The Deity Science Challenge

After two days of absence I got myself back into game just to find out that this is actually about winning itself rather than something else, cool.
Nappy DoWed ~T135 and atm it's been 80 turns of constant masses of troops in various forms highly ineffective being the only common description of them. I've only taken one city of his and likely to take others any time soon.
@T217 I have 6 cities, 590 bpt, no factories, 1 res.lab., 2GSs waiting, 45gpt, no cash, 3 RAs in about 20 turns and only +2 happiness. Alex is the only one with coal but he's been hostile for sometime now, haven't researched for oil yet and I only have 2 aluminium to spare and I'm currently researching for electronics.
The few CSs still around are allied by either Alex or Nappy. Haile dominates religionwise so mine is virtually useless and he's also in tech lead which seems odd.
The lack of cultural CSs is making my policy adaptation so slow that it seriously is a setback. If I were to start from scrath or even halfway I'd build a few cultural buildings, too.
Hopefully I'll have time enough to finish this tomorrow but the games to follow will be different for sure.
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Couldn't help myself so I played few more turns. Haile built Apollo T221 & Manhattan T222.

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yeah, it's about winning but it isnt about breaking deity records but a comparison of which civ is stronger at the Sci victories. i cant tell if im surprised or not that i haven't seen any finish times yet. france has been such a runaway in all my games, but im not as good a player as many true deity level players.

Winning is usually a given but one gets to choose which way to win and/or it if there're secondary objectives like in the challenges started by Snarzberry. On the other hand since G&K I've skipped quite a few maps from the start I disliked. From that pov this challenge seems refreshing.
Not having win times yet proves at least that there're some challenges within the game. Hopefully these challenges will be defeated so there'll actually be something to compare.

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Well, I have a few games going, but it is nothing to write home about. In the OCC Babs game I was so keen to try (ToA opening and Desert folklore) China got annihilated by Greece and Nappy and guess what, it's T65 and I have 2 enemies on my doorstep. Washington DoWed first on T55, and Nappy followed 6 turns later. I beat all of them back, but now I am discovering how crucial the first GS placement is. Having the Academy tile unavailable for 5-6 turns is to suffer a research stagnation - really awful.

Gotta try it again. The starting location isn't as bad as it first looked. The key is buying the necessary tiles as the money become available. Making a run for the Religious CS + Cape Town helps a lot. The only thing I am failing at now is to time the Rationalism jump. The only time I managed is on the netbook, along with an Oracle policy (getting 2 in Rationalism by T100 is awesome). Looked nice, but right now, on T153, I am surrounded from all sides by America's troops, who, being friendly for over 100 turns, promptly decided to backstab me...

Thanks for setting up this challenge...

Yes buying the citrus & wheat tiles with the 90$ from the 3 CS + free pantheon from the 2 religious CS is key to jump start the game.

However, making a comparisson between civs from this map will still be very difficult because so much depends on random factors independent of civ choice or player skill, such as: will America & France decide to expand towards or away from your starting location (more likely to be America since France is hemmed in by lake & city states) ? Will one of the AI civs become a runaway ? Will one of your AI friends decide to backstab ? ...

Well, for that reason, there is no way to play the same game twice, let alone 5 times Still, I'd say it is as close as it can get Nifty challenge, that one, you even have an option to lose. I like that in a game.

bc1 said:

Thanks for setting up this challenge...

Yes buying the citrus & wheat tiles with the 90$ from the 3 CS + free pantheon from the 2 religious CS is key to jump start the game.

However, making a comparison between civs from this map will still be very difficult because so much depends on random factors independent of civ choice or player skill, such as: will America & France decide to expand towards or away from your starting location (more likely to be America since France is hemmed in by lake & city states) ? Will one of the AI civs become a runaway ? Will one of your AI friends decide to backstab ? ...

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well, that would apply to every map. no 2 games can ever be played identically with different civs. there is no closer representation to compare civs than this, as far as i know given the tools we have access to. i guess i could disable barbs but that's a small long-term ramification for a game. game developers probably have some better tools (probably ones to force AI to make the same decisions) but I am not one of them. i dont even make mods.

My 1st game with Harun just ended with a humiliation when Haile launched @T262. My launch would've been just under 280 so it wasn't even a close race.
Somewhere around T200 Haile took a weird science leap from everyone else and I couldn't catch him due to mistakes made earlier. I was expecting far more aggressive game but Nappy was the only one to DoW me and nobody was keen making war, sadly.

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very interested to see how this turns out. I'm wondering if you guys had any thoughts on Freedom for a Science Victory -- If I go 4 city tradition and spam food growth, finish rationalism, should i go freedom or order after... I was seriously considering order because of the insane science boost from factories.

It is not so easy to finish rationalism and go freedom on deity, as it just takes a lot of time to gain a policy from medieval to industrial, as few culture boosting buildings are available. Going for museums kinda deviates from the science victory course, and is only worth taking after a few civs have researched it, as it costs less in that case.

Usually, left side rationalism + order is best. Then if you have broadcast towers, it is worth finishing rationalism for the 2 free techs, if the game hasn't been won by then.

firstconsul said:

very interested to see how this turns out. I'm wondering if you guys had any thoughts on Freedom for a Science Victory -- If I go 4 city tradition and spam food growth, finish rationalism, should i go freedom or order after... I was seriously considering order because of the insane science boost from factories.

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order also lets you faith buy GEs. for me i'm seeing it really is the way to go. the only time im tempted to go Freedom is with Babylon for the extra great person rate but it only sometimes amounts to an extra GS by the end. I would faith buy a GA (after GSs get too expensive) and pop it for the golden age but it wasnt as good as getting a GE for Hubble. i usually dont even need to finish Rationalism. i just go the opener, then Order then factories policy then back to Rationalism for 2 more on the left side (up to 17% bonus to Unis).

I have a decent OCC game with Babs going. Friendly with Genghis, Washington, Alexander and Hiawatha, around T200, just finished Ballistics and pushing towards Apollo and Hubble. I am very interested to see where this game will end, and how. Used the ToA opening, and will have a GE for Hubble.

EDIT 1: The game turned out all right. Since I had to leave for work there wasn't much tme to do a writeup or make screens. I will upload the screens tomorrow when I get back home. Everything's done, T251, I just need to add the last part to the starship. Napoleon was my everyday bully, we are still at war as I am about to launch. I hate to double post, so I am editing this one.

EDIT 2: So, this is how the game went...

My opening was: Monument (as no culture riun can be popped) - Scout - ToA - (save money, sell embassies, find CS, get loan, buy worker) - Library - buy a Bowman - NC - (buy Water Mill with the 2xWine, or buy more Bowmen if CoD'd and build the Water Mill) - Oracle - Granary - buy University - start Oxford and save up - buy Observatory whenever you have 780g. This gives me 2 ok wonders and 1 GE point to work with, along with a lot of BPT. When I had nothing useful to choose, I cranked out Bowmen, worked on a Garden and a National Epic. I also refrained from singing any RAs before I knew I have my Observatory set up for a better RA boost.

Tiles: Monument before Scout helps buy the Citrus jungle tile 1 turn faster, followed by the Wheat tile. The Wheat tile has 1 production, which greatly helps when building the ToA and NC without hindering your growth or forcing you to stagnate just to finish the wonder sooner. After that, the hill tile close to the wheat tile on the river is very important. I slapped a farm on it too. I found that going for farm on the two riverside hill tiles is better than mines in the early game, as it allows you to grow and expand to other tiles with production rather than sitting on the same 3 hammers all the time.

Tech: Archery - Pottery - Writing - Philosophy - get Civil Administration (techs vary, just look which one is the cheapest for its time - e.g. Drama and Poetry and Currency cost the same amount of beakers, so if you see that Currency is like 7 turns and Drama 9, go for Currency) - get Education - beeline to Compass and select Astronomy with Oxford free tech. After that the mileage varies, but in my game I beelined Pisa so that I can get a GE for PT. The next beeline was to Plastics for the Research Lab, and after that to Hubble.

Policies: Full Tradition, Commerce opener, Rationalism left side, Order + Factory bpt boost, finish Rationalism. I freely admit I saved 1 turn before finishing Oracle cause it really plagued me to see if I can do a double Rationalism opener (Policy + Oracle), but I couldn't, as Haile always built it around T90. Too bad really... Would have made for a great game. So I simply continued as I would have normally played it, by building it and selecting the commerce opener with the free policy. The most difficult thing here was to actually count the turns and select a specialist for the Amphitheater so that I can open Rationalism on time, or no more than 2-3 turns after getting Astronomy. Ugh. Took like 5-10 mins of calculations and a few pieces of paper, lol

Religion: founded Tangrism (same as Tengriism, but the Mongols got it first), picked whatever available, along with the Desert pantheon. Ended up with Tithe, up to +15% Production, Swords into Plowshares (big gamble, as selecting it paints a bull's eye on your city), +20% combat near our Religious city. 10 faith per turn was enough to get a GS around T245 with faith for the last tech to pop.

Wonders: ToA, Oracle, Pisa, PT, Sistine (as nobody cared about it), Hubble. Nothing else. Beelining to Pisa is very useful if successful, as it opens Ironworks early and allows for extra Hammer production. For Hubble I intentionally removed all my beakers specialists and left only the 3 Engineers in the workshop and factory to get a GE in time. Took lots of planning, lol...

Otherwise, the game itself was a rough ride up to T100. I made early friendships with the Mongols and China, while having America and France coveting my lands. America DoWed around T45, followed by France (Napoleon had the perverse pleasure of bullying me all game long, even managed to kill a few of my units). I beat them both back, and saw that America was friendly with the Mongols and China, so I bought myself off the war with some money and woe and behold, 1 turn later Washington offers me a DoF. Nice plot twist, you *+*+*... So I used that option to get friendly with as many civs as possible. In the end, I befriended Genghis, Hiawatha, Washington and Alexander and made regular RA's with them (I avoided making 2 or more on the same turn to escape the beakers bug, as that would have corrupted a game that was going really well anyway). Wu was a friend for a bit, but then I stopped making DoF's with her, as the turned into everyone's beating bag, lost its capital twice and was obliterated in the end. So I kept the 4 as happy as possible, and even did something I don't usually do - I signed Defense pacts with all of them, just to discourage Napoleon from DOWing me every 20-30 turns. Ethiopia was a decent civ for a while, but I saw he was denouncing anyone else, so I refused all his friendship offers in order to keep the aforementioned 4 as happy as possible. Eventually, Haile was also annihilated.

And that's it, the rest of the game was fending off my bully, giving it a gift or two to keep it happy, as I signed RAs and teched up. I will win it on T251 (just need to launch), while still at war with France, who promptly DoWed me for a gozzilionth time. Honestly, I expected to see a nuclear bomb flying my way, but thanks to the fact that France was bullying Greece and America as well, they couldn't sign many (or any?) RAs and ended up short - Paris is a few turns from completing the Manhattan project as I am about to launch. Maybe the Defence pact I signed with all of them helped too - when France DoWed, all the RAs would be automathically annulled, as all the aforementioned 4 go to war with Nappy as well.

This game was a blast to play. I am keen to try Siam, but I may take a small break too. We will see

All done. Changed the language of the game from DE to EN for better clarity Thanks steam for letting me change the language on the fly - however, earlier saves still have the same turn notifications in German. Funny thing...

The wonders of OCC never stops amazing me - perhaps I'll try it some day but somehow it just doesn't seem interesting enough.
Anyway, I launched T261 with Korea as my 2nd game. It felt very weird to play on a map that's familiar. I started with by checking the two religious CSs but still missed the the desert folklore so I pretty much skipped religion - managed to get one but didn't enhance it.
4 city trad start & NC by 95. Nappy attacked @ T61 - no real threat but endless units swarming around made workers' job tricky. Haile took a rocket start so I didn't have to worry about wonders before Hubble which I got far too late ~@240.
I could have skipped the offensive against France but it seemed more fun than doing nothing so I eventually wiped him out apart from one city. Lack of money caused a 20 turn stalemate during war - few extra gold would've been nice but didn't want to neg happiness.
Other than that nothing much happened. RAs with Geng, Wash, Hia most of the time & one with Wu. Alex didn't much care for me so no DoF and Haile I passed since he was far ahead most of the time. Spying gave me two early techs but Hiawatha burned my spy after that so I went defensive which wasn't much of a success either.
My bpt was most of the time some 10-20% better than with Harun but I produced less GSs - 1000bpt broke @ ~T245. Policywise full tradition, comm opener & full rationalism though I could've skipped the finisher and launch at the same time as last two RAs were now useless.

In next game I hope that Washington attacks instead of Nappy so I could have some usefull puppets.


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Few pics from the game describing the bpt progress more than anything else and in case one is wondering about the clock all but the end pic are taken from a save few moments ago. Apparently I forgot, again, to take pix during the game.

awesome! finally a finish. i took a break from Civ for a couple days but i'll be playing some more of this tomorrow.

I've been busy with other stuff, too and particularly in this game most civs had huge armies but they didn't much go to war so the turn times were longish. I'll prolly do the Mayan next as want to see the if the religion has more use. Generally the map seems very favourable to Ethiopia as they have huge bosst from nearly endless faith - I want more wars...

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OCC just makes the game run faster, in my opinion. I also find it a bit boring, but keeping in mind that my time is usually short, I rarely have time for an extended Civ V game. I really want to do a domination win once, but it takes tons of time

DGDobrev said:

OCC just makes the game run faster, in my opinion. I also find it a bit boring, but keeping in mind that my time is usually short, I rarely have time for an extended Civ V game. I really want to do a domination win once, but it takes tons of time

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Yup, that just about summarizes it but still prefer wide(r) vs OCC. The time is an issue and that's why I rarely finish a game without extra incentive like the challenge here (especially true in vanilla) and each game tend to span over several RL days which is a bit annoying.It would be nice to finish a proper game in one decent session for once. Also, I like the pre-industrial part more than I like post-industrial and if the time wasn't so limited and AI provided even roughly the same challenge than in std speed I'd play marathon.

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I did four quick starts with the Mayans but all the games started exactly the same as Washington settled towards me which meant that I couldn't use the same NE riverside tile for my 2nd city that I used earlier. This is not much of a biggie while it just means no garden, no watermill but indirectly it also means that Haile's religion spreads so fast that I can't have mine apart from the capital.

I played the 1st start to T100 at which point I'm a bit ahead of Sejong in bpt, no wars but only 3 DoFs however I'm reluctant to continue this particular game before trying few more times if I can get Washington to expand in other direction as I'd like to actually use the religion instead of just generating faith.

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Few more starts with the Mayans & Washington always puts his cities on the same spots so I took liberty instead of tradition - the outcome was more hostile Washington but much more friendly Nappy. 5 cities start, NC @ T98, friends with Nappy, Haile & Hiawatha unfortunately this time Nappy become extremely religious while Haile only built 5 cities so with relative ease I have my own religion spread into a couple American cities as well as my own but no way to spread it towards France or even CSs on that side.
I managed to get both LotP & PT with GEs and haven't tried others; oddly GL went @T82. Alex DoWed @T130 which wasn't surprise since his CSs allies were on my borders 5 turns before that - few troops but nothing to worry about even with my miniscule army. However, Nappy decided to backstab me 4 turns before our RA @~T170, gazillion troops companied by equally numbered Alex's troops. After wiping China & trying to wipe each others they fancied gangbanging me instead problem being both topping scoreboard in every aspect & having all but few CSs so I lost half of my culture amongst other thing.
@T200 I have 560bpt, building research labs without factories since there's no coal, can't build airplanes so I can't advance to any direction even though I've apparently killed most of their ground troops as well as all Jerusalem's troops. A stalemate if there ever was one. The bpt is slightly higher than with Korea, 2 techs ahead, 3 GSs waiting instead of 1 and massive faith surplus to buy one more if needed, no real happiness issues but I could use more money and surely some coal & oil - with all the land including desert & coastline there really should be some oil around. Spying, again, is just defending unsuccessfully my own position - got two techs and burned both times with a max promoted spy in a city with most likely unoccupied by domestic spies.

Most likely I will not finish this game but try roughly same again while hoping that China outs up some resistance. One thing that's been constant is that China gets wiped out soonish and America is crappy - the difference between having one neighbour or 2+ is huge especially here where those with one have virtually unlimited space to settle.

DGDobrev said:

OCC just makes the game run faster, in my opinion.

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Does it, in this case, also make it easier ? Just curious since I haven't played an OCC since Civ2.

First, I admit that my views are biased since I always thought that OCC is/should be harder way by quite a margin to pursue any VC but especially in G&K. Obviously OCC is limited by the choice of civ to use. The main problem seems to be AI's reluctance to conquer the last city which doesn't make any sense when DoWing a civ with only one city. The obvious motive would be capturing the city but AI tends to be satisfied with a non-profitable peace deal without an apparent reason while it happily conquers CSs.

At first glance the map didn't seem that good for OCC but after few completed games & few more up to T100-200 the map doesn't seem to favour wide either unless the stars align in extremely lucky way.
Very easy to get 5-6 cities with a unique lux but the lack of resource tiles makes population growth vs production a bit on/off choice. This is particularly tricky later in the game when one should've oil based units.

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a truly wide game isnt in your best interests for a science game, imo. ive yet to see a good strategy on wide for science, meaning 10+ or 15+ cities. but 6-8 settled cities are certainly possible but usually if your first 3 cities go 10-20 tiles away and you fill in the spaces later. it's tough with america as they have been settling closer to me in more games than not. filling in the gap by the river north only kept him from spamming more cities for a little while. several times ive had both france and america snipe really small, no border growth spots in those gaps i intended to fill in.

depending on the definition of 'easy' is probably the larger concern. for me, easy means less micromanagement and faster decision making as well as turn loads. the larger my empire the easier it is for me to lose focus on the goals and timings. but for others easy means playing to AI advantages/disadvantages regardless of micromanagement, usually because they have a much larger comfort zone with the game than I do. they also are usually MP players.

regardless of the AI's unwillingness to take out a lone city culture it isnt hard to entice war when you dont want to. signing an RA or allying a CS, even by accident, can be the tipping point and if you cant hold your ground they'll take you whether they wanted to or not. so far in my games, Iroquois, China, Greece, and Ethiopia have been removed from the game, China more than the others, so the AI certainly does it, just not as a priority.

OCC is viable win in GnK but not optimal. It's also fairly difficult based on the VC (sci/diplo/cult) you choose. Ive never done it with dom as im not even sure how OCC works with taking capitals if they are the last city of that AI.