The Deity Challenge Line-up #18 - Babylon OCC

Incan

There might be something fundamentally wrong with my playstyle, as I can't seem to wrap it up in a decent enough time. Help me out:

I assumed getting Rationalism done fast wouldn't really be that useful because I only have one city, so I delayed it. Probably made most of RAs rather useless then.

I also believe having Temple of Artemis and HG would have made me grow better and faster. Big mistake was delaying the Medical Lab probably, even bigger mistake was not having any religion most of the time. As you can see, I saved up enough for a GS but then I remembered I have no religion

Germany had a good one with the Production bonus per follower but he never sent any missionaries my way. Didn't get Porcelain tower either, I underestimated its usefulness and, well, got beaten to it. Instead I finished with:

Oracle
Itza
Pisa
Sistine
Big Ben
Statue of Liberty
Neusch
Redentor
Forbidden Palace
Hubble

I was swimming in gold and happiness, and I don't think I've ever had bigger production in an OCC game. Still, I ran out of gas towards the end and finished rather lousily late. Awesome map for replay value.

Some side notes, when I realised I had nothing really good to spend the hammers on (because Research, who needs that derp), I started to... arm myself



I laughed it off, I mean look, he's HUGE. Probably an AI glitched



.. what?? You can't be serious



Ah come on, you can't all be scared of a few little rockets

Turned out, they should have been. Remember that Salt you never had to pay for? Well, this one's also on the house. What are you looking at, George???

Let me start by saying that although this was a pretty entertaining game, I will NEVER play OCC on my own initiative. 1st time I've ever tried it and the handicaps and change to play style were "interesting".

So, I checked out the very nice starting dirt and made for the river/hill next to the mountain (Observatory seemed like a good idea with only 1 city). I went Scout > Monument > Shrine > Library > Oracle > NC.

My Warrior stole an early worker from Germany who gave peace shortly thereafter. This was the only worker I had the whole game. Researched Pottery > Writing > Mining > Calendar > Philosophy. As I was tech'ing so fast and had already scouted my whole island, I made a quick detour to Optics and sent my Scout for a swim.

Everything was pretty uneventful for the first 240 turns. Germany and America wanted me to DoW the other, but I declined and no shots were fired on our island at all until much later. I was just building every bit of infrastructure I wanted and grabbing Wonders I never even consider.

Full list of Wonders in order:
-Oracle
-Hanging Gardens
-Chichen Itza
-Sistine Chappell
-Porcelain Tower
-Eiffel Tower (GE)
-SoL
-Big Ben (GE)
-Hubble (natural GE)
-Neuschwanstein

I was lucky my Warrior found a neglected Faith hut t25. Pantheon was Earth Momma. I was able to found 3rd religion and took Tithe and Swords Into Plowshares (didn't plan on doing much warmongering). I figured religious buildings were somewhat useless in OCC. I enhanced to Religious Community and Religious Unity (but no CS ever adapted my religion and I made no attempt to spread). I planted my 3rd unwanted GP.

Right about the time I found the 3rd big landmass, Shaka and Oda were just finishing off France. It looked like the Incans were going to be next out, but they lasted until around t320 and were a good trading partner, but they did cause some problems with my diplo very late when they asked me to denounce Ashurbanipal.

I'm friends with everyone and got the tech lead before the 50% mark. I planted 4 GS. I built no units until very late (just bought a few Bowmen and Military CS gave me enough units that I felt pretty secure.

First World Council came up around t140ish and I did NOT want to propose World's Fair (kinda hard to win with 1 city). Since I had a bunch of Wonders I proposed World Heritage Sites, which passed. Sadly,someone else did propose WF and I spent enough time to get a silver medal and not 1 turn longer.

I was first to Ideologies by quite a bit. I was considering Order for the extra science, but figured building 1 fast Factory wasn't as good as the Freedom tenets. About 20-30 turns later everyone else started getting Idologies, America and Zulus went Order, Ashur joined me in Freedom, and everyone else went Autocracy. This is where the game got very silly.

Washington had proposed World Ideology Order, and I must have agreed to vote against it on accident. When vote came up t240ish, I only had 2 delegates and voted for it to keep him happy, However, he blamed me for its' defeat, immediately denounced me and then he and Shaka double DoW's me. I wasn't too worried as I had Foreign Legions by then and a good tech lead. However, the psychos never even fired a shot at my lands, instead spending the next 25 turns killing off all of my CS allies. This cost me as I went from 50 FPT back down to 20 FPT and this cost me at least 1 GS.

Next, out of the blue, Japan proposes Embargo Babylon. He's been at war with everyone else on the map besides me, but pulls this proposal out of his arse. Because my CS were just killed, I didn't have the votes to block it. Now I'm down to 3 of 8 Caravans, all going to CS. Nope, now it's 2 as Washington takes out another CS ally.

Pocca then pipes up and asks me to denounce Ashur. Not wanting to tarnish my reputation, I do so, even though Ashur went Freedom. 5 turns later, Bismarck and Ashur double DoW me. Shaka, who has killed 2 of my CS allies, gives me peace and 12 GPT….which was nice. America finally gives me white peace. Germany gets DoW'd by Washington so finally gives me peace. Since I only had 3 oil resources, I could only build 2 Bombers and a Fighter. I got gifted a Mobile SAM and a Rocket Artie, and these were enough to keep Ashur at bay for 45 turns of useless war. Right after making peace, he Citadel-bombs and takes a small peace of land (I returned the favor on t345 just for spite.

I finally got to make a proposal t320ish, proposed repealing my embargo, sent a diplomat to America to get him to support this. Washington asked for all of my iron and horsies AND 31 GPT, but I had to pay it. Once it was repealed, I stopped building spaceship parts and built 8 caravans ASAP and my income went from 20 GPT to over 220 GPT. This was enough to buy the final 2 parts.

Meanwhile, on the other Western landmass, Shaka and Oda were having a very serious nuclear exchange:




Somehow, I went from tech lead to 3rd and Shaka and Ashur actually got 5 spaceship parts built and America got 3. I just couldn't tech any faster and couldn't get any more GS. Nobody was even close to CV or Diplo and the military was pretty balanced. I've never had a game where I got the 1st 5 parts built before anyone else got 2 and still almost lost, but I guess that's one of the breaks of OCC.

That starting position was ridiculous - dbl salt, dbl horses, and dbl stone for crazy early production.

And it seemed almost no religious civs (I guess the Inca a little bit)

I had no expectations of getting a religion - built a shrine, but I chose the +1 culture from pastures to help with the social policies - stone circles was already gone, and I figured earth mother was a waste - the 2 faith a turn from the salt wouldn't get me a religion.

But when I got to Theology, I realized only one religion had been founded so far, and said heck with it and started building Hagia Sophia - it only took me like 12 turns. Founded a religion (at that point Assyria had founded the 2nd one but there were still 3 left) - I took tithe and the +2 faith for wonders (I'd also built the hanging gardens), and then immediately built the great temple, so I had a decent faith production.

I delayed upgrading the religion and concentrated on spreading it to my continent. America got a religion so I thought it would be for naught, but for some reason he and Assyria put almost no effort into spreading a religion (usually there's flocks of prophets on deity). The Incas sent some prophets over post-astronomy but by then it was pretty futile. I converted Germany and almost all the city-states, and when I upgraded took itinerant preachers, so the cross religious pressure on the continent was massive.

With the religion and tithe I got tons of money which I used to buy CSs, starting with cultural and maritime ones, (while the AI, as usually, just sat on it's thousands of gold).

I started grabbing all the cultural wonders - after universities I beelined for Printing Press and used Oxford college for acoustics, built the Sistine Chapel, then the Leaning Tower, popped a GE for The Globe. Ended up being able to build Uffuzi as well, which is rare on deity, but I think the rest of the Ais were mainly going along the bottom of the tech tree - i.e. Taj Mahal didn't go until a good 25-30 turns after I finished Uffuzi.

Anyways, after that, it was all downhill. I only needed a handful of archaeologists. I didn't get to suggest anything at the start of world congress (America had the Forbidden Palace and Germany beat me to discovering everyone), but I had most of the City-States, so I eventually took over and passed my religion as world religion (+50% tourism for me!). I pushed through all the usual CV techs/policies (went Freedom of course), and everyone was friendly so open borders/trade routes were easy.

The Inca were the main cultural leader - requiring a good 50 turns more than the second place, so they got a pack of great musicians (I bought 2 with faith, and I didn't build the musicians guild until I was near the internet, so I generated a few quickly enough).

I just completed the deity win achievement a couple of days ago, so this is my first submission. Played a practice game with a landlocked start and got rolled by neighbors pretty badly, so I'm as surprised as anyone that I won at all, much less after starting in place on the coast.

Manage to nab Stone Circles, which I never get on Deity, and I got the National College so fast I went for the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus before Oracle -- normally a pointless waste of time, it actually made for some great early tiles producing food, production, gold and faith! Also offered a nice 100g consolation prize for popping all the pointless Great Musicians that spawn when you're working all your specialists late in the game.

Of course, after managing to get a religion at all, I didn't do a good job of spreading it, partly because I don't like to waste faith on missionaries but realized a little too late that trying to do it through trade with only one city is a bad idea. Not a game losing idea, clearly! Just left some money on the table both through tithe not performing well and sub-optimal route selections to low-gold cities that never converted.

I instigated an early war by paying Germany to attack America. Bismarck was settling me aggressively and producing a lot of early swordsmen. I managed to get by with one ranged and one melee (as well as a scout) defending until nearly t150, when I think I got a pikeman from a CS. Any time Germany started massing on my borders I either paid him to start a war or someone to start one with him.

I was honestly a little worried that I'd just slowed myself down too much overbuilding units and defenses that would gather dust when Bismarck finally did declare. I think I lost two of my ten units, but kept him from razing a single tile and after a dozen turns or so but I took Volunteer Army for my second tier Freedom policy and he quickly backed down.

Of course, after I started to buy city state alliances out from under him to benefit from Scholasticism and defend borders, Germany started stealing liebensraum with Great Generals. The first one only took two tiles in my working range, but a second one a couple of turns later took a salt mine and one of my precious quarries. Not my quarries!

I honestly think I could have finished a little earlier if I hadn't razed two of his cities -- spent about 80% the cost of a spaceship part on rushing two tanks -- but games are supposed to be about having fun, right?

The one thing I did learn is that I should have opened Commerce earlier to get Big Ben. I did manage to pick it up before buying spaceship parts, but I could have gotten it much earlier if I'd been paying attention. And I should have stuck with commerce to pick up Mercenary Army and Mercantilism. Instead I wasted a couple of policies on the Exploration tree thinking I'd maximize my sea trade gold. Oh well, next time, like when I replays this map by settling next to the mountain.