The Deity Challenge Line-up #41 - Shoshone

[consentient]

@beetle: Nice victory, don't be too caught up with turn times. That said, what turn did you hit Dynamite?

 

[vanatteveldt]

If you're doing a HCA XB rush with NC -> machinery, what is a good tech path after machinery? I guess chivalry, but after that do you beeline dynamite, or is it smarter to get education (and banking?) first? And do you get one or two rationalism policies, or try to complete commerce asap?

(reason I'm asking is that I find it difficult to keep economy and tech pace going after chivalry, with all cities churning out units and a good portion of honor gold going towards keeping afloat with -25 gpt or so...)

 

[consentient]

Education is needed to get to Dynamite in good time. Banking you can usually steal.

How many units do you have at this time? 8 XBs and 3 Knights per front is enough for most maps. The economy thing smells to me like there are unnecessary buildings, not enough gold buildings, you haven't gotten to Wagon Trains and you're not making the most of trade. You should still trade, even if you can only get 3GPT per lux.

 

[vanatteveldt]

Army: (split over two groups)



Economy:



A lot of cities have monument, barracks, and granary. A number have library, stable, or water mills. There are some redundant buildings like amphitheatres and shrines, but also hapiness buildings (colloseum and a +2happy temple). Three cities have courthouses, and 3 of my cities are lacking markets.

The former NW player just built macchu pichu, that would certainly help but it would also be quite a diversion.

I didn't get education or banks, that's probably a bit mistake that might warrant reloading to t100 or so. I sold off some shrines and amphis, that got me down to -27, but that's still not very positive...

Edit: I'm currently researching chemistry. Would you think it sensible to stop that and get Edu first, or is that too late anyway?

 

[vanatteveldt]

Update: t151, [E AI capital] has fallen

Spoiler :

The southern army had no difficulty whatsoever capturing Moscow as her army was tied up by my northern army, and the terrain from the west was completely flat. I've learned to respect terrain / approach!



Russia is willing to offer peace with 4 luxes and a bit of gold. I guess I'll have to take it,if only because I don't think I'll be able to capture either Rostov or St. Pete quickly and I don't have the happiness buffer to do so anyway. Accepting the peace brings me down to -3 happy, so that's not too bad.

One cap to go! I guess what I'll do is conquer Wroclaw with my northern army, even though the terrain is also quite obnoxious. I could liberate it but I guess I'll just take it and citadel bomb the hell out of constantinople. I guess I should be able to win in 20 turns or so if XB's will do the trick, but I really wish AI were better at chopping... The good thing is citadels remove forests, so that might be a last resort to get some line of sight going.

On a related note, I started building some infra, I bulbed edu and almost all cities have markets, but I guess it's a bit too late to do a lot of good. My money was around neutral for a bit, but capturing moscow made it tumble down again, I guess because you immediately pay for units, but get the gold later.

 

[vanatteveldt]

Spoiler t164 domv :

Capturing constantinople was almost anticlimactic. I moved my S army north while my N army captured wroclaw. While the XBs slowly crawled through the forest I used workers to chop some of them and 3 GG bombs to clear a path to the capital. Cannons + range/logistic XBs + musketmen made short work of the city, didn't even suffer a single casualty.



As you can see in the screenshot, I had a lot of troops at hand but most never even saw any action. In retrospect I should probably have kept more troops in my cities to deal with a possible DOW.

Management summary:
- 3 city NC, honour -> commerce (openers + 3 policies)
- Tech: philo -> machinery -> chivalry -> chemistry / edu / fertilizer
- Captured NW with CBs, rest of the world with XB. Opponents had musketmen at the end but that was no problem on flat terrain. Had a complete stalemate against E opponent on rough terrain.

First deity domV and first <200 victory. Thanks consentient and others for the advise and feedback! I guess I should move on to harder DCLs after this...

Lessons for next time: work on infra earlier. Especially once two armies are underway, build markets + unis everywhere before building more units, if only to have dynamite as an insurance policy in case XBs are insufficient.

Other main lesson is the importance of terrain. Open terrain makes invasion so much easier. I never realized it doesn't just mean an extra turn of bombardment, but it mainly means that you can only shoot at a city/enemy from a couple tiles which are all in melee range, making it much more difficult to use a group of bowmen to reduce a city or break an army. Also, the range promotion is mostly useless in rough terrain.

(sorry for the triple post, but I figured that making a separate post for the victory report would make storm troopers life a bit easier. And one doesn't mess with storm troopers...)

 

[consentient]

NICE WIN!!!

A lot of cities have monument, barracks, and granary.

Monument and Granary are good buildings. Barracks are good but only if you're going to be buying/training units in the city. On this map, with everything so close, I don't think you need more than one city with a Barracks.

A number have library, stable, or water mills.

Libraries are good, but the others are gold traps. They're not going to make enough difference to the speed of productions to justify their upkeep cost.

There are some redundant buildings like amphitheatres and shrines, but also hapiness buildings (colloseum and a +2happy temple). Three cities have courthouses, and 3 of my cities are lacking markets.

Ampitheaters and shrines are pointless. Markets are much, much better.

I didn't get education or banks, that's probably a bit mistake that might warrant reloading to t100 or so. I sold off some shrines and amphis, that got me down to -27, but that's still not very positive...

The Honor finisher is great and can keep many domination sweeps afloat, but if you can get positive GPT you can buy troops more easily. Cut away the unnecessary buildings that you think will boost production, and instead buy the troops with a lot of GPT.

Lessons for next time: work on infra earlier. Especially once two armies are underway, build markets + unis everywhere before building more units, if only to have dynamite as an insurance policy in case XBs are insufficient.

I'd say you've hit the nail on the head.

My advice: try DCL #17 (Germany). That's good training right there.

 

[Sclb]

T199 DomV
2nd attempt on the map, first time mainly failed to bad diplo. Played it safe this time and built library and universities for artillery if needed, which was needed after one of the eastern civ went into industrial early. T54 Construction, T101 Machinery, which were close to the time of the previous illiterate attempt, except this time my infrastructure was a lot better due to picking up a lot of the other tech that boost gold especially.

Spoiler :

Stole workers off Venice.
Pathfinders ruins: Population, culture, upgrade, faith (sun god pantheon), faith, upgrade, culture in that order. Was able to get a religion, with holy warrior but fpt was bad and didn't do much with it. Mainly used the GPr to do CS quests.
Built Pyramids in capital after first army since nobody else built it.

CB:
T78 Attila's court, after setting up Huns against 3 other civs, and left one of his city alive
T108 Venice, after paying Harun to capture it a few turns before, followed by denounce and DoW on him.

XB:
T116 Mecca, left one of his city alive
T129 Honolulu, Poland took out his final city along after CS took his 2nd. DoW Poland to liberate his 3rd city, and another CS NW of it, while my 2nd North army work their way east to Warsaw. Both armies converging at Warsaw.
T162 Warsaw, after his endless unit spam, city contains SoZ. It took a very long since his Winged Hussars were destroying my units very quickly. I had to spam replacements. At this point, the 3 eastern civs were at war with each other. Had to destroy all his cities to access the cultural CS and Theo.
T182 Constantinople, bad terrain for XB so had to wait for forest cutting with help from citadel bombs, research dynamite meanwhile as it was needed for Russia.

Artillery:
T199 Moscow, had to go through St Petersburg which had lots of hills, wouldn't be able to take without artillery and used most of my GG to bomb a path down to Moscow. It was probably faster to move the entire army around the map and attack from the west instead of north. I forgot the fact that if I recall a civ to life, they give open border for free. Ranged/logistic gatling guns were excellent meatshields.

SP: full liberty, full honor, 2 commerce wagon train, no ideology yet although 3 factories were almost built.

I had a lot of gold which I used to buy CS and bribe civs, so nobody denounced me until it was their turn to be killed. Poland took way too long to kill, Byzantine was a joke, but there was no way to reverse the order. Cathy and Theo built most of the wonders.

I think this is my first sub 200 Dom V.

 

[vanatteveldt]

NICE WIN!!!
[..]
My advice: try DCL #17 (Germany). That's good training right there.

Thanks!

I'll have a look at it next week. For RP reasons I'd be very tempted to go full-out panzer + autocracy (and hopefully capture the kremlin this time). I think peddroelm did a Panzer LP so that would be good inspiration.

Monument and Granary are good buildings. Barracks are good but only if you're going to be buying/training units in the city. On this map, with everything so close, I don't think you need more than one city with a Barracks.

Interesting. So you build most of your troops in one or two production cities, and let the rest build infra+wealth?

Libraries are good, but the others are gold traps. They're not going to make enough difference to the speed of productions to justify their upkeep cost.

I figured stables would be pretty sweet on this map, giving something like 4+ extra production in most cities?

Would you sell a water mill in a captured city? I sold the shrines, theatres etc which did indeed help quite a bit with maintenance. I guess I could have sold the granaries once I plunged into unhappiness, but that't probably a situation to avoid anyway, probably by getting protectionism in time?

 

[consentient]

So you build most of your troops in one or two production cities, and let the rest build infra+wealth?

Depends on the situation. Here, there was no real need for more cities beyond the first Army. The purpose of 3-city Liberty is to help get that Army out. So 3 pathfinder CBs + 2 Archers in each expo + 4 or 5 in the Capital, then upgrade.

Once the first army was built, I don't think I built the Knights anywhere except the cap. The expos built happiness and gold buildings and sometimes wonders that I know I can't get = GOLD (more than you get from wealth, I think, not sure). But Wealth is good, too.

I figured stables would be pretty sweet on this map, giving something like 4+ extra production in most cities?

Put it this way = you're not gonna put a building into the queue before the first army is built, and on this map, the first army is the core, right? Later you might want to add another to speed things up while you go through

Spoiler :

Poland

and

Spoiler :

Hawaii

at the same time, maybe, but since you're hitting Machinery really early and XBs are all you need to clear this map, I think it's not necessary. Stables are great on this map for peaceful VCs. But we are warmongers, aren't we?

Would you sell a water mill in a captured city? I sold the shrines, theatres etc which did indeed help quite a bit with maintenance. I guess I could have sold the granaries once I plunged into unhappiness, but that't probably a situation to avoid anyway, probably by getting protectionism in time?

1. Which captured cities? You only want capitals, and since you want to win quickly, there is ZERO need to Annex. You won't need Artilleries on this map.

2. Shrines to make faith for what? Granaries for what? You don't need growth or faith.

3. Who cares if you're unhappy, as long as you stay above -10 ?

4. You shouldn't get to Protectionism on this map. Even going Honor rather than Liberty, you want to kill everyone in 50 turns starting from Machinery. But Liberty is strictly better for this map because there are competent military civs that will fight back if you don't hit them while their trousers are down. Hitting Construction T40-50 will help you snowball into a power they cannot repel.

TLDR: For warmongering, the economy is everything. In fact, in Civ 5 BNW, gold is king. The more gold you have, the quicker you win.

 

[beetle]

That said, what turn did you hit Dynamite?

T218, and I have no idea if that is close enough for arty rush.

 

[vanatteveldt]

Interesting analysis, I'm even tempted to replay this map to improve my "total war" empire management and maybe compare lib vs honor.

That said, do you build barracks in your first three cities to jumpstart the archers -> XB and reach range earlier, or do you simply start shooting earlier? And if not, would you build them between first and second army?

I did annex cities, maybe that was a mistake but I figured capitals were juicy enough to be worth getting the production from -- but if your production mainly comes from buying stuff I guess you might as well let them focus on wealth, even if they also build stupid things like amphitheatres.

Is the tradeoff between lib and honour mainly one of an early liberty production boost of 105 (settler) + 50 (second setler) + 215 (GE for NC) ~ 360 or 9 archers, vs a later income boost?

(I consider pillage-repair to be an exploit, so that doesn't figure in my calculations)

 

[consentient]

T218, and I have no idea if that is close enough for arty rush.

Nowhere near, I'm sad to say. You want to hit Dynamite ca. T160-180. With beelining, Oxford + GS bulb it's really achievable most games.

do you build barracks in your first three cities to jumpstart the archers

No. No need for Barracks on this map. Barracks is for Trebs > Cannons, etc. If you're warmongering hard, XBs will have Logistics when they need them.

I did annex cities, maybe that was a mistake but I figured capitals were juicy enough to be worth getting the production from -- but if your production mainly comes from buying stuff I guess you might as well let them focus on wealth, even if they also build stupid things like amphitheatres.

If you leave them puppeted, they make gold for you.

Is the tradeoff between lib and honour mainly one of an early liberty production boost of 105 (settler) + 50 (second setler) + 215 (GE for NC) ~ 360 or 9 archers, vs a later income boost?

The main difference is that if you want to war with CBs, then Liberty is strictly better. If you intend to get as far as Industrial units, then Honor starts to take the edge back. On this map, Honor would be fun, but Liberty strictly better.

(I consider pillage-repair to be an exploit, so that doesn't figure in my calculations)

Not only was there no pillage-repair in my sweep, but no worker baiting either. When my workers had done their job, I disbanded them.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Spoiler :

Swarmed by Huns and Poland on turn 45. I honestly think I have the worst possible luck when it comes to conquest maps

edit:

Spoiler :

Lost capital on turn 72. I'm absolutely 100% sure the only way to win this map is if by some miracle you don't get attacked by both guys at the same time from two sides. I'm marking this map is impossible and never speak of it again

 

[consentient]

How many units did you have at that time?

 

[vanatteveldt]

Consentient, thanks for the explanations. I'll try an industrial era domination with the Germany map, that should be fun.

Not only was there no pillage-repair in my sweep, but no worker baiting either. When my workers had done their job, I disbanded them.

Just to be clear, I didn't want to accuse you of using any "exploit", I just wanted to say that that particular benefit of liberty had no attraction to me.

BTW I did keep using 3-4 workers for each army until the end, laying down forward roads and chopping annoying forests (with escort). The only real worker bait I did is when I killed the escort of an AI worker with XBs and had a knight nearby: I captured the worker but immediately retreated the knight, and the AI was so fond of his worker that the city garrison captured it back

 

[stormtrooper412]

How many units did you have at that time?

Around 10. I stand by my view though, the only way to succeed is to hope either of the two attacks someone else. But that's a coin flip

 

[Sclb]

@ST: Bribe NW neighbor to attack E, even if he doesn't move any troops, you get a positive fought in the same war modifier. And E never makes peace, so you can take you time to prepare army until you're ready to fight NW.


I wanted to know what is the tech path for Honor-C-A, is it
Luxtech -> Philosophy -> Construction -> Currency -> Machinery -> Education -> Banking -> Oxford dynamite -> Industrialization for 3x factory autocracy

Or do you take construction before philosophy? Assuming not CB rush, NC is better for science.
Education before Machinery? Not sure if delaying XB is a good idea.

 

[stormtrooper412]

@ST: Bribe NW neighbor to attack E, even if he doesn't move any troops, you get a positive fought in the same war modifier. And E never makes peace, so you can take you time to prepare army until you're ready to fight NW.

I wanted to. Apparently they haven't met yet

 

[vanatteveldt]

I had to bribe E at least twice to go to war with someone else before T80 (it didn't occur me to bribe him against NW). This was really painful as it happened within 30 turns (he did make peace!) and it cost me 2 or 3 unique luxes each time. The only thing that saved me hapiness-wise was an alliance with a merc CS from barb quest + worker return.

In both cases I was sort of lucky to just see his troops coming, it's really silly that they allow their invasions to be bought off so easily.

I also opened my pathfinder to the NW and immediately captured a worker and harassed him a bit, that might have helped contain him?