We, the inumerable hordes of RBCiv, will defeat diety

[Drasca]

Myself, Morred, Altas, Maniac Marshall, Dwip, and Snaproll have gotten to 1070 AD in a Diety game today. We will continue and complete it come january. Stay tuned, for Diety will be conquered!

Oh, and some of us have screen shots. Those are forthcoming as well.

[Dwip]

With a nod towards Morred's post here, and Snaproll's post here.

To fill you all in, the map is...actually I forgot the map. Temperate snaky continents archipeligo? Standard?

Players are:

Atlas - Elizabeth (England)

Drasca - Catherine (Russia)

Dwip - Kublai Khan (Mongolia)

Maniac Marshall - Qin Shi Huang (China)

Morred - Gandhi (India)

Snaproll - Huanya Cupac (Inca)

Bad Guys are:

Mansa Musa - The Great Satan

Napoleon - The Lesser Satan

Julius Caesar - Just Kind of There, Really

Plan was for Maniac and Morred to go builder, the rest of us to go fight people and take their stuff. This is why the game gave Atlas and I stone, stuck Morred on a barbarian-filled iceball of a continent, Maniac on a not-quite-as-bad-but-still-not-fantastic piece of land, and then gave me of all people Hinduism.

Morred covered the early game well, so let me just add a few notes.

1. We got Stonehenge, then lost Oracle (and an early trip to Metal Casting and Colossus) by 2 turns. Lost Pyramids by 16. We haven't seen a wonder since, though Atlas popped two Engineers, and I got a third. We bought Machinery with Atlas' two I think.

2. My Hindus utterly refused to spread to anyone, despite world trade routes, for a LONG time. Then they finally did, and almost everyone got it, whereupon Maniac sent missionaries to lots of cities, and sent me a Prophet for the holy building. I gotta say, one of the best things about playing coop like this is the teamwork, and I think ours was pretty good.

3. Through use of the holy building, I was able to run a 5CC and about 70% science regularly, which was far higher than anyone else (Maniac or Atlas had something like 40%, and the military heavy people had little or nothing). This is due more or less entirely to that business with starting civics costing upkeep, we think. I have absolutely no idea how anybody thought the original way was at all broken, but I can't say as how I was having huge issues with zooming through the early game. This way? It sucks. It sucks a lot.

4. It was eventually decided that we had to take down one of the AIs. Originally it was going to be Caesar, but then we took a look at Mansa, noted his ludicrous point lead on us (twice as much as any two of us), and decided on him. Unfortunately for Napoleon, Tours was between us and Mansa, and looked like a great spot to take, so we went ahead and geared up to take it down. Snaproll got the nod to do the beating, and Maniac built him a whole bunch of catapults. I did the same thing on a much lesser scale for Drasca and Atlas in the west (I'm pretty sure I'm the only one of us with a majority of their cities fully developed).

The results? Well:



Nappy has 3 longbows and a pike, Snaproll has about 6 catapults and as many horse archers and swords. Also note Mansa's RIFLE up in the NE corner.

...Yeah. I hate Mansa.

So let's talk about combat here for a sec. Bombing defenses went ok. But combat in this new patch? Yeah, I dunno. None of us were really happy with what happened. Snaproll has the numbers, but more or less all 6 of those cats suicided on the bows, dropping everyone in the city down to 1.5-3 health, then the sword went in and died to something, dropping it down a bunch (.4 IIRC), then a bunch of Horse Archers suicided stuff down to 0.x health numbers before we finally won. It was pretty ludicrous.



Meanwhile, in the south, Morred's new AI self was getting adventuresome...



Considering how badly Morred was getting dominated by barbarians early on, we thought that was pretty amusing. After razing the city, AIMorred went on to fight some skirmishes with Visigoth, the City State of the Barbarian Overlord, which is like size 7, walled, and improved.

Drasca, Atlas, and I, meanwhile, were ramping up to take down some of Nappy's core, here at Rheims:





Note Atlas' big stack of guys, Drasca's galleys (with Maniac's sword aboard), and a couple of my catapults. We haven't quite got to that fight yet. It's coming.

And here's the world as we left it in 1070 AD:



The AI obviously didn't agree with Morred's dotmap.

You can also see how bad my 5 cities and 14 unit army are hurting me, too.

Also Drasca's western continent, full of ex-barbarian cities he conquered with his giant horde of axes.

We're getting there. Just need to deal with Mansa. Somehow.

[Morred]

Nice work guys! Hopefully I can kick in some more hours sometime after boxing day, my AI version has done some good work with my area, but as you said, didn't quite agree with my dotmap

Now let's hand down some asswhippage on the AI!

[Speaker]

This game should be in the main forum. This sub-forum was created only for the reporting of competition games.

Now go kick some Deity ass!

[Drasca]

Atlas - Elizabeth (England)

Drasca - Catherine (Russia)

I was able to run a 5CC and about 70% science regularly, which was far higher than anyone else (Maniac or Atlas had something like 40%, and the military heavy people had little or nothing

I made Atlas choose Lizzy over Victoria for purely shallow reasons, as I find Lizzy much more pleasing to the eye. Since Atlas had the foresight to take advantage of the Philosophical trait with popping 2 engineers which gives us a wonderful step up into machiner, I don't feel so bad, and I feel proud to play alongside Atlas at the same time.

This military person, this creative/financial military Catherine worked the seas and eventually ran cottages and lots of Dyes. I chose Cathy for her ability to quickly expand, and be able to pay for that expansion. I had expected theatres earlier than this for the happiness bonus (which is crucial in Diety), but because she is financial I was able to to run fairly high science, and save a few pennies but MM'ed the % when additional science would not gain us turn from research.

Atlas too ran a Financial Civ, so ponying up for maintence and research doesn't seem so bad. Looking at my screenshots, I was still running 40% research by the end, but I was running anywhere from 60-80%, depending on what would save me money without reducing actual tech turn rate.

Drasca, Atlas, and I, meanwhile, were ramping up to take down some of Nappy's core, here at Rheims:

Napster dropped a lot in score when he lost Tours. I figure he'll sue for peace soon enough. What we really need from him is a path towards Mansa Musa.

Also Drasca's western continent, full of ex-barbarian cities he conquered with his giant horde of axes. We're getting there. Just need to deal with Mansa. Somehow.

How could I not? Just look at my starting position:



[size=4]Four food resources within city radius, and three lakes with +3 food each when lighthouse is whipped up. Blue dot or circle is where I actually started. If I had known earlier about corn to the west, I would've settled one tile further west, and given Maniac more room to build the city east of me. Plus, he didn't build the settler which made the city. I built it for him when I saw his culture had expanded over that water channel seperating us.

Red Circles are sugar resources. I got an extra food and shield to play with setting on top of the sugar. Unlike Sirian's house of straw, this Russian capital made of snow cones was far sturdier. Corn, and two clam resources. This is the ideal situation for whipping. I was given no less than a... let's see, 3 population working the resources x 5 food each = 15 minus 6. NINE! 9 food surplus. After whipping a granary, population points only took 2-4 turns each. Sirian only recommends 5+, this is 9+ with options to expand well into uber food. Like the previous MP Diety attempt, I went nuts on the whip, and additional :mad: unhappy population :mad: was a good thing with all that extra food I was carrying around. I had little choice about the matter too, as you can see there virtually NO shield production in that city radii. 5 Hammers, tops? ... That's not good, especially not for capital beuracracy. Being a financial civ however means Beauracracy is not my ideal civic, but Free speech with +2 Commerce from towns is. I might even squeeze out some production from those towns with Universal sufferage, if we ever get that far. Let's see... from the looks of things, I'll have a size 26-27 city if I work every tile. 6-7 specialists? You betcha.

Back to whipping though, how could I not whip up a dozen axemen? Damn the :mad: faces, I have so much food and population to abuse (just like my Civ leader namesake), I'll forge an army out of the blood of my people, and they'll continue flocking to my capital endlessly with that food supply--and in spite of so much hate. Normally, you'd see a 1:1 ratio of unworked tiles and :mad: unhappy faces, but my city grew so large... the :mad: could not keep up with the general populace.

I lost two axemen in a gamble against the first barb city...



The one shown here next to the dyes. The barb city had 6 archers, 4 of which decided to suicide themselves against my utterly HUGE axemen hoard in stacks of 5, 3 and 2 (no iron at the time). Barbarian assimilation seems to be my specialty... of course, I had no clue what sort of massive invasion armies both Atlas and Snaproll had planned. Still, it was the only action of the time, trumping my fellow warrior civs into feeling almost like a peaceful pair of khans. Almost, but that's enough to gear them up for taking down mansa!

I have a feeling we'll be needing at least 30 catapults for mansa.[/size]