The Immortal Challenge Lineup - Game #22 Ethipoia

Settled a few tiles E, hadn't seen the 4th salt yet. 2 Expos, standard Tradition. Scout, Stele, Worker, Granary, ToA, Archer x2, Settlers. Missed HG and Borobudur, got Oracle, Sistine, FP, LToP and GE for Globe. Currently building WF.

Finished Trad t91, then finished Patronage, Rat open once I hit Industrial (personal handicap). Just got Radio, went Freedom, and now have a new policy. Typically I would take Secularism (and stop Rat there), but I am tempted to get the 6 Foreign Legions and take Jakarta with 7 wonders, several are useful. My military is pathetic, but I assume they can do the job on their own? Happiness is through the roof, so I don't need Univ Suffrage at all. I suppose taking his cap will really screw my open borders...

I am thinking about trying a very late CV. I have no idea how long it will take me to finish Aesthetics, as I haven't even opened it. No Ampis, etc. I still need a bunch of stuff in my cap as I just built wonders for so long, and still have to finish Schools in my expos (4-6 turns).

Brazil... He DoW me! Why? We were friends. RAs going. No negative diplo. He happily adopted my religion. No contested borders. I thought he was the nicest guy going around. Is it possible someone paid him to war with me? Or because he thought my empire was weak so he attacked? I think I was ranked 7/8 in soldiers at the time. Was very surprised. I thought he had low deceptiveness, hated war, super friendly and barely built offensive units. He did build the terracotta army. I even gave him $$ when he asked. Any ideas on why he would DoW me?

The AI understands that conquest is a great way to expand his empire. Even 'peaceful' tradition empires will do it if you are that weak. What turn did he DoW you? Why didn't you build units?

Turn 163 he DoWed. I had a mixture of ranged units (some not upgraded) and bought a couple of horses. I was able to defend his attack without losing a unit and got a Great General out of it. He just kept attacking my city without worrying about my units. I am a very peaceful player but really want to break this habit. I think I need to ban myself from winning via Science..

For some reason I lost interest when Brazil DoW on me. I was going to stop playing as I thought I wouldn't be able to defend the attack but thought I'd push through. To my surprise I did. Then I thought I'd just experiment. Not build any more units. Just go for a science victory - almost mindlessly, beelining to the science techs. Just keep pushing 'next turn'. I even set my workers to automation after a while.

Encountered just one tricky part where Venice could have gotten a diplo win but I was able to buy out a CS and use spies to stop him from getting voted in as leader by 2 votes - lucky! Bought some scientists with the excess faith I had. Built spaceship parts with engineers through Order. It was shockingly easy. I think I need a dose of reality and give Deity a go. Or try a domination win but I know I'll do badly, even on Emperor!

I decided to really focus on religion in this game. I was generating a plethora of faith from the very start really. It ended up being useless mid game as Venice was relentless in spreading their religion so I decided to bank it for late game engineers and scientists. Worked a treat. Without it, Venice would have won Diplo easy. Especially given I wasn't paying any attention to CSs until I realised he had enough votes to win.

Tech Order
Pottery
Mining
Animal Husbandary
Archery
Calendar
Writing
Philosophy

Build Order
Scout
Stele
Shrine
Granary
Settler
Archer
Worker

Social Policies
Opened Tradition
Opened Piety - get a fast faith start and get Great Mosque of Djenne
Finished Tradition
Piety - Theocracy
Opened and finished Rationalism
Order - got to engineers finishing spaceship parts

Religion
Pantheon - Earth Mother - 1 faith from copper, iron and salt
Founder - Tithe - 1 gold for every 4 followers of this religion
Follower - Mosques - 3 faith, 2 culture, 1 happy
Enhancer - Religious Texts 25% faster religion spread (50% with printing press) - This ended up being a waste of time.
Follower - Cathedrals - 1 faith 1 culture 1 happy 1 great work of art slot

Wonders
Borobudur
Great Mosque of Djenne

I built 3 cities. I settled in place after umming and ahhing if I should move north-west but thought the extra river protection might be good, didn't want to waste a turn and was hoping for some goodies in the FoW. Not to be - just a bunch of plains. Possibly saved me in the end against Brazil having a river to cross to attack my city but early on I was kicking myself for not moving and getting 2 more salts (I think) in my borders.

2nd city I wanted to be near Lake Victoria but Indonesia beat me to it. So I settled on a hill south of Lake Victoria next to a mountain and river and bought the cows and banana tiles before Indonesia would.

3rd city - probably not ideal but in the Tundra/hills area to the south-east of the capital and south of Indonesia to get Crabs and Marble in my borders. I was too slow to get a city north where the bananas and gems were.

I fed all my cities food via caravans for the entire game.

Well, nobody gave me any advice, so I just did what I knew I figured most would say - ATTACK! I took Foreign Legions, and it was quite tricky to take Jakarta with only 2 tiles exposed (mtn and ocean bottleneck). He could snipe at me from the mtns N and the sea, so I did lose one of my precious FLs. What ended up working was leaving a Gat next to the city, it never took any damage, and I was usually able to rotate FLs in and out. Healing took forever, I burned a lot of insta-heals and abused pillage-heal. Took it t220, all those delicious wonders!

Kept the war going since he was the culture leader, and killed him off t227. I kept Surabaya as it had TWO Manufactories and lotsa nice buildings. Waited to DOW Venice a few turns until I got Infantry, took La Venta, and then Venice t246. He kindly built me Louvre recently.

Pedro and I have been buds most of the game, now I need to decide if I backstab him as the new culture leader, or just ride it out. I answered my own question, which is that it is entirely possible to win a CV when opening Aesthetics late (with the help of some violence). It would be fun for a while if I tried to take Ottomans on, they took Bill-O and Maria out. But it would likely become a boring slog to get at the interior capitals. I'm actually pretty sure Pedro is gonna back-stab me before long. His war with Venice will end soon enough.

Pretty uneventful finish, once I had all the CS couped/bought I just cruised to victory. I lost 3-4 level 3 spies trying to coup Cape Town, but luckily (?) everyone was stealing from me so I always got new spies leveled up quickly. Pedro never did DOW me, but late game he did bring a GG near Venice, so I got some troops by the border and it went away.

Sul went Autocracy and got creamed by my Freedom pressure plus WI-Freedom, but he never would switch. Four of his cities flipped to me, first Vienna, which made me reconsider DomV, but I just liberated it. Second city I sold to Maria, 3rd and 4th (the same city 2x) I resold to Sull for 25 gpt and 2 lux, then 85 gpt. Which is pretty funny as it just hurt his happiness.

I never did annex the last 3 Venetian cities, the governors did decent builds, and actually worked both Landmarks (but not a Holy Site).

This ended up being pretty fun - I was irritated about not getting a good religion spread going, but the mid-game CV wars (t206 DOW of Indo) were a nice change of pace.