NEW Deity Challenge I - The Ottomans

Beelined optics: lighthouse is like hanging gardens + ironworks.

Work boat was really cheap - and that made naval start much easier.

SP: piety opening - liberty up to settler - piety left 1 (shrines and temples +1 culture and faith) - will finish liberty for the finisher (this is a brilliant idea... having a nice finisher effect for liberty makes liberty much better).

Worried about Greece attacking me, so I did not settle more cities yet.

2 civs got religion enhanced pretty quick, so I did not have any choice to get buildings. I think I chose God of sea (1 hammer and 1 faith from workboats!) - tithe - temple one.

Got pyramid, but this was overkill... I stole too many workers from CS so should have used that hammer to somewhere else.

I went into this game unsure of whether Domination was possible, and around the time I decided to make a foray south with my Janissaries, I got something of a warning (See first Screenshot) that perhaps I should rethink. From that point onwards, I pushed for a fast but sturdy Diplomatic game, knowing that one slip could cause the neighbour to invade, and that would be the end of me. Keeping him onside was a huge part of the challenge, not easy when we had different ideologies, but I made the switch after building SoL (with faith-bought GE).

The second biggest challenge was finding enough WL votes. Without Globalisation AND World Ideology, I'd not have done it, so although it looks like I won by miles, I was short without both these events occurring, both of which came about within a few turns of the vote (the first WL vote). Complications included the disappearance of one AI civ and the subsumption of several CS.

Conclusion: Not an easy DiploV by any means, and a little disappointing I couldn't have gotten going a bit stronger and a bit earlier, but clearing barbs and building an empire without worker steals (I envy Glory7 his) slowed me down considerably. A satisfying win, but one which leaves me wanting to see someone else clear this landmass militarily.

Opened 2 scouts monument shrine worker warrior then started making settlers.
I straight up made 6 settlers with a pause for a fishing boat.

Settling this agressively obviously made Isabella and Alexander angry but they accepted bribe to attack someone else until the AI had made enough cities to no longer suffer the penalty. Seems the AI expands more in this mod.

I went my usual Engineering before NC then rushed the NC with the Liberty Engineer in the 90s then workshop then education at T112 and completed universities around T120.

Policies wise I didn't get that many to play with, I completed Liberty and then put 3 in Piety for the opener, hapiness temple and science boost. I decided to feed the capital with Cargos since it had a unique +75% science from both the NC and the Grand Temple.

After that I simply completed Rationalism around T165 with the help of winning the world fair. I then got Plastics around T170. Compared to the base game I was mostly slowed by fixed value GS and no free scientists from Hubble. Otherwise it would be below T200. I bought 2 GS with Faith.

I ended up being declared on by Greece because of ideology near the end but a rush buy of tanks was enough to repel his riflemen.

Ideological pressure was at -32 at the end but I was able to stay positive.

I sadly couldn't get Pisa maybe if I had saved an Engineer made in the capital it would have been easy to grab. Besides that I got Sistine, SoL, Hubble, Cristo, Neushwanstein all built with engineer and Porcelain which I made normally.

Education t106.


SP: again, I intentionally avoided rationalism and tried honor. Getting culture+science+gold for killing is super cool!



dynamite.


I rushed brandenburg gate with GE. Cap may pump out heroic epic + range frigates.

Athens falls..


Scholarism is great - allied all available 15 CS (one is taken early by other civ). Btw, without rationalism, own spt sucks...but it actually prevents the player from running away, which makes the game more fun.


Moving on to Arabia. Win is guaranteed, but the problem is time (real world time).

I intentionally let my CS to take the Greek last city (Rhodos in the screenshot), and liberated Greece by taking Hali.... city. It is funny that he became super friendly after "recalled to life"

Man.. this is amazing. I did not know how AIs behave under this mod, so I cowardly settled. Your city spots are great.

My goal was not to win in the best time, but to really make the Ottoman Empire great (again). I wanted a wide empire with good science, military, culture and a powerful religion. Maybe it was the roleplaying that got to me.. I don't know. So even though my scouts were sometimes moved by invisible hand I got a really strong start off, had good scouting, found decent ruins, decided to go Liberty after not getting a culture ruin. BO in cap was something like Scout / Scout / Shrine / (Buy Scout) / Monument / (Buy Archer). I stole 1 worker from Alex, found 1 in a camp, stole 2 workers from the same CS and started settling like wild as soon as I got to CR. My plan was to plop down 8 cities, I settled for 6 in the end, never making peace with CS so I could conquer it between ST and Plastics for another TR and more lategame science. Built lots of units early, ended up getting 3 CS allied and a lot of friends. I had excess happiness out my a.. 20+ Smiles with 5 cities allowed me to get a very early GA, before the one from Liberty. After CR I dipped into Piety for one point, just to get my Shrines faster. I settled my last city way too late which really screwed with my growth and culture game. Got my Liberty finisher T90 and took a Prophet. Egypt would have founded literally next turn.. I'm now 100+ turns in but don't want to talk too much since I am not sure this is the run I want to finish. We'll see.

Being dissatisfied with my Liberty start I wanted to try a fresh one, without any bugs. I wanted to play violent SV with Tradition, seeing as I didn't like Liberties performance. This try I did so, so much better.. Due to better (nonbugged) scouting I met almost all CS by T50. Got like 10+ ruins in total. Stole a total of 7 Workers without DOWing a CS. I got a 2 from Camps, 3 from Spain and 2 from Greece. Just like in my other game I was permanently parking scouts on greek borders to stop any chance of expansion. He didn't even dare to settle north of his cap until T90 Diplo was good, all my cities were better, NC came 10 turns earlier, everything was going great. All religions but 1 were gone, but no one else had a Pantheon even. I felt secure.

Then it happened. Egypt just built Hagia Sophia. They had no Pantheon, took last religion from me on T90. Just about four or five turns before I could've gotten mine. This made me ragequit. I am now torn between playing to amazing openings, both of which I want to try for different reasons. For now I will be playing the Liberty one, updating you guys regularily. Both are roughly T90 to T100, both have lots of CS allies, lots of Worker steals, all the city locations I wanted and decent diplo.

After looking at Acken's great game, I decided to try out his Liberty guide for this game since NQ seems to favor wide play and I must say I like it a lot. I bought the FoY tile near Edirne so that made the expansion phase easier. Seville settled early, so I was too late for the river/hill/coast spot for Ankara. I went for a 8-city NC, finished Liberty at T90 and took the GE. With GE nerf, I had to wait to T93 to finish NC. I also planted a random 9th city after, but stopped there to not delay National Wonders.

I stole workers from Greece and didn't make peace until the late T90s. Alex seemed really nerfed this game and was not a threat. One funny moment was when he suicided two Companion cavalries on one of my cities.



Spain was the military leader all game and was easy to bribe. Both Isa and Alex where in fake friendly mode. I killed two birds with one stone twice in the game by bribing Isa against Alex in two fairly long (and unsuccessful) wars.



One of the big difference in NQ is that the cultural AIs generate a lot more Tourism. If you go wide, you could potentially really be screwed over by Ideologies. Hopefully, in my game I won World Fair and Arabia one of the cultural leaders joined me in Freedom. World Fair was the first resolution passed and was completed in only 4 turns in the T160s. Assyria was not so lucky however and switched Ideologies 4 times!! Ashurbanipal went wide (14+ cities) and played fairly uncultured. He lost many cities to revolt. Each time he switched Ideology it seems his most favorable Ideology also switched. He started with Autocracy, then Order, back to Autocracy, then Freedom and back to Order. Here are some key moments that made Ideology pressure shifts: different cultural leaders adopting different Ideologies, Order Poland taking down most Autocratic Egyptian cities and becoming the Tourism leader and Freedom as World Ideology.



For policies, I went Full Liberty, Full Patronage, Full Rationalism and then 8 in Freedom. Patronage is a lot better, especially Scholastism. Most of the late game I had 448 Science (16*28) from CSes alone. Although with the new Consulate policy, you do not need Globalization to win a Diplomatic victory, science is still the bottleneck as you need to reach the Information era to trigger the World Leader vote. Although the AIs seem to tech a little bit faster than normal Diety, only two AIs had reached the Atomic era at T228 in my game. The WC was founded early at T128 and that screwed a bit my timing this game. I had to go through an extra 25T proposal than normal. Maybe if I had went for Rationalism before Patronage, I could have skipped a round and finish in the low T200s by reaching the Information era in time. By T180, I had all 16 CSes allied without doing a single coup and researched Globalization T204 (it was however far from necessary to win). Although the AIs seem to generate a lot more gold in NQ mostly by going wide, they do not seem to be more aggressive for spending their money on CSes. So I would say that a Diplomatic victory is even easier under NQ than a normal Deity game with the enhanced Patronage policies and distinct GP meters.

• Got Pagoda faith purchase reminder at 120 when it required 200 faith
• CS indicate the amount of science provided in a standard game not the new NQ value (good for comparison though)
• Religious CS do not seem to provide the 50% boost from the Patronage finisher
• Also had a weird bug where my trades (trades to renew) wouldn't stick (resolved by making a new trade with a new item)