Epic 4

As this is my first attempt at Deity I decide to use Sirian’s start. the goal is simply to survive, and this would be a major achievement. In fact surviving into the AD years would be an achievement.

First Thoughts

Hmm, 2 warriors and Rome has grown to size 2….I suspect that one isn’t going to be enough to survive. So I decide I will build units until I reach the health and happiness limits. I decide to send the warrior home and leave culture to do my exploring for me. The first barbs appear in 3400 bc, but they are only warriors.

I see what Sirian means when he says raging barbs….




I suspect things are only going to get worse.

The first 2 barbs attack and lose, so I’m halfway there towards a promotion. Another warrior joins the army in 3310 bc, and now I set Rome to build an Archer. By 3280 bc the first wave of barbs is over and I haven’t suffered a loss. But what little rest they get is soon over and the warriors keep coming.

In 2980 bc my first archer arrives, and I start on another one. He soon the gains his first promotion, and I chose hills defence – he can then guard the sheep when/if I get a worker out. It turns out he has 2 promotions, so I go to hills defence 2. in the meantime the barb warriors continue to give him experience.

Bronze working comes in and I start on a worker as I now feel I have enough units. After animal husbandry comes in I decide on Iron working as the copper looks to be too far away for now, and I hope for iron next to Rome.

Once the worker is built I resumed archers and sent the worker (protected of course) out to get the bacon. In the meantime the first archer barbarian appears and the pasture finally gets built , the worker will now move to the other hill and build a mine (protected of course) – hopefully I’ll pop some iron or copper.

In 1870 BC I lost my first unit – a warrior who was guarding the worker, but I also had an archer guarding him as well so I don’t lose the worker. I now felt confident enough to start a barracks.

I entered the classical era in 1390BC – Iron is nearer to me than copper, but I’ll still need a new city to claim it. First however I thought I needed some commerce to fund this new city so I set on the path to pottery

Oh dear….




The first axe barb arrived in 910BC, I needed to step up production of units and go claim the iron ASAP. In the meantime Confucianism was FIDL, and my research rate went down to 40% research due to unit costs now. I started the settler in 715 BC but then noticed…



Doh!

I guess revealing this at this late stage now shows the importance of early exploring. However I hadn’t yet built the settler so I could just re-arrange my plans. In 500BC antium was founded one tile above the copper

Rome then celebrated making it into the AD years.I MADE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

4000 years old, only another 2k to go.

In 260 AD I suffered a major loss with 4 archers and 2 workers lost in a turn. But on the plus side that reduced unit cost, and I could increase research towards longbows and the new security that would bring.

In 830 ad – Islam was FIDL, I hadn’t even researched monarchy yet…

In 1030 AD the axemen commeth…



It was this onslaught that finished me off, they pillaged everything and killed my units. I was just hanging on when the deadline came around.

Still, 5000 years of survival on deity is my best yet .

A very quick report that I'll flesh out later.. hopefully

Victory in 2089 when I finally cultured the needed tiles from Qin. Ghandi was no more in ~2000 and had been down to 1CC for quite some time since 1930s. I could have won this over 100 years earlier but I didn't want to attack Qin as he had been my bestest buddy and I wanted to do a detailed study on culture. I sat at 67% for over 50 years before I could swine the final 1% (~18 tiles) from Qin.

I decided on the road less traveled and grabbed Mystisism and Poly first before the indicated hunting and archery. This gave me Hinduism which eventually spread throughout the world except for Izzy and Louis. The intelligence gained was huge allowing me to basically pick Ghandi's pocket since I knew where all his units were.

I spent over 50k bribing Qin NOT to attack Ghandi. Every 10 turns he would try to help me out but since Ghandi had no coal, Oil or Uranium that fight would have been over too quickly and I would have no chance for the culture win.

I popped ~5 techs from huts including Monarchy in ~600bc, Machinery, Animal Husbandry, Drama and Metal casting. I tried to maximise this and it worked out well.

Met Ghandi and Qin quite late (after 1300AD) and never had a chance to trade techs till refrig and medicine. Eventually I built the Internet and caught up completely. I was never out of it though as I had rifles by infantry and infantry/arty by the time they had Mechs.

Getting out researched by the barbs was annoying mind you. They showed rifles in 1600AD against me and it was a scramble to get grens up.

Great game and thanks for the chance to play.

Gotag

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With an unfinished game (due to starting too late) up to 1840AD, I will anyway post (probably tonight) an short report just to compare and discuss the opening moves since I might have done some highly unconventionnal move by settling (on purpose) on the Gold...

Barbarians had been at most just a small nuissance, mainly when they appeared with a new stronger unit for the first time (axe, then mace, then grenadier) but were under controle.

Stopped in 1840AD, when starting to be able to trade techs again with Spain. Gandhi being probably already in futur tech with all the wonders.

More to come later.

Jabah

edit - Reading Sirian's shadow, I realized that founding on the Gold was also the 'easy save' choice... scratch the unconventionnal in the first part

What a great game that was ... here is my report.

Summary - killed off by Qin in 2286.

I decided to actually put up a website. Enjoy:

http://uberfish.atspace.com/

Hi,

I was unable to finish Epic 4 unfortunately, which is a real shame as it was a very nice and fun scenario! I played until the 19th century, and you can read my mini-report here.

-Kylearan

This is the first time I played Deity, and the first time I played raging barbarians, so I had no idea what to expect. However, I feel I’ve done well up to 2050, when I stopped playing. I was placed second at the time, behind Gandhi, had research everything up to Future Tech 2, and even got 2 wonders: Colossus and Internet.





The fight against the barbarians was balanced on a knife edge for most of the game. At the start I weaved my worker through advancing Barbs, taking units out onto forested hills to try and stop them before reaching my lands, sometimes having no option but to fall back, take a gamble or two, and rebuild an improvement or two. I took mostly Extra First Strikes for my Archers, to be able to use them in open play too. Fighting Barbs totally dominated the game up to about 1700AD, after the completion of two great wars in which Gandhi and I wiped them from the continent.



The year 410AD: I was still fighting waves and waves of Barbs (often coming in crippling groups), but had managed to expand a little, having 6 cities of sizes 7, 5, 5, 3, 2, 2. I run science at 30% or 40% for most of the game, up until about 1700AD, when it started to increase gradually up to alternating 90% and 100% for the last 60 turns. My research was semi-non-existent until very late in the game, taking about 40 turns per Tech. I did, however, not heed the warnings and sent my opening warrior out in a circle around Rome to get some goody huts, and I think I got three Techs early on from huts, and another one from taking defended huts. I got a few Great Merchants throughout the game, with two Great Scientists much later on used for Academies. Also, I got Calendar only very late. I didn’t want to obsolete Obelisks, since I was using them in all new cities do get my borders expanded as quickly as possible, to use resources and increase sight. This could have been a mistake, since Rome could use those plantation to good effect. I also got Monarchy quite late, for the Wineries.



While I was on Praetorians and Barb on Swordsmen (around 1200AD), I decided to build a shipload (actually I never used ships, except fishing boats and an exploring transport right at the end) of Axes, Praetorians and Catapults to try and take out some of the Barb cities that was churning out units like crazy. I had to attack on three fronts, but I started on the South Eastern side. I thought if I could take out those tree cities, the entire eastern side of the continent would be safe.

Curious by the title? I bet!
Ok here are a few ways I see to get access to the northern locked-away continent and the precious religions it holds.
Once you have a single city up there, you have an airport there ... lifting in the big guns ... you get the idea...

1.) Getting promotions is not a problem in this game so promote your units up to Guerilla III (gunpowder and melee only). Guerilla III has the nice side effect that units can enter mountain tiles ... next to useless on normal games. So just invade Spain or France with them.
((Do I have to add a winking smiley here??)) Just to be save -

2.) In the late game: Explode a nuke or use a spy to deliberately melt down a nuclear plant to trigger global warming. Now wait with your large invasion fleets next to the icebergs blocking the northern continent until the right iceberg tile melts due to global warming. And there you go.
((Do I have to add a winking smiley here??)) Just to be
save - Plus: I think that melting icebergs is a nice concept.

3.1.) There are two spots near France where units can be unloaded although they cannot enter the land behind. In the early game, if the spot is not taken over by French culture yet, found a city their and try flipping a city on the other side. That will be next to impossible I think, because i) by the time Rome can found cities across the oceans, France will be quite developed culture wise.
ii) flipping a city will need amazing culture. But where to get it?

3.2) Just unload a settling party on these spots, but do not found city there. If the spots are already taken over by French culture you must have an open borders agreement of course to enter the beach. Now close that border and see where the settling party gets teleported. If the little one-tile islands inside the mountain keep sea are not all under cultural control, the computer might teleport your settler there rather than back to the Roman continent. (Depends on the distance I think)
There is another option here. Have open borders also with Spain. Close borders with France, hope the units get transported into Spain, move the units up to the northern coast of Spain and then close borders with Spain. The distance to the northern one-tile islands should be rather short now.
(I actually tried this method, but it crossed my mind to late into the game. By then I could not get an open border agreement with Spain, despite gifting lots of tech.) Also I find this way to be a bit dodgy and exploitive, but it would have been a nice coup.

4.) Nuke the hell out of them and hope they offer a city for peace. Now I do not know if that actually works, since none of these cities would be under some Roman cultural pressure.

To keep it simple: Heres another unfinished game by Qwack which couldnt be finished because it took so much time .

Will I ever complete one of these epics? Only time will tell... One thing to keep in mind, I wrote the first 2 parts of my report a few weeks ago when I was expecting to finsih it. YOu will notice the level of detail drop off from about 2800 BC because I wrote that part right now 8)
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Report:

The basic settings which should be noted are the difficulty, the world size, and the variant rules. They are Deity, large map and raging barbarians. I think just from those 3 settings you will have a pretty good feeling of what this game will be like. A true grind and a true test for even the top civ4 player. Here’s the civilization we will be playing as in this game.



I haven’t played JC much at all so far, but as far as I can tell, he seems to be like a very strong leader for a high difficulty game like this. Expansive and Organized are probably 2 of the traits which are extremely weak at the low difficulty levels, but gradually improve and can be called 2 of the best at the higher difficulty levels. The biggest strength of Julius Caesar however, lies in its overpowered unique unit. The praetorian is basically a swordsman with 25% more power. It has a huge lifespan, and will probably be a strong unit until Maceman or Crossbows start showing up, which is usually around the same time. And here is the starting position:





According to Sirian, the first barbarian units would start showing up in 3400 BC. This is an extremely early date, and so I seriously thought over my starting strategy here if I was to ensure survival in the early game. There were 3 options in my mind as far as what to do at the start of this game.

Option 1: Move the settler to the gold hill tile and settle on top of it. The benefit of this option is that it yields us a HUGE 2,2,2 tile right from the start of the game, and will give all our stationed units the +25% bonus. It would also move us into position to grab those rice into our capital. It would also eventually give archers that strong +50% bonus as well. The disadvantage was that we would lose our best tile, and possibly the one tile which can help us get our research up and hopefully get somewhat caught up with the AI’s.
Option 2: Move the settler to the pig’s hill tile and settle on top of it. The benefit of this option is that it gives us the defensive bonuses again, but we would lose the important Pigs tile. I eventually eliminated this option because when I was making my game plan, I had thought that moving to the pigs hill tile would give us 3 food. I eventually ended up testing this in worldbuilder and it turned out that it actually didn’t give 1 extra food.
Option 3: Probably the vanilla move for most games, settle on spot. The basic advantages of this move are that it won’t cost us a turn at the start of the game. We have protection from the river from 3 sides, and we hold on to the 2 strong gold and pigs resources.

Eventually, I ended up going with option 1. I simply could not pass up on the defensive bonus the hills provide after reading all those warnings Sirian posted . I felt this game will rely on maximizing everything you can with the very little you will have. Moving to the hills gold tile will work in good synergy with a beeline to archery. It would cut down our research time to archery by a few turns with the 1 extra gold, as well as helping build early army with the 1 extra production. The early archers would get the hills bonus to beat off most barbarins. This seemed like a good gameplan to me on paper, but obviously, being good on paper doesn’t mean being good in practice.



Like I promised, I ended up moving my settler to the gold hills tile. It will be interesting to see how many others actually end up making this move. I would also be interested in whether or not Sirian made this move in the Start file with help. The first thing ill do when this game is over is open up that start file with help to see what exactly Sirian did :P.



And ofcourse, Rome was founded in 3970 BC. I immediately started the Capital on a warrior. Most likely, 99% of the people who participate will go warrior first :P. and if someone can actually survive without going warrior first… hats off to them. I actually maximized growth at the start however, instead of going after production. My belief was that we want as little warriors and as much growth as possible before archery came in. I pretty much thought 3-4 warriors would be enough to hold up all the barbarians until archers show up. In 3790, we get some cottage luck. A scout is popped from a hut. This is absolutely huge because I wasn’t going to use this scout for scouting, but instead for fog-busting and reducing the barbarians.



In 3730, the borders of Rome expand, and the hut which was 2E of our capital is popped by the expansion. We get 39 gold. It might not sound like much but gold will be useful to run 100% research here on Deity level. Especially with the huge penalties and upkeep costs the human has to deal with. Hunting comes in 3700 BC, and I automatically set research onto Archery. Buddhism is FIADL in 3670. Wow that early. A couple of turns go on quietly, my Scout is in fogbusting position… and then… it happens. The Barbarians are coming. O_O



Instead of simply positioning all my troops in my city and fortifying them, I was sending them out to hills or forest-hills to bust the fog. And this turns out to be very useful, because one of my warriors finds an important hut in this game. Here’s what I’m talking about.



And this is what it ends up giving me:



This is huge, not only is this 1 more unit for defensive purposes and for fighting the barbs, but its one more unit for fog-busting and preventing barbarians from spawning. Good stuff. Like expected, more barbarians start showing up in 3370. Archery also comes in the same turn, and I switch the capital to an archer pretty much right away. There was a big decision here however. Whether I would start my worker after I have 2 archers, or whether I would risk it with only 1 archer. I eventually ended up choosing to build 2 archers before a worker primarily because this matched up better in terms of having another growth before a worker, and it also meant our first archer would be out sooner. Also, if a lot more barbarians start showing up, the worker will be doing nothing anyways, so I decided to play it safe.

My tech path was pretty much set-up here already. I had thought this over about 10 times before the game and after Archery I was going after Bronze Working. I felt we would have copper in our capital, and even if we didn’t, it should be somewhere nearby. I know this game can’t be so hard that we don’t even have a metal near our capital somewhere… Or could it?? :P

Check out this screenshot in 3310 BC. Fog-Buster, its time to run :D.



Also look at this one. Holy crap. Good thing that archer will be done soon… Talk about being squished.

Used Sirian's helpful start due to my lack of Deity experience.

Completed Warrior then moved to Archer / Archer / Worker / Archer / Archer / Settler / Archer / Barracks / Archer / Archer / Praetorian

Used existing exploring Warrior to scout a little more before returning to help defend city

Went from Archery -> Bronze Working -> Iron Working for fastest route to Praetorians then onto The Wheel to link up resources / cities

Fought off the first few waves of Barbarians with minimal losses and then saw Iron revealed to the North West on discovery of Iron Working.

Sent out 2 Archers, a Warrior-Medic and a Settler to found Antium on the Iron resource. Manage to dodge most attacks en-route but new city comes under sustained attack. At one point defence is down to a wounded archer and just hanging on before reinforcements arrive. Think I lost 2 Archers and a Warrior on holding it. Production of Praetorian was started as first priority.

Worker initially mined plains hill next to Rome for additional production. Sat hills 2 archer on it for defence but most attacks focused on cities.
Once Antium founded and defended against initial waves, started building road from Rome to Antium to link up Iron and allow Rome to build Praetorians. Need them urgently before Barb Axes start appearing.
Managed to build most of it with protection of just one Warrior but one section kept being attacked for pillaging and cost me an archer keeping it open.

Finally managed to link iron to Rome in 1000BC & start its first Praetorian. Antium completes first Praeorian in 925BC and it went into immediate action.

Science track after Wheel went to Animal Husbandry then Agriculture.

Spot first Barb Axe north of Antium in 805BC. A quick chop and whip help bump out a couple more Praetorians allowing me to fight off the first wave of Axes.

Loose a Praetorian against the odds to a Barb Axe in 610BC but defensive situation now stable and Rome starts another worker in 550BC. Pottery is the research target (@50%) to get some money to pay the troops.

First Barb Sword sighted incoming from NW in 280BC. Third city founded in 235BC as start of a ring pattern to keep Barbs away from the 'core' developing areas.