Sick Start

[AutomatedTeller]

In fairness, this is a save for HC and it's either marathon or epic, not sure why. I think it's immortal, not deity, but that's ok, and it seems to not be huge, but tiny, but that's ok, too. the "this is not a great start" people (including me) generalized. The OP didn't make any claims that it was a generally great start.

marathon is different, and a quecha rush on any level the AI starts with archers is very different.

 

[PeteJ]

Geez guys, be a little open-minded would ya? I played a little bit of this map and I can tell you it is a very strong start. Here's a few screens to show you what I'm talking about:

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

To start I settled on the southern gold, grew to size 2, then quecha rushed. I think I stole a worker in the first 5 turns or so. Right now I have 5 cities, 12 quechas, 9 workers, and stonehenge. A little cheesy I know, but "play the map", am I right?

 

[backthief]

Gems only occur on grassland or grassland hills, that's too little production for a Checker-Rush. And 2nd bad thing about gems is, that they mostly occur near the jungle, so near the equator, which is bad from two points of views. First, one doesn't want jungle and 2nd one does not want to start in the middle of the map between several empires with different religions. A nice niche corner near the sea is way better for strategic reasons, and that's also where the gold appears.

Sorry i wanted to say grassland instead of plains, small translation problem.
Good points Seraiel, but still my first question remains. You rather have more food than gold, specially because without food you wont take advantage of all that gold anytime soon, right?

I almost always win on Emperor and sometimes on Immortal, and i feel like i NEED 1 or 2 high commerce resources on my first city in order to have a chance ingame. Therefore i focus more on those tiles than the food itseld, sometimes sacrificating growth.

Am i doing it wrong?

 

[Seraiel]

Geez guys, be a little open-minded would ya? I played a little bit of this map and I can tell you it is a very strong start. Here's a few screens to show you what I'm talking about:

To start I settled on the southern gold, grew to size 2, then quecha rushed. I think I stole a worker in the first 5 turns or so. Right now I have 5 cities, 12 quechas, 9 workers, and stonehenge. A little cheesy I know, but "play the map", am I right?

You had "the right nose" and expanded in the right direction. I had to give up the start, because I was afraid of Monty (found out he had 1 Archer in every of his cities then, lol) rushed him and then Cyrus came up with Immortals when I rushed him, had no time to scout him, but if one is playing for HoF one has to take risks and possibly attack without scouting.

And yer, play the map, have fun, this will be the easiest Deity game of your life. It's even more easy because...

Spoiler :

If you expanded to the east, there is lots of jungle in the south where you can peacefully expand afterwards, you will get 2-3 times the cities of the nearest rival if you make it right.

Sorry i wanted to say grassland instead of plains, small translation problem.
Good points Seraiel, but still my first question remains. You rather have more food than gold, specially because without food you wont take advantage of all that gold anytime soon, right?

I almost always win on Emperor and sometimes on Immortal, and i feel like i NEED 1 or 2 high commerce resources on my first city in order to have a chance ingame. Therefore i focus more on those tiles than the food itseld, sometimes sacrificating growth.

Am i doing it wrong?

Hi

3 Gold 2 Food, 2 Gold 3 Food, doesn't matter to me, anything beyond 1 Gold 1 Gold / Gems AND 2 Food is playable with these settings. This start for me has 4 Gold 2 Food (as I count FP's and 4F Ressources as half Food) so it's even better, as you can see on the screens above, it's possible to work all the gold with only 2 farms, so with a 3rd and a 4th farm, this gives an awesome production PLUS commerce start, exactly what is needed for rushing.

And stopping growth is nothing wrong when it comes to rushing, with HC one is even delaying BW so there is no chance to whip at all, and to all the whiners, 3 farms 4 gold is still 10 times better then 7 cottages.

If you got commerce problems, I can only put the great lighthouse to your heart, for me it has become #2 ww after the oracle even before MoM or Parthenon, and having a specific style of play is nothing wrong. If you feel like you need it, you need it, like I want and need Marathon. Only thing thats ing me up is all the people that say Marathon is cheating, without ever having played one of my games on Huge against 17 Civs, but still, they can judge, can't they. Pathetic.

Sera

 

[Um the Muse]

Quechua rush is a special case, of course, but many of those points Sariel made for commerce being very important are also true for HA rush (and presumably all Classical and Ancient Era rushes).

When production is cheaper, food and commerce become relatively more dear.

I tried to explain that costs don't neccessarily scale well with additional cities. That's especially true when you're conquering cities, as it can be painfully slow to assimilate the new cities into your empire. It's a good thing that I don't care for early warring

 

[krikav]

I call them Checkers because they actually are (as long as they don't fight hill-archers )

And yer, I'm talking about maximum points on a Huge Big & Small Map with low Sealvl, that's why the savegame is named so For that purpose one needs maximum start commerce to fuel the early expansion phase up to 20 cities. It's very specific, and this is a very very specific start for that purpose.

But I really would be interessted, what other players suppose to be good starts, not especially for my purpose, I know already I need 1 plain Hill, 1 forrested plain Hill, 1 Gold Hill, at least 1 further Gold / Gems Hill, Food doesn't matter that much, as City will be small most of the size.

I still don't see, why this start is considered low on Food with 4 FP's and 1 Rice if settled on the Gold in the S, or why it is considered low production, if there are like 4-5 green Hills and Gold-Hills are production + commerce, plain-cows are also awesome production.

I see obvious benefits of gold plains hills if your capital is mostly going to spew out "checkers".
Settling on a marble/stone plains hill would also be nice.
Or to mine such a hill.
Grassland cows would probably be good, especially if you had multiple ones. (one cow feed one gold hill.)

 

[krikav]

Gems only occur on grassland or grassland hills, that's too little production for a Checker-Rush. And 2nd bad thing about gems is, that they mostly occur near the jungle, so near the equator, which is bad from two points of views. First, one doesn't want jungle and 2nd one does not want to start in the middle of the map between several empires with different religions. A nice niche corner near the sea is way better for strategic reasons, and that's also where the gold appears.

They also contain one less commerce, compared to gold.

 

[elmurcis]

They also contain one less commerce, compared to gold.

Hmmm.. 1 less or 2 less than gold? if me correct, silver was gold -1 and gems was gold -2 commerce...
Still.. 8 workable (no jungle over it) gems is greatest start I ever have had.. sad that dont have save

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Gold is +6, gems is +5, silver is +4.

Incense +5, Dye +4, Silk +3
Fur +3

 

[MarigoldRan]

Reasons why commerce is more important early game Deity in Huge/Marathon with standard 11-12 civs (or perhaps just huge maps in general):

1. You don't need to grab good city spots very early. There's more room for everyone to expand, so you can take your time. The land is 3x larger, whereas the number of civs is only 1.5x larger. This means there's 2x land for everyone.

2. The AI techs slower in the early game. For that reason, you can't rely on tech trading to catch up until later in the game.

3. You build at 2x slower speed. But you tech at 3x slower speed. So that means you've got a lot more hammers than normal speed, but less research. Hence the need for commerce to balance it out.

4. Commerce leads to production in Marathon/Huge. More commerce means more money to support cities. It also means earlier techs like BW and Pottery, and granaries and whips.

You still need a balance. BUT my argument is that commerce is much more important at Marathon/Huge than at standard settings.

The reason why Deity players become deity players is because they SPECIALIZE in their preferred settings. Some of them fail to understand that their specialized knowledge and experience for standard settings MAY NOT TRANSLATE AS WELL to other settings.

Just because you've played 2000 games at normal/standard doesn't make you an expert at Marathon/Huge.

 

[civvver]

Nope, pigs are just as fine.
And more realistic. I'm still annoyed at corn giving more food than rice

Yes that one is just bull crap. Compare the amount of people in history who survived off basically rice alone, then look at those who ate corn/maize and had to supplement it with venision or buffalo. Hence why I have modded rice to give equal food!

 

[Um the Muse]

Yes that one is just bull crap. Compare the amount of people in history who survived off basically rice alone, then look at those who ate corn/maize and had to supplement it with venision or buffalo. Hence why I have modded rice to give equal food!

I was going to agree with you, then you ruined by saying venison and buffalo The three sisters are corn, beans, and squash. The three plants grow together in harmony in such a way that you get a triple harvest. The minerals that one plant needs in the soil are completely different from each other.

I think it's bogus that you have to irrigate rice. Isn't it a water crop? And while we're griping, it's completely absurd that jungles are actually worse than nothing.

Oh well, this game is more about entertainment than historical accuracy. Why else would State Property be worth using, or slavery be so powerful but only when you are the cruel task master type who can't import more workers. It's so wrong that it's funny.

Edit: It turns out I only remembered part of the story behind the three sisters (there's even a fourth sister in some places). Here's the Wiki entry.

I was also completely wrong about rice cultivation. It's traditionally flooded, but doesn't have to be. It's just a lot more work.

 

[Seraiel]

Sorry i wanted to say grassland instead of plains, small translation problem.
Good points Seraiel, but still my first question remains. You rather have more food than gold, specially because without food you wont take advantage of all that gold anytime soon, right?

I almost always win on Emperor and sometimes on Immortal, and i feel like i NEED 1 or 2 high commerce resources on my first city in order to have a chance ingame. Therefore i focus more on those tiles than the food itseld, sometimes sacrificating growth.

Am i doing it wrong?

Have to answer again to this post.

Besides the GLH you'll also want to try out Failgold Economy, as that is something, that can keep your expansion and tech-rate up when not having enormous ammounts of gold / gems / silver. I tried out lots of Huge / Marathon games without gold some weeks ago, without Failgold you're going to loose, but getting 400 from SH and especially 1500 from failing the Mids does work.

Anyway, I prefer getting those wonders and having GLH + a shrine + Gold / Gems / Silver.