Deity for beginners: a peaceful builder strat.

[Txurce]

Jshelr, I agree that my start is oddly suitable for my strategy and goals. Plugging the chokepoint slowed the AI settlement onslaught, but even more meaningful is the chokepoint itself, which pretty much meant that only the Romans would even try to pass through it. Even better than that is the Romans being the runt of the AI litter on my continent. Defending myself shouldn't be a big deal at any point, which means I can focus on research (and keep the Romans happy with older tech).

I think I can get the TOE with a well-timed prebuild, well-stocked gold reserves, and researching the democracy branch. If I do get it, I'll trade atomic theory for the techs I don't have, and gpt to finance maxed research. I intend to hang onto electronics to try getting Hoover's, but could easily be beaten to it. And then I expect to do exactly what you advise: turn off the research, and buy my way into the space race.

Why bother with Hoover's? I may not, because I only need major production in maybe four cities to build the SS, and don't expect to need to crank out a major military. One reason to go for it in this game is that it keeps it out of the AI's hands, but in all honesty, I don't know how much their building it would hurt me in a space race. You raise an excellent point in terms of the penalty I'll pay waiting for Hoover's, when I could have built coal plants... but in this game, I wouldn't build the coal plants until after I'd finished most of the essential buildings. I could be wrong about the balance sheet here, but my gut says that putting up cathedrals, libraries and universities should precede coal plants, even though the plants would speed the builds. What do you think?

[jshelr]

Too close a call for a doctrinaire answer. The total construction time for both needed happiness buildings and factory/utility construction would be lower if the factory/utilities were done first -- provided the natives are not too restless!! If you have the lux and pop is low enough so everyone is smiling, you know what to do.

[Txurce]

Catt, I'm lucky both to have the time to play these games, and a fresh enough goal to make me want to start this one right after finishing the last one (which took forever). My map is a standard one: 4 billion years, right? The lack of hills didn't matter in despotism, but will in monarchy - which is why I'm planning to build Bach in Giza, where there are both hills and cows.

Alva, I just checked your suggestion: if I put an entertainer in Heliopolis and Giza, and so drop the luxury slider to zero, I could speed my research to 23 turns. This is a good idea in general, now that Heliopolis is no longer cranking on the GL... but not for Giza, where I plan on starting the prebuild in six turns - an entertainer there would cost me two shields. More to the point, MT in 23 turns still doesn't beat out the FP build. I guess I could slow the prebuild so that research catches up, but the production output in Giza will soon far surpass that of the FP city.

In the end, I think I'll have the research edge on Bach, and will benefit in research sooner from an FP asap. But you could well be right... so here's a save of the game at this point!

[Txurce]

The Middle Ages: defensive expansion and Bach's.

The Greeks want tribute - Egypt wants a Golden Age

By 150AD I was a republic, close to building the FP in Pi-Ramesses, and had Giza building a palace in preparation for a happiness wonder. Most of my WCs were upgraded to knights, so when the Greeks understandably asked for tribute, we were at war. I softened up Rhodes with knights, then sent in two WCs, and - bang! - I was in a GA. A happiness wonder looked very doable all of a sudden. As in my other deity games, I took advantage of a superior enemy’s isolated cities. Although the Greeks had a surprisingly large number of hoplites in each nearby city, they only had longbowmen for offense. My knights divided into two battle groups, and took all four Greek cities on my borders and an island on my east coast to boot.

Back to the tech race

I now had 18 cities, was third in size, and second for the moment in mfg. goods and gnp. This looked like enough to potentially generate the production I would need to win. And, although I missed the Chapel, I had Bach's. But despite the two wonders, my slow temple building resulted in a mediocre culture standing.

The AI was also pulling away from me in tech - why are those other countries so smart? - but two factors kept me close. First, I researched music theory and the printing press, which allowed me to trade for some tech. Secondly, I lucked into an encounter with a Zulu galley off my coast, which allowed me to trade communications to the seven other civs. (Zululand was the tech leader, but the four civs on the other continent were all pretty even.) Working against me was that I could get very little value for my two extra luxuries, or none at all: it seemed like those who could afford them already had them. Also problematic was the discovery that I possessed no saltpeter.

The Persians' turn to do me a favor

I wasn't sure if I would need the saltpeter - I could trade for nationalism at some point, and theoretically survive with infantry and artillery. But the Persians - the biggest civ at the time - were growing increasingly disenchanted with me for no reason, so I paid for military tradition, and sent a settler off to build a city on a bare patch of desert between Greece and Rome with saltpeter. There was saltpeter near one of the three Persian cities at the bottom of my land mass as well, and I started building cities in the jungle toward them.

Just as my borders reached theirs - and no gunpowder - the Persians declared war on me around 550 AD, and burned down my two new towns. They had cavalry and musketmen (reinforced by riflemen) against my knights. My edge was local superiority in numbers again, because the Persian mainland was somewhere offshore. I killed off their cavalry in the jungle, and took their three cities, the last with a cavalry upgrade against riflemen after snagging their saltpeter. Despite troops on ships off my coast, the Persians paid for a peace treaty.

The war gave me my five new dye luxuries - enough to finally expect a decent return on my homegrown stuff. It also gave me a Great Leader. Yes! It is now 600 AD, I have two sources of saltpeter and coal to build railroads. My gold reserves are also gone and there's a long way to go, but in the flush of my sudden gains, I now feel I have the advantage.

[alva]

Great stuff ,

but you could by a PC next time? I tried to open your safe wich off-course didn't work.???? then I rememberd you are working on a mac

PS: you're game is making me want to start a new game of my own. Don't know if that's such a good thing tho'

[Txurce]

Alva, I thought Mac saves could be opened by PCs. Does it download as a ".sav" file? If not, retitling it might help. (That's what I did to open PC files.

[alva]

nope, can't open it.
"not a valid same game" , well, something in that area

I'll try downing it again, see what happens

[Txurce]

Playing out the hand.

Catching up with two wonders

The AI's tag team (Greece, Persia and Zululand) had enough of a research lead that it made sense for me to turn off the research and buy the techs as they were researched. The dye luxuries helped to pay for the ungodly amounts the AI demanded for steam power, medicine, electricity and the scientific method. (I made some money back by selling these techs to the slower AI civs.) I had been building a palace for the TOE, but now just used the GL in 830 for guaranteed success. I traded atomic theory for every tech I didn’t have plus tons of gold, and kept electronics for myself, as the palace build became a Hoover build.

Over the next 15 turns, the Aztecs were swallowed up, I fell less than a turn behind in tech, and found myself with no oil again. On the other hand, Hoover was mine in 990, with Egypt first in size and mfg. goods, in the black despite maxing out on science. (Note to jshelr: having only just traded for industrialization, I finished Hoover before I would have completed very many coal plants.)

Research in the modern era

By 1130, when I entered the modern era, three of my cities had flipped – one a recently captured Persian city, the other two a formerly Greek island city and my saltpeter city far away on the Greek border. Only my pride was affected, as the cities had little value, and I regressed to third in size, although still first in mfg. goods. I had also fallen behind in tech, as Persia, Greece and Zululand traded the last industrial and first modern techs among themselves. (I took advantage of the higher prices for techs by in turn selling them to the Babs and Americans.) And while I had discovered oil on my own territory, I now found myself with no aluminum.

I resorted to my standard space-race strategy, and researched ecology right after computers. I lost the race for the SETI wonder, but researched ecology in 1275. This put me in the driver’s seat for the rest of the game. I traded it in various forms, and received fission, space flight, aluminum, a net 575 gold, and 10 gpt.

I was still down satellites, but I doubted the AI would beeline for space as well as me. The game was playing out as I had expected at this stage. My defense consisted of four infantry, three MI, twenty cavalry, and eight bombers and destroyers – thinner than I preferred, but not unduly worrisome, given my unusually secure borders.

In 1315, I lost the UN by one turn, but researched synthetic fibers, and traded it for satellites, superconductor, spices, 1150 gold, and 150 gpt. I cannot stress enough how much the human player benefits from the AI’s hunger for new tech and the rigidity of its research pattern… combined with the AI’s refusal to sell to itself beneath a certain price. I started building the ship then, with only the laser to research, and launched in 1380. A postmortem revealed that the Greeks had completed (and started) only five of the ten SS parts.

Conclusions

This game had a couple of factors work in my favor. First, I could have lost the GL to any AI civ that focused on it, despite all my efforts. Even bigger was the geographical advantage that allowed me to expand and secure my borders so easily. A third was that only the Aztecs were eliminated, and no one civ pulled away. On the other hand, keeping up on research was tougher than usual, because the AI had almost no wars to distract it.

In the end, I was able to follow my pregame strategy almost to the letter, and win a fairly competitive space race. It came down to maximizing tech with the Great Library, FP, and a happiness wonder in the early part of the game, scrambling to stay close enough to get the TOE in the industrial era, and then taking advantage of the AI’s patterns in the modern era. Spending an unusual amount of time looking for trading opportunities was critical. So was having a worker factory in operation the entire game.

That said, I suffered from low population and culture. I wonder if I should have used my workers to irrigate for a while and knock up my pop, or built granaries ahead of other improvements, rather than later. (I doubt the latter, as I needed all that other infrastructure.) As for culture, I could have built some temples earlier perhaps, and tried for a couple of other wonders, just to build up my rating. It didn’t really matter this time, but in different circumstances those flips could have been crippling.

Interestingly, in this case my builder strategy would have worked even better than my domination strat for a domination win. On the other hand, I still don't know how I could win via domination in a game where the SR is an option.

What is most notable, though, is that this was a deity victory with a builder strategy – just two short defensive wars – and no ancient-era warmongering to expand. As in my domination games, this goes to show that players can win on deity with strategies that are not beyond a beginner to this level.

(For some reason, my .jpg file appears as a download, rather than an image. It's not very revealing - my civ a turn before the end.)

[alva]

nice work indeed
so, on to the next project??
btw: if you do a next project, maybe even keep a closer notebook/diary: sort of like a tutorial/guideline book

Edit: solved

[Txurce]

I'll try to keep a more detailed logbook (or diary) next time, but I'm not sure there's a point when the actual moves aren't that crucial. This game was unusual in that I was able to stick to my pregame strategy throughout, and it all went more or less like clockwork. The only meaningful variable was how I made use of the chokehold, and that broke down to 1) finding it and 2) blocking it with two warriors before any settlers slipped through. I played everyhting else pretty much like everyone else would, I think... which is part of the point I'm making with these games.

[ducki]

Very impressive.

I recently 'graduated' to Warlord and the map generator has been very cruel, so I'm getting frustrated - for example, my latest attempt ended up with me starting on the edge of a desert, 10-15 moves away from a 3-wide chokepoint with Germany and England on the other side, and I had horses, iron, 5 silks, a gem, and 3 gold... but the silks were off in barbarian-land across the desert, and there was not a single river or lake on the whole continent...
which meant I was unable to irrigate anything...
which mean my towns all hit about 3 or 4 citizens and became Zero Growth. Ugh. Painful.


But your game is encouraging. Maybe I'll make it to Deity some day. Right before Civ XXVIII gets released, probably, by Sid's great-great-great grandson.

[Txurce]

Ducki, why don't you build your towns spaced more closely together, so that the pop limit won't matter as much? This will allow you to build your way to the silks, as well as generate shields and gold. The only downside is corruption, but that can be addressed by building the FP sooner (or bouncing the palace, although that's more complicated to do right).

[ducki]

Well, I built at the silks mostly because there's enough desert between there and the nearest town for 4 villages even spaced 3 tiles apart...and it is [u]pure[/b] desert...no water for irrigation, no fishes, no nothing... plus, I wanted the silks to try to trade and catch up in the tech tree. It's just a rotten map, IMO, and until I'm ready to take over some territory past my choke-point, it's a long hard road to get enough settlers built up for that many mostly useless 'bridge towns'.

Maybe I'm just not very good at the game...entirely possible.

[punkbass2000]

I would like to propose that the GL is entirely unnecessary and that the ToE needs to be the penultimate goal.

[Txurce]

Punkbass, you have the floor.