Community Deity Game #16 - Sweden

I won't finish the game because after all these mods the base game feels too boring, but hey even the base game can surprise sometimes..
 

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Pushed Sweden's UA pretty far this game :D

Spoiler :
With the extra 250 gold, I bought a quick shrine after going Pottery first. This allowed me to pick the 2nd pantheon. I chose Dance of the Aurora. After discovering the religious CS nearby, I decided to open Piety which I haven't done in a long time. The fact that none of the other pantheons chosen at that point were faith based also comforted me in that choice.

Something weird happened early on in my game. In the T20s-T30s, I captured a Netherlands settler near where I placed Sigtuna in my game. As I would later find out, this was Netherlands' original starting settler. Netherlands stayed for a very long time on one-city all early game, because of it. When it finally settled its 2nd and 3rd city near Germany, Bismark DoW'd William not long after and took them. This started an almost game-long perma-war between Netherlands and Germany since Amsterdam is in a difficult to reach area. Amsterdam fell not too long before my game ended. Germany also settled the Western coast/river spot which would also instill a game long rivalry between Germany and England.

I had a real slow beginning this game. I am not sure if its because of the Tundra start, the sparse resources, the Piety opener of maybe a combination of all three. I also focused on production early on to get buildings and make my low pop cities adopt my religion passively faster. Does anyone know of a guide/resource where I could learn exactly how the passive religious pressure works? ie is there a way to estimate/calculate when a city will convert to a religion? For some reason, most (but not all) my cities seem to convert when they grow. For example, if a city is pop 5 with 2 followers and it grows to pop 6, followers will also grow to 3 and the city will convert to my religion. Bismark looked a bit dangerous early on with the largest army, but Netherlands occupied him early on which gave me the time to convert his cities so he would become naturally friendly.

My religion was
Pilgrimage - Pagodas - Monasteries - Messiah - To the Glory of God

Netherlands and Poland also opened Piety. Netherlands was however confined to only one city most of the game and didn't spread their religion. Poland was on another continent and sent a lot of GP toward the Shoshones early on. However, they were only removing my religion from the Shoshone cities and not them converting to their own with multiple spreads for some reason. Poland Catholicism never got a foothold on the main continent. The Iroquois also founded, but mainly spread it to its own 20+ cities. England founded with the Hagia Sophia GP and only spread it to her own city. This left pretty much the whole continent for me to spread my religion with the German and Shoshone spamming cities. I got a 100+ faith output really soon around T100. After purchasing, faith buildings in all my cities, I generated 5 GP before reaching the industrial era (at which point, I stockpiled my faith). I didn't plant them, but used them to spread my religion 3 times and then gifted them to a CS. At first, I wasn't sure if it would work, but it did. So you get (most of) the benefits of the GP and can gift it too for IP! I ended with a 11K faith stockpile at the end (personal record). With it, I faith purchased 10 Great people (8*1K + 2*1.5K) thanks to To the Glory of God. So never before was it so easy to ally all CS in the game (even if there were 20, four more than standard). My lowest allied CS was at 175 IP.

In summary, I went 4-city Piety into NC. I settled 2 cities after mainly to get coastal access and to fill out my territory and get one more river GP generating city. I took the Small-Piety approach, but maybe you could call it the Medium-Piety approach in this case ;) I was late most of the game (compared to a normal one). I was lagging behind maybe 90% of the game. However, the AIs loved me. Neighbors adopted my religion. I always proposed the most popular resolution including Art Funding which everyone except Germany wanted. I didn't even attempt to win WF and settled for Silver. I was 4th to Ideology. Germany went Autocracy, Shoshone Order and the Iroquois Freedom. Even if Freedom would have made more sense, I chose Order to secure a least one friendly neighbor. It was the first game where I aimed for a Diplo victory that an AI actually reached the Info era first. The Iroquois who were a major runaway with 20+cities and Rationalism actually reached it a few turns before me.

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Also, I encountered this bug at some point.

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Achievements
A. The Gift of Genius: Gift at least X Great People to CS
e) 10 Great People 5pt
I gifted 25 great people total. I wrote political treatises with all my natural GW. I started golden ages with most of my GA. I also bulbed 5/6 GS to research Globalization in time (even if not necessary). Otherwise, I gifted all my Great People. I generated a bunch of GMu solely for gifting. I gifted my 5 GP that I got pre-industrialization. I also got 3 great people from CSes, because of the Patronage finisher that I also gifted. And, as I wrote previously, I faith purchased 10 great people with my 11K faith stockpile at the end.

B. Hack On: get at least X Hakkapeliitta and keep them alive until the end of the game (they can be upgraded)
c) 10 Hakkapeliitta 5pt

C. March On: train at least X Caroleans and keep them alive until the end of the game (they can be upgraded)
c) 10 Caroleans 5pt

D. A Friend in Swede: at some point in the game be friends with X civilizations
d) 4 Civilization 4pt
I was friend with 5 civilizations at one point: Shoshone, Germany, Netherlands, Poland and Iroquois. England was a sworn enemy of Germany and didn't like me allying Kiev. So I never got to friend them. Netherlands got wiped out by Germany. Germany was a good friend until the very end when I allied Sofia and Hong Kong with Great People gifts. At which point, Germany denounced me. Poland didn't renew DoF after going Autocracy. I stayed friend with the Shoshones (my Order buddy) and the Iroquois (Freedom) until the end.

E. Special: have a Hakkapeliitta with a stacked Great General take a city 0pt
Played peaceful all the way.
 
Spoiler :

Used the starting gold for shrine, got a pantheon after meeting CS for tundra faith. Easily got first religion with pagoda so there aren't many piety AI after all. Started with 2 cities, planted one more when I was well over supply limit with bought settler. Spammed spearman/archers and upgraded to CB before starting on Germany. Stole worker from Germany, never made peace. My 1st expo was planted between Germany and England and I was hoping for England to DoW first which they did. Therefore I took a detour and defended and used 2nd army on Germany. Meanwhile Shoshone was happy for peace after worker steal and happily spamming cities, which I will take after dealing with everyone else. I was also able to kill a Dutch settler that was unprotected, and it turns out they only had 2 cities, so I made peace with them and sent TR to leech science. Germany planted a city south just before I killed him off so I'm forced to go to peace and also send TR to him. England was pretty easy, and afterwards went to Dutch and they died quickly due to only 2 cities and no troops. 2nd army went on to Shoshone and that took longer due to their massive land area and city spamming. Also they had pikes which took longer to kill. It took shortly after T100 to clear starting continent except for 1 German city. I used that city to farm xp until Renaissance. SP was left liberty, Honor until GG. Used liberty GE to rush NC.

Surprised to find the 2 remaining civs each with own continent and pretty advanced. So I just get DoF with both and wait till Modern era after 100 turns then kill them with Battleship + Carriers. Delayed winning Dom with gifting London to Poland after reviving them from Iroquois. That allowed me to also capture Onondaga in addition to Warsaw for all their wonders. I just didn't want to win Domination even after clearing every other Polish and Iroquoian cities, so waited for the CV.

Achievements:
A. The Gift of Genius: Gift at least X Great People to CS
e) 10 Great People 5pt (lost count after gifting 7 GG and 3 GM, I also had many GA and GAdm, also GPr after using 3 charges. Didn't gift a single GW or GS obviously)

B. Hack On: get at least X Hakkapeliitta and keep them alive until the end of the game (they can be upgraded)
c) 10 Hakkapeliitta 5pt

C. March On: train at least X Caroleans and keep them alive until the end of the game (they can be upgraded)
c) 10 Caroleans 5pt

D. A Friend in Swede: at some point in the game be friends with X civilizations
b) 2 Civilization 2pt (only Poland and Iroquois after clearing 1st continent. There were no way to get friends on first unless I go peaceful)

Special: have a Hakkapeliitta with a stacked Great General take a city 1pt (Every inland cities off starting continent were captured with UU anyway, too lazy to swim more ground troops)
Total 18 pts


Spoiler :
 
I am very impressed with the folks who cleared the continent! Good job guys! Please share your initial build order.

I won the second WL vote. There were late wars with 3 AIs, only one of which was by my choice. The first war was for the GG. I made peaces ASAP for the other two so I could place diplomats. One civ was eliminated late game and if it had gone to a third vote, I was in good position to recall him to life (except that the easies thing would have been to buy a navy from scratch).

I had the tech lead and just a couple Boosters had been build, so it was fairly uncontested. Need 42 votes, got 45.

  • Gifted 4 GMu, 1 GG, and 3 GPr for 4 points. The last was kind of cheese since I had not finished spreading but I donated him early for the achievement.
  • Just one Hakkapeliitta, 0 points.
  • Just two Carolinas, and both of those upgraded from warriors, 0 points.
  • I had at least one RA with every civ, but friends came and went. At the best point, just as ideologies came around, I was friends with all but one AI, so four total for 4 points.
  • I took no cities, 0 points.
 

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Beetle, I once recalled someone to life and they still wouldn't vote for me. Just FYI.

The only time I've ever had anyone else vote for me was when I had the rare combination of utmost respect (6/7 bright green modifiers) and fear (I'm the only one with nukes and non-proliferation has been passed).
 
Strange? I thought it was hard coded that once you recall someone to life, they are bound in blood to vote for whatever you propose until the end of time. Unless they were first recalled by someone else, then re-killed and re-recalled :lol:
 
Maybe there were other things that affected their decision?

I'd be interested to learn about any code that affected WL vote or WC votes in general. The only method I currently have to get stuff passed is massive bribes. I remember games where to get what I wanted I spent over 200 GPT in bribes. Compared with some of the subtleties of real-life diplomacy, this could do with being made less gamey, I think.

I mean, they thank you when you vote for their proposal, but even if you try to bargain in advance by trading vote for vote, they simply won't. Is is so hard to code an AI to be a bit more open to things than "I definitely don't want this" or "I definitely do" ?

I think a sensible approach could be (and I'm no expert at all on what is possible in code) to have each proposal flavoured in the same way that something like 'CS Bullying is', with numbers 0-10, and then have that number affected by in-game conditions.

So for example, we could have Darius with a natural flavour for 'Historical Landmarks' of 7, and then having gone Freedom it would get +2, and having built X wonders it would get +X (or X/y), etc.

But I never see anything other than either

- AI wants it (and will actually pay YOU to vote for it)
- AI doesn't want it (and will only accept MASSIVE bribes to vote for it, if at all)

I remember offering Maria T something like 2000 GPT and all of my cities to vote for World Religion (not hers) just as a test, and she still wouldn't take it. That's just silly how intractable that is!
 
I once had an AI spontaneously vote for me as host. It completely threw me off guard because I had given him my votes -- so neither of us won! I reloaded, but now I wish I had at least done a screen capture. At the time, I did not realize just how remarkable it was!

I now understand the bribe mechanics better, but I still find Globalization diplomats and CS allies to be more reliable than bribing. This game I also had WI and WR, which I have only gotten bolder about proposing because of these forums.

In terms of bribing, often the AI wants massive bribes to vote for something clearly in their best interest. In this game, at the WR vote, the faraway runaway was up to be embargoed. I tried to pay him to vote against that (so he could not vote against WR). He wanted the same crazy bribe for both votes -- so I skipped it. He was embargoed and my WR passed. No bribes, but it was a close vote.
 
If you recall AI to life, the would ONLY vote for you for WL vote, nothing else and they won't help you pass whatever resolution unless they really want it. Normally their vote for WL can't be bought even if you have diplomat, with a rare exception if they believe you can't win the WL vote even with their bought vote. Even in this case, it costs a lot to buy their vote for WL. For the non WL votes, you can buy votes with diplomats if they want it, and usually don't cost much.
 
For the non WL votes, you can buy votes with diplomats if they want it, and usually don't cost much.
Are you referring to an AI you recalled to life, or the AI in general? For one recalled to life, I agree. For other AI, my experience with buying votes is that their attitude towards you is the most important factor. Which makes little sense when trying to secure a vote for something the AI is in favor of anyway!

But I never see anything other than either
- AI wants it (and will actually pay YOU to vote for it)
- AI doesn't want it (and will only accept MASSIVE bribes to vote for it, if at all)
That describes the vast majority of votes, but there are opportunities enough where the AI votes can be secured at reasonable costs. I got a sense of the mechanics by routinely approaching friendly AIs for votes where I didn't actually care one way or the other.

I remember offering Maria T something like 2000 GPT and all of my cities to vote for World Religion (not hers) just as a test, and she still wouldn't take it.
It is frustrating that sometimes “no means no” (which might always be the case with votes) but others times “no” just means the player needs to add a few more gpt to the offer.
 
Are you referring to an AI you recalled to life, or the AI in general? For one recalled to life, I agree. For other AI, my experience with buying votes is that their attitude towards you is the most important factor. Which makes little sense when trying to secure a vote for something the AI is in favor of anyway!
For non WL votes, you could always buy votes with diplomats. Recalling them to life is just a strong green modifier so they might like you more, but cost of buying vote is related to how much they like you anyway, and how much they like the proposal.


It is frustrating that sometimes “no means no” (which might always be the case with votes) but others times “no” just means the player needs to add a few more gpt to the offer.

For WL votes, no matter how much you pay, they won't vote for you unless one of two condition is met. Either you recall them to life (they vote for you 100% without need for any diplomat), or they like you enough and your combined votes is insufficient to win the WL vote anyway (require diplomat and may be very expensive)
 
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