The Deity Challenge Line-up #20 - Spain - Valentine day Resurrected

Largely uneventful affair with only 2 wars, one when I took Cathy's Piety finisher GP and when Lizzy DOWed me(as in the screen-shot). Thanks to ToA & Petra I generated a GE before I could generate a GS so probably could've shaved some turns of this. Planed to do a SV using what I've learned in the Can someone explain exactly how bulbing mechanics work ? and that seemd to work.

This map was a lot of fun. This was the first Deity map where I managed to theme the Sistine Chapel, Hermitage, and Uffizi with art. I had to buy two GAs to do it, and I'm sure I would have been better off using the faith on GMs and could have won much sooner (my last GM bomb was overkill, as you can see in my screen shot).

I figured there was a nearby NW based on the context of the DCL and civ, and went the right direction to find Kilo right away. I settled in the same spot that I see most everyone else did, and immediately bought Kilo and ripped through tradition insanely fast. I wandered my warrior East and was about to circle South when I found the NW and faith CS. I immediately bought a settler and headed to settle near it. I hit a gold ruin and bought a second settler, which I actually settled first right next to my starting location. I settled my original settler on the coast near the crater and I managed to buy the tiles I was getting 16 fpt from two wonders and 75% of an early academy! While I was using my warrior to scout the area around the NW, I stumbled into an unguarded Celtic settler. It became a free worker to chop a granny and library into my city, and more importantly didn't settle in the dirt I wanted. After that I got super aggressive trying to prevent Russia from settling between my cities and wrecking my grand plans. I was building a 3rd settler because I had 400 gold to rush a library and I knew the turf was vulnerable to settling when I spotted the Russian settler with my returning scout. I brought the warrior over and even brought my 2nd scout back from the South to help. I used the settling recommendations from my settler to help me figure out where she was aiming to settle. I settled my 4th city right next to Cathy's settler. I built a 4th settler in Barcelona while the NC was getting built, and plopped my 5th city on the elephants. This dirt was fantastic. Seville lagged a bit in population relative to my settling order, but it did fine working mostly dry plains with a boost from 2 food caravans (one from Petra) and the early science/faith was great.

I decided to keep my religion in house and went mosques then pagodas, plus tithe and RT. Most of the middle game I was hauling in 90+ fpt. Getting that extra 3 happiness per city was great, but what was really fun were the border pops from 4 extra culture in my expos. They popped borders just like a tradition capital, and that saved a ton of gold because my cities grew like weeds. I pissed Cathy off eventually by being so awesome right next to her saltiness, so she converted my capital with a prophet at one point. I got a kick out of having a Spanish Inquisition in Madrid, and kept one there afterwards.

My capital was insane. Because I bought my settlers, I went right to the ToA after scout/scout/worker. There was no need for a monument or shrine lol, and I'd rather have ToA if I can than a granny. I was short of workers early, but ended up with two settler/workers (the second from China) and four more from various steals. Somehow everyone still liked me after taking all of the best land and three early wars for steals, so I kept wonder-building and went culture. I added Petra, Globe (rushed with natural GE from Petra/ToA), Pisa, Sistine, Uffizi (rushed with Pisa GE), Porcelain, Machu (why not?), Eiffel, Broadway (not themed), CR, Sydney, and I had 4 turns left on the Great Firewall when I won. I lost control of the WC for a while when I decided to buy science buildings everywhere and production buildings in my cap, and I wasn't able to propose the IG until too late. You can see from my final screen shot that at 615 production per turn towards it (that was the first turn), I would have won quite easily. I founded the WC and proposed Arts Funding and WF the first two times, then IG on the 4th when I really wanted to propose it for the 3rd. My expos gave me MoH, Oracle, and Brandenburg (why not?). The dirt was so good that I grew all of my cities with only two caravans to Seville and two cargos back and forth between Madrid and Barcelona. After a while Toledo picked up one of Seville's food routes. I kept the other trade routes headed to the culture leaders as soon as I got them, except Wu whom I forgot about until late because she didn't have any coastal cities available to Madrid.

I did a pretty bad job of exploring and only used a single Caravel and Conquistador. I didn't even find the last NW, and I wasn't the first to any after the first two. I kinda approached my navel scouting like it was a pangea map instead of terra. I had no intention of settling any more cities with the kind of clinic I was running with my first 5, even though I think the Great Barrier site was worth settling and the FOY would have made a fun "resort" for my empire.

Cathy and I had a passive-aggressive thing going on, and she backstabbed me. I had plenty of warning from allies, but I was busy winning the WF so I just took a bunch of loans from her (dirty if she did attack, but I can always find a use for gold if she didn't so I didn't feel too bad) and when she did attack I upgraded all of my Xbows to gats with the money. Madrid was in easily defensible terrain, so it was just annoying to lose food/production to her soldiers on my land. After I won the world's fair I used the policy to buff up my army with foreign legions and push her back. Russia actually attacked from two fronts, but she didn't have enough troops to the North to make trouble. England decided to pile on and usually longbows are a real problem, but not when you have gats and foreign legions in the field. I got peace from both pretty painlessly really.

England went Order after I went Freedom, and then Russia went Autocracy. Austria followed me into Freedom, then China went Order (I'm thinking because she was warring a lot and England had some Order influence), and everyone went Freedom after that. I could have won sooner with a DOW/musician bomb, or just paid the 360ish and 4 luxes that Cathy and Wu Zeiten wanted for open borders, but all I had to do was keep playing and I'd win eventually and this game was really fun. Plus Cathy was very unhappy threw the entire end game. I ended up flipping Cathy to Freedom after I dropped a GM on England, and a couple turns later she wanted a DOF again and open borders for only a couple gold. I'm sure she was going to backstab me again based on her troop movements during the whole sequence, but it didn't matter because I had a GM ready to drop on her that turn. I had another GM by China, and out of habit I DOWed her the same turn and bulbed it. But I really could have afforded the insane price she wanted for open borders (it was over 400 gpt without the luxes!) and won without the DOW. I just couldn't have paid both of them what they wanted, but it worked out.

This map was a lot of fun, and I'm tempted to play it again and see how fast of a science win I can get. I dunno though, there was a lot of luck in getting all of that territory claimed before city spamming Russia got in the way and I'd be sad if I didn't get the same cities. Then again, it looks like IronFighterXXX and Acken both were under T200 with 3 and 4 cities respectively, so I guess as long as I put Madrid in the right spot and grab Petra again things will go pretty well.

BTW, a sub-170 CV is just plain bad ass.

Almost quit on T3 after I saw the mountain top ruins as I really wasn't about to let bugs tickle me. In extreme lazy mode rather settled by the river rather than started jogging to the hills. Bought a settler as soon as possible, stole a worker from Lizzy which was more due to muscle memory than anything else, recruited Boudicca's ninja settler before barbs and started camping. Scouting was sadly blocked my hefty number of foreign cities.
T35 religion after faith ruin, T65 GS from Liberty, T66 Petra, T80 CS which was decently fast for 5 cities without NC but Cathy had Knights on T71 and enhanced 2nd after Cathy and for a change Theo went Piety & actually managed to get a religion.
T82 Pyramids & Oracle followed by T84 5C NC which is were I stopped this weird game.

Friends with Cathy & Theo while the others are neutral and not a single war in the game apart from my recruitment efforts; no one has even attacked a CS and since this is grandma dominated world I assume everyone is nitting socks.

I'd like to do something leftfield to make this more lively but actually finishing a game is a reasonable time frame is also tempting. Either way I can't see the victory beeing under pressure in any way, shape or form. Being true to Liberty Dom is an option but it prolly leaves the yet uncharted territories, well, uncharted & unused sadly.

Didn't bother with pics at this point - I assume they'd be pretty much like everyone else's.