The Deity Challenge Line-up #34 - Egypt

[Acken]

I started again opening with honor opener and even though it s nice to destroy barbs, i m not sold on the whole thing. I agree with soo about citues being your best defense and even offense by far. I think i m gonna start one more time to test another approach.

Also, request for advice regarding liberty. If you go for a 4 city NC. When do you consider it s late to build 2/3 more expos ?

I preffer to go straight for 6-8 cities and make the NC with a GE. Or build the NC late and get a GS if the capital production is excellent.

If you go 4 cities do it like tradition and make your extra cities right after the NC.

To be honest any cities beyond T100 is a liability no matter your strategy in my experience.

 

[cazaderonus]

Yeah that s what i was thinking as well. I m thinking dropping honor opener as it makes liberty finisher come way too late to my taste. Even though my current situation isnt too bad all things considered. I managed to grabmhappiness and culture for the mple which makes burial tombs give 4 happinnes, 2 culture and 2 gold. OP much lol.

I d grab oracle right after petra and finish nc at turn 100 hard building it, i reall need oracle hence priorizing it beore it goes away. I m thinking liberty finisher for a gs academy or keeping it for a rushed LTOP. Dontnknow really. Main issue is that i d create new expos not until T 115/125.

So yeah. I wanna restart going full liberty.liberty and pop expos lik a crazy person as anti barb system. Probably rushing philosophy for early libraries and burial tombs to deal with happiness issues. Petra should be available late as i think there aint much desert outside my area. Probably get it after nc.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Another restart. This map's real difficulty is somewhere between 'extremely insane' and 'impossible'. It was turn 90 and all I managed was 3 pitifully small cities, barbs coming from at least 5 directions, pillaging left right and center, and now that they're stopped, I burned all my happiness and can't grow

 

[sun8119]

Well, if you want my advice then you should build much more units in the first 100 turns, dunno I think at least 2-3 units per city to defend from barbs. You should be fine then. When your borders grow and you have like 4+ cities plus AIs cities then barb camps won't be much trouble. Sure it will be slow but you will catch up later.

 

[Redaxe]

Ok I'm done

Culture Victory Turn 305 Victory

I bent the rules a little on this - rather than focusing on rapid expansion to 4 cities and NC I beelined straight to Hanging Gardens and then to Petra. My idea was to get a supercity going and let expo's catch up after. A supercapital can carry your civ if your a bit late on expanding.

Since you have the Southern landmass to yourself (and the barbs) there wasn't too much of a rush to settle. Although I did sell my resources to buy a settler to get to Mt Sinai (although the barbs carried my settler most of the way if you get my drift. So it was capital +1 expo at Mt Sinai before building National College.

One secret regarding the map - not a huge spoiler though

Spoiler :

You're the only civ that has desert access and no other AI capitals start near mountains.

After I had some basic military out the barbs weren't an issue especially with Honor opener. Some people question whether you get the culture back from that policy but I swear I did on this one. I kept as many camps around as I could just to farm culture and every few turns I'd be getting about as much culture from killing 2-3 barbs as my total culture for that turn. It certainly did add up even moreso in the late game when Great War Infantry started popping up - to get 50 culture in 1 hit is pretty good!

Once I found I had Petra the gamepace seemed to go on steroids. Byzantium was always friendly so I basically didn't have to worry about wars at all. I did a pretty standard cultural victory. Teched to Education then to Acoustics etc, bulbed a lot of Great Scientists to get to the mid-game Cultural Wonders...
Only thing that slowed me down was trying to get my musicians to Venice - I don't know why they can't fly - it's a bit much expecting Richard Wagner to walk across a continent...

I also manipulated a lot of wars between Poland and the Shoshone - being the 2 big runaway civs it really gave me a free run (paying Poland to declare war on 2 of their friends so they get a double backstab bonus and then no more Research Agreements for the Rest of the game .

A very wonderful city! Doesn't show the Sistine Chapel and the Statue of Liberty. Other Citys have the Machu Picchu and Sydney Opera House.

Spoiler :

Venice got a lot of culture - which is odd for just 1 city - they must have had World Church.

Spoiler :

Don't think i've ever had so many social policies before - not on diety anyway. You probably can't see it there but commerce is almost all filled out as well so 34 policies in total

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

 

[beetle]

I have no idea why the AIs let me have so much time, but I happy to get my first ever Culture Victory (something I never got at Immortal even), turn 370 (!) raw score is 2670.

I tried a second wide game, self founding 12 cities, but really that is so counter productive. Four city Tradition was very strong. A science victory would have been so much faster, but I really enjoyed playing autocracy. I turtled until Ideologies and Cult of Personality. I didn’t really try and take cities until the end, when it was clear the cultural runaway needed to be off the map for me to win. Great fun, no nukes (on my part).

 

[adcarrymaokai]

t370? Oh ok I might continue the CV route... because with 10 self-founded cities, but I felt like bailing for Diplo.

Edit: nah, going to replay. 10 cities is too much to handle, and my Reformation belief is useless.

 

[Bimblecrumbs]

The problem with 2-3 units per city is that it delays the necessary early buildings like libraries/granaries/monuments. 1 fortified unit per city should suffice, with a warrior/archer duo roaming killing camps. Perhaps 2 units in a city with 2 barb camps close by.
If they're not overwhelmed at 0hp then new cities, especially those on hills, can soak barb damage and use unimproved tiles to crack out a library.

After saying all that, I've opened honour as per usual and am still struggling. In theory it works fine but in practice a string of hand axes/horsemen can ruin one's day, as they did mine

 

[adcarrymaokai]

The problem with Raging Barbarians on such an isolated start is that they only hurt the human player. And especially with this start...

 

[stormtrooper412]

Well, if you want my advice then you should build much more units in the first 100 turns, dunno I think at least 2-3 units per city to defend from barbs. You should be fine then. When your borders grow and you have like 4+ cities plus AIs cities then barb camps won't be much trouble. Sure it will be slow but you will catch up later.

Did exactly that, and ended with T128 Education as a result

 

[beetle]

Well, if you want my advice then you should build much more units in the first 100 turns, dunno I think at least 2-3 units per city to defend from barbs.

You need less than that to defend from AI! I did okay with starting warrior and two scouts until I got a got a couple War Chariots. The most I needed was four of those guys.

The problem with Raging Barbarians on such an isolated start is that they only hurt the human player. And especially with this start...

I don’t know about that. When I went wide, I picked up like 8 settlers in barb camps. When I played 4-city Tradition, I ended up building two workers for a total of four.

t370? Oh ok I might continue the CV route... because with 10 self-founded cities, but I felt like bailing for Diplo.

Yeah, I thought wide was suppose to be good for CV, but it did not work out that way for me.

 

[Stolare]

First deity challenge

T 281 SV

Theodora was friendly for the entire game but with 4 space ship parts built she decided to declare war. Had no modern military units but had the cash stored for parts. Rushed two tanks and when she saw them she retreated her army of cannons and GWI (thought it was kind of weird). Dido also DoWed but was no concern.

Did not think barbs were that hard to deal with--just annoying as had to build a few archers to deal with them.

 

[GenuineRisk]

Theodora was friendly for the entire game but with 4 space ship parts built she decided to declare war.

This is why I usually keep my spaceship parts sitting around my capital and assemble them in one turn.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Liberty - Commerce - some Piety + Order. Somehow won before t300, but not sure what the AI's were doing, really.

 

[sun8119]

You need less than that to defend from AI! I did okay with starting warrior and two scouts until I got a got a couple War Chariots. The most I needed was four of those guys.

Well, chariots are much more mobile so you might need fewer of them

 

[Redaxe]

Well my game was spectacularly peaceful noone declared war on me and noone even denounced me. It's amazing how much easier it is to develop - totally different from the Songhai map.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Barbs have pikes and I still don't even have the NC. This is the most horrible map ever created and I'm not going to lose any more nerves over it

 

[beetle]

I did a pretty standard cultural victory. Teched to Education then to Acoustics etc, bulbed a lot of Great Scientists to get to the mid-game Cultural Wonders...

I for one would appreciate having the “etc” bit expanded upon. I have never been able to figure out the peaceful CV path. I understand the general outline, but I can never seem to get those mid-game cultural wonders, and timing/winning International Games never seems to be something I can manipulate. The game elements I can easily control never seem to amount to nearly enough.

 

[beetle]

So I have played this game from turn 6 (when I hit a culture ruin) three times now. Opening Liberty and Tradition, both times I pick up Desert Folklore. So I thought I would try opening Piety and try and get Sacred Sites. DF is not an option. Goddess of Festivals (with all the incense) seems like a decent fall back, but it is slow to generate faith, and I end up founding last. Disappointing, but okay. No faith building available, and SS is already picked!

I am still going to play it out, trying for a CV, but will probably fall back to diplo. It would still be something of a trick to win at Deity opening Piety, but this map seems like about the most peaceful one could hope for!

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Barbs have pikes and I still don't even have the NC. This is the most horrible map ever created and I'm not going to lose any more nerves over it

This map has terrible early game due to several things:
1. Heavily isolated. If you want to meet other civs early, you must send your first scout north and bypass the borders of Constantinople before they expand and block the path. That means stealing at most 1 worker from Theodora and asking for peace asap. Sending any scouts east is a waste because all of them will die to barbs.
2. Very very raging barbs. Too many coming too early. And given how isolated the map is and the fact that the entire lower border of the map is land and not a continent/pangaea closing in with ice shelf means you will be fighting infantry barbarians well into 200's unless you cower all the lower borders -- and that just won't happen.
3. Very few unique luxuries: there is plenty of incense around, a couple marble spots, and then 1 gem, 1 cotton, and only some dyes far east, copper on the far peninsula, and some gold far far east in the desert.

However, once you get through the early game, it should be smooth sailing. I opened Liberty and built a Library immediately in my one expo and bought one in the second expo, so my NC was done by t80 with 3 cities, and then Petra asap and expanding to 9 cities after. I had 3 archers and 2 warriors defending me from the barbs. I was able to manage happiness with Meritocracy, Commerce finisher, CS alliances, Pagodas, Burial Tombs, and Ideology. It was scarce for the most part of the game, though. But somewhere past t200, I realized I was making so much money that I could go for any VC by spamming faith-bought Great Merchants and simply getting all the gpt from cargo ships to Constantinople... I could have bought my way to SV, CV, or even DomV if I wanted to mess with that. The only reason my cities were working all science was because I needed Globalization to win the vote... band I barely reached it because I was too busy making money and neglecting science. And no AI is really in a position to assault you given the geography.