The Deity Challenge Lineup #12 - The Maya

I took it as a joke, and you got a chuckle out of me.

Looking at your map, it's a tough situation, but not necessarily a foregone conclusion. I see you are close to Radio….am not sure if you can get Freedom and Foreign legions in time. Any chance of getting loans from other civs to buy a few modern units to hold him off?

foreign legions is 10-15 turns away maybe, but i kind of lost interest. There is more than double that amount of units you already see in the fog of war and within 4-5 turns my empire was so swarmed by him that i had to throw the towel. I should have beelined for something more militaristic. Could have had Artillery and Gatlings already, but i was to science orientated. I don't really have 10-15 turns here is the problem. Even if you survive this there is still korea in this game(obv in the modern era for quite a while)

I am more pleased with my game, but am pretty much resigned to 2nd place. I now have 9 cities, WF starts in 6 turns, but I will have only 5-6 workshops. Happy has been an issue off and on, so I am even building Zoos, and only have Gardens in my cap. Not good.

The Seige Towers were pretty fun, I think I was gifted 4 total. I was about to take Dido's Hippo in the NW when I finally decided to ask for it in peace, ka-ching! I always forget to do that. I have been in one long war with Monte - after pushing him back from my cap I stationed troops around Almaty and just picked them off in the marshes. I have 1 Log/Range XB and 1 Log with no Honor. Soon to get my 3rd GG, I burned one against Dido.

Poc has 9x my pop and 3x my production, 12% tech lead, full Trad and Liberty and 2 (3) in Honor, GW, Rifles, everything. He is now settling my continent too. I have only met 9 CS - my G Admiral has only met 3 CS, LOL.

I have Liberty, and 3 Piety (love Theocracy with rel building spam). I am tempted to go 2 more to reform with To the Glory Of God as I will have almost 100 fpt, but that means super-delayed Secularism. Can't win w/o that ASAP.

Since I focused cities on Rel bldgs, then happy, and I've had to limit growth, so missing Granaries and Libraries a lot, sheesh. Hardly any Aqueducts. Yet since I took Choral Music I need 5 followers, LOL. Monte's religion spread everywhere, but part of why I'm not ending the war is his cheap Missionary waves. I must have killed 8-12. Tables are turning as I am GPing everything now until Modern Era.

I think it would be fun to take him out - he has had a huge mil tech lead, but was late to get XB's. My ST are losing worth as he now has Castles. No good approaches head-on.

I'm sitting on a GE - I wanted to use it on Ironworks, but that is a long way off. I could use it on Grand Temple now, hmmmm. At the rate Poc is teching I don't know if Eiffel will be there. He has proposed Science Funding - I don't recall seeing an AI do that for a long time.

I am debating trying for WF gold - it seems like a longshot, and will just delay workshops that much more. I still want to settle SE of cap. I need more workers. I finally have enough cash to buy desert hill tiles in Venice. NW's will take 15 turns, ouch. I'm rambling...

Dido

...she was pretty much a gonner as soon as Monte attacked & took Utique, never settled another city nor did much of anything else either.

Just finished a short stint after watching the CL game & hoping I was in as favourable position as Chelsea.
I'm suffering from the classic north-american-native-tribesman-settling-under-every-freaking-tree-on-the-planet-syndrome as Poca has been doing whatever he pleases & the rest will follow from very safe distance.
T250 he's still 8 techs ahead of me while I just passed Sejong by Autocracy boosted stealing. Having gazillion crappy cities doesn't seem to slow him down much though he has taken several Rationalism policies.

T250 with 4 caps I'm still without any Guilds - apparently those were very fragile in this game - which without cultural CSs hurts more than I originally thought. Haven't build a single horse unit nor upgraded, yet at least, one but I kept the couple of Hakkapeliittas purely for supporting domestic local units.

So far the most interesting happenings were while killing Monte off & selling his last city to aforementioned treehugger, he had a revolution from Order to Autocracy next turn & backstabbed me on one after that - didn't do much good to my happiness either but in the end it wasn't that bad as I switched few turns later as well. Everyone but Korea has now Autocracy.

Luckily I seem to have some Uranium though so has Poca as I'm expecting healthy exchange of nukes in later turns. Others have some sort of armies but they're no threat at all - Sejong had larger army or rather navy than I did but oilless GWBs & rowing boats scared of deep waters even when they occupy every tile available can do very little to stop Battleships.
Rammy is falling under Poca's troops & Boudicca is sandwiched between them. The question is basically whether I should to straight to nukes, build as many as I can & then launch'em all on a single turn & start mopping or should I make some room in advance and move in slowly. The main problem is that my gpt will sink like a Russian sub when I DoW Poca and the life expentancy of Cargo ships approaches zero very quickly.

the grin off of Pocatello's face, or possibly his civilization off the face of the earth

This game is no fun. I made so many mistakes - taking Venice wrecked my best trading partner, allowing peace later with Monte allowed him to build up his military for the final onslaught of Texcoco, I went after Monte's Utique to liberate it for Dido and she and Pac double-DOW me the turn before. Once I take it, I am a monster to Rham. Monte offered 19 pop Tlateloco in peace, which I sold to Korea, and am rewarded with a denouncement. I bee-lined towards Radio and should have gone for Gats instead.

I had to run a bunch of troops west to fend off Dido and Poc, and couldn't get enough back in time. I can probably retake Texcoco, but I am just sick of this game. I just don't enjoy Deity very much, so I may just quit the series. I don't enjoy being 2 eras behind in tech and units to just maybe win a SV late. I don't enjoy constant war unless I am advancing, and even then it is so frickin' tedious. I have the basis for a cool wide empire, but I still don't even have Libraries or Granaries in some cities. I can do much better with Tradition and then expanding - pretty much done with Liberty.

Thanks for posting the maps and such though!

Sorry you had such a hard time. I bailed also. But I hope you don''t give up the series. You're an asset to the play base, and not all maps will have bullies like Pocatello lording over the world

I go for liberty, 5 cities + petra T73, NC T87 and Oracle T94, Education T103.
Peaceful start, Montezuma and Dido hating each others, trying to get up to 7 cities but running into some happiness limitations. Also I have no idea what venice is doing, no puppet.

Latter portion of the game was pretty uneventful. No wars -- I had enough of an army that Monty didn't want to fight me, and he was busy getting nowhere against Carthage and Venice anyway. The most exciting thing that happened was me winning the World's Fair, which enabled me to push through to the purchasing discount in Commerce. My culture was still constraining enough that I had to build Sydney Opera House to get all the policies I needed. I used a Great Engineer to hurry this, as my early Pyramids gave me enough GE points to eventually spawn one in the late game.

I also passed World Ideology: Freedom, and three AI's joined my team. Between that and the World's Fair culture, I managed to have zero ideological unhappiness, giving me a very high population cap. So I prioritized Hospitals and Medical Labs and entered "xtreme growth mode" for the last forty turns.

Nice straightforward science victory, just with a lot more investment in security/defense than normal. I agree with the sentiments of those who feel that Deity is kind of limiting -- there's a lot of options in this game that you can't really do on Deity. Personally, I try to switch it up with lower difficulty challenges/Gauntlets/GotMs. It keeps things fresh.

I don't understand how your science, around T80 was higher than mine at the same time, even though I had NC by then, higher pop, my trade routes were to AI, and I had Pyramid in every city. I'm truly baffled.

Any ideas?

Mine was kind of slow, but I was bribing world wars all the time. Pocotello actually had more techs than me at the time of the victory, but I had him fighting a few wars.

I did a liberty start, but lost the mids to Poc. I did get Petra in the oasis desert hill area and that was surely key to winning. I kept Monty busy as an attack dog, but was somewhat risky due to my limited amount of troops. I got a few nukes to keep everyone at bay late game. Not really happy with how nukes work in Civ 5. I get a few and everyone is cowering fools, even Poc who had 3x my score. Got me a bunch of money to buy stuff with sky scrapers.

I was in a happy order party with Shoshone and Venice. Venice got jesuit scholars which really helped me get labs up quickly.

I don't think I posted any screenshot??!! I'm not sure I even took one.

Furthermore, I'm pretty sure I had 5 cities by that time.

Regardless, thanks for the LP. I found it informative, especially how accelerated the empire can become with a few extra workers.

Nothing unexpected happened post T250 unless one counts Poca's almost reasonable decisions towards Space as such. Due to Poca's massive army the turn times were so long that I seriously considered taking Diplo VC on T282 but curiosity got me over it as I wanted to see if Poca is serious with his space mission.
Mass bulb with 9 GSs within few turns before T300 got me XCOMs, SBs & Nuclear subs in few turns so only one turn of war was enough to wipe off Dido and take Rammy's & Poca's capitals. Getting the tech lead just before T300 is something new I admit.
8 nukes with dozen SBs and & logistics BSs with subs clearing the path can do a decent damage and gifting/selling Poca all surplus resources along the way made his comeback nicely handicapped. Poca had (at least) 7 nukes for quite a while but didn't use a single one against anyone but me - so nice to be popular.

Didn't catch a single Guild even thought wiping off 4 civs, didn't upgrade the Pikes I had and extended the no horsies to include tanks as well. Hakkapeliittas were used on escort missions and the lack of internal TRs which really isn't a novelty for me.

T153 LToP, T155 Sejong went Industrial and Poca followed the next turn and I lost & recaptured Tlatelolco and sold it to Poca in hope of Monte DoWing Poca but that didn't happen either way even with mu money greasing things but they didn't have OB either so used the small safe heaven for some easy xp.
T161 DoF with Venice was over and I renegociated it to DoW. Taking Venice was easy but I was more keen on getting xp than capturing.
T183 first to pick ideology and chose Order and Poca joined 6 turns later. Apparently there was a global lack of coal and I got mine by GG bombing just in time before Poca's natural expansion.




T196 Poca offered DoF, T201 bulbed radio, T204 Eiffel T with a GE, T207 took Tenochtitlan but apparently was too tired to make a pose in front local attractions hence no SS. T217 Poca went Atomic, T222 Oxforded Plastics & bought few labs, T224 Poca's Manhattan was built, T227 I filled Honor and to celebrate that I wiped Monte off next turn but he was missed by no one.




T230 Poca had an Autocratic revolution so he backstabbed me next turn but was willing to co-DoW Korea with me on T237 after my Autocratic switch. I was winding down Seoul and snatched Busan off Poca by just sailing in and with roughly same manner I liberated Kamphaeng Phet few turns later. Seoul was mine T248 with half a dozen needless WWs. Poca build Apollo T248 and was cruising to space well before anyone else though his war against Siam was half-hearted.




Decided to avoid war with Poca for a while so I DoWed Boudicca T253 and liberated Lampang to get few brownie points but Poca captured it right away. Edinburgh was easy to capture but OB from Poca ran out so I was blocked there and Poca's offer wasn't the cheapest ever...



...so I was stuck. T259 Neuschwanstein to help with money issues. T264 Poca build GFirewall on the same turn I was about to steal so the late game tech plan took an unwanted detour and he goes Information next turn. T271 WF win as Poca had some other things to do, T272 Satellites and a rare process of hard building Hubble start. One oddity in Poca's tech path was that he didn't go for satellites first so I had time to wait for one more natural GS before finishing Hubble on T288.
T283 Muang Saluang was hammered down for easy capture so I DoWed Siam.





Two GG bombs to allow building a road and one nuke to celebrate the DoW was enough to capture Carthage.






Road building was the key here as well but I still couldn't resist of dropping few nukes to eliminate local air force if any existed.






4 nukes to soften the defenses, SBs taking care of the rest & a paradrop to secure the tiles - this is just too easy now but very effective and in this case I could've even kept the city with relative ease.

Full Liberty, full Honor & the rest in Autocracy not because they were better but because I wanted to keep it clean. I lost 4 policies while switching Order to Autocracy full after winning the WF my policies came in 4-6 turn intervals due to lack of early policies.




Surprisingly high pop but nothing otherwise surprising here. Poca had 36 cities in the end while the rest of had some ~15 combined.

My religion covered ~2/3 of all cities even though I didn't spread it very actively in later turns. Bought few 1k faith Mosques just to get rid of the surplus but focusing on conversion I could've spread it almost all cities by the end but converting Poca's cities with his own religion was a risky business and I really didn't want Poca to DoW me - when nukes are involved the initiative makes a huge difference.