The Deity Challenge Line-up #20 - Spain - Valentine day Resurrected

Maria

Dido

Really early everything - T92 Education, 160 plastics

Lots of wonders - Hanging Gardens, Petra, Leaning Tower, Forbidden Palace, Porcelain Tower, Statue of Liberty.

Extra scientists at the end, not sure if that means I could win sooner or not, it seems like you are sort of locked in to the world congress vote timings at some point.

I sent the Warrior West and found Mt. Kilamanjaro very quickly. An early pop ruin allowed me to buy that settler around t4 (IIRC). I had to wait a bit to buy the tiles as I settled Barcelona on the coast, but quickly took One With Nature and founded the holy order of Cave Diving pretty early (Tithe, Pagodas, Feed the World, Religious Texts). Finished Tradition quickly and went religious route and got Sacred Sites before venturing into Rationalism.

The game was very peaceful early, although Dido pulled a backstab with inadequate troops so my archers got some XP practice. Built Petra the hard way on t63ish, so I basically had the equivalent of 2 capitals early. I founded Seville and Cordoba pretty quickly thereafter to grab the resource-full interior. I decided to make Barcelona my science city (mountain) so was able to build NC t75ish while building Oracle in Madrid (gotta luv 2 strong early cities. Even by detouring to Xbows, I still got unis pre-t100, so this was a very good start.

First World Council vote came pretty early and I proposed World's Fair. I had so much production early and had 4 workers chopping so I was able to easily win it even while doing stuff like finishing Ironworks in Madrid and building Sistine in Barcelona.



This was probably my strongest start ever on Deity at this point. I decided to go for a CV even without opening up Aesthetics until very late. I got first ideology by a longshot and went Order. Cathy and Maria T. followed me into Order which couldn't have worked out better. Cathy was the strongest civ militarily and I didn't take over tech lead from her until I Oxforded Radio. She had the strongest religion and I had to waste a couple of GP's on keeping Barcelona interested in Cave Diving. Thankfully, Lhasa and Jerusalem were game-long allies so I had a ton of faith.

Maria T, in the meantime, was keeping wedding crashers busy, as it seemed like every decade she was co-opting a new CS. I thought I got out exploring the other land-masses early, but I'd show up and the CS would already be wearing Austrian Red. In other words, having these two powerhouses follow me into Order was a great break. Everyone else was a pretty good trading partner……..with the exception of Wu. For whatever reason, that Chinese b*tch was a pain in the a$$ the entire game.

Cathy asked me to DoW England with her and I wanted to grab a couple of Lizzy's archeological sites, so I agreed, fought for about 10 turns and did some digging, then made an easy peace. About 15 turns later, Russia had steamrolled through York and London. Lizzy then built the Louvre in Hastings, so I DoW'd her, let Cathy do the heavy lifting, then took the city on t225 with a couple GWB's and Tercios.



I did settle a 6th city to grab GBR with a Conquistador and sent a missionary over to get the pantheon double faith. This turned out to be a pretty nice city despite the late settlement. I just wish I had remembered to build an aqueduct there much earlier.

After that, it was just beelining Internet, doing some theming work, then just waiting and watching my tourism grow…….except for stupid China. She just wouldn't give me open borders all game no matter what I offered. She wouldn't convert to Order no matter how much unhappiness she was getting. I didn't complete Aesthetics so couldn't buy any more GM's. I guess I could have DoW'd her and sent a GM to her that way, but I had wasted mine on theming Broadway and Sidney OH. I had the other 5 remaining civs influenced by t245 but China wasn't even close. I finally got control of WC again and got IG passed, but Austria kicked my butt on that one.



That delayed the win another 5+ turns. This really should have been a sub t250 win, even with my lack of experience with CV. I made several mistakes, namely going for a couple of extra happiness Order tenets instead of finishing Aesthetics. I built 6 World Wonders in Madrid and 4 National Wonders. 5 WW's in Barcelona and 5 NW's. Pretty good balance and kind of fun to do it that way. Population growth was blah, as I was focused on production trade routes early and tourism trade routes later on. I still finished #2 in population.

Oh, and I didn't find FoY until Satellites.

Gracias, twas a muy bueno trip, but absolutely exhausting. Estoy muy consado.

I'll try to circle around and play the IDS game if time allows. That India game will be next on my list……..not sure if I've ever won with them and I don't particularly relish not having culture ruins nor Shaka games. The AWC concept seems interesting……sort of like how I played before finding this site.

Thanks. To be honest, it was sort of a coin flip between the two, but since I almost always go Freedom, I thought I'd try something different. Also, because my population wasn't very strong, I wasn't sure I'd be able to take advantage of working the specialist slots Freedom excels at. In this case, it worked out very well as the biggest 2 threats followed me into Order. I actually have the save for when I chose ideologies…..maybe I'll try to replay going Freedom to see which is quicker.

I think both are situational for either VC. I usually go Freedom for SV, as the 6 FL's are just perfect for a turtling strategy (because you are beelining Replaceable Parts your 6 Infantrymen will be OP for a long time). Had I gone Freedom in the Spain game, I could have probably used them to take out more cities and steal more tourism, but there really weren't any obvious geographical targets and I was in no position to ramp up a military capable of taking more than a few cities.

One other reason was that I built a few Tercios and so already had the backbone of my army and didn't feel like FL's were that much of an improvement. I was beelining Internet so wasn't going to be anywhere near Artillery and would be somewhat late to flight.