My comment in the game thread (worth every minute!) was rather cynical and sarcastic, as this was one of the shortest games I've ever played - 2320BC!
Techpath was AH->Mining->BW. I figured that since Holkans are resourceless, I could rely on them for barb defense and skip Archery, also without Hunting to start the path to BW isn't much longer. I was on lower barb alert after discovering how close neighbors were, although maybe I should have been more careful after the closest one (Mehmed) built GW at 2880BC. However, I thought I was doing a good job of warrior spawn-busting (can't find a link, but barbs can't appear within the 5x5 square centered on a player or AI unit, even if that unit can't see all the tiles. So it's actually not that hard to mostly block out spawning. Credit DanF at Civfanatics) - only a little land to the north, which was usually filled by some AI's wandering scout, and a barb city to the south, helping out.
One warrior came near:
![[Image: 1.jpg]](http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff82/timmy827/adv%2039/1.jpg)
I was planning on mining the hill 2E of capital, so parked my worker and warrior there, hoping to lure the barb into suicide rather than pillaging - had just gotten BW, so no holkans capable of fighting on level ground yet. Plan works, except that the barb wins at 3.3%. I had built a 2nd worker so this was not quite game over; had to rush another warrior out of the capital. The wounded-but-promoted barb laughs at the innate defensive bonuses and wins again at 3.5% for elimination.
![[Image: 2.jpg]](http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff82/timmy827/adv%2039/2.jpg)
Note Lakamha in the above picture - I couldn't access the combat log after losing, so I WB'd in a 2nd city just to see what the odds were. Then oddly enough, that act reset the random seed and I won the battle. Too bad real RBCiv play can't work like that....
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I had hoped to run a bunch of deity pangaea starts to around 1000BC or so, just to get a handle on balancing the higher barb defense and the need to expand ASAP before the AI grabs it all, but didn't have time. With AI's close, I intentionally went for faster expansion with lighter defense, mostly by building a 2nd worker and intending to turn that into a settler-chop-storm. Lesson learned, although it does rather sting to lose a game to a near-literal one in a thousand RNG results...
I really hope no one else has such a bad outcome, although from how quickly the "game completes" were rolling in before I started I thought we might see a lot of early defeats or retirements. Deity pangaea is always cramped but it seemed this map was more so than average, and while the capital was strong and lots of grassland in vicinity was good, there wasn't a lot of food resources availabe in the expansion areas. I went into WB after losing...I think I was going to get the cows to the NE, banana just east of start, and the fish/ivory to the SW if everything went well for a total of 5 food resources...maybe get the barb city at cows/corn to the south (in my limited experience this is tough, a lot of archers defending means that an AI will surely try to take it before you can assemble enough units, and they are much less likely than on lower diffs to bring force insufficient to win on their 1st try). It looked to be a pretty hard map even considering the player had the advantages of no violent neighbors plus a strong leader/civ. Not to criticize Sullla - Deity is SUPPOSED to be hard, and I'd rather have something on the harder side than a HOF-style start.
Techpath was AH->Mining->BW. I figured that since Holkans are resourceless, I could rely on them for barb defense and skip Archery, also without Hunting to start the path to BW isn't much longer. I was on lower barb alert after discovering how close neighbors were, although maybe I should have been more careful after the closest one (Mehmed) built GW at 2880BC. However, I thought I was doing a good job of warrior spawn-busting (can't find a link, but barbs can't appear within the 5x5 square centered on a player or AI unit, even if that unit can't see all the tiles. So it's actually not that hard to mostly block out spawning. Credit DanF at Civfanatics) - only a little land to the north, which was usually filled by some AI's wandering scout, and a barb city to the south, helping out.
One warrior came near:
I was planning on mining the hill 2E of capital, so parked my worker and warrior there, hoping to lure the barb into suicide rather than pillaging - had just gotten BW, so no holkans capable of fighting on level ground yet. Plan works, except that the barb wins at 3.3%. I had built a 2nd worker so this was not quite game over; had to rush another warrior out of the capital. The wounded-but-promoted barb laughs at the innate defensive bonuses and wins again at 3.5% for elimination.
Note Lakamha in the above picture - I couldn't access the combat log after losing, so I WB'd in a 2nd city just to see what the odds were. Then oddly enough, that act reset the random seed and I won the battle. Too bad real RBCiv play can't work like that....
----
I had hoped to run a bunch of deity pangaea starts to around 1000BC or so, just to get a handle on balancing the higher barb defense and the need to expand ASAP before the AI grabs it all, but didn't have time. With AI's close, I intentionally went for faster expansion with lighter defense, mostly by building a 2nd worker and intending to turn that into a settler-chop-storm. Lesson learned, although it does rather sting to lose a game to a near-literal one in a thousand RNG results...
I really hope no one else has such a bad outcome, although from how quickly the "game completes" were rolling in before I started I thought we might see a lot of early defeats or retirements. Deity pangaea is always cramped but it seemed this map was more so than average, and while the capital was strong and lots of grassland in vicinity was good, there wasn't a lot of food resources availabe in the expansion areas. I went into WB after losing...I think I was going to get the cows to the NE, banana just east of start, and the fish/ivory to the SW if everything went well for a total of 5 food resources...maybe get the barb city at cows/corn to the south (in my limited experience this is tough, a lot of archers defending means that an AI will surely try to take it before you can assemble enough units, and they are much less likely than on lower diffs to bring force insufficient to win on their 1st try). It looked to be a pretty hard map even considering the player had the advantages of no violent neighbors plus a strong leader/civ. Not to criticize Sullla - Deity is SUPPOSED to be hard, and I'd rather have something on the harder side than a HOF-style start.
That's some really nasty luck. You could have tried again for a shadow game, but I can understand why you wouldn't want to make the effort. 
