[SPOILERS] Rusten enters uncharted waters

[Rusten]

Depends on how close they are, I may not want to settle too far inland, but if you limit yourself to your starting continent you're not winning this game. It's a snaky continents B&S -- that means island hopping. Back it up by force if necessary and make other allies. I can't let anyone settle a fantastic city within 5 tiles of my starting city -- no matter how they feel about it. That would just be poor play.

Have to step on somebody's toes at some point, you just want to make the number of people you annoy as low as possible until you can deal with it. If we assume that there's a single opponent on Pig Island then I'll likely aim to settle there and then eliminate said civ with my UU. Make friends with whoever is on my starting continent instead by not settling past the pig+fish choke point. But I'm not ready to sprawl everywhere at this stage obviously -- need to pick battles and grievances with care. One natural enemy is not the end of the world.

[darrelljs]

Ok, that makes total sense.

Darrell

[Rusten]

Nobody's founded a religion yet, which means that both Buddhism and Hinduism are likely to be available by the time I select my tech. I'm trying to think which one everyone else would choose to up my chances, and the obvious answer is that I should go meditation. I'm the only spiritual leader which means I'm the only one with cheap temples which is the main draw over polytheism. Polytheism, OTOH, leads to monotheism so it's not a "dead" tech to the same extent. It's even required for literature, unless something has changed in the mod.

The bigger benefit of polytheism for me is that I can quickly go to monotheism if I miss on the first attempt, but considering how early I'm teching meditation (before fishing, agriculture, pottery) I really should be the one to claim the religion. T34 is very early and should beat anyone who hasn't done a straight beeline. I want meditation anyway so it's not 140 beakers lost which you could argue it is for other civs/leaders, and with 2x gold and other commerce all these early techs are easy to get.

[Rusten]

The greatest city that ever was! Just don't tell them they're about to be enslaved. 




Scouting synopsis:

[Rusten]

BW is in and there's no copper to speed up early production. Feeling too lazy to produce a screenshot right now, but just insert a copper resource on the plains flatland 1N of the fish in the above screenshot. It's the only visible source. Even more of a reason to make a long dash there for city #4. May insert archery as it's just a 2-turn tech and an easy 1-pop whip for escort. Going all the way there with just warriors is a little risky, it depends on who's nearby and how close they are.

It does make me more optimistic about settling more of the inland though, because the balancing instructions were to make sure everyone their own source of metal IIRC. I believe the words were something along the lines of the script making sure it's within a certain distance of civs but you'd have to manually check to see if it's actually located in a realistic position for said civ. It's now more unlikely that a rival civ will settle the spot in the near future.

[Rusten]

T23 scouting synopsis: 






23 turns in and still no sign of other players. The map has gotten spicy, but my general situation is still rather bland.
Leviathan has completed its 2nd worker and they're about to team up to chop out my settler before moving towards sheep+gold while roading.

[Rusten]

I drew up some long term plans and there are things about The Oracle that I really dislike.

-If I want to plan around it in a big game I need to build it very early, and that means instead of a settler+worker just after granaries are in. This is a crucial time for development and it will set me back. I want to grow and whip, not run a bunch of plains hill mines and making a wonder. If I could chop most of the hammers it would be a different story, but I only have 3 forests available. Early scouting suggests space to fill too. This turn I even ran into a lion from the north, which suggests no civ up there (more likely to be coast).

-Multiple gold tiles means that I will sprint through the tech tree with or without The Oracle. Its value is greatly reduced with such a quick early tech pace. If I try to build it and it delays the closest gold city for 15 turns, then what's the point? I'll hardly gain anything. The bottleneck is usually researching everything in time, and it's great for those starts with 0 commerce and lots of forest, but it doesn't do much for me here.

I may just build an early temple and run a priest for GPP instead. It's too slow for a theology bulb, but it will enable my shrine at a reasonable time. A wonder like The Hanging Gardens might be better. It will provide engineer GPP and if it's the only wonder I aim for I should have a lot of cities to go with it. A fancy play would be HG --> forge (engineer) in HG city --> bulb philosophy with scientists (pacifism) --> bulb machinery/engineering with GE --> kill with UU. The 3rd GP would then be a priest for the shrine or a theology bulb for theocracy. Seems pretty good to me.

I've mentioned The Great Lighthouse too, and I may go for that instead, but I imagine the competition will be fierce as I have above average land tiles. Hoping Dark Savant will build early Oracle --> take MC --> deny colossus from the FIN leaders. I'm selfishly relying on him to do it for me.

A fancy play would be HG --> forge (engineer) in HG city --> bulb philosophy with scientists (pacifism) --> bulb machinery/engineering with GE --> kill with UU.

Wouldn't be bad to start an early golden age either. Definitely an option over bulbing philosophy. HG will boost population to make it more worthwhile and I could keep OR and get forges everywhere to prepare for war and then go theocracy. With spiritual I don't need to save my golden ages for civic swaps. It could provide the edge I need to roll over someone. I'm liking this more and more, The Oracle is for patzers.

[darrelljs]

I would think no nearby neighbors makes this more of an SP game which favors strong Deity players .

Darrell

[Rusten]

I would think no nearby neighbors makes this more of an SP game which favors strong Deity players .

Darrell

That's an interesting point to discuss.

Firstly, I agree that this should be good for me as empire management, efficiency and long term planning are probably my biggest strengths, but what defines a deity player, really? I'm curious to hear your opinion.

My thoughts: There are a bunch of "deity players" that I find very unimpressive and groan whenever I see them playing or explaining other civ related things. A lot of beating deity is knowing the AIs and cheesing the same tech path every single game (for BtS: Bulb
towards liberalism while trading for lower half --> cuirassiers). You don't need to understand or be good at civ4 to do this and win deity games. I've never identified myself as a deity player and put little stock in it as an achievement personally. There are many impressive deity players too, but for me they are just impressive players that happen to sometimes play deity level SP. Their non-deity games are usually more impressive and interesting.

Most of what I've learned I got through playing succession games with self-imposed variants. Special thanks to Ungy for his SG series -- if you're still around please say hi.  Having games where you either can't whip, can't cottage, can't run specialists and so on helps your overall understanding and knowing of what's good or not so much more than mindlessly spamming deity games. That's why a lot of "deity players" fail in MP or don't find it enjoyable, because they are just good deity players and not good civ players.

[Rusten]

Today was the turn to decide between polytheism and meditation. I went back to favouring polytheism for a few reasons.

1) I have enough early happy to the point where I don't see myself building very early temples. Meditation can be researched after writing for instance and I won't feel a difference.
2) I've got enough science to research monotheism before writing. Getting the OR bonus on a few libraries would be lovely.
3) While I find meditation less risky over polytheism for the first religion I hated the idea of a situation where I'm not first to meditation and then have to truck through polytheism for nothing afterwards to get to monotheism. Going poly first should be safer to "guarantee" a religion, although it might not be Hinduism. I don't see how anyone can beat me to monotheism given my early setup and the fact that I can delay AH and writing without trouble.

Today's turn also confirmed that there's water to the north which is very welcome. Found yet another gold tile too. I think that's 5 now -- starting to worry about inflation and lower yields.