G-Major 126

I really should have turned events off... I got the truffles event, but also the mining accident (on my ONLY SOURCE OF COPPER, with hardly any gold) and the previously-mentioned volcano. And the granary vermin one. Sturgeon's Law is obviously true...

As Isabella has DoW'd me, I'm heading to Machinery for Macemen (no iron, unfortunately).

1385 AP loss, done in true cheese style by Justinian.

Gone for a different tactic: Good peaceweight, not very aggressive, and the scapegoat of Pacal. Everyone's pleased except Pacal, who is the only Hindu as well as having evil peace weight. Relations will improve after favorite-civic bonuses. Schwedagon Paya is a useful wonder here, to get into FR.

shulec said:

1150 AD. Man I love pounding on weak AI. Someone should break 1000AD.

Alphabet 1000 BC, Currency came too late in 125 BC. Once I got economy up and running I was good.

I chopped 6-7 forests into the UN with a GE and it still took me 8 turns to build it.

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Great job shulec.

Couple of questions for ya.

Why did you go with events on? Did they help you?

I still am learning a lot about AI selection. It seems to be a big part of this. Why Justinian? The others I get. Is it because of the religious nuttiness?

Who was your opponent for the vote? Did you intend for them to be the opponent?

I gave up my peaceful game. It was ok but not great. I tried an all out war but that just distracts too much from getting specialists and bulbing.

Trying an in between one. 10 AI map, wipe out 2-3 neighbors. I got a machinery oracle, no iron though.. Axe rushed Frederick. He bribed in Hatty and Mansa. I was planning on Hatty next, so that was convenient. Raised one of his cities because he built it in a dumb spot. 2 turns from settling it and qin pops a city one tile away in a just as dumb location. So now qin has to be wiped out. Not looking forward to the protective archers. Have to get some siege now. Are horse archers any good against protective archers? Or should I just go Elepults? I think Hatty will still fall to axes. She only has 2 cities and I just pillaged her iron. 4 caps should be enough to be competitive. Doubt I will get pre 1200 AD though.

TalladegaKnight said:

Great job shulec. Thanks!

Couple of questions for ya.

Why did you go with events on? Did they help you? Just for fun! And, no they didn't help and might have hurt. (-1 with Hatty maybe.)

I still am learning a lot about AI selection. It seems to be a big part of this. Why Justinian? The others I get. Is it because of the religious nuttiness? Most of the AI I chose were for an early rush. No protective, no aggressive too, I think... as I read farther down, I forgot about Qin Su Huang--protective, but often hated. I might have chosen AI without Mining so they are slower to get copper. I don't remember.

Who was your opponent for the vote? Did you intend for them to be the opponent? My opponent was Justinian. Early on I had to choose between Darius and Justinian as a buddy. I chose Justinian, then he became a pariah. I pretty much peaved everybody a little, but the world started to become very Hindu. Justinian had only three cities, so I built the UN and gave it to him! I was planning on Darius being my opponent. I was planning to spy flip Darius to FR so he would lose his religion bonuses with the other AI and then flip myself back to OR or Pac. But I didn't need to.

I gave up my peaceful game. It was ok but not great. I tried an all out war but that just distracts too much from getting specialists and bulbing. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE peaceful games, but the best results always come from the players that can manage all out early war! (Not me by the way)

Trying an in between one. 10 AI map, wipe out 2-3 neighbors. I got a machinery oracle, no iron though.. Axe rushed Frederick. He bribed in Hatty and Mansa. I was planning on Hatty next, so that was convenient. Raised one of his cities because he built it in a dumb spot. 2 turns from settling it and qin pops a city one tile away in a just as dumb location. So now qin has to be wiped out. Not looking forward to the protective archers. Have to get some siege now. Are horse archers any good against protective archers? They are great against almost dead protective archers...otherwise, no!

Or should I just go Elepults? I think Hatty will still fall to axes. She only has 2 cities and I just pillaged her iron. 4 caps should be enough to be competitive. Doubt I will get pre 1200 AD though. I just tried to kill everybody I could before they got Spears. Some worker steal/choking helped. One of my biggest difficulties was being next to Mansa Musa. I grabbed two of his cities, but Skirmishers on hills, copper and willingness to trade tech when annoyed made him too costly to kill and

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Good luck!

1857 AD. Tried elepults on Pacal, completely forgetting about his holkans. Should have picked De Gaulle as the scapegoat. Took two cities, but one flipped to England at about 0.5% odds. Tech parity at around 1000 AD, libbed Astronomy after Gandhi gave me Optics, but I could only get one city on the other continent because my only coastal city had terrible production even with Moai. Fell behind in tech, traded after my beeline to tech parity. Elizabeth voted for Gandhi in the Secretary-General vote, but a defensive pact and obsolete horse for hit musical (to help with happiness, not diplomacy). Roosevelt was in Free Market and not Mercantilism, so I was in Free Market for commerce then Mercantilism (and bribing him into it) and he got to Friendly. Elizabeth's vote was key, or I'd have been 4 votes short.

Lincoln almost got an AP victory, with any votes other than him and Gandhi (except me or Pacal) he would have won. I had much less than 40% population (even less that 8%!) so it was a true diplomatic victory, with all 4 eligible AIs voting for me (one was dead, another was my opponent).

The AP helped, temporary +2 with Lincoln when the resident elections came around. Bottom in every demographics category except imports/exports (although I was in Mercantilism, so that one doesn't count) and I could have voted for Gandhi and STILL won! You can go a long way with good diplomacy and a beeline... one of only two of my diplomatic victories, although the other was small/standard/epic/noble pangaea with Egypt... which is much easier. Got around the same date this time as well! Might have the most civs voting for me or the fastest true diplomatic victory, neither of which count for anything!

I tried another one in hopes of finishing before 1000 AD. Not quite.

I did a horse archer rush taking out Gandhi, Justinian, DeGaulle, and Frederick. Mansa founded Buddhism and was the only AI to my west. I let him have all the land out there and everybody else when Hindu - Darius, Asoka, Hatty, Qin Su Huang, and Liz.

I had heavy negative diplo for declaring war on friends, but it didn't matter, I won on the first vote. (I was the only one to declare war in the whole game!)
Darius -7
Asoka -5
Hatty -4
Qin -4
Liz -4

I got all but Asoka to vote for me (he had a last minute free religion switch). I was conscientious to not give liberalism to Darius so he wouldn't go free religion, but forgot about Asoka's (and Liz's) having FR as their favorite CIV.

I planned better this time and built the UN in one turn. I got currency much earlier and never truly crashed my economy. I got a late 12% priest that cost me about three turns on Electricity. I believe I would have broken 1000 AD if i had earlier stone and more hammer rich captured AI capitols.

I tried another one in hopes of finishing before 1000 AD. Not quite.

I did a horse archer rush taking out Gandhi, Justinian, DeGaulle, and Frederick. Mansa founded Buddhism and was the only AI to my west. I let him have all the land out there and everybody else when Hindu - Darius, Asoka, Hatty, Qin Su Huang, and Liz.

I had heavy negative diplo for declaring war on friends, but it didn't matter, I won on the first vote. (I was the only one to declare war in the whole game!)
Darius -7
Asoka -5
Hatty -4
Qin -4
Liz -4

I got all but Asoka to vote for me (he had a last minute free religion switch). I was conscientious to not give liberalism to Darius so he wouldn't go free religion, but forgot about Asoka's (and Liz's) having FR as their favorite CIV.

I planned better this time and built the UN in one turn. I got currency much earlier and never truly crashed my economy. I got a late 12% priest that cost me about three turns on Electricity. I believe I would have broken 1000 AD if i had earlier stone and more hammer rich captured AI capitols. An earlier GE would have helped, I had to run about 16 turns with next to no specialists because my GE city (Forge/mid/HangGard/Hagia Sofia) was slow to pop a specialist. (This is one of the biggest difficulties in a fast UN game, especially when you have powerful GP farm cranking out GSs.

Mine got excluded for "reloading". I never even opened a save more than once! I'll try again, probably be worse though.

Thought I had you Shulec, but alas it was a tie 1150 AD. Pre 1000 may be possible. I am not sure with Saladin. The protective was awful. Gandhi with his cheap uni's and philo trait should be able to do it.

Why does it take so long between building the UN and the vote for diplo victory?

I gave this one a try but didn't crack 1200. Protective is like not having a trait. I did try with the "all crappy" lineup that I listed above: I don't think it effected things too much.

One more thing: does everyone make an Academy with the first GS? I almost always do, but saw that a few of the HoF wins had none built.

Skipity said:

I gave this one a try but didn't crack 1200. Protective is like not having a trait. I did try with the "all crappy" lineup that I listed above: I don't think it effected things too much.

One more thing: does everyone make an Academy with the first GS? I almost always do, but saw that a few of the HoF wins had none built.

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I did in this one, but only because I would have had to hold onto a GS with nothing useful to bulb for a while. I was teching CS and didn't want to bulb paper or optics.

The nice thing about diplo is it requires little buildings. A granary and library is all you need. Courthouses if you plan to have a lot of cities. Maybe a forge and that's it. Universities are nice to haves. I only built 1 in the cap in this one. I went university of sankore, spiral minaret, and apostolic palace so I built monasteries and temples. Fast diplo is all about GS bulbing mainly.

Results:

G-Major 126 - Diplomatic, Monarch, Ancient, Standard, Epic, Terra, Arabia (check options)
1^st Pollina 930 AD
2^nd shulec 1070 AD
3^rd TalladegaKnight 1150 AD

Congratulations!

Sub 1000 - Awesome!

Congrats to all 3 of you. This was a good challenge.

Great game pollina.

No libbing Radio?

UN before AP is craziness.

Very impressive. Great job.

edit: nevermind, you did lib radio, I lost it in all the combat's going on.

TalladegaKnight said:

Great game pollina.

No libbing Radio?

UN before AP is craziness.

Very impressive. Great job.

edit: nevermind, you did lib radio, I lost it in all the combat's going on.

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Thanks. My game was actually kinda messy. Not in a bad way, just a lot less straightforward than expected.

My plan was to play this fairly peacefully. Steal a few workers from the bad guys, De Gaulle or Peter, but play nice with everyone else. Turned out that none of those two was anywhere near me. Mansa was just a few tiles away, but he's the last guy I would declare war on. My other closest neighbors were Elizabeth and Gandhi, so I had to steal my workers (and eventually grab some cities) from them.

I had no marble, so I skipped Aesthetics/Literature/Music. On higher difficulties that is usually not a problem, since you can still trade for Literature. Here, I only got Literature while I was teching Physics, barely in time to build the NE in my capital to speed up my second attempt at a GE. (Building the Oracle in your GEngineer farm can backfire.) I eventually got my last minute (literally!) Engineer. Without GLib, NE, Parthenon, I ran Pacifism most of the time. Spiritual turned out very useful. I generated only 6 GScientists pre-Electricity (Academy, Education, Astro, SciMeth, Physics, Electricity). I usually aim for 7-8.

Some of my secondary cities still had many forests left after unis were built, so I chopped out a few maces and started a world war vs. De Gaulle, just for fun.

Pollina said:

Thanks. My game was actually kinda messy. Not in a bad way, just a lot less straightforward than expected.

My plan was to play this fairly peacefully. Steal a few workers from the bad guys, De Gaulle or Peter, but play nice with everyone else. Turned out that none of those two was anywhere near me. Mansa was just a few tiles away, but he's the last guy I would declare war on. My other closest neighbors were Elizabeth and Gandhi, so I had to steal my workers (and eventually grab some cities) from them.

I had no marble, so I skipped Aesthetics/Literature/Music. On higher difficulties that is usually not a problem, since you can still trade for Literature. Here, I only got Literature while I was teching Physics, barely in time to build the NE in my capital to speed up my second attempt at a GE. (Building the Oracle in your GEngineer farm can backfire.) I eventually got my last minute (literally!) Engineer. Without GLib, NE, Parthenon, I ran Pacifism most of the time. Spiritual turned out very useful. I generated only 6 GScientists pre-Electricity (Academy, Education, Astro, SciMeth, Physics, Electricity). I usually aim for 7-8.

Some of my secondary cities still had many forests left after unis were built, so I chopped out a few maces and started a world war vs. De Gaulle, just for fun.

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I didn't get marble either. I went down the aesthetics line anyway. Maybe where I lagged a bit behind you. The great library took forever to build even in Frederick's capital.

Currently giving these settings a go with Gandhi instead. Well with huts on too. I learned that aggression first then playing nice is the way to go. Horse archered my way to 3 AI caps. Oracled currency. Your oracle of CS in the 600's BC was gutsy. Really gave you a huge boost.

As usual, awesome game Pollina!