The Deity Challenge Line-up #31 - Ottomans

Deity is an illusion that can be discouraging. I know it was for me because you start WAY behind and usually until early Industrial era you simply get even more behind but that's when the AI somehow stops and your snowballing takes over

 

As I have said before... I am new to this series. As far as I can tell this series is some sort of Deity Training Ground. I can understand that to a point. I guess what I do not understand is how reloading and restarting games over and over can help you improve. I concede to the fact that it will help you to a degree but it seems to me that it hurts your game more than it helps your game since you always know that if something goes wrong you can just restart or reload. It also seems that nobody who reloads/restarts has moved up to playing this without using them. I am just curious when those of you who are trying to learn by using these cruches start to play without them. Honestly, I have no real solution. Most of you seem to enjoy playing the game and have no problem with reloading or restarting when things do not go the way that you want. I suppose my beef is not with this series it is more so with the game options. I would like to have the option in my games to be able to click a button that makes the game unable to reload any turns and if it was possible to be able to not allow replays at all. When I play this game I try to keep it as real to life as possible. I wish in my life I could go back a few turns ago and reload them up but I am not able to do that so I have to live with the mistakes I have made and move forward win or lose. I want my Civ games to be the same !

It appears the only real solution is to play my own games with some sort of special rules. I am not good enough to win many games before turn 250 so I would have to make it turn 275 I suppose.

Perhaps I will start a Series with some special rules that players will follow if they want to try.

Rules:

1. No Reloads/Restarts unless game crashed
2. Win before turn 275 or Lose
3. Victory Condition Specified
4. Deity Level / Stand / Stand
5. Pangea / Conts / Fractal Maps

I would get into other things like no worker steals, no RAs... etc. etc. but I do not think anyone is going to play in the series but it was good for me to put some rules down on paper so I can see them to try to play with them for my next game.

 

It is pretty straightforward. Playing the same map lets one compare, for example, Tradition versus Liberty or Freedom versus Order. Playing one map Tradition and then a different map Liberty is not nearly as educational. There is just too much RNG.

Take a look at St412 spreadsheet. Not many participants hit that! I have enough trouble winning Deity reloading/retries. I am not much interested in an “ironman” mode as I would be very frustrated. Also the UI is twitchy. I still occasionally throw a garrison unit into the water because I think I have a naval unit selected. I wish I could figure that out! And then there are all the times I mean to move a unit W and it goes NW or SW instead.

 

1. I don't get the impression that people abuse reloading. There's a few odd reloads but for the most part, the game runs smoothly for most people. Restarts less, though restarting gives you map knowledge but people generally restart when they lose or they're about to.

2. Pointless. I only keep track of finish times for the sake of averaging which is ultimately a factor that determines how hard a given map is.

3. Like I said previously, I disagree completely. Different victory times are a result of different styles, opening strategies (Tradition, Liberty, Honor, Piety), different AI behaviour, the game itself has many factors involved and that makes it good.

4. Already like that, so yea.

5. Irrelevant. You can only make a case for map types in which the map script doesn't work as intended or if it's based on islands where it's automatically easier because of the naval AI

 

Some players force similar rules to themselves, some players try different strategies etc., and some players win past T300. Anyone is welcome to enforce such rules and post them when you describe your game but I do not think enforcing such rules to everyone will work.

 

Plus, having it open-ended and not oriented towards fewest-turns-possible means that the better players give themselves some very interesting challenges. For example with recent DCL33, Peddroelm was set on making wide Liberty/Piety work -- which he did -- but it took him a few tries to set it up.

@SooHongLoo, maybe you should stick to the HoF and GotM?

 

I agree although those threads are just as easy to cheat at as well. At least you all here in the DCL tell eveyone when you lose or reload/restart. I do not see the point of playing a map over and over and when you do actually win you get to be listed on a spreadsheet that shows no * for what you have done. It is like you have 20 finishes and never had a problem or a loss with one of them. Silly to me but it is as I have said before this is your thing and I am the outcast ... Enjoy!!

 

Finally finished this DCL. Fun water map that makes full use of UA, at some point my navy was too large and was over supply limit forcing me to disband some other units. Navigation was done around T140 but it took many turns to finish that I got battleships a few turns before the win.

SP: liberty opener, honor opener, finished liberty and planted GS, finish honor, commerce up to mercantilism, autocracy up to clausewitz

Wonders: built pyramid, statute of zeus, Brandenburg's gate, Prora.

Spoiler :

Settle 5 cities, stole worker from Spain, hard build 1 worker, had 2 from pyramid, also a few from barb camps. Tempted to forward settle Spain but that position was impossible to defend. For some reason Spain did not want to make peace with me for at least 60 turns which hurt me since nobody sent early cargo until polynesia discovered me.

I had to raze the city south of Madrid to reduce the number of troops so that I can keep Madrid, and that slowed me some turns. Barcelona has some very nice wonders such as Petra and Notre dame, so I decided to keep fighting, but I have to wait until Dynamite to take it since I have literally no army and only a massive privateer/frigate navy. Once I got some +range frigates, I moved on to Polynesia while building a new navy for Indonesia. Arty was ready a few turns after.

Jakarta fell very easily and made peace, while Polynesia was tech leader and culture leader. His cities were hard to take by the time I got to him. Eventually I had to deal with ironclad which the UA helps to steal, and also GWB. His cities only started to fall around T225. His wonders were also spread over 3 cities and I decided to take them all and it took a while. I have to keep replenishing arty and frigates due to GWB.

While I was dealing with Polynesia, England, Indonesia, Spain, Poland all DoW me, so I decided to DoF Huns which was also at war with all of them and they got 1st pick autocracy. I also borrow some cash and sell my stuff. Luckily I just got to Flight and I rush buy GWB in Bacelona and Jarkarta and have my main navy back from Polynesia to defend against Spain. I also got a few Triplanes to help take the inland cities of Polynesia since their GWB was very problematic. Made peace with them once they started mass producing battleships. Meanwhile the 2nd navy moved from Indonesia to Poland and quickly destroyed their defenses and took Warsaw with some arty.

At this point, I was close to getting battleships, so I waited a few turns to upgrade frigates and then to finish off London, Attila's Court and Edinburgh. I took all 3 cities around the same turn since I can't handle the happiness hit.
Turns out that England only had 1 city, and Celts were eliminated by Huns long before I got there.

Could probably finish it earlier if I didn't waste that much time on Polynesia and only taking Honolulu. I could probably also deal with their battleships with ironclads+UA and it might speed up by a few turns since they got it way before me.

 

T263 peaceful culture victory.

Spoiler :

Was (and still am) lost on what to do on maps whereby you need to tech sailing to meet more than 1 civ. Wanted to go for petra but wrote it off after seeing spain had desert terrain. In hindsight she could only build it in Barca so I guess thats what failboat scouting does for you.

Stole workers from culture CS in the north, settled 4 City NC and 1 after it. Frist 100 turns werent very great and I was baffled at how i misplayed such great dirt.

Trieme to explore the world (never met the celts before attila killed her).

Being isolated the only person who could harm me was spain, but after i adopted her religion and paid a tribute to her she offered DOF. signed RAs with her after that there went any threat of attack. Attila, Poland, England were too busy fighting each other and Indonesia was ground up badly by Attila. Hawaii was too busy settling cities around the world to be bothered with me.

Cargo ships were used to maximum effect to recover from a misplayed start but sadly Hawaii built the FP the turn before WC was founded so I was booted out of the proposal making. Was used to having WF for free diplo and culture boost but turns out that it is entirely unneeded.

Spammed wonders and late arch (~T180) but managed to fill everything. Got back into the WC by couping Hawaii's Culture CS allies, won the IG, and the game was over. 2 faith bought GM with 9k tourism each walked/swam over to hawaii but tbh it didnt have much effect on the turn time.

Wonders: Sistine, Uffizi, Broadway, Christo, Eiffel, SoL, and PT.

Social Policies: Full Trad, Full Rat, Full Aest, 8 in Freedom.

Congress: +3 cutlure to wonders, IG (won). AIs went around around banning Luxuries and failing to pass WR while i was locked out.

Religion: Took religious idols, but never managed to found. Spain had desert folkore & pagodas so i welcomed her religion. Indonesia helped out greatly by taking mosques, and waging conversion wars on my cities. I have never had visits by so many prophets and missionaries before - at one point istanbul changed religion twice in 1 turn. England with Jesuit Ed showed up with 1 prophet 2 turns before Sci theory so I had glorius dreams of faith public schools suplementing pagodas and mosques in my cities but the spainish inquistion was quick to convert everything back in 2 turns...

 

T285 CV. Haven't played CV in months, so everything was off, though I was lucky with some timings, and the game wasn't lost. No Renaissance wonders or Louvre. But I got an achievement "the magnificent one". I think I am going to replay this for a DomV, for once.