Some Deity Fun with Mao

[Lain]

I can upload Save, but I think your analysis is pretty much spot on anyway. And (I think) I am aware of some problems that caused delay. I had 1500 Failgold so slider was at 100% all the time, but only 180 beakers... could have built more research though, I had good production cities. Bulbing went fine (as you mentioned, though I traded for Paper from Mansa, so it went even better than normal). Actually I had my GS lined up, but was waiting for Nationalism and Gunpowder self-tech, that killed me in the end. With more commerce I could have been faster and there would be no problem.

I feel that I also commit too many mistakes when fighting war. I get surprised by big stacks too often. When I probably should be using tricks like: Take city, let him retake it, then use Spy for revolt and slaughter his stack? I don't quite manage that and so the war drags on longer than it should. Combination of all that brought me defeat.

However, in the meantime I won my next two Deity games. One with Lincoln (will post write-up in the other thread I think) and currently I am playing a new game, but it's looking really good (and this one is without any map knowledge or single reload like here, so has to count for something). So I believe that I've already improved just by discussing with you and reading up on old games here. Maybe will post my current game too, it's quite a fun setup, maybe someone will play that one aswell. Everybody likes Shaka on his borders, right? ... Guys, where did you go?

I plan to come back to this map in 1-2 weeks and see what I can do. I just lost this one for now. Will finally look at your save today (I delayed because I wanted to play this out myself first). Looking forward to analyse your tech path, attack dates and all that. Wish I had a video to see how you move troops in war though . Don't even need commentary, I just feel like watching some Cuirs-wars would be really educational. And yes, I watched all of AZ videos. Still, I feel like I miss some tricks, when I see that some guys win a war with Cuirs in 10 turns or something.

Edit: Ok I just took a look and yes, you distracted Bismarck really well with that war. I have to watch out for opportunities like this too, more than I do so far. But sometimes bribing like that doesn't work I guess. In my war, I took out his Iron aswell, but he traded for Iron from Mansa (for Gems ), so it's a bit random taking out metal.

Did you actually continue the game after your war with Bismarck?

 

[georgjorge]

Big congrats on your Deity win(s)! Well done.

I only continued the game until taking a fourth city off Bismarck, at which point he was willing to vassal. Didn't have time to play more on that as I ran some test games for the next Game of the Month

Wars with two-move units, contrary to one-movers, offer some nice strategies. It's essential to know where their stack is at the beginning because you want to catch it out in the open if possible, or at least in a non-hill city with low cultural defenses (but I wouldn't let them re-take a city for this because without City Raider promotion or Trebs it doesn't offer any advantage over attacking in the open). Note that if you are not threatening a AI city with your units, their stack will often (always?) come to you and attack your cities. So if their stack is in a city near your borders you could just put your Cuirs in range (but not threaten their city), declare and do nothing, then kill off the stack when it moves out (preferably not onto a forest tile). The war takes a bit longer in the beginning but you will encounter a lot less resistance afterwards.

Another trick is forking, i.e. threatening two cities at once with your stack (only possible with two-movers). They will put a lot of units into one city and leave the other too lightly defended so you can take it (and maybe some units will get stuck between cities if you are positioned well).

Third, cease-fires. If you have enough war success or enough time has elapsed, don't be afraid to take a cease-fire to prevent losses. For example, you have taken a strongly defended city and your units are wounded when you spot another mini-stack approaching that could counterattack and kill several of them. Cease-Fire, heal, declare again - if you can take the diplomatic penalty from others for re-declaring. Also, cease-fire just before an AP resolution comes up if you cannot afford to defy a peace vote (only danger: AI might peacevassal to another AI right away if too weakened).

Spies for city revolts are nice if you have enough espionage points, I hardly ever bother doing it but maybe I should.

 

[shakabrade]

1290AD Conquest

Spoiler :

Cap-order: Kublai, Sury, Raggy, Hammy, Mansa.
Overwhelmed them with pure numbers and tried catching SoDs in the open.
I had some luck with wars as everyone was distracted. Therefore my neglect for economy and trades past Rifling wasn't punished. Should have (and easily could have) researched Physics for Airships.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

I would normally write a bit more but this new forum look repels me.

 

[Lain]

Hi shaka, I looked at your screenies abit. Before asking stupid stuff, I read the last 200 posts or so you made on this forum first . It already gave me many answers regarding tech trade for example.

Seems a few mistakes I do are:

- Trading techs carelessly... I don't trade immediately when I have monopoly of course, but in general I probably trade too much and lose grip of the game.
- Too much bribing for war, giving techs away and putting everyone in unit spam mode.
- Apparently not effective movement of troops when in war, also thanks @georgjorge for pointing out some of those basics, much appreciated

Now I have a few questions left:

- If I saw correctly, you didn't upgrade many troops to Cuirs before attacking? A few knights and then whip Cuirs everywhere?
- How did you overcome low commerce to self-tech Nationalism/Gunpowder faster? Granary/Forge and build research? I built lots of wonders for failgold, but in the end that just meant I had 1500 Gold for 100% research but it didn't do me much good with 180 pathetic beakers.
- Rifling is no reason to stop with Cavalry apparently even without Airships/Spies? Very impressive. Do you promote Flanking on Cavalry so they survive more? Because I think even with Pinch you will get like 2% chance or so vs Hill rifles.

Lots of stuff left to learn for me. Maybe I should do some kind of Daily Rounds and just post lots of games with thoughts so I can be corrected. Don't know if anyone is intersted in such a Deity game spam though?

Too bad Kossin's screenshots are almost all gone. I think I read many other great threads, but would always appreciate if someone could link other stuff I could learn from.

My current area of concern: Semi-Isolation on Deity. I found a thread from TMIT, but not much else unfortunately.

 

[shakabrade]

Hi Lain, first, I must say that I like the way you learn. You identify weakness and then attack it. You'll probably be a very consistent deity player in couple of months when you get more intuition (which is basically condensed experience).

- If I saw correctly, you didn't upgrade many troops to Cuirs before attacking? A few knights and then whip Cuirs everywhere?

I have upgraded 3-4 Knights. Actually, this could have been a bit suboptimal. I have underestimated my GPP and have missed an opportunity to get that GM out. This probably cost me 1-2 turns on attack date but I saved some population for Cuirs. Since I had to research both Nationalism and Gunpowder myself, I couldn't afford to start whipping Knights too soon anyway.

- How did you overcome low commerce to self-tech Nationalism/Gunpowder faster? Granary/Forge and build research? I built lots of wonders for failgold, but in the end that just meant I had 1500 Gold for 100% research but it didn't do me much good with 180 pathetic beakers.

I have built research and not wealth and run scientists because I needed everything faster rather than more efficient (and in the end it is more efficient ). I had a bit less than 300 bpt, iIrc and I got plenty of gold in trades.
With 6 cities maintenance is negligible.

- Rifling is no reason to stop with Cavalry apparently even without Airships/Spies? Very impressive. Do you promote Flanking on Cavalry so they survive more? Because I think even with Pinch you will get like 2% chance or so vs Hill rifles.

Indeed, you only need higher numbers. Also, pick easy targets as you only need 40 war success (check diplo screen after every successful battle when you are close to it). You should avoid anything like battle for Stalingrad. That is why in this game I chose to attack Mansa the last, my numbers became too big, units highly promoted and there is a large tech gap between Rifles and Infantry/Artillery meaning I had some time to deal with others (weaker and less advanced). If Mansa for some reason went for Steam Power and Assembly Line, I would attack him sooner but my losses would be critical and I would need to wait some healing and reinforcements prior to capping others. I must stress that not getting Airships was a mistake. With Airships, Cavs beat Rifles and even Infantry.

Regarding promotions, +25% promos work better on low base strength units. If attacking, I believe that combat promo is adding percentage to your base strength while +% promos/abilities work on defenders (reason why Trebs are so much more powerful than Cats against cities despite lower base strength). On Cavs, you need combat and sometimes I go for March. Although your Flanking guys could survive, they'll deal less damage. That means that enemy defender will still have higher chance to kill your next unit. Also, Flanking guys take forever to heal when they withdraw and for me that is the same as being dead .

 

[MyOtherName]

Regarding promotions, +25% promos work better on low base strength units.

Actually, strength has nothing to do with whether combat or the other promotions are more effective -- the relevant statistics are the total modifiers for the attacker and defender.

I think the advice you quote is a correlation=causation fallacy -- you typically won't be attacking with low strength units (and caring about their success) unless you have a lot of -X% modifiers to apply to the defenders (e.g. Trebuchet's +100% against cities), and the closer the defender's modifier is to 0%, the more effective additional modifiers become.


For example, Combat I is the superior promotion against a defender with more than +120% defense, but City Raider I is superior if the defender has less than +120% defense.

Or, if you have Combat I, then Cover is superior against archery units with less than +200% defense, and Combat II is superior against archery units with more than +200% defense.

(i.e. x=2 is the solution to 1.2/1.1 = (1+x)/(0.75+x))

 

[shakabrade]

@MyOtherName

Thanks for clarification. I actually never knew the way it works (but have stumbled across some threads). I know that it is too complicated to do in your head in seconds. And those calculations were always for 1v1 combat not taking all the possibilities, unit compositions into an account. Anyway, never trust an engineer with maths. We always search for shortcuts.

In real situation, though, the edge that pinch would provide against defender is real but is negligible (it is less than few percent), even more so compared to disadvantages. Combat works on defense too, and also allows you to get some other promos like March or Amphibious. In situation where Pinch would provide greater advantage, enemy defender will change to Pike or Jumbo. You must promote many guys to Pinch they will never use to get that fight against Musket or a Rifle. Combat promo will always be used and in the long run yields better results. I used to overthink it in the past.

 

[MyOtherName]

Np. I had looked at this stuff a lot back in the early days of Civ 4, so it's nice that the remnants of that knowledge are still useful to people!

Combat is special on offense, since it's the only effect modifying the attacker's strength. It's much less significant on the defense, since it gets lumped in with all of the other modifiers and so just has the obvious numerical effect -- e.g. C1+Shock+Formation makes a better defender than C3 against melee and mounted units. (of course, C2+shock makes a better defender against melee than C1+shock+formation!)

 

[Fippy]

Also, Flanking guys take forever to heal when they withdraw and for me that is the same as being dead .

Yup, and they will never become Veterans with 3-5 combat or other promos added.
Flanking would be much better if survivors stay at 50% hps.