The Deity Challenge Lineup - Game # 1 - The Zulus

"Luck" Definition by Webster : the things that happen to a person because of chance : the accidental way things happen without being planned.

This is why I always say I do not believe in "luck" I believe in a plan. (IMO) I think Glory_7's game is a prime example that so called "luck" of anything in this game (ruins, Nat Wonders, building wonders... etc) in SP, no matter the level, has nothing to do with anything in this game. I have always believed that you can not just win but destroy, crush, annihilate (same word as destroy but sounds better IMO) the AI on any level no matter the map, civ, land, policy you choose, what ruins you find... etc. I would even go as far to say if you have the right tactics and knowledge you can overcome someones finish time even if they get more of the "luck" factors in the game. Knowledge equals skill and this is a skill game (IMO) (SKILL: the ability to do something that comes from training, experience, or practice!) and "luck" has nothing to do with it. That is to say if "luck" even really does exist. Ofcourse this is just my opinion and we are all free to choose what to believe.
Civ is one of the most luck-distorted games that I have played. You do not depend on luck to do well, but it certainly plays a part in the flow of your game.

There are several things to consider:

1. Ruins: one player may get an early culture ruin and open a SP tree super early, get a good tech (writing), or... stumble upon barbarian encampment or map ruin, which are not as useful.

2. City-State quests: you may get something easy like kill barbarians and barbarian camp, or you can get unlucky, and the CS you really need to ally is asking for a Great Admiral or Angkor Wat.

3. AI behavior: while certain leaders have flavors and the AI is generally more or less predictable, you still don't know what kind of irrational thing they might do or how they would use their deity advantages.

4. Resources: while certain resources appear on certain terrain, there are times when you simply don't get the resource, and that is pretty random.

Think about chess. None of the above applies to chess; the game is luck-free. It is just you, the board and rules, and the other person. And while the human opponent is supposedly smarter than a civ AI, the human opponent tends to make rational and logical decisions that you would expect, while civ AI is stupid and nonsensical, so you can't even predict what kind of stupidity it might do next. The same applies to many other games: humans, oddly enough, are easier to predict because you know they are going to perform an action that makes sense.

I play some other pc games, and even multiplayer action games have recently reduced "luck" (random) factors in their games to the mininum, so that players can rely on mechanical skill, game knowledge, and decision making more than RNG.

Of course, these things largely apply to civ (aside from mechanical skill), but there is still more randomness than in other games. I agree that it does not matter very much when you are a good player in general, but you also can't deny that early game in civ can be rather random. It is not to say that people who consistently perform well are just lucky, but to simply acknowledge that "luck" is one of the factors when you play.
 
I agree with you, adcarrymaokai, and since I'm someone who tends to replay DCL maps occasionally, I'm staggered by how different my two playthroughs can be due to luck. I recently finished DCL #12 as you know, whereas the first time round Pocatello hit the Modern Era in like T160 or something stupid. This time the tech speed was much, much lower. And the insane thing is that the other continent was at constant war in both games.
 
it's exactly how I feel. I obviously struggled with Brazil a lot, and on the Poland map I got my currently fastest SV finisher
 
I once had a game where i got boxed by Pocatello very fast leaving me with barely enough space for a single city. I reloaded, today i probably would have DoWed him early and maybe stole his settler but not then. Rather than moving my Warrior east on T0, i moved him west (maybe it was north/south, don't recall the details). Poca settled in the opposite direction and i could play my tradition tall game.
Out of curiosity, i reloaded the T0 autosave and moved warrior in the same direction as first attempt, sure enough Pocatello boxed me on T15! :eek:
There was no randomness as moving the warrior in a given direction would give the same result each time, but OTOH it was pure luck whether or not i got boxed at the start without prior knowledge of the map.

Actually : Civ obeys Chaos Theory. There is absolutely no random factor. If you could know all the factors that will affect the possible results (including the seed used by the RNG), you could predict exactly what will happen next. However you never know all the factors and thus can't predict anything, as a result luck plays a role (a minor one for good players).
 
Spoiler :

After l losing the Attila map, I wanted to do another domination game and Zulu Dawn on Pangea sounded like a good combo for that. I went liberty, founded 4 cities, and then went to war on turn 94 with Xbows and spearmen. My BO in the expos was monument, granny, library, Ikanda, and units for the next 100+ turns. Nobody else went Liberty, so I got the Pyramids around T55.

I stole two workers from France, and saw him marching a settler towards me when I stole the 2nd. I used my 2nd scout to immediately get in the way and brought my warrior back. I was able to use all 3 units to eventually kill the escorting warrior and take the settler. My early scouting suffered, but I had three French workers right away, and later three from Liberty/Mids and two from Valletta. I made peace with him for a while and farmed xp from Valletta. I got DOFs from Siam and Washington, and then put the world at war. I got America to attack France, and England to attack Siam. Then I got Dido to attack America, and attacked France myself. I left him with one city on T109.

Pocatello had the GW, plus the ToA, HG, Notre Dame, and a few others. America and Carthage were really into it, and America wanted to stay friends and trade with me. I decided to take down Pocatello and use the GW when everyone decides I’m a threat after taking two capitals. Plus he looked like he might run away. I bribed him to DOW Babylon, denounced him, and then attacked him to get my stuff back. Babylon was an ally and friend from then until I later attacked him. It was a slog to get through Shoshone territory, and I lost two Xbows to knights, but I took Mosen Kahni on T140.
I got a double DOW from Siam and England, which was just fine with me as I had time to bring my army back to the homeland and plenty of fresh units to defend with. I lost two more Xbows when Ebeth brought her army through Babylon and pincered me from the West, but I was averaging an Impi a turn at this point and just threw them at the carpet of Longbows. I just kept punching until they stopped moving. I got Babylon to help me with Siam, and moved pretty quickly (for me, not using bombers/tanks/xcoms) through Siam and England. I now had Babylon surrounded, and the time seemed right to kill my buddy and leave myself with a single front. France, England, and The Shoshone were neutered. America and Carthage were in a perma-war, and it was a stalemate once New York fell. So I waited a few turns for my DoF with Babylon to expire and my units to heal, then went to war. It was about T175, so my experienced Xbows took their time beating down his muskets and 79 defense cities. I finally took him out on T194.

I Oxforded Dynamite on T203 and teched Rifling on T205 (slightly funny, but I was had a GS bulb in there and needed both to proceed so I didn’t hurry Oxford in the build queue). I used my cheap rush buys to put in Military Acadamies right away, and all my new cannons/arties had 3 promotions Shaka style. I steamrolled America in 3 turns, then slogged my way up to Carthage (she had Rifles too, but not upgraded Impi-Rifles). I knocked Dido out T221. I had wanted to clear the map without needing to upgrade my Impis, but reading through what others have done I guess I should have gone after France 10-20 turns earlier and never looked back. I’m still trying to get the hang of the timing and pace of early warfare.

Because I plunged the world into chaos and destruction very early on, I was the only one who picked an Ideology. Everybody’s tech was terrible (or they were soon dead or dying) except for Dido, and she was on the wrong side of the tree to be a threat to a full warmonger like me. She knew 8-9 techs I didn’t, but I knew 5-6 she didn’t. I went Order so I could hold territory and keep pumping out units from my production heavy core cities. They pretty consistently produced whatever unit I wanted to build in about 4 turns all through the ages, from an Impi a turn to a Cavalry a turn. I built workshops just before teching Industrialism, and was able to get coal mined fairly quickly. I built universities in my expos then too, as I had only rush bought one in the capital. Dido hit the Modern Era right on turn 221, and never got to enjoy it. I got there with rush bought factories, and doubled down on happiness. Full Commerce helped too. My only wonders were Big Ben and Machu (Liberty GE), not counting conquests.

You can see from my final screen shot that I have no idea what’s outside of my continent, but who cares lol. One interesting thing was Riga holding New York. I seem to remember city-states always razing cities they captured. I'd have to check, but maybe New York had the Colossus or something.
 

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Speaking of randomness and luck, I enjoyed “The Black Swan” by Nassim Taleb. It’s not only about what is luck and what is randomness, but also how people perceive such in ways that are instinctive. The book gets its odd title because it was a fact that all swans were white until a species of black swans was found in Australia. There are different kinds of randomness: the distribution of human height has no extreme outliers (people 1000’ tall), but the US economy tanked in 2001 far worse than any economic model predicted (using human-height type randomness assumptions) due to terrorists crashing planes into the WTC. I know this is OT,
but it's interesting.

This game is 100% deterministic as mentioned above, but the RNG does a really good job of obfuscating that. Good enough for me to feel lucky when I step on a pop ruin on turn 2 and a culture ruin on turn 5.
 
T135 Domination Vicotry
Spoiler :

I plan to run through all the DCL games, so here comes the first.

Policy: 5pts honor.
Tech order: Archery -> Mining -> Bronze Working -> Beeline composite -> Beeline Impis -> Beeline Xbows
Initial build order: Monument -> scout -> 6x archer -> Ikanda, I stole 2 workers from America very early.
I only built one city and I made all capitals puppets. I only conquered 2 non-capital cities in the end (one for xbow upgrades and one to make my way to Carthage)

I started my push with 4 archers and 1 spearman (ruin upgrade).
Capital conquests:
Turn 42: Paris
Turn 59: Moson Kahini (After conquest I upgrade archers to composites)
Turn 81: Babylon
Turn 92: London (Spearman -> Impis)
Turn 107: Sukhothai
(Turn 115: Philadelphia, it was undefended (newly taken by dido) and I could set up an upgrade base for my xbows)
Turn 122: Washington
Turn 135: Carthage

This game was interesting, but messy. Loads of DoW left and right and to be honest some reloads when things went too sour.

Some mistakes:
- I probably shouldn't have gone full honor, just the left side honor would have been enough. The extra gold kicked in too late to have any impact.
- I should not have gone impis before xbows.
- I shouldn't have skipped roads entirely, I removed all roads I got my hands on in order to save gold. Should probably have built a road through the jungle to Sukhothai.

The Conquest order is something to think about. Dido was a powerhouse and her capital in a narrow place, even thou I had 5 "extra range and double shoot xbows" (and allot of other units) it was very slow pushing into Carthage. I had to sacrifice 3 generals to instantly remove jungle to get some line of sight in order be able to take Carthage in a feasible amount of time.


 
Congrats on what would appear to be the fastest DomV on the DCL! :O

Do you have any saves from earlier in the capital sweep so I can play it through? Maybe a T80ish one?
 
OMG, I didn't realise it was that good of a time :D I have all autosaves since turn 44, just tell me if you want any other.

I don't really know how to send savefiles in this forum. I put the autosave from turn 80 in my Google Drive
 
Spoiler :
I've decided to try a Deity total war game for the first time and thought Zulu was where one should start. I've used the Zulu domination guide from this forum, so the build order and everything else was pretty much as described there :) and everything went fine until everything suddenly went BAD :lol:
I warred a bit with Siam and Valetta since turn 27 to level up archers and get workers. Got pyramids turn 50 and managed to settle 4 cities. Later got Machu with Liberty GE. America and Babylon liked me and sent caravans, so no problems with science.
Warring with Siam was problematic because of the terrain and Dido coveted my land and had quite an army on my borders, so I made peace with Siam and turned East on turn 76.
I was quite pleased with my tactics, especially using workers as bait and pillage/repair. Believe it or not I always avoid war and have never tried it before :)
Took Utika on turn 100 without casualties and moved towards Carthage. I could not be as careful with Carthage though as Babylon, who was my friend, suddenly DoWed me on turn 108 :confused: Took Carthage in a hurry on turn 112 and turned back to protect my lands when suddenly my BFF US DoWs me too... I've lost quite some army taking Carthage so there's no way I'm defending against two carpets of doom...
I think it was not a very bad attempt for the first liberty domination game, but I've made some mistakes. Like, I should have decided who to war from the beginning and not change my mind afterwards. But I guess I panicked when I saw Dido's army... Also, Dido was a bad choice to start my conquest with because she was far away and on a narrow peninsula, which means my army got stuck all the time even though I built roads. Any ideas as to what else I have done wrong? :)
Anyway, maybe I'll try it again sometime, but now I need to relax and play something more peaceful and familiar :p

 
Think about chess. None of the above applies to chess; the game is luck-free. It is just you, the board and rules, and the other person. And while the human opponent is supposedly smarter than a civ AI, the human opponent tends to make rational and logical decisions that you would expect, while civ AI is stupid and nonsensical, so you can't even predict what kind of stupidity it might do next. The same applies to many other games: humans, oddly enough, are easier to predict because you know they are going to perform an action that makes sense.

I play some other pc games, and even multiplayer action games have recently reduced "luck" (random) factors in their games to the mininum, so that players can rely on mechanical skill, game knowledge, and decision making more than RNG.

Of course, these things largely apply to civ (aside from mechanical skill), but there is still more randomness than in other games. I agree that it does not matter very much when you are a good player in general, but you also can't deny that early game in civ can be rather random. It is not to say that people who consistently perform well are just lucky, but to simply acknowledge that "luck" is one of the factors when you play.

And this is all good. Civ is a civilization game, not a competitive multiplayer game. You can still create a 1v1 in a battleground map with mirror maps, no AIs and no ruins. That would be balanced and almost luck free. But competitiveness level is not the core of this game. Well, actually ANY game who has AIs can't be really a competitive game, since AIs make decisions who alter the humans results.
 
Can we talk about luck, again? I was looking at glory7's screenshots, and he is farming xp off Valetta with ease. I came to farm xp around t46, and they already have a CB sitting there. Washington hates me, and has an army of CB's. Neither he, nor Dido want to fight each other. This isn't looking good at all.
 
It's ok tho. I went Honor, straight up right side for culture and cheaper upgrades, finished at about t95. Did a whole rotation on Valetta with 8-9 units, healing and shooting, and going home. Kinda worked. Waited for DoF to expire with Siam and struck right there. Now, I am going to chew through AI's. Look at all that gold that I saved. :p Only 1 trade route to me from AI's, so Machinery on t100.
 

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Ok, I will have to replay this one. I didn't finish fast enough, and those gunpowder units start pushing my limits. Besides, Pocatello killed Napoleon, built the Great Wall, Red Fort, and is sitting on 60 defense capital on t150. Ummm. You need artillery for that. All in all, somewhat poor execution by me. Need to start attacking asap after Construction. I had all that money, and I should have really just bought an army with that and rammed carpets into AI's.
 
Replayed the map. Started conquest around t65 and CB-rushed Siam and England. After that, took out Babylon, but signed peace to save time. Same with Washington. He has only 1 city, so I don't think he is going to be a threat even if he tries to retake his original capital.

Now, the worst is left for last: Pocatello, Napoleon, and Dido. Dido doesn't seem too bad since she is not doing well. Pocatello, on the other hand, is already in the Renaissance, and he has Musketmen on t108. The graphic says I have the biggest army, but half of it just finished fighting Washington and will come raze some French cities. I am very worried about Pocatello, though. How am I going to deal with these Musketmen? Lhasa is in the way, and he has the Great Wall, AGAIN.
 

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