WOTM 38 First Spoiler

[babybluepants]

WOTM 38 First Spoiler 1AD

How is your game going?

Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in WOTM 38, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless EITHER

• You have reached at least 1 AD in your game, OR
• You have submitted your entry

Posting Restrictions

• Please do not discuss anything that happened after 1 AD,
• Please do not divulge your final result if that happened after 1 AD.
• Please do not discuss the location of resources that may not show up before 1 AD.
• Do not post any savegame file from the game. Discussions and screenshots are fine but not actual games.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Challenger Save
Well, I survived to 1 AD.

I started out with only 1 Settler and 1 Scout so, after the Scout didn't reveal anything interesting, I settled in place.

The scout met Gandhi but then died after defeating a Bear, scaring away a Lion, and finally succumbing to a Barb Warrior.

Well, losing that Scout hurt, as I was low on spawn-busters. When I built my 2nd Settler (counting the initial one as the 1st one), I sent him to the SE but had to retreat him for about 8 turns before he could finally settle.

I was so low on spawn-busters that when I settled my first City to the SE for Flood Plains and Gold, I had to hunker-down inside of the City with 2 Warriors. The City still fell around the time of me getting up a third City to the south-west. Of course, the Barbs decided to raze my City.


The Barbs seemed to be a lot heavier from the east and it soon became apparent why, due to the geography. Still, I pressed on, ignoring Wonders, re-expanding to the same SE City location and then building another overlapping City to the east of there.

From there, it was a cat-and-mouse chance, vying with Huayna and Bismarck for Barb Cities. Eventually, I closed borders with Bismarck, which allowed me to capture and keep 1 Barb City and capture and raze another, which I will resettle.

My tech situation is pitiful, to the point that Gandhi took pity on me and gifted me a tech. Awww, shucks, so nice of you.

I don't know where I'll take the game from here. There was already one AI-AI war and there are a couple of nutty AIs in the game, so I doubt that I'll be able to maintain peace until the end of the game.

Getting 2 Marbles was nice but getting Marble + Stone would have been preferred, since I'd really like to be hiding behind City Walls and eventually Castles in this game!

My plans for the future? Just hang in and survive for as long as I can.

 

[dima42]

contender save.

one settler settled in place, the other settled by the flood plains and gold to the SW. I'd hoped that the gold would eventually offset the costs of having two early cities and the units.

my economy plan was to build marble wonders for fail gold. unfortunately i accidentally finished the parthenon. hasn't done me any good yet, but i'm about to run a bunch of specialists.

i expanded a lot, killing my economy worse than i thought possible. at 175bc, i was running at break-even with 0% research, and no specialists employed (i couldn't -- i had just discovered writing in 175bc ).

the early political situation was:

washington/huyna/bismark/victoria are hindu, gandhi is buddhist, monty is confuscian.

my plan is to stockpile units and attack gandhi. my economy eventually pulls out sailing out of thin air around 700bc. unfortunately three turns later gandhi has longbows. well, there goes that.

now i have a pretty large (not comparable to deity warlords ai, of course) standing axe army that my lack of economy isn't doing a good job supporting. so i decide that something has to happen, and that something is declaring on Bismark.

in 175bc i finish writing and sue bismark for peace after taking a nice city and a crap city from him and facing about a third of his stack. koba is true to his name and throws about thirty axes at five longbows to get the nice city. he gets me 300gold, which saves my economy for another turn or two .

by 1ad i am not doing well, but it is not totally hopeless. my economy almost subsists on trading (i do not expect to ever catch up, but i hope to be sufficiently close behind that my units need to attack at more than 3:1). bismark fortunately switches out of hindu to confuscianism, so he might not attack me in retribution (i will be switching to confu when it catches, and then hope to get the confuscian block to fight the hindu block while i take out gandhi with cats against hopefully-not-riflemen). i have plenty of land to expand to. (this game is very kind in that)

more likely, bismark will declare on me next turn and then it is over .

 

[kcd_swede]

I had a lot of cities and a lot of land, mostly because I was able to capture barb cities. But this meant it was 150BC before I got writing. All peace so far. With writing I will be able to get research going again at least, but even though I am #1 in land area, I'm too far behind in tech to win this I think.

Settling the second city without pottery really slows down pottery, and the economy is hell. I think the Challenger save is probably easier. I think I should have used the settler as a scout and let it die. Settling 2 cities and having all those units is ecopnomic death.

If you want to really test whether it is the starting units that make Deity so hard, the way to do that is to delete the AI starting units and see if it gets easier. Giving us the Deity units without the Deity AI ability to support them is a handicap, not a bonus. Too bad I fugured that out too late.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Well, I'm down two settlers--the one that the Contendor save started with that I didn't get and the one where my 2nd City got razed by Barbs.

Regardless of whether you settle a second City, having all of those extra units to spawn-bust for Barbs would make for an extremely different game. If you tell me that you had to "hunker down" like I did with 2+ Warriors defending each of your Cities due to not having enough units to properly spawn-bust and still had a City razed, then your game would be on par with the Challenger start.

If I were playing with hindsight knowledge, I'd know to beeline Bronze Working and get our Copper connected and I'd build more Warriors before building my first Settler, but without that knowledge, I can't honestly see how the Challenger save is actually easier.

 

[Mitchum]

@ Dhoomstriker

What happens with the Contendor save is that it takes forever and a day to research any tech. So, in the challenger save you started with a single settler, but you were able to research several basic worker techs before your settled you first city, right? I tried the normal save and experienced the same thing that kcd mentioned. It took me 3 times as long just to research Agriculture due to the maintenance cost of having more units and two cities before having an empire that can handle it. It sounds strange to complain about having all of those settlers, workers and spawn busters, but unless you were prepared for the major hit to your economy, you end up in a very big hole. A different hole than the one you were in, but a hole none the less. I ended up quiting before 1000 BC when I saw that I had hit rock bottom and was still digging...

When you're done with your game, give the Contendor save a try and you'll see what we're talking about.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

No one says that you HAVE to settle your second City immediately or that you HAVE to keep all of your units alive (if they are costing you Unit Costs or Unit Supply).

There is a little Delete icon whenever you have a unit active, such as Scouts, while there is a little Sleep icon for a Settler.

Also, it was suggested in the pre-game discussion thread to settle 2 Cities on the same River, so that you'd get an immediate Trade Route connection. I wonder if doing so might have made a large difference.

Settling one's second City intentionally close to one's capital is often a good idea, particularly as you increase in difficulty level. I wonder how many people sent their second Settler far away (say, to the southern Coast). I certainly didn't settle that far.


I get what you are saying, though, that if the units were used in a certain way, they could have hampered you a lot. The real challenge with the contendor save the comes with figuring out just how to properly use the units that you are given.

Even if you settled your second City far away, if you settled with one of the Gold Resources in your City's 9-square-radius, you could have very quickly overcome the deficit.

 

[zamint3]

I ended up quiting before 1000 BC when I saw that I had hit rock bottom and was still digging...

Same story here.

Got trashed by barbs when my units were on strike and I started to get units disbanded.

Will try another approach now.

 

[psparky]

Playing the Adventurer save, which is still one or two levels above my skills, particularly with the handicap of those starting units

Totally underestimated the impact of all those units on my economy - research rate was terrible. If I survive to get cossacks, they are going to up against something pretty tough!

Since one thing I could build was axes, I went to war with Bismark early - but the last thing I needed was more cities, so it was a case of pillage and raze. I'm not sure if this actually made a profit in itself (or would I have been better off just deleting my units), but it has certainly weakened him to the extent that he's below me on the leader board, and maybe I can take him out.

At 1AD, I have 8 cities, 34 pop, 31 gpt at 0% research, no religions, 2 scientists about 25% of way to first GS for academy, 1 supermedic chariot, about 13 axes and a few spears and chariots, last research completed was currency.