The Deity Challenge Line-up #14 - The Netherlands

Not done well on my first go. Settled 3 but Dido is absolutely the worst to have as a neighbor, the forward settling psychotic demon. But anyway, what happened was I waited until 120 turns to get all CBs to XBs but I am the worst warmonger ever so that didn't really go well, and in all this commotion I forgot I left a city completely undefended and unimproved. Dido was also involved (paid) in a quite a lenghy war with Lizzy which was supposed to slow her down and open room for me but instead her units multiplied like rabbits and I definitely need to learn how to war better.

I used to suck at war until I watched some VidLPs to see how the pros do it. I recommend Maddjinn's Spain and Poland VidLPs, and anything by Acken, Moriarte and especially Peddroelm. Peddro chooses an Honor strategy that makes the start quite tricky, but the mid and game stronger than Liberty.

I watched all of that, but I still suck, and even if I'm doing alright, it just drags on forever if I need to take on a Civ that can obviously build a zillion units in one turn

Every time I say to myself I need to learn how to war properly if I ever want to be any good, I just get tired halfway through..

Well, let me tell you that the strategy is excellent. Adwcta describes it in detail, so I won't repeat what he has said, but the basic premise is that you make the most of certain bonuses at certain times during the game, and you start my staying small and focusing on faith. So, in this case I was hemmed in by two aggressive neighbours. I'm not the best at domination and even if I was able to destroy them, it comes at a huge cost which I'm usually not too good at recovering from. So the basic strategy was going Piety and just focusing on gold, faith and culture in the first 150 turns or so. I got Goddess of Festivals and tried to settle 2 more cities away from both Carthage and England. Essentially the plan was to take as much time as necessary in the Ancient, Classical and Medieval eras but to make sure I convert the majority of Carthage and England's cities, to get the most important diplomatic modifier. I also gifted them various amounts of gold and sold them all my luxuries. This was quite difficult to achieve but I did eventually manage to flip their cities. I was a long way behind, and only got the NC about T150. But around that time I was getting aqueducts up in all my cities. So after that, I was able to go more or less full food focus. Spies were stealing technology faster than I could research them by a long way, plus as everyone had all the techs, I was given discounts all across the way. As soon as I hit the Rennaissance it was a beeline to Industrialization (getting Universities up along the way) and I was able to get the third ideology (2 tenets of Freedom). The next step was buying up all the city states, which I basically had all of in about 50 turns. I finished Rationalism to get Statue of Liberty, and then switched ideology to Order, so Carthage and England (and most of the other civs) would permanently love me. It was then all Patronage except the bottom two, and trying to push through Scholars in Residence and the World Religion vote. With CS allies (almost all of them) combined with some diplomats, I got this through no problem. I had 4 GSs saved up and bought another 3 with the faith I hadn't been using since the Medieval era to bulb Globalization from Plastics (I used Oxford for Plastics). Then it was a mad rush to buy Police Stations and build the National Intelligence Agency which would give me the spy as a diplomat needed to win the first World Leader vote. Luckily I did, but if not I would have been able to win 20 turns later. Great strategy if you have a poor start that nevertheless has some faith output.

I started thinking I'll do it differently for a change and go for Honor but as Dido the Peacelover had two in Honor when I opened I went for Liberty instead.
Classic start as after several turns of cat & mouse with Lizzy I stole two workers and started building archers. For a while it looked like I could do something useful but the CBs appeared on T41 so I went for home with a white peace. Dido blanketed the plains, seas horizon beyond that few turns later - the 3 marsh tiles near Amsterdam were invaluable and she seemed to be more interested in killing units than capturing the city. The initial invasion took some 20 turns during which I lost few, killed a lot, spawned 2 generals one of which I lost before having a chance to move it and the other one was later used to bomb the FoY from Jerusalem. Had to buy 3 tiles to get past the wine tile but well worth it; Ivory was was optional extra. Too bad the siege escapee got killed soon afterwards so I only started meeting others from T95->. Second modest pile of cash used to ally Zurich at which point I was ~30 happiness but all I got from it was a mostly useless GA.

Liberty was finished T85 and the GE used for NC as 26 turn build time didn't seem very tempting. The war ongoing but I had almost nothing shoot, no place in the seas so pretty much stuck building infra without hammers. The CS quests were gems, salt, musicians & merchants none of which I any chance of fullfilling. By the t130 I had completed 3 CSs in total.

CS T108, Education by stealing T125 and Machinery T136 and finally Carthage T142 mostly due to a single heroic Xbow shooting over the bay. Maria finished PT on the same turn so AI was 30 turn ahead & I 30 behind even a semi-decent game, -50gpt as any effort for a sea route got pillaged within 3 turns. Luckily 3 DoFs and enough happiness to sell everything I got to keep me floating - not a chance of buying anything or gifting to CSs. Having a hefty surplus of workers I ended up deleting & feeding them Dido without chance of getting back and a bit later ended up too few of them.
I also forgot my scout to heal for 100+ turns and few other similar hickups happened which I tribute playing while sleeping. Some light in the tunnel when I got Frigates the only downside being I had 2 iron & no money, miniscule details but I had to wait for 9 turns to get my iron back which I had sold to Lizzy all game long. Too bad she used it for swordsmen and not SotL.

DoWed Lizzy T160 & took London 15 turns later but only SotL - I lost more ships though Beggars. After that I wasn't the pinacle of tranquility anymore and backstabs were pouring in - only Suleiman after heavy greasing stayed my friend. I also paid him to DoW Maria & Ahmed and Ahmed to DoW Harald which cost me all the gpt I got from Suleiman for a Carthagian city - I needed a city reachable by a caravan.

So in short it started in the bottom of a canyon and has been steep downhill ever since. Carthage had 4 buildings & London 5, my bpt passed the turn # on T175 when I had 185bpt which is fine for 4 cities on T100 but no so fine for 6 cities T175.
All the WWs were built before I started dreaming of the needed tech, still haven't met all the CSs, 4 NWs are hiding somewhere, don't have money or gpt, iron would be useful as would culture nevermind more than one trading partners but the absolute worst part is that I have a fair chance of winning this mess in reasonable time while I should've been hammered into oblivion at least 100 turns ago.

After the Bismarck DCL I was pleasantly surprised that some AIs still have the touch of making tons of units early in the game but Dido outdid him by a hefty margin. More ground troops and especially mounted ones and on top of that no shortage of naval units too bad Amsterdam was attackable from only one sea tile.
Since AI is still capable of doing this wtf doesn't it do it more often? Every leader is usually infested with some weird treehugger bug which shake off around T200 if they're still alive.

Next target will be Copenhagen ~200ish and then to Morrocco to hopefully get some oil currently hoping I won't get DoWed as I still have RAs with Morocco & Portugal. Enrico is hiding in the corner and I hope I can surprise Suleiman in the end. What I don't want is a global war as there won't be enough units to defend every corner and Carthage is especially vulnerable.

No surprises in the later turns. No mounted, siege or flying units were harmed during the game but one Knight accidentally built. Ground troops outside the starting continent were only used capturing the 2 Moroccoan inland cities from a relatively std Frigate/Battleship game -rush would really be inappropriate term here.
After getting Battleships the need for teching was non-existent but I ran specialists till the end as a very remote backup plan and ended up with 4 unused GSs. One GW apparently just chilling out and all 3 GAs used for the current Golden Age way too late.

Read thru some of the comments on this tread so I expecting a tough start. Found out soon enough that I was stuck on a small landmass with Dido and Lizzy- and Dido wouldnt make peace after I stole a worker from her. (I had to route the worker thru the CS up north before it made back home...)

Went for 3 city Lib CB rush, helped by Lizzy's caravans and Dido suffering from Hiawatha's syndrome - she spammed settlers. Once i figured out that crossing the river and attacking her city from the north desert was the way to go, she didnt last long. Carthage fell around T80ish and then trooped my units over to take London at T94. Lizzy had built the terracotta army to mutliply her army of 2 warriors and 1 spearman.....

with a 7 city lib empire, took a detour to workshops and guilds before heading for education. Built the pyramids because noone else had. This was a painful period of trying to manage happiness to grow and catch up in sci (Rein at T141...) All capitals were coastal so i figure battleships were the best shot.

In the meantime, portugal/venice/morroco were happily spamming wonders, while suleimen and harald were happy being their normal pyschopathical selfs warring each other.

Around T170 Portugal decide that she wanted to win culture style so she opened Rat and killed venice. She was first to ideo (order), and was popular on me by the time I had 3 Fact. Followed her into order (saw no point in happy barracks if cancelled by tourism unhappy)

Managed Batteship tech around T203 with Oxford help. Went for demark first since he was weak and had the SoZ - he fell in at T213. As a side note Frigate upgrading to Battleships cost 390GC???? Crazy expensive.

Meanwhile Maria has GWB/battleships/submarines and is busy trying to kill Morroco (the only AI with any chance of withstanding the Portugal Tourism onslaught), aided by a 300k army score Ottoman army/navy. Everyone else (me included despite winning WF) would have been under her spell by T230....

Declared on her, and managed to take venice (~T220) and lisbon (T229) due to her insistence on killing my CS ally instead of more of my navy. Some brave battleships were sacrificed in the zerg style assualt.

With the Maria taken out it was a simple mop-up of the Morroco and then a 1 turn pearl-habour attack on Istanbul on T247. Even with 7 cities pumping out units i couldnt beat his army score so i lied to him about my navy's movement and sniped him.

Social Policy: Full Lib, 1 Exp (+3 hammers), 3 Rat, 6 Order.

Religion: Never bothered, ended up with England's terribad one.

Some picture - Dido's Settlers(that worker was a former settler), Maria voting for me to be WC host (i have no idea why), Pearl Habour, and the Union of Dutch Socialist Republic.

Stole worker from England, paid Dido to war with anyone just to keep her off my backyard. One of my city was dangerously close to her and would've been a liability if I put it on the coast. Eventually she got all but 1 English cities. 3 city NC then settled 2 more, one on island and the other one in a crowded location just to feed capital which doesn't have any production, so all I can do is to grow it as large as possible and rush buildings with gold. Typical 5 city tradition commerce rationalism freedom game after that. No wars as I was able to friend all the non warmongers and paid all the warmongers against each other. The UA generates a massive amount of gold as I was able to sell/trade off every lux I own, and get easy WLTKD and CS quests for lux. In the end only needed to borrow money for 1 part and had enough to buy the other 5. All my friends except Portugal followed me into Freedom so no problem with ideology. Portugal went for the free autocracy SP which crippled her CV attempt . In the end, I had just enough GS this time, but the bottleneck was the slow Hubble. I feed capital production and still didn't go as fast as I liked. Another setback was couldn't win WF due to poor production, I should've guessed and just stop after the free SP. So I built the hermitage and landmarks to help culture a bit. In the end I only had 1 extra SP to spare.