Semi-Isolation on Deity (including LP videos)

[Lain]

Currently recording a Semi-Isolation game on Deity and figured I could share that with you guys. Maybe there are people who want to play along with me, practice that kind of game and compare approaches.

I would also be happy to discuss strategies and maybe expand on the videos with some written in-depth thoughts. Don't think there are any videos on Deity Semi Isolation yet. So I hope it might be useful and/or entertaining to some people.

Leader is Peter of Russia. Philosophical and Expansive is a great combo. The start is also quite juicy.



You can watch my try here (thumbnail is a little spoilerish):

Spoiler :

Starting save is attached. I am using the BUG mod.

 

[yyeah]

Good that you post it here iam currently watching your vid, but find it yesterday by accident and yea i think that there more pps who love watching deity playthroughs .

Back to the start i have to disagree with your opinion that having Mansa in the game dosnt change a lot, in my opinion it changes maybe not everything but it affects human gameplay significantly. Hes best AI which one can have in a game, he will trade you every tech, even if he dont like you ( anoyed). One can bribe him on other ais even if he is pleased with them. Hes rel nuts and he spreads hes religion like crazy. Just overall Mansa is a guy whos favor human player a lot, especially on deity.

Becouse of that and beocuse we are starting with stone my first thought was Great Wall and somekind of Spy Economy.
We can debate about do we want to use spy to bulid SY and run slider. Or make couple of great spies and just steal couple of techs.
Anyway i would definetly consider it

 

[Pedro78]

Won't have time to play this one, but I'll definitely keep watching your vids, nice work

 

[unas876]

Spoiler :

Nice game! Currently in the middle of part four here and I'm wondering about two things:

1) Why did you never focus on hooking up the stone? There were a few instances where it could have been very helpful, for example when you were building wealth in some cities or infrastructure that wouldn't become very useful immediately, like harbors in some cities.

2) Why didn't you get out a couple of Chariots for the barb city that Mansa took? I think that could have saved you a few issues and stuff like running artists in the neighbor city there etc, plus that city is pretty decent itself.

 

[Lain]

@yyeah

Yeah you are right about Mansa of course. Changes the dynamic of the game. But I meant that it doesn't particularly affect my strategy. For example, in Semi-Isolation I would (almost? Never say always in Civ IV ) always go for early Optics. No matter if my neighbor is Mansa or Montezuma.

Most AI are easy enough to get to Friendly by late BC if you try hard. Maybe worst neighbor would be someone like Genghis Khan... no religion, no wonders, starts with negative attitude towards you etc...

Mansa also helps the other AI a lot. He gets Rifling = few turns later everyone has Rifling because he trades it away like a moron. But I agree, great to have him on your continent .

I didn't really think about a Spy Economy, but it could certainly work. Would be interesting to see how it plays out. And how it compares to a "normal" approach.

@unas876

Spoiler :

1) Early on I didn't really have the time to do that. Though I do think that getting Masonry instead of Animal Husbandry for a few chops/whips into Pyramids (failgold) would have been more useful. Would have led to earlier Monarchy and probably helped a lot. Missed chance there. Later I didn't think there was any hurry. I guess Chichen Itza was available for a little failgold. It got built pretty late, but I got CoL in 200 BC or something and I thought "ok it will be built in 5 turns anyway, no point in doing something now".

So I just ignored the Stone for a long time. Probably could have done more with that, especially early. Building Wealth for a few turns was ok, because I got the money immediately and I was kind of rushing to Optics. Putting those hammers into Moai Statues would have given more gold, but only much later.

2) Well, even Chariots get pretty bad odds against Archers. Against 3-4 Archers you might need 8 Chariots. At least. So I was always going to need the help of Mansa. I was hoping he'd take out a few guys and I clean up eventually. Didn't think he would bring his whole army. Of course I had a window of opportunity with only 2 Archers left, where I could have taken it with Chariots for sure. Wasn't ready for that. My original plan was to flip the barbarian city culturally (less waste of hammers) but of course Mansa didn't give me that much time.

I didn't take it seriously enough. Maybe because I didn't really want that barb city. Yeah it's decent, but all good tiles are already used by my other cities. So I would have razed it. In the end it wasn't such a big issue though. If anything, that city might have slowed Mansa down a little bit. I would hope that even Deity AI suffers a bit from a useless city so far away from its capital. But who knows. In the end a nonevent pretty much.

For a barb city with double gold and pigs I would have fielded 10 Chariots as soon as possible but in this game you look at that and think "Meh, is it really worth the investment? Just flip it in x turns and be done with it" And then, 2 turns before Mansa gets it you think "Well, in this case I should have done more for sure". My thinking at least. Needed better anticipation.

 

[lymond]

Nice vids, Lain. Good to see a great player posting some high level play lps. Are you German? Your English is excellent...seems second nature to you.

While some good city spots, it's unfortunate the proximity.

I cannot imagine not using the stone. Spy economy on Mansa would be nice or the Mids.

One thing I noticed is how you finished the Granary in Moscow. You do not appear to optimize the Granary

(oh..and Expansive is my favorite trait)

 

[Pedro78]

I've opened the starting save and played the first 50 turns, looks like an interesting map (just some thoughts, I don't intend to play along ) :

Spoiler :

Looks like the map gives you everything you need for an easy win : some pretty good city spots and stone for mids + GW. Except the good spots are far away and Mansa will grab them unless you block him off quickly, which heavily hampers your economy and makes getting GW + Mids very hard, maybe even impossible. Your second city location is really far away, not sure if it was the best choice, although it was probably the safest as Mansa expanded quite fast. Also it isn't a spot that will pay off immediately, so I would rather have grabbed it as a third or fourth city spot (before 1800BC for sure).

Only thing I disagree with is going fishing, here being expansive gives you 10T worker, which makes farming floodplains a better option imo than going fishing + building 2 workboats, I think that slowed you down a lot. Going Ag-AH gives you less commerce, but a much faster start (and allows you to grab the Ivory spot, which would be my second city as it's usable very quickly (10T worker as well, while capital builds settler #2 and #3). Not really sure about the tech path. Lots of forests + stone make mids an option, but given the need to REx it's definitely a tight race.

Overall you play very safe (maybe too safe at times?), should result in a convincing win if nothing major goes wrong during the Mansa war. I've learned a bunch of things from watching your vids, listening to someone thinking out loud is always educational

 

[Lain]

Thanks, lymond. Yeah I'm German and I also wanted to practice speaking English for longer periods of time, so that's part of the reason for doing the LPs .

I have a few regrets regarding the stone, yeah. Spy Economy I don't know, but I fully expect someone to secure Pyramids and block enough land at the same time. I didn't have the confidence for that, but it's a shame not to use the stone for failgold at least. Generally, the early game went a bit sloppy. I don't want to blame the distraction of recording/talking too much but it helps to stop and reflect on things for 10 minutes sometimes, get up from the computer and walk around, things like that.

Sometimes I pay attention to the Granary, sometimes I find it hard to assess the optimized food storage vs getting yields of a new tile a bit earlier. But I did bookmark your Granary exercises in the other thread and plan to make better use of that from now on .

I do enjoy playing Expansive. My favorite trait might be Imperialistic. Getting a great spot earlier on a tough map or gifting a city (which I do quite often) ... just seems so valuable to be able to 2-pop-whip after one turn.

@Pedro78

Spoiler :

Yeah not sure about Fishing. Felt like the more natural thing to do (at that point ofc I didn't know about having to hurry like that), but maybe I ignored Expansive too much. Thing is I also needed Archery (I think) so commerce was definitely a concern.

I definitely suffer from playing too safely sometimes .

I am optimistic about the war vs Mansa. Even though 6 vs 15 cities is kind of pushing it a bit.

 

[Pedro78]

I do enjoy playing Expansive

You've been working a FP instead of a 1F2H / 3H tile when building a worker while expansive, thus not getting the bonus . I'm sure that's just because you were distracted, but it waisted you 2-3 turns early game.

Spoiler :

6 vs 15 cities is nothing if he doesen't have rifling. And as soon as you'll start mass-drafting it'll be alright even if he gets rifles, Mansa getting rifling will just make the war longer and costlier.

Imperialistic, imo, is a nice trait when it's combined with another trait that makes it better. For example I love Catherine because Cre/Imp allows to REx extremely quickly. The only thing I really love about Imp by itself is the ability to go settler first with a 2H or 3F city center tile.

 

[lymond]

That's interesting about IMP since many consider among the lower tier of traits, but yeah sometimes being able to two or 3 pop settlers a couple of turns faster can do the trick. While not generally the most optimal of leaders I do enjoy a good warmongering game with Cyrus.

 

[unas876]

I don't want to blame the distraction of recording/talking too much but it helps to stop and reflect on things for 10 minutes sometimes, get up from the computer and walk around, things like that.

I have no idea, but isn't that possible while you're recording? Just hit a pause button or whatever and then continue. I actually thought you were already doing that when there is a blackscreen for a second and you say that you just checked if you were still recording. If that was possible, it would benefit both you and the viewers imo.

 

[DrCron]

I'm still playing the Roosevelt map, but I will check your progress on this one. Nice that another Deity player is uploading videos!

 

[Lain]

Hi BornInCantaloup. Long time no see . How are you?

About the game..

Spoiler :

Interesting that you went for the GLH. Was it a higher priority than, say, Pyramids? Or are you planning to get both? Settling to the west like that seems to work out great. Especially if you can block him off to the north. Mansa built The Great Wall in my game so Archery seemed necessary anyway. Since I didn't know how quick he'd expand, I focused on grabbing the goodies in the north. However, looking at your screenshot, the jumbo city is everything I hoped it would be.

And you are right, Agriculture-Worker definitely seems like a stronger option. Somehow I didn't consider that for very long. But it seems kind of natural, so point taken. Seafood starts still give me a headache sometimes.

Yeah I usually put more emphasis on safety, especially in the early game. Rarely die to barbs, but sometimes I get into tougher/slower positions as a result. So I like to see other approaches, yours in particular often show new perspectives to me. So your input here is much appreciated .

 

[Pedro78]

Watched all your videos, looks like it's gonna be an easy win from where you currently stand.

Spoiler :

Taking out Mansa put you in a really strong position, plus the rest of the world isn't teching really fast. I'm curious to see how tanks + fighters will turn out, as I've never fought this kind of war before.

 

[Lain]

@BornInCantaloup

Spoiler :

That's pretty impressive. You will end up with more cities than poor Mansa at this rate . And with the GLH you should be able to pay for them aswell. Some recovering to do, but after you seal the block-off, you have all the time you need. Especially if you can secure the Pyramids aswell.

Very nicely done. You usually bring some different approaches to the table and that helps me a lot. Since my style is so different, but I am still trying to learn.

I finished my own game a while back. I am keeping a little "library" of all the games I've played. And I figured I might share a few Semi Isolation Saves here, in case someone wants to practice those kind of games (had a request aswell). No point in making new threads for each map, but maybe people could get some use out of "hand picked" Semi-Iso games which are (imo) well suited for practice. Deity difficulty.

 

[Olafeson]

Yeah nice Lain, keep them coming. I am currently watching your Nobles Club Game with Suryvaraman. Would be nice to see more Deity videos from you. Especially since
Absolute Zero (Chris 67132) makes so many (may i say crappy Let´s Plays) of Methusalem aged games like Might and Magic 7 +8 and Heroes 2 lately. Yuck.

I will finish my 2th deity approach game after a long time of only immortal. First started decent but then i failed miserably and quick. DoW with too small stack
and then got backstabbed by a million russian troops.

So in one or two days i will jump into your safe and replay it and post a bit here about it. Wish me luck i definetly gonna need it.

 

[learner gamer]

Nice vids, Lain. Good to see a great player posting some high level play lps. Are you German? Your English is excellent...seems second nature to you.

Seconded. I'm enjoying watching the Peter game - and learning plenty too. You explain why you're doing things really well Lain.