Siam - Pimpdaddy Warbucks

[S.K. Ren]

Ok, if anyone read what I've posted before, pretty much ignore what I was yammering about. For those who didn't its in the spoiler at the bottom.

the TL;DR is this: Playing Marathon Deity I managed to play the social game with all the AIs and actually keep up with them(As much as you can without GS bulbing) while they beat each other up. Only moments after posting I was dragged into a 100+ turn war with the Songhai then the Ottomans. Holding them off wasn't the problem. I had Trebuchets in my cities and Elephants (being Siam) guarding the edges when invaders came.

The problem was that both Askia and Suleiman both some how got to the point that they were in an almost perpetual Golden Age which gave them 200+ gpt meaning they could reinforce like nobodies business and steal all my CS ( T ^T) Everyone else was dirt poor. Couldn't even scrape 500g together on average. But that's just a part of Deity I guess.

However what I see as my greatest failure is trying to survive on 100% plains, even with 3 Maritime CS (Got lucky and was able to sell Fur, Wine and Horses) up within the first 100 turns that was brutal. Virtually no growth at all...

Spoiler :

Sooo, I've been trying to nail down a Deity win for a while and lately I've been rolling Capital only, puppet empire. Basically a OCC lite. Anyways after losing a long game where France(Me) Japan and Arabia all allied together against everyone else, I switched to Siam because a) I finally found the trick to using CS in deity and b) they're the ones that flattened the triumvirate.

So I start up a new game of the following

Siam
Pangaea
Standard
Marathon
Deity

Standard quick play and go.

So I start smack dab in the middle of the map, on plains but with lots of rivers so I figure its good since there's Fur and Wine nearby. I go for the Fur first for some reason, which worked out actually cause I got Archery from a hut and churned out about 3 archers before I finished education. As soon as I could I started selling my Borders for 50g a pop and immediately bought friendly with a Maritime State. Stole a Worker around this time (turn 80 ish?).

As I'm exploring the map perfectly(Somehow I've yet to lose a scout) I realize I've got no immediate neighbors. Arabia and the Ottomans are far to my left and to my right is Russia, Songhai, Mongols, Hiawatha and China. Lucky for me each are just close enough to fight each other and im just far enough away to not be touched at all. Im pretty sure getting those early archers gave them a statistical reason to ignore me but still its unnatural for the bs that I usually see on deity.

So I start selling and expanding my CS control to 3 Maritime and 1 Cultural. During this I am signing DoFs left and right, keeping my borders open (this gets really good later on) and despite me seeing denouncements flying like confetti amongst all the DoWs from my neighbors, I never get in trouble for it. In fact, I've never been attacked, I've never lost a unit to barbs, I've traded with enemies and yet I've never dropped below Friendly with anyone.

And to top it all off, I just caught a chariot archer firing over my capital to kill an enemy scout. lol!

As a final note for this up date I will say its Turn 190 and I'm looking to be a contender for getting the Great Library as well. Seems my neighbors are too caught up in their war efforts. Best part about that is I passed it up intentionally thinking I wouldn't get it and grabbed the NC and a Circus which combined took longer to build that the GL does

Tech Path: Animal Husbandry-> Archery(Hut)-> Trapping-> Pottery-> Calendar-> Writing-> Philosophy-> Civil Service(In progress)

Social Policies: Tradition-> Aristocracy-> Legalism-> Oligarchy-> Landed Elite

So I guess I'll turn this into an actual question: Is early agression at least in build up a large army (Beyond whats reasonable to defend your cities) effective in deterring DoWs?

Second: I hear tales of people getting GS early but the only place I can see them coming super early is at the end of the Liberty tree and from the Hagia Sophia. Where are people getting GS as early as Im hearing them at (3-4 of them before reniassance) And no DLC recommendations please.

 

[snarzberry]

If you start in a large open area without near neighbours then you can avoid war for a long time, especially if you don't settle any more cities. It wouldn't normally be advisable to stay at one city in that kind of spot, settling to claim some land will pay dividends over the course of the game. If you like a strategy where you're going to keep just your capital and conquer a lot of puppets then it's probably best to do that if you roll a map with some closer neighbours. But yeah, in such a spot you'll notice far less AI aggression as your land is not encroaching on their chosen spots for expansion.

About the GS early in the game, you can get them from the liberty finisher and HS as you mention. But also from PT and a home grown one from your first university in the capital. This can give you three GS in order to do some kind of slingshot pretty early, before T120 on standard. But as Siam where you want to get a few puppets it's maybe better to go for allying a cultural citystate early and using that extra culture to finish liberty around T80 (standard speed) and bulb Chivalry for elephants. Use them to get a small puppet empire, this will be even easier on marathon but sorry I'm not familiar with the exact turn times or anything as I don't play that speed.

 

[S.K. Ren]

Thats actually really good advice. On Marathon you can sell a luxury to a Friendly AI for 720g. That's more than enough to get an Ally and of course you should have more than one resource to sell in your start. I'm gonna give that a whirl.

But my main point that I though was weird was that I had DoFs with everyone save for Songhai since everyone hated them. And yet despite being friends with them all, I got no notifications telling me to not get friendly during their denouncements.