Theory crafting a Deity win with no tech trading (huge Pangaea): Elizabeth of Sumeria Great Wall EE

[MassRiflemen]

***Golden Rule: No fail gold allowed***

*Map Settings* Huge, Pang 11 civs, No tech trading, Marathon***

Unless someone can vouch they've won deity on a huge Pangaea with no tech trading, it is completely impossible using, improving or fine tuning any method that I use on emperor or immortal.

As it stands I have a 0% win rate on deity when I prohibit the use of fail gold. Even when I allow fail gold, I lose about 90% of them.

Without fail gold I have an 80% win rate with any aggressive leader on Immortal, 100% with Boudica of Sumeria (slaughter Ai for days with Boudica Vultures) and Elizabeth of Native America (a relatively peaceful win that ends up with a Perm Alliance).

What I'm considering it to switch these leaders and civs. I HAVE NOT TRIED IT YET, however, this it the outline of what I am planning.

Elizabeth of Sumeria---at least one gold in capitol with stone visible upon settling. Also regenerate if not near coast.

Chop the Great Wall asap. Chop a rax in your two best production cities and chop two vultures and whip two vultures and kill the nearest coastal neighbor. Use their capitol to chop the Oracle and get metal casting, chop a forge and run an engineer and get the colossus. This great wall rush also makes barbs irrelevant. Only triremes are needed for seafood protection.

Once alphabet is researched and all food techs are done. Stop researching. Period. Elizabeth can produce two Great Spies in no time. Keep a 20% EE silder and split the points between the two top techers with equal weight (since you don't know which techer is gonna get dogpiled)

Use this moment to raise massive vulture armies with a single spear. Go forth and capture the Pyramids and the Great Lighthouse. Your forests are only used to for chopping vultures. After these are captured, raze the cities around them to reset the culture war in your favor. Pillage everything else (don't throw units away) to effectively kill the AI. Never give peace. Come back every 10 ten turns to pillage over and over.

Have one city spam spies all game. Steal everything. Self tech to castles, whip these for the EE bonus. Don't tech economics (obsoletes castle) or astro (obsoletes colossus), until you're ready to go assembly line. Always chop/whip the EE buildings (security bur, intel agency and jail) upon availabilty.

Get the Kremlim by self teching communism and blow your great engineer on the statue of liberty and turn all specialists into spies.
Run merc the entire game for the extra spy spec.

Althogh you'll never be ahead in miltary tech, the idea is that Elizabeth's Philo trait makes the Sumerian EE OP as hell, combined with her FIN trait, allowing for a monster sized war machine of 40-50 vultures pre 0AD and a metric ton of maces/trebs/pikes in the middle ages, (like 200+units) only running a 20% slider until the Renaissancemallowing her to capture the mids and GL to compliment the self built colossus, maximizing her gold per turn at the coastal locations she initially conquers.

Any thoughts on what else I shoulder consider before throwing another 48-72 hours at another horrbily failed Deity attempt with those map settings?

 

[Daniel Boone]

I think you might have posted this in the wrong forum.

Moderator Action: Moved --NZ

 

[sampsa]

There are players who'd win very close to 100% of the games with those settings, without re-rolling starts, with a random leader. I'd suggest posting in strategy&tips.

Any thoughts on what else I shoulder consider before throwing another 48-72 hours at another horrbily failed Deity attempt with those map settings?

Forget complicated tricks and learn how to set up your empire, just in a normal fashion. Food and cottages, get a tech lead and start conquering. Should be a lot easier on marathon and it's very doable even on normal speed.

 

[lymond]

Yep, you can most certainly have fun with your experiment, but please note that it is not a recipe for winning on Deity or becoming a Deity player.

 

[drewisfat]

You're ok with playing Marathon, EE w/ NTT, unrestricted leaders, vetted starts, AggAI, permanent alliances, reloading combat odds, and using WB to add in a free battleship.....

but fail gold is beneath you

 

[MassRiflemen]

You're ok with playing Marathon, EE w/ NTT, unrestricted leaders, vetted starts, AggAI, permanent alliances, reloading combat odds, and using WB to add in a free battleship.....

but fail gold is beneath you

I consider fail gold to be game ruining and trivializes everything. So yes.

I also consider tech trading to be game ruining, as it also trivializes everything. I'd rather add a free battleship than resort to fail gold or tech trading.

Let's put it this way, I allow fail gold or tech trading (tech trading can be turned off, whereas fail gold requires player restraint), I can win deity with practically any start that doesn't lack food in the capitol or the nearest expansion site with metal. It's like playing out of a book. You can't lose so long as the the start itself isn't game ending. It's boring, tedious, and frankly, boring, because of it.

Yep, you can most certainly have fun with your experiment, but please note that it is not a recipe for winning on Deity or becoming a Deity player.

Can you give me a link to a guide on winning deity without tech trading?

 

[sampsa]

Can you give me a link to a guide on winning deity without tech trading?

It doesn't need a guide, because it's very similar to normal play. Value of buildings goes up somewhat and the games are longer and more tedious.

This is normal speed, so a lot harder than marathon. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2ak1kHTkXU7WZZGLJmHDOZZWv6_PaNQq

 

[Fippy]

I consider fail gold to be game ruining and trivializes everything. So yes.

With what logic?
On deity we don't have that much time for wonders, they can go pretty fast.
Give one example how it's making everything so easy..cos those you invest in failgold are not appearing out of thin air.

 

[MassRiflemen]

It doesn't need a guide, because it's very similar to normal play. Value of buildings goes up somewhat and the games are longer and more tedious.

This is normal speed, so a lot harder than marathon. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2ak1kHTkXU7WZZGLJmHDOZZWv6_PaNQq

this is beautiful

this entire series is no tech trading deity. lots to learn from this

 

[MassRiflemen]

With what logic?
On deity we don't have that much time for wonders, they can go pretty fast.
Give one example how it's making everything so easy..cos those you invest in failgold are not appearing out of thin air.

Fail gold and tech trading is nasty cycle that circumvents the original design of the game.


Fail gold to pursue the upper tech tree to trade for many bottom techs (one tech = many with trading). The tech advantage also allows you to make minimal garrisons (better unit investment per hammer), whereas in no tech trading you have nearly twice the unit count of equal tech units (which drains your treasury).

Whoever implemented fail gold in the development did not foresee to obvious consequence. They should have reimbursed hammers at 75%, 100% for industrious trait. Obviously the existence of fail gold would make indust trait broken.

It also allows you to bulb things that you would never bulb in a no tech trading game. You'll never bulb philosophy with NTT, you want GE's for machinery and engineering and a GP to bulb theo.

I also feel like it allows you to ignore the map once you're stable. It doesn't even feel good when you when win when you rely on fail gold. It's a slimy feeling. It's not fun, and removes the challenge. Especially when combined with tech trading.

When I played with fail gold and teching trading, the only buildings I ever made were a granary and barracks (lightouse and harbor for coastal cities), and sometimes a library. Straight to the end of the game (which always ended in a cuir domination).

With no tech trading, each city whips its appropriate building upon discovery of the tech (I have to save population). Barracks cities whp forges. Science cities whip observatory, uni, lib.

Everyone whips courthouse, and everyone whips a market for the happiness, and commerce cities whip banks and grocers. I stay in slavery until kremlin+assembly line and whip factories and coal plants, into aqueduct, grocer. Forbidden Palace placement is crucial, and if you can secure divine right with a GP, the Versallies allows you to to set up a triangle of palaces for corporations.

Yet none of this matters, or is even considered, with Fail Gold and Tech trading. It's also painfully obvious that you've won long before the cuir breakout with failgold/tech trading.

Do me a favor. Play one game on huge lakes on Monarch (easiest difficulty that isn't braindead). No tech trading, no vassals, no fail gold. Tell me if you found it more enjoyable than a Deity game with fail gold and tech trading.

 

[sampsa]

Just stop playing only pangaea, stop playing large, and most importantly, stop playing the completely broken marathon. Thank me later.

 

[drewisfat]

Most people don't play Huge Marathon exactly because it's very time consuming. This is why you're not going to get many takers on your challenge. As a slow player, mara/huge would take up like a month of my free time. Generally those who do like mara/huge have a high tolerance for tedium and appreciate the epic feel of such a large long game.

As far as what makes the game too easy, there is a giant disconnect between what you claim affects difficulty and what most of us have experienced and theorycrafted for years.
- It's not obvious at all that failgold makes IND OP. I'm one of IND's biggest fanboys here, but gun to my head on a random map I'd have to pick FIN over it, as FIN is universally beneficial in all games. IND can match that benefit but only if we're able to build wonders. That requires a strong tech position and limits your tech path. It also assumes that you don't need those hammers on say units. If you're choked to 3 cities, or if Monty DoWs you early, failgold won't be of much help.
- Larger maps increase the difficulty of the game (more to conquer) while slow game speeds make it easier (units move faster relative to game speed). Because of this Large/Epic might be roughly equivalent to Standard/Normal. However, this does not hold up as well for Huge/Marathon, because Marathon is also halving the relative cost of units. There's also the issue that rush mechanics (namely chopping, whipping and drafting) become much stronger the slower the gamespeed.
- Tech trading is much stronger if you have a guaranteed 10 potential trading partners on your landmass compared to 0-6 trading partners. You're not alone in pointing out the huge power of tech trading, but your preferred settings are exacerbating this issue.
- Switching to NTT does generally make the game harder. However, if you're relying on stealing techs, then NTT is no longer a constraint on you, it's a constraint on the AI. So really whether or not NTT makes the game harder or easier depends on your ability to run a dedicated EE. Normally this is dependent on getting TGW. Now if you're handpicking starts that have stone and handpicking Giggles' Ziggurat AND handpicking PHI/FIN on top of that through unrestricted leaders, you've actually made the game much easier and one-dimensional.
- Permanent Alliances essentially allow you to conquer AI diplomatically late game.
- AGG AI, especially on Marathon, allows you to worker steal with impunity at the start.
- Intervening (wb/reload) whenever something very unlikely/unfair happens allows you to play much more ambitiously.
- Natural coastlines + huge means given the right map TGL could be crazy OP.

Playing with whatever settings and house rules make the game challenging and enjoyable to you is a goal I can get behind. When I went through my Quick speed and KMOD binges, I would regularly gimp the difficulty a bit by using high seas and selecting my leader. However, saying failgold makes the game trivially easy is particularly discordant given that the setup here is already effectively dropping the difficulty 1-2 levels. That's what I was trying to say without coming off like too much of a jerk.

Already many strong players are incredibly risk averse and never build early game wonders, because if they come up just a little short failgold isn't adequate compensation for the huge sacrifices entailed in going for an early wonder. A small nerf of 25% like you suggest might extinct that practice altogether. It would certainly nerf IND into a bottom tier trait. Mysticism, widely considered the worst starting tech, would be even worse as you no longer get the tiny compensation of putting spare hammers into Stonehenge failgold. We should also consider that the AI gets failgold too, quite a lot actually given its complete lack of judgment on whether it's likely to win a wonder race. I wouldn't be totally shocked if a failgold nerf actually made the game easier.

As far as humans deliberately failgolding goes, it's important to remember that just building wealth exists, and was certainly intended by the developers. Compared to building wealth there's some give and take.
Strengths:
- Affected by IND and resource modifiers
- Possible pre-currency
- Can convert chops directly into gold
- Can convert whips into gold through overflow
Limitations:
- An unknown delay between putting the hammers in the wonder and getting the gold
- Need to have the corresponding tech early before the wonder is completed
- Can't whip wonders directly (huge malus and no failgold)
- Can't build wonders in multiple cities simultaneously

Most people value hammers somewhere between 1.5x and 2.5x as good as commerce, so even with max modifiers we're hardly breaking the game. The flexibility to convert hammers to wealth is mainly worth it in a post-expansion but pre-war phase, where your hammers are pretty low value, but how often you're in that phase should vary game to game.

If we look at the HoF tables (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/) we can see that a BC spaceship launch (90AD finish) was famously achieved on a Large/Mara map, and yes chopping a bunch of forests into failgold was a core part of that run. Does this mean chopping forests for failgold is OP? Well, if we look at what's instead possible with converting forests into units on a Large/Mara we can see that a jaw-dropping 2270BC Conquest victory was achieved a few years ago. This is all only remotely possible on Marathon, and you can see a big drop in most modern records just going from Mara to Epic.

 

[civac]

Failgold is a very important mechanic on large NTT games. The two key advantages are higher efficiency (IND, resource multiplier, OR) and even more importantly it's usable prior to Currency when Wealth is not available. Moreover, you often can use National Wonders to generate failgold. Turning whip overflow into Moai failgold is a common technique to crawl to Currency when you have 16 cities and 5% effective research rate.

Nvm: drewisfat already mentioned most of this. Only skimmed his post initially.

 

[Fippy]

Sure Civac, but it still takes time to build up Moai gold.
There are so many important mechanics in Civ..we play with Slavery, a broken OP civic which makes failgold look harmless in most games.
Or in MP games i often see such rich maps (and ofc bfc gold / gems) that going broke takes some special skills

 

[Plains-Cow]

***Golden Rule: No fail gold allowed***

*Map Settings* Huge, Pang 11 civs, No tech trading, Marathon***

Unless someone can vouch they've won deity on a huge Pangaea with no tech trading, it is completely impossible using, improving or fine tuning any method that I use on emperor or immortal.

As it stands I have a 0% win rate on deity when I prohibit the use of fail gold. Even when I allow fail gold, I lose about 90% of them.

Without fail gold I have an 80% win rate with any aggressive leader on Immortal, 100% with Boudica of Sumeria (slaughter Ai for days with Boudica Vultures) and Elizabeth of Native America (a relatively peaceful win that ends up with a Perm Alliance).

What I'm considering it to switch these leaders and civs. I HAVE NOT TRIED IT YET, however, this it the outline of what I am planning.

Elizabeth of Sumeria---at least one gold in capitol with stone visible upon settling. Also regenerate if not near coast.

Chop the Great Wall asap. Chop a rax in your two best production cities and chop two vultures and whip two vultures and kill the nearest coastal neighbor. Use their capitol to chop the Oracle and get metal casting, chop a forge and run an engineer and get the colossus. This great wall rush also makes barbs irrelevant. Only triremes are needed for seafood protection.

Once alphabet is researched and all food techs are done. Stop researching. Period. Elizabeth can produce two Great Spies in no time. Keep a 20% EE silder and split the points between the two top techers with equal weight (since you don't know which techer is gonna get dogpiled)

Use this moment to raise massive vulture armies with a single spear. Go forth and capture the Pyramids and the Great Lighthouse. Your forests are only used to for chopping vultures. After these are captured, raze the cities around them to reset the culture war in your favor. Pillage everything else (don't throw units away) to effectively kill the AI. Never give peace. Come back every 10 ten turns to pillage over and over.

Have one city spam spies all game. Steal everything. Self tech to castles, whip these for the EE bonus. Don't tech economics (obsoletes castle) or astro (obsoletes colossus), until you're ready to go assembly line. Always chop/whip the EE buildings (security bur, intel agency and jail) upon availabilty.

Get the Kremlim by self teching communism and blow your great engineer on the statue of liberty and turn all specialists into spies.
Run merc the entire game for the extra spy spec.

Althogh you'll never be ahead in miltary tech, the idea is that Elizabeth's Philo trait makes the Sumerian EE OP as hell, combined with her FIN trait, allowing for a monster sized war machine of 40-50 vultures pre 0AD and a metric ton of maces/trebs/pikes in the middle ages, (like 200+units) only running a 20% slider until the Renaissancemallowing her to capture the mids and GL to compliment the self built colossus, maximizing her gold per turn at the coastal locations she initially conquers.

Any thoughts on what else I shoulder consider before throwing another 48-72 hours at another horrbily failed Deity attempt with those map settings?

This sounds like it would be very fun to watch.

Would you put it on YouTube?

 

[MassRiflemen]

This sounds like it would be very fun to watch.

Would you put it on YouTube?

I'm doing trial runs atm. I'm dying to mass elepult just before I finish engineering or gunpowder.

 

[Plains-Cow]

I'm doing trial runs atm. I'm dying to mass elepult just before I finish engineering or gunpowder.

It would be fun to watch you stream. If you can post screenshots here or to a thread kind of like what livinginaz and me did (post updates like a story), I'd totally comment and follow!

 

[MassRiflemen]

It would be fun to watch you stream. If you can post screenshots here or to a thread kind of like what livinginaz and me did (post updates like a story), I'd totally comment and follow!

I'm switching to Suleiman. I need Imp for faster setters. I have to claim stone and bronze. I also need the GG points works well with Gwall.

Elizabeth simply can't survive elepult retaliation on mass vulture and she's too slow to settle.

With Imp it feels like I get the Gwall for free since I can settle the stone asap.


Another consideration is Agg/Phi so my vulture rush can punch through the walls.

 

[floydmcw]

- AGG AI, especially on Marathon, allows you to worker steal with impunity at the start.

Curious why? Is it because AGG AI causes the AI to not escort non-combat units?

(I assume AGG AI means the "Aggressive AI" setting, not an AI with the Aggressive trait.)

 

[sampsa]

AGG AI for some reason is more willing to sign peace. Maybe it values a unit "threatening" their city more highly or something.