The Deity Challenge Line-up #31 - Ottomans

[consentient]

For those frustrated by this map, I'm afraid that you have me to thank for it. I submitted it to Acken, along with an Egypt map suitable for Chariot rush that he rejected, and which I uploaded to my Domination thread.

Might I suggest that if there are kinds of maps you'd prefer to see, and you roll one, and think 'this would be good for the DCL'. that you submit it and let Acken see if he thinks its good.

The civs that haven't been used yet, and will likely be used before the cycle starts over, are:-

Assyria
Austria
Egypt
England
France
Greece
Japan
Korea
Portugal
Shoshone
Siamese
Songhai

TLDR: A gentle reminder that you can submit your maps to the DCL and have everyone play them along with you. JUST DON'T FORGET TO DISABLE/DELETE THE MAP PACKS!!!

 

[stormtrooper412]

Not frustrated by the map but rather the civ, Ottomans really bring nothing to the table on a map like this

edit: another restart down the crapper, stole worker from neighbor, neighbor stubbornly bugged out and won't accept peace. Wasted 15 turns of unhappiness because there's literally nothing to boost it with. By the time I'm on my feet, it won't be much of a game left, so I'll just pass up this map entirely and mark it down as "circumstantial"

 

[consentient]

Not sure I'd go that far. If you can

Spoiler :

get across the isthmus and smash Spain very early

, you can get a decent DomV going, but it's pretty tough to do.

 

[InDubioProReo]

I will probably go SV if I ever finish this one. The map doesn't seem suited for a DomV, which is a shame since I wanted to try Ottomans for that.

What I don't understand with the design of Ottoman civ is their UA. Ottomans weren't exactly known for their dominance over the seas, they were pretty strong at some points in the history (16th century I think) but losing battles against Portuguese they kind of stopped being a strong naval power. I wish they gave them a economic/infrastucture bonus instead of that, considering how well the empire was governed in its initial years and golden age (14-17 century timeline especially).

Giving them a naval bonus, and then giving them one strong musketman and a slightly better lancer just says confusion to me.

 

[beetle]

Wow, people open and finish so fast! Don't you like to make uninformed speculations first?

From the look of it, i dont see no reason not to settle on spot, you're only missing one rock east. But any move to get it will either lose you a marble or the coastal start, the later being a terrible idea i guess. I'm thinking of spamming ships obviously, perhaps go liberty but i dont deal with it really well.

Yeah, SIP definitely. I like how much river I see in the opening screen shot, so follow that upstream and the east rock for the 1st expo at the very least? I will try Liberty too with any kind of encouragement. Up river, up coast, down coast is four cities just from the opening screen shot.

 

[GerrardCapashen]

t358 science victory

Spoiler :

I started out pretty well, getting a four-city NC on turn 87, with Petra and the Hanging Gardens. I stole a total of 5 workers from Yerevan with a single scout over about 40 turns, then decided I didn't need more and made peace with them. I then got Pisa, the Globe and the Uffizi, looking for a cultural victory. However, Isabella decided to DoW me, and even though I killed every conquistador and tercio she sent south, she would not make peace for about 80 turns. During this time my economy started to hurt, and she captured Erdine. I got it back but another capture-recapture cycle brought the city down to size 1 and basically made it a new city again with very few buildings. I eventually got her to make peace, but my nice start had slipped back.

I went from 2nd in tech to 5th, and while I was able to catch up again, she DoWed me again in the modern era. Despite my having rocket artillery and bombers with mech infantry, I couldn't really push past Budapest, which I liberated from her. I probably should have puppeted it as a base for my bombers rather than liberating it. But I didn't want to waste too much time destroying Spain, because Polynesia and the Huns were two runaways on the other continent.

I eventually made peace with Spain, only to be DoWed two turns later by the Huns. Atilla swarmed me with battleships, destroyers, and carriers with bombers. I lost Ankara twice before I was able to sink his entire fleet and force peace. During these wars I went from having 14 city-state allies to 5, since Spain and the Huns killed off most of my city-state friends. I knew my only hope was a science victory, so I set all cities to research production. The Huns, Polynesia, and I all finished with 76 technologies (1 more than needed for science, I researched lasers for jet fighters before I thought it was going to be a close race for science). However, I had the Freedom level 3 tenet to buy spaceship parts with cash, so I was able to finish the ship first.

You can see from the screenshot how close the race was. I pulled my spies out of their capital cities since the added information wouldn't have helped me speed anything up - I already had 3 cargoes sending production to Istanbul, burned a late-game GE for a manufactory, and the last part was going to be bought anyways. I put my 5 spies in my 5 cities to try to avoid any tech stealing by Polynesia or the Huns.

If I had finished Rationalism rather than just putting two points into it, I could have won much more easily by buying great scientists. I think I need to start putting a minimum of 4 points into it, then I can always finish it reasonably soon if I need to. But adding 4 policies is too much. I was closer to finishing Exploration, so I did that and hoped for a lot of cultural renaissance sites. I got one, but the game ended before my archaeologists could find more.

I think this is the closest space race I have ever won - I lost the Iroquois ICL (forget the number, maybe 18?) space race to Casimir by one turn. (It would bother me less if I lost to an AI who was less annoying. I have to say Casimir is in my least favorite 5 opponents.)

 

[adcarrymaokai]

What I don't understand with the design of Ottoman civ is their UA. Ottomans weren't exactly known for their dominance over the seas, they were pretty strong at some points in the history (16th century I think) but losing battles against Portuguese they kind of stopped being a strong naval power. I wish they gave them a economic/infrastucture bonus instead of that, considering how well the empire was governed in its initial years and golden age (14-17 century timeline especially).

Lol...

'Barbary Corsairs' didn't even come from the core of the Ottoman Empire, but rather from the territories of the North African coast which came under Ottoman rule for some time. While it is majorly confusing as to why they received such an awkward and unfitting UA, you also have to keep in mind that civ is a "history-inspired" and not actually historically accurate game.

I would do something silly like Honor-Exploration, but it's probably super suboptimal, and I don't have time to play anyway.

 

[Acken]

Playing Liberty wide. I'm approximately 10 turns behind results Olodune seems to have.

Spoiler :

 

[cazaderonus]

Can't wait to try this one. Tired of my Iroquois game but i need to finish it. That's one good thing DCL did to me since i started, it makes me finish games when i may have quitted on a normal game (that iroquois one ? WOuld have ragequitted when LToP went away at turn 110 and screeaam "You damn Cheating AI !!")

As for the naval perk of the ottomans, dont forget they were dominant on the Mediterranean sea, especially greek islands for a very long time. So it's not that stupid tbh.

 

[Babinski]

Thanks, but I still don't plan on an LP any time soon. I'd say you wouldn't learn anything from me, but the truth is that I learn something from just about every LP I watch. I'm going to stick to the screens and text for now, but I'm certainly happy to debate actions, as always I'm still behind Acken in development speed and his LPs are excellent. My advice to improve play is to try and play the first 80 turns as slowly as possible since every little decision snowballs into the midgame.

Spoiler :

Optics: This was a close call, but I chose not to prioritize it here, since we also have good land tiles and plenty of room to expand to. I picked it up while Libraries were going up since Philo would have finished too early.

Caravan's to the cap early? Heck no. This is a cargo ship map. Sailing was prioritized and the timing worked out that Istanbul and Edirne could swap cargos on the same turn. This is before NC. The Petra caravan was used to prop up land locked Ankara all game long.

NC The NC was finished right around 90 which is slower than some, but pretty standard for me with a 4 city tradition opening. I think focusing on food infrastructure first is usually better.

Some miscellaneous other stuff:

- I did get an early culture ruin (but no pop or tech or faith). This means a monument can be skipped. With a Yerevan camp clear I think I finished tradition in the mid 80s.

- Spies were totally useless this game: I stole a very late Astro (t160 or so), and killed a single spy around 230. That's it. That meant not a single coup, and so most of my gold went to city states.

- I stole two workers from Spain by preemptively declaring, pillaging a copper mine, and waiting for the repair crew to show up. A late couple of thefts from Bucharest added two more.

- One of the most variable decisions is how to spend early gold. Here I bought a warrior, then food/lux tiles, and finally Samarkand at full cost.

Istanbul

This is a special capital, and almost certainly why Acken labelled this map as 'Easy-Medium' . We have mining luxuries and hills that don't need to be bought. That means settlers are easy to spam. Mining luxury starts are almost as powerful as Salt starts, provided there are growth tiles as well. I had plenty of GPT and the 4th city was founded in the early 50s. By the late game I could 2-turn Archaeologists from Istanbul which I don't recall being able to do before.

Manpanzee seems to like high production starts as well:

Nice thoughts and write-up Olodune! Allways looking forward to see your plays.

One question: Why use spy in your cap instead of couping CS? Do you get any benefits from killing spies (I'm not considering slowing down AI:s tech much of a benefit. That late in game you are allready far ahead and it only gimps RA:s)?

 

[Olodune]

One question: Why use spy in your cap instead of couping CS? Do you get any benefits from killing spies (I'm not considering slowing down AI:s tech much of a benefit. That late in game you are allready far ahead and it only gimps RA:s)?

The goal is to train spies in the cap so they have higher coup chances -> I'll almost never coup unless a spy is rank 3. At that rank an ~80 Influence gap is around 75% odds. I might be off by a few %.

Do you coup with rank 1 spies?

 

[Olodune]

Playing Liberty wide. I'm approximately 10 turns behind results Olodune seems to have.

I'm not so sure - you have better beakers, an extra city and better growth potential. If you're also going CV I might prefer mine just because of the tourism scaling off a wonderous capital. I have worse culture, and better faith, but I can't really take credit for the later. Did you found your religion? That opens up World Religion if so.

 

[Babinski]

The goal is to train spies in the cap so they have higher coup chances -> I'll almost never coup unless a spy is rank 3. At that rank an ~80 Influence gap is around 75% odds. I might be off by a few %.

Do you coup with rank 1 spies?

Yes I do, the exception beeing the first spy who maybe steals a tech first. I usually use spies to "lock" my CS allies. They allmost never fail, give me enough influence until next coup.
I usually out-tech AI in fast science games before beeing able to steal one tech. My experience with killing spies is that its very unreliable. Are you often able to rank up your spies fast through killing other spies?

 

[Olodune]

Are you often able to rank up your spies fast through killing other spies?

Often, yes. Reliably, no. I don't know why exactly some games my capital becomes a feeding frenzy and sometimes all the foreign agents would rather go elsewhere. Having too many friends doesn't help, I think.

 

[stormtrooper412]

The goal is to train spies in the cap so they have higher coup chances -> I'll almost never coup unless a spy is rank 3. At that rank an ~80 Influence gap is around 75% odds. I might be off by a few %.

Do you coup with rank 1 spies?

I train up my first spy by having him steal two crappy techs from a non tech leading AI (because the tech leader is likely to keep the spy to itself) and then I go and coup, move out and coup some more. Often a 76%-ish chance gets my spy killed so in that case I just fork over the dough and coup an easier CS

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Honor sounded fun in theory, but as usual, turned pretty crap in practice. Maybe as a second tree? Maybe just the right side secondary tree? I don't know.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Honestly, Honor is a pretty crap choice for a map like this. I went Liberty, Tradition and then again Liberty, so 3 restarts. Hoping to score a diplo win this time while using Frigates/Battleships to stir up the pot.

Or restart again

 

[Acken]

I've scraped my game to try different opener. Here are my 2 games at T125.
Opener 1: 6cities NC, Philo first, Cargo after settlers to feed capital. Use lib finisher for an academy. Decent results but the lack of AI routes (or mine) made the luxury tech acquisition and slowed down the start. Also since I took Philo first, some of my cities didn't have much to build at one point. Reached education turn 115.
Opener 2: 6cities NC, Engineering first, Cargo before 3rd settler (half built before collective rule) and sent to AI. The start is way better, allowing to grab luxury techs fast enough to spend very little time in unhappiness. The extra gold allows for a granary rush in last city. Getting aqueducts faster in already better cities snowballs into faster workshops and simply more buildings. Almost all cities have: Aqueducts, Workshops, Colloseums as soon as I hit education on turn 113. No city will require a rush since all unis are built in 4 to 9 turns.

SS1

Spoiler :

SS2

Spoiler :

 

[consentient]

Holy crap you're good, Acken.

 

[stormtrooper412]

How did you get all the cash for all the CSs. You know, sometimes I wonder if I'm still realistically at Chieftain level