The Great DoC URV challenge

I've bolded everything in the OP as in the UHV thread, changed Viceroy to Heir, Monarch to Regent.

Id:
Civilisation: Persia
Type: Religious
Score (normalised, history rank): 6119, Louis XVI
Winning date: t338 1751AD
Difficulty: Viceroy
Gamespeed: Normal
Version: SVN 731
Scenario: 3000BC
Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/77g76987fo04fws/Cyrus AD-1754 Turn 339.CivBeyondSwordSave

Images:


Founding Zoroastrianism:
No, I am not joking, it is really hard, at least in my computer. I needed to upload five times in order to found Zoroastrianism! Moreover, I was forced to found Sirajis 1N from the desired spot to gain one turn and finally make it. Crazy, but I think that I was just too unlucky.

A story of survival:
Do you want adventure and an endless war against you? Do you want a civ that the game wants to kill by almost any means possible. Then Persia is the best choice. So here's a list of everything that wants to kill you during the game:
*Babylon
*India
*Greek conquerors
*Roman conquerors
*Parthians (inside borders)
*Asvakians (inside borders)
*Turkics
*Byzantine spawn
*Arabian big spawn
*Seljuk conquerors
*a LOT of Seljuk conquerors
*Mongol spawn
*Mongol conquerors
*Mughal spawn
*Turkish spawn
*English east indian company

If you are an experienced gamer in DoC you except all these, but if you are a first-time player, so much war spawning without any notice will 100% frustate you enough to hate DoC for a long time. However, facing all these is in fact relatively easy.

Mesopotamian conquest, Transoxian expansion:
Use the initial army to conquer Babylon, Jerusalem and Sur. Meanwhile train a settler to settle on horse and maybe a second settler to settle on iron. You will see many barbarian in North Persia so founding the cities on the strategic resources is a good idea. If you are confident enough that you will defend these resources found the cities in the nearby deserts. This will gift an extra population point in both cities.

Achaimenid era, Indian expansion:
In achaimenid era you aquire horse ASAP, build barracks and stable sin all your cities and train horse archers. You will face many enemies so don't build anything else except horse archers. The experience gained from barracks and stables will make your horse army strong enough against greco-roman conquerors and after them you can conquer India. Building the three shrines (zoro, hindu buddhist) and cottaging Mesopotamia, Hindus and Ganges will strengthen your economy and fund your large empire.

Sassanid era, Byzantines and Arabs:
Try to discover Feudalism before Byzantine spawn. This way you will be able to train powerful knights and crash the arab units. Discovering pikes can help too, but IMO a mounted army is better. Byzantine and Arabs will spawn at war with you, so there is no need to give away your cities, let them conquer themselves. You have to wait for 10 turns each time before reconquest, else it will cost much more units. After the end of Arab liberation go to conquer Jerusalem (temple of Solomon=more money from shrines), Mecca (islamic shrine) and Egypt (flood plains, cottages and elimination of Arabia).

Turkomongol era, Seljucs, Mongols, Mughals and Turks
Try to discover military tradition before Seljuc spawn. Moreover build walls and castles in your cities, especially the core ones Cuissasiers will be the strongest unit in the world for many centuries to come and you will face many large stacks. prepare yourself and build many of them, at least 20 to 25 cuisassiers. Seljuc will spawn inside you core area and will try to get your core cities and collapse you to the ground. Fortunately you have the first move, destroy all ghulams and then the rest of the units in the following couple of turns. Seljucs will try to drop the defences to zero, so these walls will save you. Fortunately, Seljuc AI isn't smart enough, to conquer one city.

Mongols will take Transoxiana, Mughals Northwestern India and Turks north mesopotamia. Prepare yourself training units, wait each liberation war turns to finish and go back to reconquer what is rightfully yours. Mind the Mongols, because they have large stacks. Mughal stack is small compared to your capabilities and Turks need just a one turn assault.

Meanwhile in Sirajis:
While all other cities train units to defend your empire and your workers improve your lands, Sirajis (the zoro holy city) has to focus on culture. Make sure to discover theatre early and built them in populous cities to start Great Artist pointing. Build Opera House and national gallery in Sirajis. Spread all the religions in Sirajis and build all the cathedrals. Build as many wonders as possible in Sirajis.

Accumulate your great artists in Sirajis and let them wait until industrial or modern era. Be the first to discover Patronage to get a free artist. In the end Sirajis will be able to produce over 500 culture points per turn. Sirajis has to reach 50000 culture points which means you need about 100 turns. You will probably be able to win in industrial era, when each great artist produce 4000 culture points. In my game I used four great artists to gain 16000 culture points in Sirajis and Sirajis produced the rest 35000 by 1690AD.

Republic of Persia:
Facing the english is something similar. Just leave your army defending the Indian cities and wait, you will be able to beat them relatively easily. Now you can start occupying yourself with the URV . Adopt republic and scholasticism to max the great artist output and make sure to spread zoroastrianism in as many cities as possible.

The fanatic era:
In 1700AD there are many cities in the world. To reach the 20% you may need to persecute some religions from your lands. In my game Byzantium spread orthodoxy in almost whole middle east, so I needed to switch to Fanaticism and persecute it. Meanwhile I spread zoroastrianism in the whole Persian empire and surrounding regions (Egypt, Anatolia, Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, Central Asia, Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea, India, continental Europe).

Bugs:
*No overflow bug! But still crash if I try to see Neapolis.
*Indies found Zoroastrianism and Indians found catholicism...

What bothers me is the Parthia attack even when Persia isn't under Greece

The OP is updated to post #102.

- Greece (Polytheism, no SVN)
- Monarch/Normal
- score : 25189
- finish : 170AD
I'm sad because despite beating the current score, I could also have beaten the finish date if I had founded my last cities in the right order (why oh why did I found Hykousa).
Anyway I got 10 wonders, no more (Babylon built Sphinx and Oracle very fast, and I didn't want to start a war in Mesopotamia), then started settler spamming.
Rome didn't pose a threat thanks to mass Phalanx production (and actually helped decently with the pagan temples).

Please, post your religion and version/SVN revision.

Made changes to be consistent with the UHV thread.

ales_ said:

Please, post your religion and version/SVN revision.

Click to expand...

Sry I forgot (should have read OP more thouroughly).
I thought Polytheism was obvious though, given the description of the game.
No SVN.

VGL said:

What bothers me is the Parthia attack even when Persia isn't under Greece

Click to expand...

Parthians would eventually revolt under Achaemenids the same way Sassanids revolted under Parthians.

I know this one maybe isn't worth mentionning in the OP, because I won later than the current earliest date, but I'm posting it anyway (due to request and because it's with a different civ).
- Catholic URV with Rome (3000 BC, no SVN)
- Regent / Normal
- score : 7766
- date : 1787 AD

1. Early game
   Cities that were settled at start : Roma, Pompeii, Carthago Nova.
   The early game was focused on development (building every building in Roma, building the important wonders i.e Great Lighthouse, Colossus, Colosseum) and limited conquests : Carthage first (before they spawed a second city), then Greece after Alexander got his empire (killing off Persia). I tried to keep the Greece alive in Byzantium until 350 AD (to avoid Byzantine spawn) but they collapsed way earlier.
   The Celts discovered theology a few turns before me, but i quickly relocated the holy city to Pompeii before building a shrine there eventually.
2. Mare Nostrum
   I stopped the conquests until Arabia spawned, then quickly conquered the egyptian region after the grace period (I had a huge stack of experienced legions by then), and wrestled the Maghreb from Moorish control shortly after that.
   I conquered Hierousalem and Makkah later, after the Seljuks, capitulating Arabia (who eventually collapsed way later).
   My plan was then to do the same with Turkey, but when the Mongols asked me to declare war on Byzantium, I seized the opportunity to re-unify the Roman Empire under one single banner. The Turks, weakened, would follow soon afterwards.
   
   Spoiler :

   
   
   The Roman Empire was then at its full glory, with three shrines boosted by the Temple of Solomon, allowing for good research/spy rates. The Empire would expand more later on, but at the cost of decadence.
3. Birth of the Prophets
   As soon as I had converted to Catholicism, I had built temples everywhere ; priests were the only great people I hired until I achieved the GP goal, surprisingly early. Several good food cities allowed me to spawn 6 great priests myself (in addition to 3 other great persons due to Wonder pollution), without even maximizing the priests, and the 6th was surplus. The first GP was, of course, used to build the Catholic shrine in Pompeii (by the way, the only Pope ever was me).
4. The Reform
   Triggering the Reform yourself is advised (and the earlier, the better). I founded Protestantism in 1160 AD, leaving me plenty of time to convert everyone back to Catholicism through espionnage (I also waited till then to convert Russia, who opened borders early with a bribe).
   Building lots of spies is important ; it is also a good idea to make sure the colonizers are all running Fanaticism around the time they discover Astronomy, to ensure that Protestantism never spreads outside Europe.
5. Stagnation
   I stopped expanding for a while after conquering Iran, deciding not to research Feudalism (and thus no Astro) to keep the Colosseum running and popping Grenadiers. I was trusting the rest of Europe (fully Catholic and mostly Fanatic by this point) to colonize in my place. What a fool I was ! I have never seen a sorrier bunch of losers before :
   - Spain started early and seemed to be doing decently, but...
   - I discovered much later that noone had got the american conquerors (I think Inca collapsed before they could meet anyone, and Aztec must have avoided it somehow, they still collapsed later) ;
   - Portugal discovered Astronomy quite early too, but unfortunately didn't start colonizing until much much later, apparently being content with their 5 "TC event" colonies ;
   - France took for ever to discover Astronomy (they only got it in the 18th century...)
   - best of all, England collapsed in 1706 ; they never even started colonizing.
6. Greatness and decadence
   Seeing all that, I finally resigned myself to get things into my own hands, got Astro through trades and research spike, and started colonizing North America around 1700.
   At this point my aim was to colonize and spread catholicism to the flip zone of America so that they spawn catholic. Although they actually never spawned (bug ?) ; it wouldn't have mattered anyway since I won a few turns after their spawn date.
   I also conquered a good chunk of collapsed China, stretching the Empire from America to China. This was horrible for my gold income : by the endgame I was running 100% wealth and still losing hundreds of gold each turn (fortunately, I won just before reaching 0 ; Portugal had finally started colonizing Brazil)

Two bugs in this game :
- the Mongols spawned with no tech at all, which seems to be a regular bug in 3000 BC start (happened to me every time so far, be it AI or Human Mongolia) ;
- America didn't spawn ; I suspect it might have to do with the death and manual rebirth of England (I conquered England and liberated it in 1769).

Different civs in the OP are tracked separately.

Fascinating story, Rackham! It is very important to report bugs in dedicated thread, to make Leo's life easier and ensure that Mongols get some love.

Thanks ! The America spawn bug turned out to be non-reproducible (from a save I had the turn before), but I reported the Mongol bug.

Bumping this

Going for an Orthodox Victory myself. I'm playing as France and have converted most of Europe (everyone except Poland) to Orthodoxy. I have 7 out of the 16 cities and I adopted slavery to make Ortho-temple whipping easier. The 4 cathedrals is the hardest part because as France, there's not much room to expand in Europe so I have to ship off Settlers elsewhere. Once I get those cities, it's just 100% espionage and turning the world Orthodox.

Anyone ever tried an Orthodox UHV? It seems like one of the harder ones for a religion.

all you need is a big empire, France should work well with that.

Just:

- conquer Spain (& Portugal), Italy and maybe 1-2 more cities in Europe (just like for the UHV-victory) and then you'll get cities in the new world.
- try to build St. Basils quickly because you will need the spy points to convert other civs

I actually think Orthodoxy is one of the easier URVs to achieve, but then I haven't tried them in a while

Thank you! The OP was updated to post #110. The OP is fully up-to-date. There are still 5 religions left.

Game Info: Regent/Normal/3000 BC/SVN 880
Nation: Thailand
Religion: Buddhism
Score: 1256
Winning Date: 1844 AD

THE GREAT THAI EMPIRE:


Strategy:
Thailand seems like it was made to complete this victory. I started at war with Khmer but did not attack any of their cities, I just killed a couple of their units roaming so they would accept peace. With my capital as my only city, I built the unique building and a few muskets.

Keeping the population low is important. For some reason, other large civs have very high approval rates and so the max population of the capital can be 3-4 for the first 100 turns of the game. Work the stone, a mine and 1 commerce/food resource and you'll pretty much be good for the game. Keep pressing end turn, give tribute when asked and make sure to train units!!

When nearing 100 turns, you should have Optics. Build 4-5 caravels and act as 'embassies', aka park your boats near civs so you can see their opinion of you. In my game I was not pleased with anyone, most people were cautious and the only civs that hated me were the civs that hate because of another religion.

The victory was won by giving tribute and donating Singapore to the Colombians, which meant that I had fulfilled all the requirements for the URV (don't know how).

I hope the Buddhist URV changes. These 100 turns of [peace/war/happiness] etc. are VERY dull but I guess they do suit civs like Tibet and Thai. By the way I don't even know if this victory is legitimate or not, I would assume so because the only civs that were "annoyed" by me were civs that were annoyed because of my religion (Islamic Moors, Protestant Congo)

A victory is legitimate if it's credited. Please, write the religion at the top of the post.

Alright it's fixed!

Thank you! The OP is updated to post #117. There are 4 religions left.