Dr kossin #22

Enjoyed the reports. Glad the map is providing adequate challenge

Wow that's a hard map, those deity stacks are scary early in the game, well played for surviving all that. I look forwards to seeing how this tough situation might be resolved. =D

Round 3a

I took a gamble and went all out on Liberalism. With regards with the Liberalism bulb that I mentioned in the previous round, I was mistaken. You need Compass but must avoid Machinery - which is exactly the case I was in!

Therefore I planned to spawn 2 quick Great Scientists by starving a few cities.
The first would complete Education


In the meantime, Ragnar decided to secure our new found friendship.


Paper being out, I traded it to Catherine.


Then traded the leftovers to Ragnar.


The second GS would bulb Liberalism until completion.


The freebies weren't great considering Catherine already had Nationalism but Ragnar didn't.


Liberalism being in the bag, I went back into construction mode.


However, by this time, Catherine was exerting some heavy culture pressure on Mutal (go figure) and I had lost 1 corn. Fighting her didn't look so good on paper right now as she was a beast on research and power. Sooooo, I decided to attempt a backdoor win.

I scrapped Universities plans and switched to Theatres/Monasteries/Temples/Cathedrals/Hermitage.

I made a few trades to enhance my current improvements.


I switched to Free Speech but stayed in Organized Religion/Slavery to finish a few buildings.


Either I'd get crushed at some point by a war, lose to some victory condition to an AI, or pull of a marginal culture victory hehe... a win is a win, right?

Soon after Sitting Bull capitulated and became a vassal of Catherine.


Moreover you can see in that screenshot that this was available:


Eventually I figured out why those wonders were going early.


The next guy is kinda similar.


Now this screenshot I hit right on time.


Once I was done whipping the non-culture cities I revolted for the second-to-last time.


With the national Epic in Mutal, with 3 Corns (for the moment...) it is my best GP farm I started hitting Enter consecutively.

The last AI is the beggar king himself, but is easily pleased with Hereditary Rule.


I got my first flipped city from Ragnar.


Relations with Cathy were not as good as they used to be (fair trade was diminishing) so I gave her the city.


I like to think she liked my gift as she came by a few years later with one of her own.


Hit enter a bunch more times... to 1822AD.
Bad news: Mansa is going for culture.
Good news: The AI sometimes has difficulty focusing on a third city for culture.


The funny thing is his 3rd city would change soon.

But that is to be continued.

Round 3b

You might have noticed Ragnar got fed up with Cathy in the previous round. He made a colony and now there are just too many of the same leaders as the previous game.


Anyway, I was keeping my fingers crossed for yellow messages like these:


By now, if Mansa stops fidgeting around, I've lost as he already has 2 Legendary cities and his 3rd city is due ahead of mine. So every non-Great Artist GP is a blessing.

Fortunately for me, Catherine and Ragnar are busy fighting offshore so no one bothers to come knocking at my poorly(if you can even say that) defended cities. Being unsuccessful at capitulating other targets, Catherine doesn't look like she can pull off a UN win on me.


Since I'm not racing for space, it usually slows down spaceships launch times a bit. My biggest worry is of course Mansa... neither Ragnar or Catherine would ever declare war on him and I didn't have anything to bribe them in that direction being quite poor in all senses of the term.
My only option is to keep making those artist bombs and hope for the best...


I got very very very very lucky one more time.


On my end however...


Next turn...


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Post-game

A look at the initial map - I really got the short end here, especially with all the brown tiles I got.


What I built this game:


Top 5 cities


Graphs - I was wayyyyy behind.


So what won this game?
This

and this


Oh and Mansa's idiocy to go too far in the tech tree and not focusing well enough culture in a single third city.

I got very lucky here I'd say. It really didn't look winnable at several times. Anyway, I'd say this is a pretty hard map given how Cathy settles in your face. If you can pull off an Axe rush before she hooks up Iron and somehow get Ragnar distracted with Sitting Bull long enough, then it's probably not that hard. It's just a lot of 'ifs' and quite a few things can go wrong. Boring finale perhaps but I was on the edge of my seat all the time, I can guarantee you that.

Anyway, I'm fed up with all the end game micromanagement (everything to keep Cathy/Ragnar Friendly, keep gold in the green - resource deals, running merchant specialists until starvation, grow, rinse and repeat, etc.) so see you in the next game!

Man that was a nice ending. Only 10 turns between you and Mansa's culture win! Nice job! Funny how Sitting Bull is #1 in space at the end A tough start on deity, and you still managed to pull it off!

Very good game!
Reminds me: on your modified emperor cookbook, one the AIs was about to get culture victory in 1852(erased him 7 turns after) and that was w/o Sistine just to compare w/ the stupid Mansa here.

Ragnar picked me even though I founded buddhism and he was in it, while sitting bull was confucian ^_^. Sometimes you just can't win.

Just to see, I put him at war with sitting bull in world builder instead and continued, was able to get >200 stable bpt around 250 AD and got cathy to friendly, won lib and had some units banked to upgrade post lib (which I won).

I'm so close but I have to be able to duck these 1300BC to 700 BC DoWs , especially considering it was a 3 way buddhist love fest with a confuctian peacemonger to pile on . It's like the damned triple BC slave revolts if I leave events on...

Nice win Kossin. Very tight margin Keep them coming. Never would have guessed you would win this. Perfect example of good diplomacy combined with culture, but I still have to laugh about Mutal, a legendary city that is pressured

With that start and only 1 religion beating Mansa is nothing short of amazing. How many GA's did you produce post liberalism? Did you settle any early ones or just bomb them all?

BigTime said:

Man that was a nice ending. Only 10 turns between you and Mansa's culture win! Nice job! Funny how Sitting Bull is #1 in space at the end A tough start on deity, and you still managed to pull it off!

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I think this is the first time I see Sitting Bull actually building *1* spaceship part so it's pretty hilarious to me. I still think I was pretty lucky with Mansa being distracted by wanting more techs and rushbuying more buildings. Oh, and his last 2 great Persons that weren't Artists.

bestsss said:

Very good game!
Reminds me: on your modified emperor cookbook, one the AIs was about to get culture victory in 1852(erased him 7 turns after) and that was w/o Sistine just to compare w/ the stupid Mansa here.

Click to expand...

Thanks.
With regards to that game, it was on Epic (unless you changed the speed?) so it's a bit faster date-wise. It also depends on when they turned off research. I think Mansa researched all the way to MM and possibly beyond.

TheMeInTeam said:

Ragnar picked me even though I founded buddhism and he was in it, while sitting bull was confucian ^_^. Sometimes you just can't win.

Just to see, I put him at war with sitting bull in world builder instead and continued, was able to get >200 stable bpt around 250 AD and got cathy to friendly, won lib and had some units banked to upgrade post lib (which I won).

I'm so close but I have to be able to duck these 1300BC to 700 BC DoWs , especially considering it was a 3 way buddhist love fest with a confuctian peacemonger to pile on . It's like the damned triple BC slave revolts if I leave events on...

Click to expand...

So you actually went Meditation first... what was your initial builds and how did you manage to not get boxed in? Cathy settled in a different fashion?

Killroyan said:

Nice win Kossin. Very tight margin Keep them coming. Never would have guessed you would win this. Perfect example of good diplomacy combined with culture, but I still have to laugh about Mutal, a legendary city that is pressured

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I must say I was pretty shocked when I started losing tiles to Cathy who didn't have Sistine and was going for Space. Actually, that's one of the first things that convinced me to really go for a culture win. Had I left her alive and not went for Culture, I think Mutal might have been in danger of flipping by the end of the game

goodolarchie said:

With that start and only 1 religion beating Mansa is nothing short of amazing. How many GA's did you produce post liberalism? Did you settle any early ones or just bomb them all?

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1 religion culture is something I saw TMIT do (dingding's deity challenge iIrc) and with a good enough GP farm it's quite doable. In general, it's a bit faster than Space but more risky.

Had it not been for Cathy's pressure on Moscow, I would probably have generated 1~2 more Great Artists (2 corns = 4 artists which is basically the number I was running) and Mutal would not have required a culture bomb so I'd have won several turns earlier.

The 10 Artists were generated post-Lib, before only Scientists.
I think I settled the first 3 (1 in Uxmal, 2 in Chichen Itza) as that was worth more culture than a bomb at the time. The math isn't so hard either.

Spoiler for the maths I used

I am not sure he even turned the research off but he had more wonders than population (one screen of wonders) in 2 cities and 6 religions (everything but Hundu) proudly founded by himself. He also got bribed to declare war on his neighbor and took a city, started building the spaceship too, I think.

Wonders 1st -Mahabodhi, TGL, Parthenon, AW, Taj, SoL, Broadway, R&R, GW, SoZ, AP + Military Academy and Scotland Yard, 2nd: Temple of Solomon, TGL, Hagia Sophia, C. Itza, SM, N. Dame, Kremlin, Hollywood, UN, UoS + Military academy. The 3rd city didn't have so much stuff, only Eiffel tower + Military Academy + 3 settled GAs. Since he was in free religion, all the religions also contributed.

Indeed, it was epic, but not deity.
***
As for this game: I, honestly, thought you'd give up. The culture win was a very good way to salvage it!
About settling: settling adds gold as well. It's not much, but still counts; it's like having extra merchant.

I like playing online games to the end, even if it's a loss. Offline I tend to abandon games as soon as I get a lead. This is probably why I'm not that good at modern warfare... I rarely get any practice at it.

I shadowed this one, I thought Cathrine was way too close so I settle my first city to claim copper and axe rushed her. Captured 4 cities razed 2, researched alphabet with the war loot and now about to get a lot of tech for peace.

Looks very good jihe. As long as Ragnar keeps his troops busy, I'd say your game is won.

Nice win. Diplomatic skills seem to be key on this level. Also surviving an early AI bashing.

Well late of course, but nice win in the end. Keep them coming Kossin, you the man!