth a read.
) 
have HE up.
there. Also, spying is not exactly why I built the academy... My army is crap, but should be good enough vs Liz.
in the NE-city. Strategically it's been a mess, I have no idea WTH I am trying to achieve, doing a bit of this and a bit of that... Still, I think things look good. I'm soon at 15 cities and some weak civs (Zara, Biz, Sury) are near. By now it's very clear that these settings are beatable, probably close to 100% rate with strong play.I agree, it's kinda fun, but such a slog. I'll try to play on anyway...
What I hadn't thought about is how NTT alters AI vs AI wars (and no vassals to some extent, and slower speed to some extent). They can't buy peace so the stronger side just keeps on rolling. I don't (yet) believe this is a massive problem for the human player though. Yes you need to deal with AI stacks of 200 units or so later, but they can be dealt with.
What I hadn't thought about is how NTT alters AI vs AI wars (and no vassals to some extent, and slower speed to some extent). They can't buy peace so the stronger side just keeps on rolling. I don't (yet) believe this is a massive problem for the human player though. Yes you need to deal with AI stacks of 200 units or so later, but they can be dealt with.
Hours of your life will vanish on these settings. One pic of yours all the AI have red fists by their names. You do get some insane stacks but if the AI are busy destroying eachother you can likely ignore their stacks. As you suggest getting peace becomes a lot harder. Once you are up to 30-40 cities when should get easier.
Have you considered any strategies to help unit movements. I think you can set up rally points. Plus queue builds using alt key so you don't need to keep micro builds.
Mr_Trotsky
Warlord
- Joined
- May 14, 2021
- Messages
- 209
I’m enjoying reading this and it’s nice to get a sense for these settings without having to endure the slog of playing them myself!
I’m slightly surprised you think that these settings should be beatable close to 100% of the time with strong play (autocorrect changed beatable to bearable which I’m sure you’d never say!) My impression - admittedly based on limited experience - is that luck plays a bigger role with these sorts of settings.
The diplo is really hard to control with so many AI and no ability to gift techs. Most games won’t see an AI march across the map to attack you because there’ll be three or four other civs they like less but it’ll happen more often than on a normal size map.
It’s also probably harder to deal with than on a normal map where at least you can start to monitor cautious Capac’s stack - once you see the red fist - even if you’re pretty sure he’s going for someone else. It’s not feasible to do that with so many AI.
As an aside, the chaotic diplo is one of the big reasons why these settings don’t appeal. NTT makes it even worse because you hardly ever interact with the AI other than to declare war. The game loses one of its most satisfying elements in managing the diplo and feels somehow less dynamic with less need to even check what’s going on with the AI. I’d also feel like rushing someone every game because I’d want an army just in case.
Other elements that add to the randomness are the barbs, the sometimes very unequal resource distribution on bigger map scripts and how AI wars end - does Mansa give Justinian gold or a city for peace or does he stubbornly allow him to slowly take all eleven of his cities. There’s little you can do to influence this without tech trading.
I don’t think these settings really reward longer term strategy and more your ability to react to opportunities presented by the chaos. It still requires skill - and I can’t really comment on whether it’s more or less skill - but different skills.
I’m slightly surprised you think that these settings should be beatable close to 100% of the time with strong play (autocorrect changed beatable to bearable which I’m sure you’d never say!) My impression - admittedly based on limited experience - is that luck plays a bigger role with these sorts of settings.
The diplo is really hard to control with so many AI and no ability to gift techs. Most games won’t see an AI march across the map to attack you because there’ll be three or four other civs they like less but it’ll happen more often than on a normal size map.
It’s also probably harder to deal with than on a normal map where at least you can start to monitor cautious Capac’s stack - once you see the red fist - even if you’re pretty sure he’s going for someone else. It’s not feasible to do that with so many AI.
As an aside, the chaotic diplo is one of the big reasons why these settings don’t appeal. NTT makes it even worse because you hardly ever interact with the AI other than to declare war. The game loses one of its most satisfying elements in managing the diplo and feels somehow less dynamic with less need to even check what’s going on with the AI. I’d also feel like rushing someone every game because I’d want an army just in case.
Other elements that add to the randomness are the barbs, the sometimes very unequal resource distribution on bigger map scripts and how AI wars end - does Mansa give Justinian gold or a city for peace or does he stubbornly allow him to slowly take all eleven of his cities. There’s little you can do to influence this without tech trading.
I don’t think these settings really reward longer term strategy and more your ability to react to opportunities presented by the chaos. It still requires skill - and I can’t really comment on whether it’s more or less skill - but different skills.
floydmcw
Prince
@Fippy do you really think the middle of the map is so bad? "Lakes" wraps horizontally so you will always have neighbors east and west. If you're near the north or south edge that's a lot of useless land with lots of useless barbs.I think handpicked starts are 90% or so
What Sampsa plays (middle of the map start, first roll accepted etc)..not so much, and he deserves credit for that.
I played something like this game (Emperor, NTT, Lakes, Big, Epic) and was very glad I built the Great Wall. Of course you could argue that if you can't deal with barbs how you gonna deal with 200+ unit AI stacks.
