The Deity Challenge Lineup - Game #6 - Byzantine Empire

London as the last city. Had GG bomb to prevent CSs from capturing it earlier.




Not too many cities left here nor did I annex any.



2nd continent. Last cities on final turn were Cardiff, Rammy's capital which he was very happily still razing and would've committed suicide in 3 turns and Dublin.



Too much culture in the end so I had to open Tradition on T306 but otherwise managed to stay away from the more common trees.




Decent religion spread out without World Religion - I actually proposed it myself but voted it down later.

The lack of Rationalism really hurts so I got to PSchools T205 even with several large cities growth severely handicapped by the lack of happiness. I also bulbed Dynamite on same turn which indicates my weird teching path. Surely it was late for any sort of proper push but best of the options currently available; well most entertaining anyway.



DoWed Lizzy T219 & took York 2nd time T226 and had I bothered to check I'd have noticed that all her 4 WWs were in York I'd have started the war probably earlier. Burned a couple of cities and sold the others to Boudicca in hope of creating much needed tension between her & Askia so Lizzy was off the map T235, too and I didn't even get too much bad press out of it.

WF was build T222-227 and won by Pacha with barely 900 hammers so I'd have won that had I tried it but settled for 350 as usual and managed Eiffel T228 which was badly needed for happiness. The nice side-effect was that it wasn't build by the Celts or Egypt.
T226 Askia decided on his own that Pacha was in his way and DoWed - didn't make any sense but I was happy.

Too bad the Celts took my Byblos which was immediately bought by Pachacuti and parts of my fleet nearby took some beating which turned out later more serious than I originally thought.
The 2nd continent was too peaceful so I paid Boudicca to DoW Rammy T231.




A novel classic GWB war - they have range of 8 against my 6 so the chances of advancing are zero. I had to buy planes & meat shields as Venice couldn't build them quick enough and swimming over the Genevan Channel was slow & risky. Almost all my arties got logistics due to the Incan invasion swarm. Worked reasonably well until the GWBs came when they all got badly beaten. I usually go for cover 1st but this time it'd have resulted losing Venice.




Liberating Almaty T232 and Bratislava twice gave nice diplo bonus but Mogadishu made an impressive move T246. I took Machu as I saw no chances of the Inca getting it back right away but I didn't expect them moving a carrier out of the way to make room for Mogadishu privateer. I also lost the only available melee ship and I suddenly started to regret losing Byblos earlier. Machu was razed so I didn't have much needed coastal city so time for plan b.

T235 bulbed Flight and Railroad on the next turn but Askia got Kremlin T239. With the help of fellow Order nations it was passed as World Ideology T242 and even it didn't make the Freedom loving Boudicca cross with me. T245 bulbed Plastics and bought RLabs one by one with rate permitted by my wallet. I really needed beakers. I only passed 1k beakers on 280s despite of having ~12 cities by then. T248 Neuschwanstein purely for happiness - the gpt was an optional extra.




Liberated Antwerp with one of the bought privateers but it's positioning after liberation wasn't the most fortunate one - all the other ships moved in afterwards.





My ninja cavalry. Usually the see-through units are waving AI colours but this isn't much better.




T264 not a free DoW 2nd time. It was a bit pricy taking more than 30% of my gpt but I thought I really needed that war at the time. Forgot to scroll down so I accidentally gave him OB as well.





Cusco for the 2nd time. Luckily it was only 6 tiles from the sea and not 7 though I used Ica as long as it was burning down, too. Tiwanaku was much easier to capture and the 2nd privateer liberating Antwerp found itself there - not optimal but way better than being sunken on next turn.




Yeah, logistics & range battleships are cool but one would think that Huamanga isn't vulnerable to sea based attacks - devs should do something about this.




T267 Askia built Apollo and was the clear tech lead but his war against Boudicca didn't go anywhere and the reason is visible in the pic - I just didn't believe it until I DoWed T275.
I also Oxforded Satellites & took the last of Incan cities so there were 5 of us.


At some point I noticed peace between the Celts and Egypt so I very discreetly changed that status quo. Boudicca was cheaper and friendlier as Rammy didn't appreciate my war with Askia nor did Pizza Enrico so they both broke DoF and DoWed. Very bad career by Enrico as after taking Gao T286 I DoWed him and took two cities not following superior Tengriism while out of my suggestion Boudicca took the other two by T295.
Askia was more keen on attacking Hong Kong than depending so it was an easy war 2 battleships taking care most of the MSAMs. T287 Hubble & T288 Askia RIP. Gave two cities Egypt, kept Gao & one was captured by Hong Kong.

T291 DoW Boudicca and T298 Egypt. Rammy didn't have anything while Boodicca did but I managed pillage and/or capture most of her oil quickly so it was more about converting the last cities than capturing them as quickly as possible. Almaty took Nottingham with my help but then I had to block them from taking London, too.


All in all far more interesting game than I originally though - the start was too good for a normal play and when one finally gets a religion why not spread it everywhere. The total domination part is always nice as it makes a some nice happiness limitations especially if there're other stuff preventing one from getting tech leads and hence superior units like in vanilla when -70 happiness only slowed SBs a bit.

My policy choices didn't make any sense whatsoever but that wasn't the point - I just wanted to avoid the normal stuff but at least finishing Exploration for the first time made me able to see a hidden arch site. The culture aspect of the game was a bit odd as finished Liberty in reasonable time, struggled to pass Piety and after it wasn't that important anymore.
Didn't build a single archaeologists myself but that's not really a novelty. At first the captured cities didn't have GWs, then nobody had spares so I couldn't swap for tourism bonuses and in the end I didn't have suitable slot available. 4 GAs used for golden ages and near the end 2 used for GWs as I had enough GA turns to finish the game. On the first half of the I'd have gladly swapped my maritime allies for a single cultural one.

The first 100 turns were sort of normal play but then the lack of beakers start making a difference and instead of leading the tech race by Industrial I was 6th and the Danes were already gone. Too bad that once there's a map with Liberty where one can run all the specialist slots and still grow beyond belief (and happiness in this case) one chooses not to benefit from it.

Religion wasn't exactly what I wanted but decent and there's something wrong when Boudicca fails with religion. I had one religious CS ally from early on but I couldn't keep the 2nd. On the other continent Inca had far too many cities to be converted so I burned pretty much all of them.
Boudicca capturing quite a few Egyptian cities made it is easier for me to flip them and by far the most annoying Pope candidate was Enrico with his two leftover prophets. He had 4 own cities none of them following his religion but the prophets walked behind me negating my early efforts.
World Religion would've helped but as I controlled the WC I ultimately voted it down for experimental purposes. I was curious to see how long it'll take without that and faith NWs. Probably the fastest way to convert the whole world is to play a normal sci game from the start until nukes/SBs/XCOMS and kill everyone apart from one city & then buy the needed prophets to convert the capitals while razing everything else - that just doesn't seem equally interesting.

Half the world taking Order saved me from the worst but burning up to 5 cities at the time made me dropping below -20 happiness more than once but there just wasn't happiness available even though I build lighthouses etc in every coastal city and had everything the CSs could offer.

Making war was extremely painful at first. In this game I lost more units than in all the previous DCLs combined (sort of). Few I lost due bad luck with CSs, several by own negligence ie running into too deep when subs were available etc but mostly because of Pachacuti. Instead of slinger-line he had tons of cannons and when they upgraded to arties it hurts, it really. The other main problem was the GWBs which I had no way of defending myself from. Quick healing and decent cash flow were the saviours.
By the time of Rocket Arties the happiness and lack of it can be ignored - they still kill everything and fully upgraded battleships are pretty much the same. I ran out of aluminium somewhere @35 units but that was more than sufficient.

The initial starting location was a tough choice, but in the end I chose the desert river location, simply because I could push a religion via Desert Folklore. It also looked to be the stronger production choice, and my initial plan was for a culture victory attempt, so I chose desert. After all, religion is extremely competitive in Deity, and what would be the point of playing Byzantium without a religion?

First of all, since when is the Fountain of Youth in the game? I have never seen it on any of map, ever. I was sort of stunned to find it, but it definitely caused me to re-think my typical 3 city before NC start, and instead went for an initial 4 cities, due to the extra happiness available. Also, this is the craziest start I have ever seen - copper, crab, and wine in abundance. Wow! Plus, lots of worker thefts from England and Geneva. What more could you ask for?

Opening social policies were full tradition. Got an easy religion due to early folklore pantheon. Picked God of the Sea for bonus, plus Monasteries and Tithe. In retrospect, I think the Monasteries choice was a blunder, as I did not know how much “extra” faith/culture it actually meant, when I made the choice. God of the Sea was awesome. Early tech was pretty standard except that I added sailing, for obvious reasons. So, pottery, mining, animal husbandry, calendar, sailing, and then a push to Education. The map suggested a pretty clear infrastructure plan: cargo ships, light houses, and then fishing boats. Education was Turn 102, and NC was in the 80s somewhere.

All the early wonders went very early in my game. When Oracle went in the 40s, I think my eye started twitching uncontrollably, and I thought to myself, what the heck is going on here? Petra was gone before I even got the tech for it, or could have possibly go the tech for it (early 50s). Then, I missed the first wonder I attempted, Machu Picchu, by 1 turn! No! Plus and added bonus, NO successful tech steals in the game, whatsoever. Curse you, random number generator!

Oh well, still an incredible start, and you have to expect something to go wrong on Deity!



I bee-lined printing press for an attempt on Leaning Tower, which I got! The plan was CV at this point, so I chose Globe Theatre, with the intent of pushing for one of these two: Sistine, Uffizi. But, just to keep me on my toes, the game sent another curve ball my way, when the Taj Mahal was built on the other continent. That was quickly followed by both Sistine and Uffizi in rapid succession, clearly someone was in the top half of the tree, the Celts. What sort of new trickery is this, passing up two wonders to build the Taj Mahal? So, the plan suddenly became yet another science victory, and I pushed for Porcelain Tower.

Except for a silly DOW attempt mid-game by Songhai, the game was pretty peaceful on the military front. That attempt was easily foiled by allying Sidon. I figured something was wrong when a constant conga line of missionaries starting bombing my capital. Apparently, he did not like my religion.

I usually pick Order over Freedom, but wanted to mix it up a little. Unlike the Inca game, I lined up the end game pretty well, everything was done just in time for the next thing to start. I saved Oxford and rationalism finishers for expensive techs, robotics and particle physics in this case. I faith bought the engineer for Hubble, plus 2 faith bought GS to finish off the tech tree.



The Porcelain Tower proved very useful in this game, as both Egypt and the Inca were not slacking off when it came to Science, despite the AIs avoiding Rationalism. Also, much less ideological pressure in this game vs. the Inca challenge due to stronger culture on my part, which is something I want to repeat in future Deity games. Freedom turned out to be a strong choice for this map, as I bought 2 of the space ship parts, and could have easily purchased a 3rd if I had been able to boost science more with a possible 5th city. Probably the biggest mistake that I made in this game was that I did not insta-buy science buildings, except for a couple in the capital. I could have easily taken out loans to do so.

- In retrospect you (and Acken, ect) are definitely correct with the Constantinople placement. Lovely city and it makes the settlement pattern much nicer for the other cities.

- God of the Sea is also a clear winner - wish I'd done that too.

- I agree with you that these Deity games are much easier when it's possible to push culture internally. However we may be a little spoiled between this and the Incan game - not exactly standard maps Usually I find mid-game hammers are in much shorter supply.

- Well Acken's LP should give us a good idea of how-to Deity CV I'm currently in the 3rd part, so far so good - but next time we have to give him a worse map to work with. His Persian game would possibly be more informative ...

- I think you were still solidly in the CV hunt when you bailed, however

- Nothin' wrong with a sub 250 Deity SV.

Now that I finished, I will definitely check out the Acken LP, just to see what I did wrong . Perhaps I was still in the hunt and did not realize it. But, I think my mid-game tech order must be wrong. Without wars, it is easy for me to go on auto-pilot and stop thinking between T100 and T150.

I agree, Acken needs a more challenging map. Let's make him face off against Alex as a neighbor, on Tundra. Of course, that would mean that I couldn't play the challenge, but it would be entertaining.

Oh well, I was on the verge of a DV and a SV on Turn 360 when the Runaway Inca won a CV. Not surprising when the map gave them a monster River/Production Capitol and their neighbors flailed uselessly against their Unit Spam though I guess. Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable game but not one I want to sink another 8 hours into to try again.

The biggest play mistake I made this time was choosing not to go Piety to get a Religion (All of the Religions were founded by Turn 65!) To compensate, I pursued the 'be my neighbors Religion' strategy but England brought me a junk Religion which had no Pagodas/Mosques/Cathedrals, no tenets that benefited either the AI or me for Religious Spread, and whose only solid benefit was Jesuit Education. Conversely the Inca on the other continent crafted a Strong Religion, Wonder Spammed and Warmonger-ed and conquered all of the Civs that I needed for Research Agreements one by one.