I'm especially interested in conquest or domination wins, but any win will do (just to show how people play differently)

So I'll start: Shi Xie, completely peaceful monarch cultural win except for the invasion of the barbarian Meng Huo. Only wonder built: Place of Honor.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=205347&stc=1&d=1235894568

This is a Diplo Victory with Cao Cao. You can see that I have just entered the lands of Meng Huo. There was only him and Sun Ce who was pleased with me so I felt unwilling to go fight him (I am a little soft hearted ;) ). Also I was a little bored and wanted to end the game rather than abandon it.

Game stats: 51_51 Map - Monarch - Epic speed

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=205430&stc=1&d=1235921209

@AP

I would love to see a thread for you discussing how you plan for a cultural vic. with HoTK. Techs - Buildings - Managing Diplomacy, etc.

wow great job achieving those victories guys. I don't know about you but I would have been extremely bored by the end of both of those.....

1 waiting forever to get to legendary culture and another with nearly the whole world as your vassal, 3000+ points ahead of the closest rival.

I usually get bored if I even get to first place, cause by then the AI's can't stop me. I have a prince/epic Zhang Yang game I'll post up here within a few days. Currently I'm tearing Cao Cao apart, I've already stolen the emperor and made 3 civs capitulate to me :) Also I'm closest to cultural victory if indeed my progress stagnates so I have a way to end it, but I think I'll be able to get conquest if I really push it.

Either way nice to see those ;)

Could have been conquest if not for me conquering Liu Biao to the last city before he capitulated. Such folly...
Built or conquered every wonder except the Li Cao Canal (very useless wonder IMHO since running Taoism will essentially give you no unhealthiness), Wu Wei and Cheng Du (both of which were my vassals).
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=205512&stc=1&d=1235945587
Very interestingly, in the small map, it appears that the holy city for Religion and the one for Guangling Melody (Hiding-in-distant-lands-ism) will be randomly assigned. It happened that Liu Yao just got it before I conquered him.:lol:
Just some screenies showing the ongoing war against my last 2 opponents:


http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=205513&stc=1&d=1235945587
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=205514&stc=1&d=1235945587

About cultural victory, see my tech list from the strategy thread. It's basically trade like mad for techs you couldn't possibly use (like military techs) and gunning for economic and cultural techs even while you're running 10% culture as soon as blades come online. Switching belief will also help (Division is the worst). Befriend the closest giant (for Shi Xie it was Sun Ce) and Cao Cao if possible. Even though the cities that have more culture initially will not be the best 3 cities. For example, I switched early on from He Pu and Zhu Ya to Nan Hai and Yu Lin, the former because it has an early Ancient Compass and trade is much better, the latter because of production. Mountains=bad for eventual growth.

yea about the techs. Its fairly easy to determine which techs will be good to trade. Just look at the tech diffusion for each tech... techs that have already diffused a bunch to you will not be as valuable to trade, since a bunch of civs already have it.... Like AP said, it usually ends up with you researching techs you couldn't possibly want or need, but then you trade them and get the stuff that you really want. In my current Zhang Yang game, once I even got one of those techs that nobody else had, I traded it to 4 different nations, and ended up with 5 new techs in 1 turn! on epic!!!! It makes a huge difference.

One more Diplo Victory. This time with Liu Bei. Once again there is only Meng Huo and Sun Ce (All others are dead or my vassals). I can't call this a real Diplo Victory as most leaders wouldn't vote for me if not my vassals. It wasn't by any means as easy as it was with Cao Cao. With Cao Cao it is a walk in the garden starting with the first turn. Liu Bei still falls on the easy side of the list. He starts at war which he has the means to win. After that he would need to act boldly in a couple of occasions. Most importantly he should kill Cao Cao early for he will only grow stronger. After that it is basically an easy game (build-up for some time then pick enemies and go get them).

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=205596&stc=1&d=1236025187

Small map, monarch, normal speed. Very patiently ran Indifference until I got Unification, then spread it to all cities. Cao Cao was uncharacteristically weak, didn't even conquer Luoyang or any Lu Bu cities until he got them from Liu Bei. I reinstalled the emperor in his rightful place Luoyang (although some would say Chang An is more appropriate). Saved a great engineer to rebuild the Imperial Palace (Luoyang was in shambles after being dominated by Cao Cao while still under the Yellow Turban flag until I conquered it). Liu Biao was the last to capitulate before domination.

Most useful cities are Chengdu, Jiang Yang (superproductive after ancient compass and Iron/Salt bureau), and Ba Jun (has military advisor and minor military bureau, plus Royal Hunting Field). Guess what my most powerful unit was? It was the Nan Man War Elephant (somehow all my war elephants got transformed by the Royal Hunting Field into this 36 strength beast, which I promoted to 3 stars)--when combined with a champion and enlisted into a legion, it crushes anything in its path, even with walls. You can only build 5 of them though. :lol:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=205736&stc=1&d=1236146049
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=205737&stc=1&d=1236146049
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=205738&stc=1&d=1236146049

I suspect the Royal Hunting Field is bugged. Some units always seem to get upgraded to their unique counterparts; some never do.

So Liu Biao is easily the leader early game because of his large territory and vassal (who can allow him to research other techs). I decided to get the 2 Liu Yao cities first before Sun Ce gets his hands on them, and we get good relations that way. With only 3 cities Sun Ce essentially becomes powerless. Got Unification spread to me so converted to it. Vassalized Wang Lang (such a reasonable guy if you treat him right) voluntarily. Then got Chen, Yuan Shu and Liu Bei by force, and even got the tiny Bai Bo who was left with Hong Nong (he can be useful once they know blades because he has a copper there, so I gave it to him). Then Cao Cao who joined me in declared on Liu Bei got DOW'ed majorly by the largest stack I've ever seen with Yuan Shao who easily won the battle of Guan Du. I recaptured Liu Bei's Pei Shan and got Luoyang.

Then the fun really started. Sun Ce voluntarily declared on Cao Cao, and got declared on by Gongsun Du and Han Sui (mind you, these two were not Cao's vassals at all). The screenshot shows everybody (me, Yuan Shao, Zhang Xiu, Sun Ce and Bai Bo) converging onto Xu Chang from all directions (thanks to me I've sabotaged his copper, horse and soon his iron), while Gongsun Du who's only warring against Sun Ce, is coming to help his ally. I'm hoping that the various AIs will sacrifice all their units against the walls of Xu Chang and I can pick up the pieces. :lol:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=205856&stc=1&d=1236237526

Of course I'm gunning for Laws of Jin which will allow me basically to kill everybody. I'm building a road towards Meng Huo to get his elephants.

Yuan Shao got the emperor, but I got Xu Chang by culture.:culture: One trick I've learned playing cultural games is that it's the absolute amount of culture present that really counts. If you leave a civ alive who still has culture in a city but they cannot reach it because it's too far away, your culture will predominate. For example, Xu Chang was 96% Cao Cao but his only city was Pu Yang (about 3 cities away), 3% me (completely surrounded culturally by me), 0% Yuan Shao--so I have infinitely more than the city owner (Yuan Shao). So I flipped it easily. One more argument to leave civs alive when they can't possibly harm you as a vassal.

LZ voluntarily vassalized which helped me a lot in getting Zhang Lu, Han Sui and Dong Zhuo. Meng Huo actually put up quite a fight and cost me some time getting those elephants.

So in 213, I was about 55% pop and 45% land, just mopping up Ma Teng in the west and about to brave a 2 front war with Sun Ce and Yuan Shao (in a defensive pact) when the option to win diplomatically came up. I probably could have won domination eventually but Yuan Shao's stacks gave me the chills, so I took the easy way out. I tried to sow dissension between the two of them by bribing Sun Ce to cut financial ties with Yuan, but their defensive pact was not affected, and neither of them would declare war on anybody. If I wanted to, Sun Ce stood no chance against me as you can see:


http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=205940&stc=1&d=1236309505
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=205939&stc=1&d=1236309505

Finally after 21 hours I've finished it. Zhang Yang with a Diplo-victory, despite the fact that my vassal Cao Cao was on the ballot and voting for himself. I was way over the pop requirements for domination (at times nearly 66%), but never really got that close to the land requirements until I had Sun Ce on the ropes as the only sovereign civ left.

I ended up not killing Liu Zhang, instead making him capitulate after 3 or 4 cities. Everyone was dead or my vassal except Sun Ce, Wang Tong, and that other 1 city guy over between the other two. It started out relatively slow, I took only 3 cities for awhile, then built up, then took Cao Cao on, and after 3 successive wars with him I finally made him capitulate, and after that it really snowballed.

I could have won much earlier if Yuan Shao didn't make me kill him completely... then my armies could have been to Sun Ce and friends much sooner. Also I think it was a bug when Cao Cao voted for himself and was even on the ballot in the first place. He had capitulated to me, and I had the imperial palace in my original capitol, and Sun Ce and I were the only sovereign states left by the time that happened.

here's the screen shots:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=206067&stc=1&d=1236444424
notice the up and down arrows indicating that there are indeed more than 126 units there, in fact there were well over 200 including all my vassals units in that single tile



http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=206068&stc=1&d=1236444424
here it is, finally winning diplomatic, despite Cao Cao not voting for me (he's my vassal)



http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=206069&stc=1&d=1236444424
here's the crazy graphs. at the end when my power just stagnated, I was only building balista elephants, and elephants in a couple cities. Newly conquered's were getting buildings and everything else, wealth or culture.



http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=206070&stc=1&d=1236444424
my leadership abilities :)

in the end it took 21 hours and was one of the funnest games of civ I've had in quite awhile :)

That's an insane number of troops. :eek:
How about a monarch or emperor game? :crazyeye:

Enough said. No elephants this time.:lol:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=206094&stc=1&d=1236464032

yea i normally play somewhere between monarch and immortal, but Zhang Yang starts out in a fairly tough spot, not much to attack except 3 small cities, then your surrounded by Yuan Shao and Cao Cao after that. Plus if you don't take Bai Bo's 3rd city before Cao Cao finishes him off on the other side, you'll never get that wheat and iron that is adjacent. It was my 3rd city going for cultural if indeed it did come to that. I might try a diety game with Cao Cao or Yuan Shao next. But I also play on the medium sized map on epic, that gives a little more time for me to overpower and out think the AI's.

Honestly in my last game, when I came up on Sun Ce's two main armies, he actually outnumbered me in one battle area, but I bided my time, and tricked him into attacking me across a river (i kinda forced him into it, by blitzing in with the other stack) and mopped up the floor with him eventually. By the time the diplo-vote came up his entire main force was destroyed... he only had maybe 3 troops in each city left.

Nice victories both with Liu Baio and Yuan Shao there :)

@AP

This is indeed an excellent victory. I think your normalized score must be quite high. It is true that Yuan Shao is as overpowered a leader as Cao Cao but still obtaining such a quick domination victory on emperor is a real achievement. :goodjob:

I don't remember exactly but I think it was somewhere around 350000 for the score. Thank you for the encouragement.:)
The small map is very different from the large map: Yuan Shao has a much better starting position than Cao Cao because he has about the same number of cities, whereas Cao Cao only has about half and the AI sucks at winning wars. The huge map is completely opposite: Cao Cao has much more potential than Yuan.
In fact I'm starting a huge map, [I]immortal[I] game with Cao Cao to see if I can win anything other than cultural. Of course I got rid of the mainland Bai Bo cities and Lu Bu, and took 5 of Yuan Shao's main cities (Ye, Bai Ma, Dun Qiu, Han Dan and some other city). Kong Rong even took one of his before he realized he needed to make peace with Gongsun Zan. Maintenance was an exercise in micromanagement until I could get Jianan Literature. Right now it's 202 and I have built the two wonders with Jianan, science is 40% and I'm about to choose a military target (probably Liu Bei since I want his generals).

Edit: the score was 1200000. I know that because my Cao Cao huge map immortal conquest was 1900000.

I am trying to see if I can get a win with Gongsun Zan. I had a test game yesterday on the huge no cities map and it was almost like taking a candy from a kid! I might not finish this game however as it got too easy. Today I started on the small map. I first lost Ji but managed to keep my other two cities. After Yaun Shao got his starting army completely destroyed at the feet of my second city I was able to re-capture Ji. (So important as it is the only city I have with Iron or any metal). Losing and retaking Ji has a good side as Yuan Shao has spread Unification to the city. Once I had it back I converted to Unification and spread it to my other cities. Peace was force by an Imperial Court decision. Now I even have open borders with Yuan Shao. He still annoyed but I am no longer his worst enemy.

What should I do next? This is the question I am asking myself now. I need to have a viable empire. This can only be on the expense of Yuan Shao. My only other neighbor is Gongsun Du who can be Dowed. I f I have to take Yuan Shao it is now or never. He is more advanced and will get even more and more advanced with time. With my current size getting to The nine bestowments (for my UU) will take ages and then he will have much better units to counter them.

About your game. On the huge map the real challenge for Cao Cao (as a human player) is the map itself. It is really huge. It gets quite exhausting after time. Yuan Shao and Liu Biao have tons of cities. When time comes to taking Liu Biao if he wouldn't capitulate when you take his cities on your side of the river, it will be quite painful taking your whole army across the river to take the rest. In the only game I played on this map with Cao Cao I ended up having three large armies running everywhere to get the game finished.

Well, I've already finished off Yuan Shao in 204 or so (left with tiny little Yan Men as his only fief). The trick, as I've said many times, is to take his iron and horse early on when he still only has 1 archer in each of his southern cities.

Liu Biao I've just finished. Did the usual trick of asking Sun Ce and Liu Biao to war on each other, then I took all his cities north of the river, and he was willing to capitulate even before then, but I knew his culture would make Xiangyang revolt so I took the very last city that has cultural influence near it. Zhang Xiu is no problem since my culture extends very next to Wan and I basically destroyed him with 2 spies and 2 stacks (one coming from the west by Li Jue's who's also my vassal).

Gongsun Zan is a formidable opponent in the huge map (I actually had quite a good cultural game before with him before the patches). Not only did he help me get Yuan Shao from the north, he has iron and good horses. I decided to wipe him out completely even though that took longer than capitulate. I just want to be neighbors with Gongsun Du so that maybe he'll vassalize.

It's 208, and now it's Liu Zhang's turn, then Ma Teng and Han Sui. Then Sun Ce: I think I'm going to use the interlocking ships to transport troops to Wu country--no wind is going to block fire in my direction. :lol:

I'm aiming for conquest (domination is probably impossible with so much empty land up north and south).

The last 2 years were spent moving spies, ships and troops SW and S. I really want that Chinese magic airport.
Stuck in the jungle en route from Sechuan to Hong Kong.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=206746&stc=1&d=1236905629

All this bad navy food for nothing. No scurvy though since I do have citrus fruits.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=206747&stc=1&d=1236905629

Almost at domination (48% land).
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=206748&stc=1&d=1236905629

The most numerous swordsmen I've ever built in my life. (Their most numerous unfortunate opponents were Tuntian Axemen)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=206749&stc=1&d=1236905643

very nice there. Thats given me some inspiration to continue on my diety/epic Cao Cao campaign. Yikes on the swordsmen, I think thats considerably more than I've ever had, though I like axes, trebuchets, and knights almost as much.

71 theatre's means at least 71 cities, thats quite impressive. If stability was introduced into HotTK it would have been insane to manage. Again nice job :thumbsup:

Well, I built a lot more swordsmen (204) than siege machines (130). It's just that I use most of the siege machines for collateral damage and don't get to keep or upgrade them as much as with the horses and swords.
Yes, most my cities have theaters (cheapest building), so it must be at least 71 cities...some of the ones I got from my vassals from votes might not have theaters yet though.

Congratulations AP, such an exciting game I believe, though you definitely got quite bored at some stage. I assume you got Gongsun Du vassalized early (voluntarily of course). Lucky you!! In my game I sent a whole army all the way back to the north. Once I got Meng Huo capitulated, I declared on Gongsun Du.

Liu Bei is unstoppable once he's accumulated enough force and espionage to knock down a capital in 2 moves (i.e. unload troops next to the city and the next move a spy causes the city to revolt). I started the war against Sun Ce in August 210 and by Dec 210 he's left with 2 cities. (Well, I kinda cheated since I captured 2 more cities the turn I won):p

The Swift Minority rapidly became a majority (built like 40 of them). It tailors well with Liu Bei's style of playing which is rapid and surprise attack, and city attack is much better compared to elite riders. Yuan Shao was definitely caught off guard when I veered around after capitulating Gongsun Zan.

Most productive city is Shou Chun (lots of rivers and you can build a watermill with almost all of the tiles if you choose the order of building correctly). Xia Pi is not bad initially. Xu Chang is kinda unproductive since it doesn't grow very quickly without farms north of it due to lack of rivers.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=207983&stc=1&d=1237774485
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=207984&stc=1&d=1237774485

With the newest patch (i.e. the one that leaves you with 1 Jizhou crossbow, 1 light cavalry and an undefended Ye). Score was something like 650k.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=225529&stc=1&d=1251082691