The ultimate challenge deity part III, Bismarck

[Dirk1302]

This is an open deity challenge, participants are asked to report their games in spoilers tags with the year above.

Deity can sometimes be a bit frustrating in that you can get rushed before the game has seriously started, not such a problem in an offline game but annoying if you're having a discussion about starting position, early game decisions and you have to restart because of an early dow.

In the first part of the series i played some 3000 years of the map to more or less guarantee that this wouldn't happen, in the second however i didn't do that and most of us were rushed by Gilg. Except for Snaaty who managed to build Oracle and get Gilg to pleased in time.

It was suggested then that remoulado, a friend of Snaaty from the German civ forum could make a map where the risk of being dowed early would be diminished. So i thought about some criteria to lessen the early dow risk and came up with this,

Fractal, normal settings

No close borders with Shaka,Ragnar,Monty,Genghis, they're allowed to be in the game though.If they're anywhere near, the distance between their capital and ours is 20+ tiles

every other ai capital 10+ squares away from ours diagonal distance counts as 1 square, this is not a severe restriction, in the immortal+ warmonger thread all ai capitals were farther away and it still felt crowded.

no isolation and no semi isolation, we should be able to get to know at least 2 civs before astro.

Since we had creative and spiritual a few times already those traits were ruled out for our leader.

Actually remoulado made 5 maps with these criteria , the one i'll post here is Bismarck, a good looking start for sure. I'm not too good with industrious myself, have to see where it fits in really.

Thx remoulado for making the map.

 

[ABigCivFan]

Nice capital site, high production+Expansive allows a very fast REX.

I would settle in place. Food a bit low as far as we could see.

Already see jungles, so prob looking to trade for IW and calender early.

Edit: Might want an early barracks, Pottery prob not needed early.

 

[Gliese 581]

Yeah I would settle before moving scout here.

 

[remoulado]

Hello,

I'm yet playing my third game on monarch, maybe I can improve my skills by reading this.

Good luck
remoulado

 

[DMOC]

If the scout could move on top of the gold hill to explore that area, that would be great but it needs to pop that hut before it gets to the hill.

 

[Dirk1302]

Settle in place seems logical, even if scout to the east reveals some goodies it's not clear we wouldn't miss out on more goodies in the west and north. So as Gliese says it's logical to settle first so we can move the scout in the best direction.

As it is it's a fair start, an additional food resource would make it a very good one.

@ABigCivFan, early game could well be similar to your ww2 start with all this jungle. Jungle often makes for slow starts but with lots of calender resources it can really shine later on.

 

[ABigCivFan]

Production rich capital + Industrious + fast producing workers...

This gives us good bonue and chance competing for early wonders (SH, GW). But we have to be careful not to sacrifice good city spots for the wonders.

See if we find any stone/marble.

 

[Anar]

Double post

 

[Anar]

It's been a while since I started reading these forums. I suppose it's high time I posted something.

Until 450AD

Spoiler :

I settled Berlin on the spot and it turned out it has 3 food resource, none of being best (at least for now). AFAIR I popped a scout, so I was able to reveal some jungle around me. This posed a serious threat to early exapnsion and moreover hampered economy. Scout discovered stone and marble nearby my capital and so my first built settler found a city near the stone resource.

So far I had Hannibal to my west, Mansa Musa to my southwest and Justinian to my east. As I am usually quite reluctant going archery route for extra defense so similarly I avoided archery and hoped my warriors will do the job. Since I was surrounded by AIs, the only regions I had to secure were northwest of my capital and the peninsula in the south.

My initial techpath was: Agirculture -> Animal Husbandry -> Bronze Working -> Wheel -> Pottery ->Writing -> Fishing.

Good thing was I had gold in my capital's BFC, but still I was concerned about the economy, since I could not see any reasonable source of commerce in BC era. Rivers were scarce, add to that the jungle.

Soon I blocked Justinian and Mansa, Hannibal and secure good chunk of land.

In the meantime met other AIs: Wang Kon, Sitting Bull and Saladin. Around late BCs Hannibal declared on Mansa, but suprisingly he lost a city and soon the fight ceased.

After writing I researched Aesthetics and traded it around getting Alphabet, Iron Working, Politheism, Meditation, Mathematics. I hoped I could build Shwedagon Paya or Statue of Zeus in my border cities to establish a strong cultural border, but I beat to both of them. After Aesthetics I moved to currency. I wanted to get Literature afterwards, but it was already built.

Anyway this is how my expansion went.

and nearly 500 years later

And some more pictures showing my rivals achievements.

As you can see my research is going so slowly I do not see how to proceed. On one hand I have very nice land, jungles soon to be cut. However it might be not enough for deity. At this point renaissance war is pretty much out of question.

One options is to cottage everything and hope in future it might be enough to outresearch rivals, but I would not hope for that. Not while having Mansa around.

The other alternative is going cultural, I have 5 religions now, which might help, but no wonders so far.

This is a problem I am usually encoutered with, I tech too slow to have a shot at renaissance war (at least at deity). Any tips, what to improve and how to proceed?

 

[ABigCivFan]

4000BC-50AD:

Spoiler :

2040BC: Settle Stone/Corn/Horse near Hannibal




Did not get SH or GW. Went for Pyramid.

750BC: With 2 chops, Pyramid were built in about 6 turns. Switched to Slavery+Representation




250BC: Doing a bit Wonder spamming.. Representation+GL+Parthenon is a good combo for research and GS generation.




50AD: Empire view. Wonders came at expenses of expension, have room for 2-3 more cities.




50AD: Capital, Building Hagia for improving works with all these jungles. GE points are great too.



The Gem city will get improved in a hurry and quickly on line.

Will convert to Hannibal's religion when i get it. And adope Free MArket ASAP to please him.

Other wise grow the empire big, run a mixed Specialists and cottages. Bulb Education, shoot for Lib sling Nationalism for Taj.

Then Democracy for cottage spam...

 

[ABigCivFan]

I will be traveling for 2 weeks and wont have access to my game PC, so I ll just post my report early.

Remoulado thanks for making this map.

50AD-End (with lots of close failures...)

Spoiler :

250AD: Capital under Buearacracy, building NE here given all the GPPs.




560AD: Lost Liberalism race to MM (who else). I was running some Scientist in cities.



840AD: Had 1 GE waiting to hurry Taj, but 2 turns late, WK beat me to it.




1150AD: Han on WK




1230AD: Han asked me to join the fight against Won, I accepted and sent a few knights to the front. the one of them is luck enough to hit level 4 to unlock HE !!! My military is very week, but sitting comfortablely between a pleased Han and a Friendly Juntine.




1230AD: Han decided to end the war with WK! I could not face WK myself, so i quickly gave WK Democracy to get out of the war.




1645AD: Finally the AP religion (Sal) spread to my land, but only have Templates for hammer bonus now (Monesteris long expired, Res Radio atm).

In a few turns, got beat to Crister Rend by Hannibal.


1730AD: I built the UN. and got elected. Tried diplo win, not even close


1730AD: Got an GE, found Creative Constructio Corp for added hammers and culture. I was thinking culture for a while, but not sure if I could pull it off sandwitched between powerful AIs.





1790AD: The great war among the top AIs. This really helps me as I stay friendly/pleased with the most powerful ones, and they hate each other.




1830AD: Beeline Computer, and rushed for Internet. This is the most important wonder I built in this game. Check out the goodies...



1830AD: Tech chart after Internet steal.



1834AD: Even with the tech parity, I could not let the AIs sit and built parts with their ridiculous production bonuses. So I got them into war again. All 3 top AIs who are the Space contenders. SB is protective, and he is to the far East, so he and his Vassals could probably take a heavy beating and not fall against combined Hannibal and Justine.





1840AD: With Assembly plant UB, I was able to focus on hammers and consequently getting some good GE to pop in cities. This one just in time to hurry Space Elevator.




1868AD: SB got doubled HARD by Justine/Hannibal. Now they ve got Modern hardware running all over...



1882AD: despite the War, Hannibal got very close to launch now, he only needs SS Life Support which he just acquired the Tech to build it.






So what happened? Did he launch?......

Spoiler :

Almost..

I was ready for him.

1886AD:




I had set to run 100% EP for a while since I start build ship, and having a massive Spy army against all space contenders.

So first take out the Security Bureau with a spy, and then start destroying ship parts, knock out his engine will delay him by a few turns.

1886AD: I got pretty luck on this spy attack, 3 consecutive success missions. Took out his Engine and Docking bay iirc.




1888AD: just as precaution, Sabotaged Justine's Docking Bay.



1892AD: 1 Turn from Ship completion.



1907AD: Space Victory!

 

[oyzar]

amazing game abigcivfan!

 

[BurN]

Grats on your win ABCF. Question for you:

Spoiler :

Where did you put Oxford/IW?

As for my game till 500AD.

Spoiler :

4000BC - Settle in place.

3920BC - Pop AH.

3680BC - Meet Han.

3360BC - Meet MM.

2640BC - GW




2360BC - SH




1720BC - Oracle, timed it with pottery for MC. (Will prove handy for trading, cheap forges, extra happiness with gold, expansive cancels the unhealthiness, more hammers for more wonders.)




1360BC - Meet Justin & settle Munich. Happy I beat Han to that spot since a settler was on the way.




950BC - Meet Wang & Settle Cologne.




925BC - 1 Turn till Mids.




850BC - Tech overview (did some trading).




750BC - Meet Saladin.

625BC - HG. Wang Kon already has CS at this point ... WTH?




500BC - Frankfurt.




525BC - Meet Bull.

300BC - GL & techs. I want to trade with MM so bad for his gold. But he's hated by everyone.








250BC - Shwedagon.




175BC - Sal dow Bull.

75BC - Part.




25BC - AP by Wang.

1AD - Essen.




75AD - Soz built somewhere, get some gold.

175AD - Angkor.




250AD - Dortmund. Also bulb part edu with GS I saved for it.




300AD - Saladin proved the world is round.

500AD - Stopped playing, one turn till lib. Will pick Nationalism and use a GE in Munich for TM.





I'm not really sure how to approach the mid-late game. I guess spamming cottages everywhere. The thing I'm doubting about is Oxford/IW, since I have NE in the capital.

I was thinking Munich or Cologne for Oxford and once cottages are matured, put the capital there in Bur. Or .. keep the capital as it is but run FS.

Or ... Oxford in capital and make Munich a hammer site with workshops/IW. Cottages in the current capital would work with biology and extra science from all settled GP's in rep. (with christo later, I can switch between Rep=science, US=hammers.)


Edit: I have 4 warriors total .. no other military. If I get dowed .. it's game over. But I've been watching diplo closely to prevent that. (I hope >_>)

 

[DanF5771]

@BurN: Wow that's a lot of wonders PLUS a nice empire -- looking really strong! I just noticed something odd in your 250 AD Dortmund screenshot - what happened to the farm NW of the rice, looks like Jungle over improvement with only 2?

 

[Dirk1302]

Played until 1 AD

Spoiler :

Thought a while about the best opening, AG first is obvious starting on worker, there's a choice on the next tech though. Main choice is between AH for the early cow or bw for early chopping. Chose AH, i don't want to whip this capital before granary, early chopping is ok but for worker/settler building purposes the plains cow is too good to delay.

After the first worker is done i immediately assign a second worker to queue as i don't want to work unimproved tiles and the worker builds fast with the forested plains hill. Take the worker off queue when the corn is farmed, put it on again and once we have grown to 2. Go Bw after AH, with help of 2 workers chopping and fast research due to gold mine i'll be in time to have archers out

Scout reveals very nice land in the west and in the east, i seem to have some time in the east where Justinian is but Han and MM are fairly close. So I chop almost all the forests near the capital to settle the corn/horse spot near MM and the rice spot near Han around 1800 BC. Soon after i pop gems in the capital . incredible lucky i don't need to worry too much about funding the rex now.

Three ai's blocked

1600 BC
Han declares on MM , good news, had it been me i would have resigned. MM has founded judaism, Han doesn't have a religion atm.

1000 BC
Justinian has enough on his hands he hates MM and 950 BC he asks me to break relations with him.I refuse since not being able to trade with MM later on sucks. It'll only give me 10 turns which isn't enough to to organize defences, good chance he's after MM anyway. His religion buddhism spreads to me the same turn and i convert hoping Han will take it up too. Shorty after Justinian stacks approach my land, the moment they enter my land without declaration i understand it's MM he's after, indeed he declares on MM. Han converts to Buddhism so i should be safe now.

800 BC i've been saving money waiting for a library in capital. Cash accumulates pretty fast with the gold and gems. Once the library is built i begin to research aest, it'll take 10 turns to research, trade it for iw and math immed.I research on to literature then put the slider back to 0% to wait for the first GS which is due in 6 turns now.

250 BC
Academy goes up i have saved some 450 gold i set slider to 100% now and
research towards currency which i get 175 BC (partly in trade).

175 BC
i lost Parthenon but GL is finished without marble in capital. Earlier i also built Soz but took it out of Queue to cash the gold later. Industrious is good for netting gold this way.

100 BC
2 Barb cities have gone up, one in the south near marble corn, this sucks since it'll delay getting the marble, the other one is a very good city near Justinian, banana/clam and fish. I've built 6 chariots, keeping a lookout near both cities to see if an ai tries to take them, chariots are bad against archers so i could use some help. It doesn't happen though so i take the great banana city 100 bc. I have an archer at 8XP, problem is his odds in attacking a city are too low. I need a barb archer on a plain square, that'll give me the needed 2 XP. I wait with taking the marble barb city in the south for that reason.

1 AD

Doing well in every respect except gpp, i might lose lib here but i never counted on it anyway with the rexing i did.

 

[Dirk1302]

@Burn

Spoiler :

Looking at your game i realize that i'm really not a wonder builder. You're not unlucky that you could settle the western spots so late. I settled them between 2100 and 1800 BC and i could already see Mansa and Han settlers approaching. I could have chosen to settle the corn/horse city with stone but it would have been hopelessly pressured culturally and probably cut off since Hippo was already founded then.

 

[ABigCivFan]

@Burn

Spoiler :

I put IW in your Munich spot. It has the potential to be the 2nd most productive city under US, and has river for levee.

Oxford/NE in Capital under Buearacracy and GL scientists and it produced highest beaker count for most of the early-mid game.

 

[Dirk1302]

Until 1020 AD

Spoiler :

I really have some important decision's to make 1 AD. 1) I could go for developing the empire asap. This means more workers and settlers, growing the capital to max working as many cottages as possible. It also implies settling the rest of the empire directly lowering the slider to pay maintenance. Later on i can put NE in Assyrian which is clearly the best place for it. Since this means no emphasis on gpp now and lowering the slider it means losing lib. Long term this would give me the best research around say 1250 AD. I probably fall out of the tech circle though for quite some time delaying important techs like economics/corporation/pp and ultimately demo.

2) Alternatively i can build NE now in cap in 9 turns (still without marble ). I have enough food for some 5 scientists, this is probably good enough to still win the lib race. It'll mean the capital'll stall for some 1000 years since i need all the production to build uni/taj mahal/oxford there subsequently. Also the other cities'll get some workshops to improve production, we'll be in caste system for some time so whipping the uni's for oxford's not on. The idea is to catch up on the lost time with demo and lots of workers afterwards laying down fast maturing cottages

On lower levels i might have chosen the first option, here i'll gain a lot of techs in trade if i have something to offer myself. Justin'll be friendly with me some time in the future and MM'll trade for quite a while. Also building Taj won't take long and a free GA is not to be sniffed at, there's also good synergy with the shops here btw.

I chose 2) and consequently put the plan to work.

200 AD i finally succeed in getting my 8 XP archer to 10 by first sacrificing an inexperienced chariot on the last barb city, then taking it out with the archer . Very important this, once it comes to unit building i'll just have a good extra production city. Worth delaying the marble for this.

Just after 500 AD i get lib, choose Nat and begin the Taj.

540 AD AP hinduism spreads to me, this is a good thing, i was afraid i'd have to do without the hammers.

580 AD first to lib, i had researched it to 1 turn around 500 AD and need to go ahead now.

From there things run their course, around 900 AD Oxford's finished during the Taj GA.

1010 AD it all comes together trade wise, i've been researching mil trad not because i need it but it gives the best trade opportunities. Indeed I now trade economics/lib for chem to Han, subsequently i get astro/pp from MM for mil trad/chem and corp from Justin also for mil trad. Begin researching demo, 7 turns now but i have a spare GA from a GS waiting. Not sure if i'm going to use it right now, i certainly use it asap when demo's in to make the civic switches.

1020 AD overview.

Tech wise i'm ~ par with MM, Justin and Wang and i have rather big leads on the rest. 2 civs have beelined to demo , i've researched 1 turn into it myself now. I really need it but i could gamble on researching steel and getting demo in trade. I don't plan a renaissance war here so if i'll have to wait for demo this'll turn out bad. Alternatively i could go replaceable parts-steam power now which is the plan anyway after demo, this seems better than steel but runs ultimately runs the same risk. Not sure yet.

My empire is second in size after Wang's i have 10 good cities founded, my neighbours have 8.I have a good 11th coming in the south with some 6 grasslands still to be worked, the rest is a bit marginal, there are still some squares to be worked in the center of the empire and i can found 3 extra cities that'll basically only be working coast which is still profitable after communism.

The empire needs to be specialized now, Moai'll and IW'll go to Essen this should be a good production city with more shops. Assyrian'll probably get GT. Polynesian'll get shops on all the plains together with HE. We're culturally pressed in the west so hermitage and the first cathedrals'll be built there. Also lots of cottages here. As i can't live forever on trade gold income i'll need some banks too in my commerce cities.

After AL Han (backward) and MM (no land, probably no troops) are the most likely targets.I can certainly set MM on Han and probably also Han on MM by that time.

Sal (also backward) is an attractive target too.Not all his cities 'll produce though because of the cultural pressure, but maybe i can take on Bull next.

I hope some others'll also take up this game. I can't help feeling that the open challenge format was much more popular when silverbullet started the immortal students series about a year ago. Have we seen it all in the meantime? It's not that deity's too difficult alone since the immortal series also attracted less interest over time.

I for one still like this format best since most of the discussions are with players who'll also have played the game adding depth to these discussions. But maybe i'll play my next game in a format such as Gliese's doing now and Sisiutil and aelf have been doing for ages, lots of short rounds with plenty of detail (and hopefully discussion) on important decisions.

 

[CellKu]

Dirk, just wanted to give you a heads-up. I really enjoy reading these (and the immortal univ.) threads even though I often don't have the time to play the games myself. So, don't be too frustrated. Although reading a walkthrough of yours would also be nice especially with your detailed descriptions and reasoning. These detailed reasoned posts such as your last one are what attract me most (and probably others as well). They are very educational with all the various options that you discuss and the explanations of the trades you made.

With regard to the interest in "university"-threads:
They are very educational and read by quite a number of people (just see the no. of "views"). Deity might be regarded to be a bit difficult by many. With regard to immortal, it seems that the "Immortal Cookbook" has "taken over". That game format might be even more educational, as games are easier to compare and the voting necessitates discussion and reasoning even more than the open game-format.

Spoiler :

There was also at least one deity game in that format in which I learned quite a bit: (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=266381)

 

[Gliese 581]

I would like to play more games like these but there's the very real danger for me of becoming almost pathologically obsessive-compulsive about it and basically shut down everything else in my life (I've had those periods) so I know I have to take time to do other things. The problem is compounded by my slow play and meticulous detailing of any online games I play.