The Immortal Challenge Lineup - Game #24 The Celts

I got it by God of War + UA + Pagodas + not caring about economy or growth at all. I don't normally get it. Think I've only had it once on the DCL/ICL.
 
Um, it is a social policy, so if you open Honor and go down Piety, that's at least a 4th policy. It was gone in my game.

Interesting strategy. Would love to see some screenshots.
 
@Consentient: Ok. You convinced me to go for another run. That and the fact I know how to make the capital unbeatable for Melee-foes! Trees are still brown though!


@adcarrymaokai: I might have been lucky in my few piety-games but I can't recall ever missing out on it when I went straight for reformation with no liberty-dip. In some games all AI go for Piety though.
 
Half the killed unit's combat strength. When you have Picts and a ton of barbs, you can get all the culture and faith you want. I also chose to get Defender of the Faith, too, so if the battle was close to my city, which they almost always are when the rebels spawn, that was extra too.

@G.R. > Trees are brown which is a bummer, but Arborea makes a nice change. All my Picts went Drill 3 then Woodsman so they could spring out of nowhere and smash up anything the AI threw at them. After Woodsman, March obviously then Blitz. These are gonna be some devilish Lancers one day.
 
t115
Spoiler :
Not enjoying this map very much at the moment! Settled mtn/hill/river, BO Worker, Scout, Monument, chop Worker, start Granary, chop Great Library (t41), finish Granary, Archer, chop ToA (t60), CBs, Settler, chop NC (t74), chop Great Wall (t89), CBs. Chop, chop, chop! Trading lux and 3gpt for lux with the two asshats. Dublin's borders are slow to expand, and Shaka just took my 3rd city spot. Jerk gave me the settle warning with Dublin, sheesh. Was going to settle near the iron to get silver and sugar too, now I either don't settle, or settle on the sugar (and later buy to the iron) and be doomed to absolutely no production. I actually considered doing a OCC on this, but didn't see how I could manage the unit cap.

I don't have TR going, focused on wonders so much, and it seemed pointless to send one to Shaka with the inevitable DOW coming..., but where is it? I'm pretty paranoid! I can't get any war bribes going - I am almost tempted to punch him in the mouth and kill his invaders - I've only seen one Impi so far, and it showed up 14 turns ago, hmmmmmm.
 

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Nigel_Tufnel2 said:
but where is it?
Click to expand...
In my game, Shaka had a grand total of 2 CB's when I attacked him, and perished soon after.

I am replaying this map right now. Want to write down how much culture I get from barbarians to see if opening Honor is actually worth it. Will try to kill everyone here and spam cities with sacred sites, if available. If not, I am ditching this map.
 
I just... Archer-rushed Shaka? 2 archers, 2 picts took his expo, while he was moving his 2 spears around my allied city-state. Well then.

Upd: Screw this sh*t. Why do the AI's always snag out religious buildings when you want them. Maybe I should have dumped cash into Lhasa to get the second prophet faster. Not sure. Trying to get religion is always so frustrating. Also, a ruin gave me population, which messed up pantheon in my second city.
 
LOL, the dreaded double-Archer rush!

Well, *it* came the next turn from the W! :lol: Just as I'm in position to siege *his* forward settled expo, his most-irritating smug one (and his many CS pals) DOWs me from the S (and kills 3 TR). I STILL don't have walls up in my S expo, and even though I have 9 range units, only 5 are XB, and 4 are up N! One good thing about it's crappy location is all the marsh makes for excellent shooting to the W.
 
t216
Spoiler :
This game is pissing me off. Every time I'd get a new TR going Alex would ally it, so poof! Thus, I'm going deep in Rat. I was going to go "peaceful" CV, but spent way too many hammers on units and tiles and BS. Roads everywhere too. After getting a decent peace deal from Shaka, I just kept mowing down Alex's troops, but it seemed pointless to try to head for his cap with all those CS roadblocks on the way. Plus I was about to meet the rest of the world. I would have loved to just start taking out every damn CS, maybe I should have just to slake my blood thirst. As it is, Alex can't tell anyone about the sins in my head. :lol: So it's gonna be an SV with at least two nukes at launch - guess for who?

I got Alex vs Shaka before WF, and they are still going at it, which is kind of fun. I would have taken out Ulundi, but it has no unique lux. I actually don't enjoy these sparse maps - I read that it is considered more challenging, but I just find it irritating. Like it just changes the game way too much. I would suggest sparse once a month, not every game, please. I don't mind if I only have 2/3 of coal, oil, aluminum (I'll find out what's what here soon), but when there are no horses to be had anywhere, etc., ugh. Since I settled the mtn I am having to citadel to get the aluminum NE.

Worst religion game I've ever had - had the 2nd religion but never built any rel bldgs until recently, and nowhere near all of them (+5 fpt). God-King, Tithe, Mosques (ha!), Swords-Plow, and Itin Preach. I will likely faith buy a Prophet to finally get some spread and just forget about GE's, maybe get one late game.

Pissed now that I planted all my early GWs as I won WF and have none to burn. Cultural Heritage passed and I am, crazily, the wonder leader for once. I used the GE from GW and ToA points to get Angor Wat. I wanted to really max out my borders for defense. Horribly slow getting guilds going, just now built a Garden, etc. All the wonders and war really threw off the flow. Plus I have the disgusting taste of voting for Alex as nobody was anywhere near close enough to king-make. :ack:
 

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Nigel_Tufnel2 said:
t216
Spoiler :
This game is pissing me off. Every time I'd get a new TR going Alex would ally it, so poof! Thus, I'm going deep in Rat. I was going to go "peaceful" CV, but spent way too many hammers on units and tiles and BS. Roads everywhere too. After getting a decent peace deal from Shaka, I just kept mowing down Alex's troops, but it seemed pointless to try to head for his cap with all those CS roadblocks on the way. Plus I was about to meet the rest of the world. I would have loved to just start taking out every damn CS, maybe I should have just to slake my blood thirst. As it is, Alex can't tell anyone about the sins in my head. :lol: So it's gonna be an SV with at least two nukes at launch - guess for who?

I got Alex vs Shaka before WF, and they are still going at it, which is kind of fun. I would have taken out Ulundi, but it has no unique lux. I actually don't enjoy these sparse maps - I read that it is considered more challenging, but I just find it irritating. Like it just changes the game way too much. I would suggest sparse once a month, not every game, please. I don't mind if I only have 2/3 of coal, oil, aluminum (I'll find out what's what here soon), but when there are no horses to be had anywhere, etc., ugh. Since I settled the mtn I am having to citadel to get the aluminum NE.

Worst religion game I've ever had - had the 2nd religion but never built any rel bldgs until recently, and nowhere near all of them (+5 fpt). God-King, Tithe, Mosques (ha!), Swords-Plow, and Itin Preach. I will likely faith buy a Prophet to finally get some spread and just forget about GE's, maybe get one late game.

Pissed now that I planted all my early GWs as I won WF and have none to burn. Cultural Heritage passed and I am, crazily, the wonder leader for once. I used the GE from GW and ToA points to get Angor Wat. I wanted to really max out my borders for defense. Horribly slow getting guilds going, just now built a Garden, etc. All the wonders and war really threw off the flow. Plus I have the disgusting taste of voting for Alex as nobody was anywhere near close enough to king-make. :ack:
Click to expand...

Really, you didn't need Cardiff. You know... selling it you-know-who for a crazy amount of gpt would make your game easier by 10 fold and allows you a lot more wonders and growth (I used to say an expansion in the wrong place is worth a thousand years of trouble and this is a case in point). And you-know-who can fight the wars down south instead of you.

Strangely enough I decided against StP and picked up Religious Community instead this game (simply because I'm not sure how much peace I'll be seeing). You should pick divine inspiration if you have no other faith generation.
 
Ah! I have never even looked at Divine Inspiration, as I usually don't have so many wonders, and I am so hard-wired to go for buildings as faith sinks.

I see what you are saying about Cardiff, it did have sugar, silver, and my only iron as I approached. After I settled I must have killed over 1/2 my W opponents units in the marshes, and the river/GW made the S attacks super-easy to defend, so it was great terrain to fight in on defense. But I have had to use a lot of Worker time to develop it. The BIG downside was killing cap growth for a lot of turns before my happy problems got solved.

Ever since I made peace x2 they are both my best buddies, it is quite hilarious. You can see in the pic W neighbor almost lost his NW expo to a CS, but didn't. S neighbor has been pounding on the SE expo a long time, but it may hold out. Part of why my games take so long is I don't use quick combat - I just enjoy watching civs beat each other up too much.
 
t339 Nukey SV
Spoiler :
I could have won a DV much earlier, but wanted to stick to my plan. I did my first ever Carrier-based nuke this game. I'm glad I saved a spot for my Carrier, as Harald had a massive armada showing up.

I very quickly assumed control of the WC, after Consulates kicked in I was able to buy off Alex's allies one by one. I also had my best run of coups ever, something like 12 straight with 2 level 3 spies, even with some of the odds in the 50-60 range. He was in perma-war all game, and his gpt dropped off a lot mid-game.

I built 3 parts, just habit, I guess. I got a crazy lot of policies, and got Mercantilism a few turns before the finish. I spent 1,000s on units the last 20 turns too, so I could have bought them all. This is the first Freedom game where I had time to TP spam - I am always waiting for cities to max out their tiles. The combo of ToA and Swords-Plowshares really helped.

I was surprised at how well Cardiff turned out late game. It had 10 oil, 2 uranium, and 2 Landmarks, and it was my only expo with lots of food. Because I went for the mtn start, I gimped my cap's food limit. But I still enjoyed the Observatory - haven't had one of those for a while.

In the end I had full Trad, 4 in Patronage, full Rat, 4 Commerce, and 9 in Freedom. I had no Freedom pals until Heile at last took it. Last session I passed WI but it had absolutely no effect... There was already a fair amount of pressure, rebels spawning several places, but nobody flipped. Also, once I had nukes, the only Afraid AI was my pal Heile. I thought Shaka being so close would be Afraid.

It still surprises me at times how each game is different, lately I had done several H-C-A DomV games. This one was more standard, but all the early chopping and wonder-whoring made it unique for me.


Marshmallow time.

 

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Oh, I'm definitely taking that screenie for my display pic, words cannot express how awesome it looks :D
 
Update - T262 Total Domination

Spoiler :
I only razed cities if it made room for me to self-build 2 or more. I finished the game with 40+ cities, more than 25 of which were self-built. All cities were small, but boy did the beakers and gold and culture add up. Now I know what it's like when the AI does it. Happiness was never really a problem, since if I went unhappy below -10 some barbs showed up which meant a ton more culture and faith and gold. It really is broken to have Full Honor, Full Liberty and Full Piety. World's Fair helped me get most of the way through Commerce too.

If I had reached Protectionism then Happiness would have been truly absurd.

Once I had the tech lead I was never really challenged in war, so it wasn't an enjoyable game from that POV but it was nice to take the last capital with one of my surviving Pictish Lancers who were running out of promotions they could have.

I also used religion to make money and faith.

I thought the Ethiopia game was the most dominant you can be, but this game I learned that ICS is a totally valid strategy on Immortal. Too bad the Deity AI won't let you have the room! ;)
 
Haha, ST - that pic does look cool on your header!

Nicely done, Consentient! So your earlier post said Honor first, what policy paths did you take for Liberty and Piety? That does seem pretty cool, nice use of the UU.
 
It was a long game so this might not be 100%

- Honor - opened and finished real quick
- Piety to Reformation
- Liberty right side
- Open Commerce - and took a few policies but realised it was not going to be necessary
- Somewhere in there Tradition opener
- Somewhere in there finish Piety
- Autocracy to Clausewitz (overkill but what the heck)
- Finish Liberty and settle the free settler next to Ethiopia (classic 'war city' for bombers and unit purchasing)

The Honor finisher is strong on its own, but when you have God of War it really makes for a strong game
 
consentient said:
Update - T262 Total Domination

Spoiler :
I only razed cities if it made room for me to self-build 2 or more. I finished the game with 40+ cities, more than 25 of which were self-built. All cities were small, but boy did the beakers and gold and culture add up. Now I know what it's like when the AI does it. Happiness was never really a problem, since if I went unhappy below -10 some barbs showed up which meant a ton more culture and faith and gold. It really is broken to have Full Honor, Full Liberty and Full Piety. World's Fair helped me get most of the way through Commerce too.

If I had reached Protectionism then Happiness would have been truly absurd.

Once I had the tech lead I was never really challenged in war, so it wasn't an enjoyable game from that POV but it was nice to take the last capital with one of my surviving Pictish Lancers who were running out of promotions they could have.

I also used religion to make money and faith.

I thought the Ethiopia game was the most dominant you can be, but this game I learned that ICS is a totally valid strategy on Immortal. Too bad the Deity AI won't let you have the room! ;)
Click to expand...

Awesome looking map and impressive turn-time for total domination with this slow start! Very good game! :goodjob:
 
Slow start? Are you joking?
Spoiler :
Celts
on
Spoiler :
Arboreal
with a close neighbour who is a pushover before
Spoiler :
Civil Service
?
Spoiler :
Alex
had no gold for buying the CS, and I beat him to all the barb quests, so he stood no chance. And
Spoiler :
Cathy
was in the tundra and trying for a religion but was beaten to it by the usual suspects.

I'll admit the map looks good. I am proud with how my kilted lunatics managed to spread their religion of pure violent psychopathy over three continents!

Thanks again for the map :)
 
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