The Deity Challenge Line-up #34 - Egypt

I attempted this, and the barbs are really getting to me. I settled on that faith wonder by the river. Got HG and Petra, but only managed to get NC at turn effing 120, education at 135. Printing Press wonders all gone, Sistine is gone as well. Currently at T150 and still working towards Printing Press. Also, since I skipped scout in favor of a warrior which then had to stay behind because effing barbs, I didn't scout anything. Although it seems the AI is also slowed down quite a bit since their pace seems similar to usual games compared to my state, I'm rapidly losing interest in the game.

Did you get the Honor opener? The 33% combat bonus really helps cut through the barb swarms and obviously the culture is nice too. It was like night and day between my games with and without it on this map. I also found War Chariots to be extremely effective.

I was initially kinda averse in doing that, but I'll try again with opening Honor next time.

Well the trudge ends here. Even though I had little trouble with raging barbarians because I went Warrior/Warrior/Settler/Settler, and my starting Warrior picked up an upgrade on the first ruin.

I tried again with opening Honor this time. I can't say I'm that much well off. NC T120 and Edu T140 this time. I think not being able to scout reliably is one major factor as well, my research cost isn't getting a discount. How the hell am I supposed to scout here really? Lone scouts will get butchered, and warriors are badly needed for barbs. The only thing I can think of is to send a unit past the northern civ asap in hope that the barbs are taken care of by the AI over there. Also, I'm not sure whether fast expansion is beneficial as well. Maybe one expo to the rivers west, but no more. HG is gone too fast in this game too.

Yes, getting the Scout N quickly helps a lot. I also used Archer/Spear pairs and eventually mounted units to deal with the E side fog/barbs.

I sent a +2 vision scout past the northern civ by teaching Optics before Philosophy and it scouted the entire map with some open borders. I think it's fine to delay exploration on this map because of the barbs, since every available unit should be defending at the start of the game.

I recommend that you open with 2 scouts and go with defence promotions on one and extra sight on the other. 30xp shouldn't be hard to get before Optics and they're more likely to survive if you open honour. Scouting in the other direction is a death sentence until you have 2-3 war chariots or the equivalent.

Whew, that was grueling.

T295 CV.

So, I built 2 scouts, and sent 1 over North immediately while the other lucked on an archer upgrade. That venture eventually revealed all the important parts of the map, so that was a major success on scouting part. Immediately built 2 settlers afterwards to west and north to block northern civ access to my land. 4th city settled after T100 NC.

Opened Honor and that certainly helped against the barbs. SP went 5 Tradition, 5 Aesthetics, 5 Rationalism, and 9 Freedom just because. Got HG and NC was built around T100 followed by Petra. However, Capital never really rose spectacularly in pop because it wasn't particularly food heavy to begin with (and I failed to get WLTKD pretty much the whole game).

Completely abandoned Printing Press in favor of Architecture, and opened Industrial through Archaeology. Immediately built archaeologists followed by museums in every city and that delayed Public Schools until a little before T230 Plastics. Didn't rush buy any science building in favor of RAs with pretty much every civ, and updating all my troops (which proved useful later because Dido went mad, Memphis was at 0 health for quite a while).

I tried to pass Natural Wonder culture twice and failed. I passed Wonder culture, but didn't get to propose Site culture. I lastly passed World Religion. Planted a city at the edge of my culture borders and gave it to Poland and culture bombed him to victory with 1 generated and 3 faith bought Musicians.

yes it was grueling

beetle said:

It would still be something of a trick to win at Deity opening Piety, but this map seems like about the most peaceful one could hope for!

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consentient said:

Read the Small Piety guide, beetle. Small and religious is not as doomed as you think for a DiploV.

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I finally got around to reading that guide top to bottom. Lots of text, but the BNW quotes are terrific!

I never did try Small Piety on this Egypt map, I guess I think that would be too easy? I am giving Small Piety a go with a retry on the DCL 37 French map.

I'm yet to execute a DiploV using Small Piety though, every time I try it, something gets in the way and I can never get around to finishing it

I'm trying to get a culture victory on this one. I had a go at spamming cities with Sacred Site/2 religious buildings, but stagnated at ~60% influence and was too far behind on science to have any hope. So, I'm trying to follow the Redaxe post (thanks for the tips, Redaxe!).

How many cities do people generally expand to in a peaceful culture victory? How much harder is OCC?

Reading some general timelines for Science victories (i.e. for Education, Scientific Theory, and Plastics) helped me, so I'm hoping someone can suggest some general/reasonable turn #s for key points aiming towards say a T250 peaceful culture victory, ex. Sistine built, Archeology researched, etc.

And thanks to the contributors and regular posters in this DCL, I've really enjoyed it - keep it up!

T282 Cultural Victory


I followed the suggestions posted in here and had a very peaceful game, minus the barbs. I enjoyed it enough I'll likely try Cultural again. Didn't know how much to expand (went with 3 cities) and sometimes wasn't sure on build order or technology.

@blatc

consentient did a most excellent OCC culture win on the Carthage map

stormtrooper412 said:

@blatc

consentient did a most excellent OCC culture win on the Carthage map

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I've tried that map a few times. It's terrible for my preferred Dom style, but OCC culture sounds interesting; probably better for TR than this map.

T316SV

I have just created my account on civ forum and don't really know if it's still ok to finish these challenges. I just finished this first, as i like playing with Egypt a lot, it is ok to play the challenges on in order right?

You can play them in any order you like.

T306 CV
So this I finished last week. I had to restart it about 6 times until I found a way to deal with the raging barbarians. My first raging barabarians map and AAARGH I HATE THEM !!!!
Stole one worker from hanoi and got some from barbarian camps. I had the feeling I was pretty slow, but it worked out. At the end I bought GMs with faith and sent them to alexandria (a humble gift of egypt to the mighty polish empire - Without this gift I think I wouldn't have won this)

Was an interesting challenge, but did i mention that I HATE BARBARIANS

by the way.... I usually take Volunteer Army as the second level 2 freedom tenet (after universal suffrage). It's more a filling up to get to level 3. But mostly the foreign legions are outdated and it's not of great value. What do you prefer to take ? And why? (urbanization gives lets say 5 happiness which i don't need at this time either, new deal is mostly useless as I have no GP improvements and for arsenal of democracy to be useful I lack the units, and the 33% combat strenght to cities is also somewhat useless... - or am I completely wrong and underestimating something ???)