The Deity Challenge Lineup - Game # 3 - Persia

[Grendeldef]

Somewhat beside the point but due to the starting location by a tempting silvery hill - am I the only one actively avoiding settling on luxes ? No, I don't see it as an exploit by any means but as a less than optimal concept hence I avoid it unless settling on a lux would the best option even without the lux - like the silver hill near GBR on this map.

[rant]I just can't make my way around the fact that somehow an adventurous hippie putting up his crappy tent on a hill somehow instantly turns into a living city & a successful mine or even worse, lurking in a jungle somehow over night turns into a functional plantation without a knife.[/rant]

 

[Acken]

Why would that be less than optimal ?

 

[Grendeldef]

For one it enables skipping a tech in getting the benefit and secondly it circumvents the function of a worker.

 

[Acken]

You need the tech to get the luxury.

The real advantage is to not having to improve the tile and get the gold yield for the whole game regardless of how you split your citizens.

 

[Grendeldef]

Sure one needs the luxury tech but not bronze working while settling on a jungle tile hence skipping a tech.

 

[Acken]

That would be the exception yes. Doesn't apply at all to this game though.

 

[Grendeldef]

Well, as I said earlier I was speaking in general terms but the statement about it not applying to this game isn't exactly the truth - it applies to every game with a jungle lux and on this map the closest one was 5 tiles away from the starting point.

I wasn't making judgements about people who do settle on luxes but curious to know whether someone else saw it as practice in continuation with concepts probably not working as intended or at least as a some sort of overlapse. The game is still full of them while few have been fixed - notorious trade & DoW being the most obvious one.

 

[salocin097]

Well, as I said earlier I was speaking in general terms but the statement about it not applying to this game isn't exactly the truth - it applies to every game with a jungle lux and on this map the closest one was 5 tiles away from the starting point.

I wasn't making judgements about people who do settle on luxes but curious to know whether someone else saw it as practice in continuation with concepts probably not working as intended or at least as a some sort of overlapse. The game is still full of them while few have been fixed - notorious trade & DoW being the most obvious one.

So are you saying settling on Luxury isn't as efficient? Let's say mining lux. You lose the potential to build a mine right? So you with whether you need that production or the happiness/gpt sooner. For a first city I'd probably say yes. Probably a second. Just ask is what I am losing worth the 10+ turns for the worker the 5 turns for improvement and possibly 3 for forest/jg/marsh of extra gold and happiness. (Somebody correct me on my #'s) And you need techs for jg and marsh.

 

[Olodune]

I think you guys are missing the point that Grendel is trying to make. My reading is that he thinks settling on Luxes is a marginal abuse of mechanics. There is some logic here: certainly the AI is coded to avoid these (which I abused effectively when settler dancing with Suleiman). The in game tooltips also avoid the lux plant.

I tend to disagree with Grendel: settling on resources is a long standing tradition is Civ games. Why remove it when it increases the complexity/fun of dot mapping? The difference between naked mining lux starts and jungle/march lux starts is already too large - by settling on luxes that delta can be reduced a little.

Personally, I wish we could still put farms, etc, directly on known resources as this makes for a more interesting game.

 

[Resipsa]

Okay I'll give this one a shot

Spoiler :

Move warrior to the right and find a river/hill/mountain adjacent tile that has a few deer camps and Cotton nearby, that's where I'm going to settle

Settle capital on turn 2 and find the 2food 6 faith Natural Wonder Uluru as so as I get a get a bit of jingle I'm going to but the tile, hit a pop ruin on turn 4 and gold ruin on 6 a population ruin.

Early Build order is Scout, Scout, Granary, while working the 2 deer camps and Uluru.
Cant steal from Japan so I take a worker from Samarkand and farm the CS for XP and pick up a second worker around turn 30. Found Religion on turn 32, take holy warriors and tithe, good thing too Japan looks to be on the war path as they've already eliminated Valletta.

DOW comes at turn 34, I have 1 warrior, three scouts but the City is in decent position and I'm able to faith but an archer at t37. Start cranking settlers despite the ongoing war because of faith warriors and the ability to faith buy immortals, I've lost my three scouts but my warrior is still there tanking damage and I now have 2 archers and one immortal.

Immortals are really good at soaking damage, I never knew. Found second city in the Northwest on a coastal hill that is in close proximity to the great barrier reef

The Ottomans have settlers floating around everywhere I decide to drop my third on a forest hill to the west adjacent to Oranges and one tile away from dyes. I wanted to put it on a river tile but It looked like the Ottomans were going to settle there prior to the next turn.

Japan is floating settlers too, I get my fourth city up just in time due, on the silver tile adjacent to the river about 5 tiles west of my capital. and score a spearman kill and settler grab on the same turn. Decent start Faith warriors/immortals have kept me in the game. My expansion wasn't too delayed but I fear NC may be significantly delayed, I have no trade routes coming in or out.

Update

Spoiler :

at turn 67 I have my 4 cities up despite constant war with Japan, I get 2 trade routes up with The Ottomans and get Dowed. Apparently Suleiman was not a fan of me buying the copy of silver near him so I could keep it in trade with him but as luck would have it I finished off Tokyo and I hit my first golden age, rush buy walls in my capital and repel a swordsman, CB, Catapult army with 3 immortals, a warrior, an archer and four catapults

About 15 turns later I get a white peace with the ottomans but Japan is still going at it double heal pikemen in fortresses at chokes are completely stifling him though

Made it to around t258 with constant war with Oda, then got Doubled Dowed on top of it by Sulimen and Alex , just retired at that point if I had been able to finish up just warring against Oda I could have launched around t280-290. I guess I'll try next time.

 

[Grendeldef]

I think you guys are missing the point that Grendel is trying to make. My reading is that he thinks settling on Luxes is a marginal abuse of mechanics. There is some logic here: certainly the AI is coded to avoid these.

This.

I tend to disagree with Grendel: settling on resources is a long standing tradition is Civ games. Why remove it when it increases the complexity/fun of dot mapping? The difference between naked mining lux starts and jungle/march lux starts is already too large - by settling on luxes that delta can be reduced a little.

Personally, I wish we could still put farms, etc, directly on known resources as this makes for a more interesting game.

Now that we're talking about the same thing we can at least agree to disagree, slightly.
I'm not against settling on luxes as such - I'm against the immediate effect which circumvents game mechanics but as a minor equalizer for jungle starts it surely has a function.
I could also live with farming luxes etc and moreover, planting citadel on an oasis.

 

[salocin097]

So you're against the idea that we are in fact skipping turns that would normally require a worker?

 

[RedRover57]

I played to T139.

Spoiler :

Taking Oda's capital was easy as I had weakened him considerably. NC around T85. I had to DoW Sully after our friendship ran out as he had forward settled right in my face (losing the trading partner was painful). So I burned down that poorly placed city and settled one of my own on the river next to the citrus. Ended up in a long war that served mainly to promote my units. Unfortunately I could not advance as he had the GW and more advanced units as he went for the bottom of the tech tree first and reached xbows before me (plus his UU). I finally got a peace deal after I bribed Dido to attack him again. Basically the GW put a stop to any hope of an early continent take-over on my part.

After meeting Alex I realized that I could not afford to neglect science any longer so I started working more on infrastructure. Currently have 5 decent cities (annexed the Japanese capital) with unis and specialists in most. Science rate is not bad. Income is good with Tithe. However, Alex and Nappy are both beasts so that could be a real problem. Alex hit Industrial on around T135 and he is 16 techs ahead of me even though my science rate is decent for this stage. Not sure I can pull this off with such a runaway in the game. Will definitely be a challenge (continents map is such a pain!).

 

[Grendeldef]

So you're against the idea that we are in fact skipping turns that would normally require a worker?

If by 'we' you mean the players in these challenges then nope - as I said I don't count it as an exploit but I'm against the principle of having concepts/practices that circumvent the game mechanics. The blame falls onto the developers, not the players as this is a minor issue - I'd say the pillage & repair concept is much closer to an exploit but I'm not demanding or requesting people to stop that either. I just don't do these and I was curious whether I was the only one or are there others seeing these as unwanted things in the game.

But I don't wanna hijack this thread from the challenge so if there's need let someone open another thread for this discussion - I'm more than willing to further explain my view if it's still unclear.

 

[Manpanzee]

If by 'we' you mean the players in these challenges then nope - as I said I don't count it as an exploit but I'm against the principle of having concepts/practices that circumvent the game mechanics. The blame falls onto the developers, not the players as this is a minor issue - I'd say the pillage & repair concept is much closer to an exploit but I'm not demanding or requesting people to stop that either. I just don't do these and I was curious whether I was the only one or are there others seeing these as unwanted things in the game.

But I don't wanna hijack this thread from the challenge so if there's need let someone open another thread for this discussion - I'm more than willing to further explain my view if it's still unclear.

I think it's a huge stretch to say that settling on luxes circumvents the game mechanics, or to say that allowing it indicates a mistake by the developers.

Let me ask you this -- does it seem right that you should be able to get a strategic resource by settling on it? I think that the answer is clearly yes, given that you can't even see strategic resources until you've researched appropriate techs. It would suck if cities getting settled in the "wrong" places randomly removed strategic resources from the game. So, it makes sense that settling on a strategic resource gives you the resource.

I also think that, considering elegance and consistency of game mechanics, it's best if strategic resources and luxury resources work the same way. If they didn't, it would probably seem unintuitive and feel like bad design. Given all of these factors, it seems to me that being able to access luxury resources by settling on them is far from an oversight, and is rather a conscious and sensible design choice.


I also think that "a city has access to the resources it contains" is a generally sensible and intuitive concept. If you can suspend your disbelief to the point that you accept that a Settler can become a city, it doesn't seem like a stretch to say that that city could contain a silver mine.

 

[Acken]

Well, as I said earlier I was speaking in general terms but the statement about it not applying to this game isn't exactly the truth - it applies to every game with a jungle lux and on this map the closest one was 5 tiles away from the starting point.

I wasn't making judgements about people who do settle on luxes but curious to know whether someone else saw it as practice in continuation with concepts probably not working as intended or at least as a some sort of overlapse. The game is still full of them while few have been fixed - notorious trade & DoW being the most obvious one.

No I don't see it as abusive (even slightly) or illogical (settling on a luxury) to answer your question.

Contrary to say trade routes which are in my opinion the biggest oversight of this expansion. It says a lot about Firaxis playtesters it they think 6 gold is balanced with 4 food. And for the logic part it doesn't make sense the food is created out of thin air. However I guess it's more a balance problem than an abuse.

 

[Dehli]

303 diplomatic win

I read the culture and tourism deity thread and really went all out this game going after culture. Finally got open borders with france and had a couple musicians on the way but the diplo vote came up before I arrived.not really sure how that would have worked because I was 45.3 influential over him and he was 39.1 on me. Enough of that now I talk about my game.

Spoiler :

I have never had such amazing luck in the early game than I did here. Settled next to faith mountain and got natural wonders pantheon. Stole one worker from Colombia then on my way back saw a Japanese worker trying to improve a tile on my side of the mountain. That was my second free worker. Couple turns later he brought another, then another, then another, then another. I stole 8 workers from him! Then we made peace and I sent him a caravan for a friendship lol.

Three times I cleared barb camp quests by my scout either walking up to an empty camp or a weakened barb that could be taken by my scout. Three instant friendships with cs. Became allies with two (Samarkand and Valleta) pretty soon after. One was Valleta so I got some free units out of that.

Built four settlers, sold most my luxs because I was getting happiness from mercantile cs. Settled near citrus and was given a citrus quest for some more free influence from culture cs. Really amazing first 100 turns. Built Oracle on 72, national college, 89, saw cichen itza still there and got that one too. Reasearch agreement Japan on 117, then got antoher with Sulu on 138. I had researched printing press by this point and started on pisa. Dido got to printing press and met everyone and founded wc on 138 also. Alex was nearly destroyed here so city states were fair game.

I planned to use my engeneer to build ufuzi, but I forgot to go into asthetics. By this point I had gone full tradition to patronage to scholasticism then opened commerce for some reason. It was probably an accident or I had an idea earlier on then forgot about it. France ended up with Ufuzi. I teched science theory to industry and built big ben. Opened rationalism then reached ideology in the 170s and started picking all freedom tenants. Later came back to build PT because nobody likes rationalism.

Teched into refrigeration for hotels, came back to radio and replicable parts. Oxford plastics. Got broadway in my cap and Eifel Tower in one of my exp. France chose order and suddenly I could barley maintain happiness. Went to rocket artillery bulbed scientist into satellites. I found a some natural wonders and suddenly I was friends with every city state on the map. This is the point where I started spending money on city states and became the constant host at wc.

I used some scientist to bulb up towards internet and by the time I reached it France who was dominating his continent was suddenly in revolt and adopting freedom. His revolt came at the time as international games so he put no hammers towards the project. I won that one easily.

In the mid of the 200s I was influntial over a lot of leaders but like 10% on france. After a bit he was influential on everyone but me and me to him. I had some great musicisans but he wouldn't give me open borders even for like 300gpt. Grrrrrr

The first world leader vote came at 280 and I thought I had a shot but I lost like five city states in the few turns before. From then on I switched to gold making mode and saved money and bought everyone outright before the final world leader vote.

Some interesting things about this game that were pretty new to me. I was the only one on my continent to found a religion. That meant every adopted prodestentism on my side of the ocean. Getting my world religion passed early was that simple. My trade routes were mainly used for food and I grew these cities bigger than any I have ever had before. I was in a couple wars with Japan but that was it this game and when he did fght me he liked to go after my city states. On that topic I only built a couple military units at all this game. Most game from military cs.

 

[dragonxxx]

Dehli , you know you can just give him a city, then declare war , send musicians and bomb? Thats the fastest way, as you don't really need to travel, and even if you need some turns after this, the city is not gonna attack you and he cannot purchase anything inside for over 30 turns in your case

 

[Dehli]

Dehli , you know you can just give him a city, then declare war , send musicians and bomb? Thats the fastest way, as you don't really need to travel, and even if you need some turns after this, the city is not gonna attack you and he cannot purchase anything inside for over 30 turns in your case

honestly never thought of that. You can perform concert tours even at war? How many great musician would I need to influence him to100? Tried to go back to an old autosave and test but I saved over on a diferent game.

 

[Acken]

Yes you can concert at war.

To know how much is needed for 100% would require more information... how much culture he has accumulated and how much tourism you have accumulated and how big the musician concert is. All these informations are available in game.