The Romans (Industrious-Deity series)

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The Romans (Industrious-Deity series)

I ended up stopping the Immortal-Archipelago series as it’s getting a little redundant. But I think I learned all I need to know for my most hated maps. I am deciding to continue with the series but I’m cranking it up to deity again.

Another change is I’m going to dump the rest of the financial leaders and go through various industrious instead. I can’t help but notice the middle-level players keep rating it so low… yes, even after all this time! So now’s a better time than normal. Though I must admit, industrious on deity is like cheating….

Anyhow, I know people are going to scream foul with Romans because of the mighty pratts. So I’m going to tied my hands behind my back here and prevent myself from any sort of Pratt DoWing on anyone. Unless it’s a barbarian of course. So… anything else goes….




:: Industrious-Deity Series Archive ::
 
Sweet, looks like fun. I will follow your game. Industrious might help a little bit on diety but you really think it is cheating?
 
Surely it is industrious that does it and not the praets ;).
 
Could you post the save? This will be interesting to follow. I've had success with your general wonderwhoring strat on emperor and immortal but deity so far has been pretty hit and miss. By that I mean sure it works once in a while but it doesn't feel stable, I lose more games by trying for it by far. But maybe I'm not good enough at it yet. Then again deciding how to play before you start a game is something I firmly believe is a mistake in terms of strategy.
 
Yay show me some of that awesome industrious trait. I definitely like it more than most... and dislike financial. (though I don't think financial is weak and I love my cottages dangit, it's just a really boring trait)

Obviously you should have began with Huayna Capac to tie everything together. ;)
 
Yay show me some of that awesome industrious trait. I definitely like it more than most... and dislike financial. (though I don't think financial is weak and I love my cottages dangit, it's just a really boring trait)

Obviously you should have began with Huayna Capac to tie everything together. ;)

He already have a game with him...
 
Whenever I start a game as augustus I start out going "ooh, Shiny wonders, but as soon as I have iron-working I turn into "wonders, shmonders! Let's kill!!!" Should be interesting
 
I was going to offer some suggestions for increasing the difficulty of your remaining immortal series games (putting yourself up against the other financial leaders and the best rexers-Portugese etc), but this works too.

Good luck =)

Now hurry up and post more! :p
 
Industrious might help a little bit on diety but you really think it is cheating?

Hmm, for expert builders I guess you could say that. But just about any trait can be looked that way if you exploit it to the fullest! I just liked to say cheating as a joke since so many claim it’s such a low rated trait :p


Could you post the save? This will be interesting to follow. I've had success with your general wonderwhoring strat on emperor and immortal but deity so far has been pretty hit and miss. By that I mean sure it works once in a while but it doesn't feel stable, I lose more games by trying for it by far. But maybe I'm not good enough at it yet. Then again deciding how to play before you start a game is something I firmly believe is a mistake in terms of strategy.

You can relax, I’m not going out to do the same old SSE/WE from before even looking at the start. That strategy has been done and done and done and done to death now. For these newer games I will ease of quite a bit on the wonders (or try to). However, I may still go full-bore SSE/WE depending how I like the start, so no promises either way. But I think generally I will tone down a lot so it should be a lot easier to follow.

I’ll post the saves at the end, otherwise things start going out in all kinds of directions in the thread and it gets a little messy.

If I know obsolete, the game is already played and won :p
Well, good to see someone seeing Rome civ beyond their swordsmen besides me.

Indeed, every time I TRY to limit myself to small turn sets I find out I just CAN’T STOP. I must…. Finish…. Another…….. Turn.!

Timer clock for this one is about 4 hours 20 mins I think. So another one I got out in one sitting (minus a 15 min break or something). Unfortunately I shouldn’t have sped-played through it. I ended up missing a few milestones which.. Usually burries you right after on deity. But nevertheless, I didn’t give up. But it sure hurt because things just continued to blow up in my face… you know when small errors begin to rapidly snowball bigger as you progresses. Anyhow… it will be evident when I post these results. I was too lazy to write notes this time while playing so will do that shortly.

Also, if I had used an epic speed-cheat, I would have had a much, much, much easier job in the latter stages of the game. Lacking this, I kept getting… bogged in one issue/complication after another, again you will see what happened. However, if I had to do it over again I’d still stick with standard or the wins I get wouldn’t be worth a real deity.


Obviously you should have began with Huayna Capac to tie everything together.
Just what I need, so my critics will scream foul and claim it was the financial trait that carried us through the day….
 

Turn 0

Spoiler :


This start may be very deceiving to some amateurs. While the food at the start looks, great, this is NOT what we want with Imp/Ind leaders. This is actually a disaster for 2 reasons.

#1 We only have 2 hills here in our BFC. This totally cripples our industrial trait.

#2 Our Imp bonus only helps settlers with HAMMER bonus, NOT food bonus.

So again, this is the worst sort of start for our traits. And just to rub more sault into the wounds, those 2 hills are not even plains-hills. Good grief.

Time for HoF players to hit the re-roll button. But I believe in starting with what you get, so even though we won’t like it, we are going to stick through this. A win here will be much more satisfying won’t it?


Turns 0-10
Spoiler :

Nothing much to say, I started on a workboat first, despite not being financial, and despite everyone else would be going after a worker for the corn tiles. I’m also going to get a lot of flack by the monarch players for postponing the irrigated corn for quite a while.. But this is my game…

Here is the start of turn #11, about to pop this hut. Though I was tempted to wait another 6 turns.

Turns 10-20

Spoiler :

Alright, now some people will really think I’m on crack for getting 2 workboats out now, despite the high IRRIGATED corn tiles. But it’s my decision.

My barb, survived the animals, and has scouted the north, I see some edges of other landmasses that should be interesting to check out (to say the least).

Turns 20-30
Spoiler :

Alright, turn #30 and we haven’t even completed the basic lighthouse before the Great Lighthouse yet. And at only 18 turns left before we can start!

Well, what can I say, the spot is just not a production monster. However, I do have a lot of tricks up my sleeve, just wait. One worker is already out the door, and I was on my way to move my warrior back into the capital for happy control. I’m going to do some master whips, we already have slavery swapped to. So initial looks again can be very, deceiving.

Turns 30-40
Spoiler :

We met Wang Kon. Or he met us to be more accurate.

Deal faithfully with Korea and we will deal faithfully with you. Betray us and your life will be both short and full of excitement…

Oh really? Well then! We best be not betraying him. Especially since I made that promise I wouldn’t crank out Pratts and DoW on anyone. I got enough disadvantages so far I don’t need any more…

By the way, some bad news. Island/Cont spot next to my capital, seems to already have a barb city planted down. So sick, I can’t even now drop a simple worker there in the HOPES of trying to mine that hill that my capital could use to get its production-deficit tiles from terrible to just poor status. This start is being fairly cruel to us, and we didn’t even get many forests to begin with either.

Note: And as can be seen we STILL haven’t even started researching Agriculture yet.

Turns 40-50
Spoiler :

Ran a few whip exploit tricks, etc. I even started researching agriculture!

On turn 45, Catherine the backstabbing-bribable lunatic greeted us. Rut-roh…..

Then on the very next turn we get another -1 relations even with Mr. Kon. Just great…

But at the very least, at the end of this set I put the last hammer into the GL. Of course, I had to go crazy on the whip here, and getting that hefty wonder penalty but what more else can I do in this spot? I think I did it pretty ok considering….

Note: Agriculture was researched so that I could move onto animal husbandry. I still haven’t even ATTEMPED to get that corn farmed yet, haha.

Turns 50-60
Spoiler :

Good news and bad news.

Good news is after AH was researched, we got horses in the fat cross, which with our poor production REALLY helps out a lot. I actually was expecting horses to pop there due to the very suspicious missing forest on the grassland tile. This was also part of my decision to go for AH, at that stage.

And for the corn critics, I did farm over ONE corn tile after my worker had NOTHING else better to do, haha. But I’m not even using my city to grow that tile so it doesn’t quite matter yet :p

A study of the last shot shows the bad news…

I have tech-whore and culture-vic master Ramesses II here. Egypt can be quite a pain because of their new strategies in BtS. And since I promised no pratt damage, I won’t be able to stop anything for a very, very long time. Grrr.

Other info, seems he owns the holy Jewdiasm city, and Kon is under Hindu for now. Strangely, I have +1 diplo for years of peace to Ramesses, despite I haven’t even known him for ONE turn yet! How is that possible? And of course, the GUI so conveniently hides the fact that deity games start with HIDDEN -1 modifiers anyway with relations.

Hmm, I guess we really do have our work cut-out for us here…

Turns 60-70
Spoiler :

Wow, what a sad irony. Look at this spot not too far away from my capital. Stone, in the fact cross, and pigs… and lots of mountains, including another happy resource. In fact, if I wasn’t so obessesed over coastal I could move it 1-E and have 5 hills with all the resources and river in the fat cross!

Argggh@%@%

If ONLY this had been our starting location, I could have had an absolute POWERHOUSE! Believe me, an absolute powerhouse…. Everything from IMP to IND trait could have been on max full-bore exploitation here. But alas.. That was just not to be.

Unfortunately that stone won’t help us so much now… but it’s nice to think of all the possibilities that COULD HAVE HAPPENED just by a different starting location. Anyhow, at LEAST we did grab one nice wonder in the other spot, THANK YOU INDUSTRIOUS!

Turns 70-80
Spoiler :

Well, another city to go up. One lousy happy resource, but a future happy resource is a future happy resource. I sorta mistimed some stuff here. My workboat I was using as a scout, I should have actually left it close to the city so I could get the clams up right from Turn #0 of its founding. But I had started this game a little tired, and by turn 80 my focus was starting to drop. As you know, this is never a good recipe but I simply can’t get myself to stop until I LITERALY pass out, even if my playing starts to go insane.

Also, I was thrown a little off-track here. I wanted to go up north to settle a good spot, but that Mr. Kon suddenly lands a settler right near my capital at the northern path blocking me. He takes my spot I wanted! What… the hell. And he does this coming from where???

I can at least get through him by open-borders, but he’s already messed up a big key spot for me. And now I really wish I hadn’t made that promise about not attacking with Pratts. Because I would have had an easy remedy here, and let him land another settler or two in the north and then simply take those cities with Roman ease. I really need to stop bending over backwards for the critics. NEVER AGAIN!

Now I’ll have to at least wait until much, much longer to fix this YET ANOTHER problem.

Turns 80-90
Spoiler :

Alright, another city to settle. It’s not in the spot I wanted, but at least I’ll take this Fish source before Mr. Kon lands ANOTHER non-sense settler on MY terrain and messes my whole settling plans up even more.

Anyhow, the only place else to go now is on that island/continent spot to the north-west. I can at least get another city there for now, or is Wang going to screw that up on me too now?

Notes: Hmm, Catherine and Kon are Weehorn. And at this time Cat owns the holy city of Confu. Also, seems Temple of Artimis only went up now. THAT IS REALLY, REALLY late for deity. You see, another great shot I missed out on due to the starting location. !@#$@!!!

I guess EVERYONE has a lack of marble so far. I mean, even RAMESSES didn’t get it a turn before 650 BC… Or maybe he just did…

Oh, and as you can see, I’m still getting plagued by BS city revolts. But at least I THINK I did the +2 health revolt event in the capital earlier. I don’t have a screenshot of it, so I am not 100% sure without checking the logs.

Turns 90-100
Spoiler :

Phew… No more messy business from Wang. So I got myself another decent spot here, Tuna City. Up north is yet another good food spot, which suit’s a drafting city just fine (if I can make it in time). Unfortunately my fully healed horse chariot pops a hut and ******ed warriors spring and slaughtered it. I brought another and again, a single stupid warrior attacks my full health chariot and I die again. So needless to say, I started cranking out quite a bit of chariots for this warrior nonsense.

I can understand barb spearmen… barbarian HA-uprising evens… even barbarian axe-men… But warriors? This is too silly I think….

Notes: Despite Wang is in some sort of a war, his teching is actually becoming monstrous. The wars must be fake because I don’t see any GG entering the game, and he’s continuing to tech at a phenomenal rate as far as BtS is concerned. I am really doubting if I chose my current tech order right. I maybe should have beelined currency stronger but I’m not too sure. Yeah, I probably should have….

But this is only with ahead in-site. I was expecting to get a religion in the capital and then run Pacifism, but so far I have gotten badly screwed by not even getting the luxury of a heathen religion in my capital. So opening up that tech path was a waste now. What else is new…

And it looks like I will be in serious trouble with the liberalism race…

I DEFINITELY would have given Wang a REAL WAR on his hands if I unlocked my Pratts.
 
You named the city next to the Incense, Silk City. :p
The resource in the forest next to the Tuna City is Silk. ;)
 
Pacifism eh? Currency and a founed religion?

You are tipping your hand. I would like to do that with Rome myself. Well played sir.
 
So, if you were gonna start over knowing about that southern starting location, do you think it'd be better to move your initial settler there? You'd lose quite a few turns, of course, but I can see how that spot would be a beast for spamming wonders.
 
I don't play BTS but will be curiously watching. I agree with your worker boat choices early because if you went the corn route your research would be too slow.
 
Turns 100-110
Spoiler :

At turn 102 I got a notice that Kon declared on Catherine. Hmm, so I guess he wasn’t fighting before with anyone after all. This is another hardship with standard speed, it takes so long to map out terrain near by, so long to meet other civs, which causes a lot of hidden issues. And it can really mess up your diplomacy when you find out too late you traded with someone who is another person’s worst enemy. Of course, this also means your tech trades are much more expensive early (or not even allowed at all).

But… I love the hard difficulties.

Anyhow, I got my next city founded. Volcano city because I know I’m going to get screwed later and hit by that stupid “mountain errupts” bs event. But there really isn’t any better way to position this city so I’ll just have to take it with a grain of sault.

Turns 110-120
Spoiler :

I met Saladin who is the owner of Hinduism.

Literature quest came up, which really I don’t think I’m going to bother with much. Colonial maintenance will be quite expensive and it’s silly to pay a fortune per city just to focus on libraries before courthouses in a gamble to win a free scientist in the capital. Haha… but maybe there can be room to squeeze it in somewhere.. Unlikely though, the quest ends so fast for a deity game I don’t think it will even get started for me. Maybe on Marathon it’s fine to go for it.. Cities can get settled to spots super fast and you have so much more time & freedom.

Anyhow, seems at the end of this turn-set the Great Library went up somewhere. Another nice shot I could have had if things had started better. But for the time being, I scouted a few more decent spots on that northern island which looks more like a small continent now. I will TRY to settle the rest of it, but it will be quite costly in maintenance.

Turns 120-130
Spoiler :

Well, I founded Sea-Food city, but then another complication arose. Wouldn’t you know, Ramesses decided to be another problem maker just like Wang, and wanted to run-amuck with his own settlers on MY lands.

I saw this coming so I popped borders through caste in no time, and then canceled open borders to box him out. And now, I will immediately settle this spot near the horses to block him out from getting anything but desert. I will just have to wait to settle the other nice corner spot later on. Grrrr…. There just ALWAYS has to be some sort of complication, doesn’t there?

Turns 130-140
Spoiler :

I ended up switching to Hinduism after being demanded to by Wang. I already have been refusing to join wars, so I’m getting enough bad diplo hits as it is. Of course, now I’ll have another problem to worry about with other religions but…. The problems are just never going to stop are they?

Also, this pop-up is rather self-explainable and I figured it was coming. As mentioned, deity colonial maintenance can get god damn painful. I have another settler coming to grab that corner with 2 fish but I doubt I will settle him unless an absolute emergency. Paying 20 to 40 gold PER CITY just for maintenance is NOT my idea of a winning strategy. This is where all the financial raving newbs shut up, while the Organized vets point, laugh, and go “We hate to tell you so…. But we told you so.”

Exponential based fees become quite devastating really quick.

Of course… we refused to grant the continent any independence. No matter what the cost is for now. I have no interest in gaining a bunch of extra HIDDEN negative diplo hits just for owning a vassal that hasn’t even done anything wrong yet.

Turns 140-150
Spoiler :

At turn 145 I got the message I had already lost the liberalism race.

!@#$%

It wasn’t to Wang, but to problem-maker Ramesses. Looks like he popped just the right GP at the right time to you know what…. And that’s all she wrote.

So now.. Here I am… my capital STILL hadn’t even got my own religion spread to it… running pacifism was impossible. No marble, so no real shot at the National Epic to make up for anything… even my industrious is not helping cause of the limited production here. All in all… looks like I didn’t have a chance.

Time to restart and find a better map.

Ummm… once it gets more hopeless…:crazyeye:

There was a post recently I remember about…. the lib-race being just some gambit. Well, I mentioned if I lose it I still continue, so thereby it can’t be a real risky-gambit. So I guess I had better prove myself here.

*gulp

On turn 147 Saladin decided to DoW on Ramesses.

Note, in the shot I have a settler already positioned in the corner (though may be hard to see). Of course, trying to settle him before the courthouses are done will be crippling. But I did finally open borders with Ramesses, and the interesting thing here is for some reason, his settler disappeared! I see the swordsman, but no settler? Does this mean the AI will kill settlers when they get trapped? I don’t know what happened to it, but I’m not complaining!

Turns 150-160
Spoiler :

Alright, this is getting pretty sick. Again I popped ANOTHER GM. I’ve been missing all my scientists, which is a big reason I lost lib-race. And it seems even when running an endless chain of scientists, a 1% event to happen, will be just as even to happen as the 99% event. I have NEVER seen any evidence to show the validity of GP point OWNERSHIP with BtS.

Now what do I do with TWO GM’s? I was going to use one after banking in order to swap it for another free GM, meaning I get the whole tech-burst for free and 1 less GM for an AI. But two now…? This game isn’t getting funny….

Anyhow, FINALLY I can do something with a pratt. While I promised I wouldn’t attack any leaders, I at least can hurt a barb! Here I get to do my SNEAK- Amphibious attack to steal a worker. Haha.

One sugar-city coming up.

And by the way, finally NOW I was able to switch into Pacifism. Though quite a bit too late I fear. I had tired to THREE TIMES spread Hindu to my capital after building a monastery, etc. And even those kept failing. Sheesh, this game has it in for me.

Note: Ramesses the problem-maker built the AP, we are going through voting now….

Turns 160-170
Spoiler :

Well, taking that barb city was pretty easy. Of course, that’s the power of Pratts :p So despite being so far behind that it’s not even funny, at least SOMETHING went right? So that can only mean… it’s about to get even worse to balance out in the next few turns. Haha!

Anyhow… look at this, we FINALLY pop our first Scientist, after only waiting over FIVE THOUSAND YEARS! Yes, 1090AD, we waited over FIVE THOUSAND YEARS. What rediculousness. So now… we can build that academy, while our other Great Merchants are just sitting idle wasting supply this whole time. What…. A joke?

Speaking of Lazy, I have 2 workers taking a break in the capital after completing roading everything. I should put them back to work on a workshop. It will be a very crappy workshop for now… and one can argue it’s best to run a priest than the WS, but it will improve after a few more techs. I need that production really bad.

Turns 170-180
Nothing good or terrible happened. So nothing to show….
-ni

Turns 180-190
Spoiler :

We met Gilga.

Rut roh… And he’s already upset we have a heathen religion. Well I can’t help that, I only just met him NOW!

Also some bad news. I lost the circumnavy bonus. Part of this MAY have been prevented if I was more awake and paid more attention to buying world maps every turn. Maybe not, but the thing is, I lost a milestone here, and could have done it better if I wasn’t so tired. Anyhow, all these issues could have been avoided at a slower speed setting, but the silly thing is circumnav bonus isn’t as strong a feature with those crutches.

But now what… seems I’m losing out on everything here. What freiken else can go wrong…

In other news, at turn #183 Catherine DoWs on Wang. That could have been me actually, but I gave into her demand earlier for a map, so I guess she found someone else who wasn’t as nice. :p

Also, FINALLY I decided to found Fish-Market city. That settler sure stood there for a while but now I got some courthouses up, I can afford the maintenance now.

However, some more bad news. Look at Sal, there is no way I can be the first to ecconomics (assuming it wasn’t gone already). So I can’t even trade off one of my useless GM guys for another on a burn up that tech-tree.

*sigh….

Note: I did get one of those ******ed quests where I was tasked to go all the way over to somewhere else on the planet on another continent and declare war on some other PROTECTIVE deity AI, just to capture a silly copper patch that was on an absolutely terrible ice-patch with no food even there to sustain anything.

Firaxis employees are friggen nuts.

Turns 190-200
Spoiler :

Nothing really good or bad happened, of course this really means the turn went badly, because we are rather quite far behind!

Near the end of the last turnset I burned off a couple great people in frustration after I finally got another scientist.

Of course, I keep getting asked to join this or that war, and it’s costing me refusal penalties with everyone.
 
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