Ok, well here is my writeup on Boers and Turks on Deity for this scenario. For the most part, outside of maybe Morocco or the Zulu nation, all the other ones are a cakewalk so a writeup is pointless.
There are probably better ways to do these things, this is just how I did it. I don't claim to be an expert at civ. If nothing else, the starts are decent. I apologize in advance if this comes out a bit snippy, but I detest this scenario.
Special extra thanks to crocivfanatic for the tips on how to win as the Turks.
General Explanation
In this scenario there are basically three sides. The Europeans, the North Africans, and the leftovers. I will be ignoring the euros for now, as all you need to win is take Suez early, and crash the Ethiopian party. For the most part, if you were to fully automate this game, 95% of the time Ethiopia will win, and the remaining 5% split between Boers and Egypt. So, those are your actual enemies. The other people are just speed bumps to deal with. Speed bumps that really really hate you.
Specific issues with this scenario.
The scenario is coded where all Euro civs hate all other civs. At the end of the first turn where you meet a new Euro civ (which may be turn 0 for factions like the Turks) they will suddenly hate you. This is in addition to the general "i hate you foolish weakness" hate you get for playing on Deity. As a result, you will be at war with most of the other civs regularly and so you can't really count on trading luxuries or even trade routes in certain cases. Be prepared
The scripting for the scenario is such that if a European civ will pop out an explorer or a canon at its capitol basically every turn it has cash. And on deity, it will have cash. This means that getting near an AI's capitol is generally fraught with 20+ range-3 canon shooting you from ridiculous positions. To make matters worse, they can move/fire on the turn they're purchased, because the script doesn't actually buy it like normal, it just spawns it and deduces an incorrect amount of gold. So if you see a cloud of canon, then you're near that civ's capitol. This has merit when you pop one capitol and it suddenly moves, and you suddenly find one of your cities accosted by the canon horde
The Ottoman Turks
You will start having met all the European and North African powers (NAP). You can not declare war on the NAP, nor they on you. They also don't have the extra hate coded in, so for the most part they will be friendly. You will be able to set up trade routes. Your capitol (Tripoli) is a production powerhouse to start, so that seems fine.
Your primary enemy in this is Ethiopia. If you do not wipe them out or severely cripple them early, they WILL win. Your secondary enemy is Egypt, and you can't actually attack them. The only AI Civ that might get to attacking them is Italy, and that's after they roll you, so you can basically write that off. You (and the other NAP) get bonus victory points for gold you earn through GPT. The gold you earn by killing units does not count for some reason (probably a bug). You get roughly 1/10th a point per GPT. If left alone, Egypt will be earning 10 points every turn for Suez and another 100 for their GPT. Egypt will hold the Suez the whole game. All you can do is attempt to siphon off all its gold to reduce its points (and boost yours). While you do technically earn points the normal way (cities, pop, land, culture, etc), it's trivial in comparison. You will need roughly 4000+ points to win (6000+ if you're leaving Ethiopia alone).
You will find in the first few turns that all the Euro civs will denounce you. During this period, they will also likely ask each other to go to war with you, and they'll choose "give me 10 turns". Which means at the end of turn 10, you will get a storm of war declarations. Technically you can reduce this by declaring war on the closer people (Italy and France, and maybe Portugal) and it's likely this will keep the others out of the picture, but they will still hate you and not be apt to trade and you will accrue warmonger hate for it, so I usually just take them all.
In this scenario, Italy has an irrationally OP UU Ironclad. In addition to normal levels, it has a +50% vs cities. This means 3 of them can one-shot most cities (if that city has 3 coast tiles). You will sadly find that all your starting cities have exactly this. This means you will lose Tunis within a turn or two of Italy declaring war on you. I have a start with coal actually in range of Tripoli, and I've built/bought ironclads and canon, and you still can't stop Tunis from getting cranked at least once.
Due to this, and the need to sell cities to shared borders in the future, I find it's best to sell Tunis off before Italy declares war. When you do this, it will suddenly be sharing a border with another power (and not you) and will cause the AI to avoid committing all it's forces on you. Likely it will just start trying to sneak Settlers past you, which you need, because you need workers.
As we've mentioned, your primary enemies are Egypt and Ethiopia. You need to attempt to cripple Egypt in any passive way you can. This means attempting to deny him the ability to settle. Combined with the fact that you will lose Tunis early on, and Benghazi is kinda meh, you will want to get some additional cities up. Avoid giving Egypt open borders until you've settled anywhere you might want to settle. The only cities you should want him to have are out SW of Tripoli, near where France/England want to expand into.
This is why my first 11 turns goes exactly like this:
- Set all cities to production. Make SURE Benghazi is using the workshop specialist, you need to drop a manufactory down on Benghazi to make it useful.
- Set Tunis and Benghazi to produce a settler, set Tripoli to produce a stable.
- Send Tripoli's trade ship to Benghazi as production, send Tripoli's caravan to Tunis as production. Send the third caravan to Egypt for cash to stop your loss
- Send your horses out to scan the wastes looking for Wonders and Barbarians. You get cash for every unit you kill, and you definitely need cash right now to buy weapons. Hitting up the city-states is handy also
- You can either just fortify your rifleman, or you can send them over by Egypts borders to try to harry any settlers he pops out and block them. I usually do the latter. I sometimes use one of the horseman to facilitate this also, depending on barbarians.
- On turn 1 (the 2nd turn) after you make friends with Egypt, sell them one of your luxuries from Tunis for GPT. If you've found a wonder, sell them both.
- When the stable finishes in Tripoli produce a canon. Somewhere around turn 8 to 10 (depending on barbarians and CS introductions) you will have enough cash to buy something, buy another canon. On turn 8 when Benghazi produces the settler, ALSO produce a canon. You want to take the "+damage vs open" experience. You need these to shoot Italian ironclads.
- On turn 10, scoot the Settler and any combat units you had in Tunis out, and sell it off to Egypt.
While you can bribe Italy into wardecing Egypt before turn 11, it's irrelevant as they will never send enough troops out that way to be meaningful. All they'll do is roll Tunis, which removes your buffer, and you will likely not get the settlers coming through your area, which removes all your free workers. So, I would advise against it.
From this point, you have the tools to start to do something. You need to settle places where you can maintain happiness with a good mixture of luxuries (since you can't really count on anyone else to trade with you. Morocco will get rolled by France and Portugal for the whole game, and Egypt usually has the same things you do). I STRONGLY suggest at least one of your initial cities include coal. While you can trade for coal (or maybe even find a CS with coal), the barbarians in this scenario are primarily Mandakelu Cavalry, and they WILL pillage basically everything. The AI is far too incompetent to be able to stop them, especially with their withdraw ability. So, if you try to trade for the coal, I find you lose it at horribly inappropriate times. So.. settle near coal. Having large lakes or mountain ranges between you and France/Germany is also very handy.
As a result, I have attached the start I used to win. It includes coal and wonders very close, as well as a handy mountain range. If you use this start you will have to use your troops to harry Egypt, else it will settle all those spots, and there's jack you can do about it.
I've avoided mentioning policies, because they're all trivial. The order and acquisition of them is irrelevant. I wouldn't ignore culture, as it's worth VP in the end, but exploring the whole policy tree earns you maybe 20-30 GPT and some useless bonuses. When you're earning 1500 GPT, 30 is sorta trivial.
- The Northern Campaign -
Italy will eventually build enough troops/ships to feel confidant enough to come at you. You should have (at least) two rifleman and 3 canon hanging out around/behind Tripoli. You will eventually need to build enough ships to take over the Italian cities. Since you can't embark any of your units, you will have to do it completely via ships. You can either build your own ironclads, or you can try to capture his via ironclads with your UA, or privateers. Having a few of the Italian UUs facilitates the future. Eventually, you need to basically take all the cities on the coast of the Mediterranean, at least up to Lisbon.
The general idea is, you want to take cities purely so you can sell them to the AI (which usually means Egypt or possibly Morocco). The AI will pay big bucks for any city that it shares a border with, especially if that city was a capitol. You want GPT trades, so you don't need friendship.
The way I generally do it is, I sell Algiers to Egypt (which I sold Tunis too, so it's a shared border) for around 400 GPT. When I take Gibraltar, if Egypt still has cash you can suck the rest off. When the 25 turns is up on Algiers, I sell it the Italian capitol, plus another Italian city to make up for the loss of Gibraltar. You can throw in the occasional other city if it comes upon extra cash. When your fleet gets up to Lisbon, it's possible Portugal may sue for peace and you can get a big lump of cash for that (100-200GPT). If not, take Portugal and sell it to Morocco for all it has. It will lose it quickly, so when the 25 turns is up, repeat.
Now that you're rolling in the dough, use the money to ally all the city-states out there. They will act as a buffer vs the Euro civs. They will probably all be taken, but it gives you time.
- The Southern Campaign -
At the same time you're fighting in the Med, you need to settling and arming up heading towards the SE. You will run into Ethiopia. The earlier you can get down there the better. Ethiopia has a UU rifleman that's extremely hard to kill. It has a bonus near its capitol (which it will be), and it has two bonuses in their policy tree. By the time you run into them, they'll be leveled 3 times, and have those bonuses. The average strength of the Ethiopian rifleman will be 80 vs your 35.
On one hand it would seem rational to bribe Egypt and anyone else who isn't at war with you to attack Ethiopia. The problem is, Ethiopia gets culture for any kills. It also gets VP for any culture it gets, and unlike your gold-for-kills, it actually DOES get VP for the kills. That means if you have the AI sending troops its way, all you're really doing is fueling its victory, since the AI is incapable of staging any coherent attack, and Ethiopia's rifleman will decimate all the other civs.
That said, it's sometimes handy to get one friendly civ (like Egypt) to declare war, and make a joint attack. The "ally" will totally fail, but they'll act as a meat shield. In the case of Egypt it will also get him to slow down his settler spam some. I generally try to sue for peace early if I can, and get some cities out of it. It saves a lot on having to fight those silly UU rifleman. Eventually you'll probably need to wipe Ethiopia out. The Euro factions can't help attacking them, and even with one city, they will score a ridiculous amount of VP.
So, if you wipe out Ethiopia, and you're able to keep Egypt's cash down for 50+ turns, you will win. Eventually you'll want to give Egypt open borders so you can let some of his settlers through to act as a buffer to keep away the Euros, especially if your CS allies fold quickly.
The Boers
The Boers start is, IMO at least, a lot harder than the Turk one. While your VP-earning options are considerably better and you don't get ganked in turn 11, it's a constant uphill battle. Your start doesn't have to be anything astoundingly special, though having mountains to block some of your flanks is pretty handy. You will find the start I provided actually has a pretty impressive mountain range that blocks Portugal away from you at the start. Fortunately (or unfortuanately) though, it's also pretty rich in luxuries, which means all the Euro civs will wardec you extremely early. Be prepared.
Anyway, for the sub-saharan civs you earn VP through culture, and you DO (thankfully) get VP for the culture you earn through kills. Even then you need to prioritize everything you can to try to get culture buildings and great works. In this case, your policies are actually very useful. You want to prioritize the right side of the tree, which is the bonus to culture. It's likely you'll need to tag the first one in the left tree for the great general, but after that, you need to stay right till its finished. I generally go for "Great Artist" for my free great person and create a work with it. Don't waste your time with the scientists, Even if you pop him for tech, you won't be able to learn anything.
The Boers UB provides a free great work, and two slots, plus a culture boost. Because of the policy bonus to great works, you should prioritize these buildings. You also want to build amphitheaters & opera houses as quickly as possible so you can build a Hermitage somewhere. Another possible use for your free great person in the policy tree is an engineer so you can 1-turn the hermitage.
I generally pick one city, usually on a river, to build all my wonders (except the Heroic Epic) and a garden in, and devote that city purely to culture. With the hermitage, it will crank out 150+ culture a turn.
It's extremely unlikely you will ever get ahead enough to get out exploring. It's possible that you might settle with horses and get a lancer or something out, to go meet the other civs. If you do this, you can possibly meet the NAP or Ethiopia and make friends with them. Being able to trade luxuries is handy. I rarely get this option. If you do, ANYTHING you can do to bribe Ethiopia or any of its enemies to stop fighting each other is well worth whatever it costs. Ethiopia will earn 50-100 VP a turn purely off the stupid AI units that go blissfully running into its maw. Every turn Ethiopia is at peace, is that much less points you need to win. If Ethiopia NEVER went to war, you could probably get by with only 3k-3.5k pts. You will likely need more like 4.5k-6k
You start out with 2 settlers, 2 workers, and 4 UU rifleman. Yours aren't nearly as awesome as Ethiopia's. They're weaker than normal, but get a bonus to defense. That means you want to try to get people to attack you while fortified if at all possible.
You also start out surrounded by Euro civs (England, Portugal and German) and the Zulu Nation and are roughly 5 hexes from the English capitol. As previously mentioned, that means canon will start popping out every turn starting around turn 20 or so. The Euro civs will still all hate you. The Zulus will PROBABLY hate you, but that's mostly just due to Deity, and not scripted hate.
The short of the Boers is this. You need 4-5 good cities (though more is not bad), with all the culture options, and a good mixture of farms (your UA gives you +1 culture per farm) and production and GPT. The reality of it is, you will probably be under siege basically the whole game. It's not uncommon for England and Germany to go halvsies on war with you in turn 2 or 3, and the Zulu nation coming in quickly thereafter.
Therefore, I find it's best to just accept that you need to make England's capitol go somewhere else. To this end, I find it's easier to bribe England (before they go to war with you) to fight the Zulus. A single luxury or 1 GPT and open borders should be enough to get them to do it. They're not picky. The Zulus will then proceed to throw themselves up against the English walls until they die. Once those two are fighting, wardec england, gank any English settlers you can find and move in behind the Zulus.
I try to produce canon out of my first cities. Depending on where the Zulus start attacking you will need 1 or two canon to drop a city. As I mentioned, due to the scripting, if you don't take Cape Town, by turn 20-25, you'll start seeing canon popping out every turn. Eventually every hex will be full of canon, and you just don't have enough troops to cut through them all. If you take the great general as your first policy, you may need to drop it down as a citadel in front of cape town to give you the extra oomph to take it. Once you take that policy the generals will come pretty often, so you don't need to sweat burning it too much. If you are able to keep Portugal from declaring war on you, then you can probably keep Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. I have never been able to do that, and so there's a constant stream of English and Portuguese ships taking my cities.
To this end, I just end up razing Swakopmund and Port Elizabeth, and building a settler and dropping a city one hex inland. It seems a waste of production, but it's only equivalent to one troop, and otherwise you'll need to keep a huge amount of canon/ships around those cities to keep them safe. 1 settler seems cheap to me in comparison. I deal with Cape Town by selling it to the Zulus. If they're still at war with England I make them make peace with England as part of the deal. You can just give them the city, they probably won't have any cash anyway. They'll be decimated by wasting all their troops on the English cities. I usually then declare war on the Zulus (Yes, I'm fickle) and grab all their other cities, and leave them Cape Town as their capitol. The AI civs are reticent to commit genocide, so it basically gives you a custodian that won't attack you and will hold a city you can't really hold. If some other AI civ gets uppity enough to do it, you'll have to go back and re-take cape town. As long as it's not England, it won't be their capitol, so you don't have to worry about the canon swarms, which is the real problem.
Back to winning. Your primary goal is to earn culture. You earn culture by killing things, so you need to kill a lot of things. Fortunately the euro civs will accommodate by zerging you with units. They're even nice enough to fill the shores of your cities that AREN'T on the shore with ships, so you can just line your shores with canon and sink them. If you don't have a bunch of canon with 2 shots and 4-range by the end, you were doing something wrong.
Again, it's a balancing act. You need enough troops to be able to defend your borders and kill any troops you can get ahold of, but you also need to prioritize culture buildings, and especially getting the hermitage up in your "culture city".
When I finally did it, I setup my first two cities, then took cape town, then took port elizabeth (and razed it and moved a new settler 1 hex north), then sold cape town to the Zulu, then declared war on them and took Ulundi. I built a citadel there and basically the rest of the game I shot at Portuguese to farm culture. During that time I built a few more troops and took Swakopmund (which I razed and built 1 hex in). I would have built another city, but I never got the chance. I pretty well got stuck in killing English units in the north for the rest of the game. I barely won, as in Ethiopia and I were passing each other every turn. I was at around 5.7k points. I actually TIED Ethiopia (exactly) on the last turn, but for some reason I got one extra turn of culture added to my score for my win. Had I remembered to prioritize the Hermitage, I wouldn't have been in such dire straights.
Anyway, good luck.
