The Deity Challenge Line-up #22 - Brazil, King of the Jungle

Light Cleric said:

Thanks Yes, going peaceful does have a good bit of luck involved, but I just don't want to emphasize that too much because I feel it kind of takes away from other people's accomplishments.



It actually was a pain once I started to hit +20 unhappiness from ideologies because a number of cities were already at their local happiness cap. The ones that didn't were puppets and unfortunately I didn't have enough cheap units to put everywhere to take advantage of Military Caste(normally spam Scouts but they go obsolete at Scientific Theory and I forgot to build some). I wanted to raze a few Incan cities but I couldn't during the heat of war because the combat penalty would have been painful. I actually intentionally let a city-state take Graz or w/e Austrian city I had up north knowing they would burn it down. I had kept it because I thought I would need it for Vienna but I didn't.

It was still worth it to be Pachacuti's friend for a while to stave him off, though. He eventually backtsab denounced me but by then I had already used our friendship to get him into 3 wars and sold him a bunch of luxuries that no one else would buy.

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Nicely done Elcee, I experienced how hard to win a DomV in this game.

So uh...I decided to give this map a try because I haven't gotten Brazil's trophy yet. I eventually finished the map, but it was so bad I decided not to post it here, but I'll gonna share my rant anyway.

I honestly had a hard time. The first time I tried I neglected military for too long as I expand so I got simultaneous DoW from Alex and Poca and Wu. The second one I settled in Salt area but still couldn't manage to hold off Wu and Alex. The third time, I bribed Alex to look the other way but Poca, who's been friends in previous playthroughs backstabbed me as I was fighting Wu. Restarted again and made Poca go after Wu in addition to bribing Alex.

All of my caravans goes from and to each city to try and keep up with growth in cap and hammers in expos, and I signed RAs with anyone I can on top of rush buying science building in cap so I barely had any income when Ideologies come. Even then, I only managed to get to Plastics at turn 220 ish, and by then everybody hates me thanks to Freedom so I couldn't get through the rest of the tech tree fast enough. Faith was also weak because the grand temple never gets to be build until very late thanks to ever expanding build list (weak hammer in expos really put strain).

Also, I admit that I still can't part myself from save scumming. I reloaded after missing several wonders by a couple of turns (these are because my hammer output can't keep up with the science, so I had to rearrange build priorities each time I missed). Also shamelessly save scummed when Couping with percentages above 60%.

The first time I nearly won, I kind of went over my head and proposed both World Religion and Ideology in a row, this resulted in my ass handed to me in separate platters by each AI. The next time, I kinda copped out with Diplo, even though Maria and Alex were in the game and Maria gobbling CSes left and right, I managed to finish it in t285. I then decided to reload the game and see when I could finish by Culture and Science, and I found out that I could won both simultaneously by t310 (science perhaps could be made several turns earier if I really tried).

Hey Erneiz, welcome to the series. Not seen you around these threads before, so welcome.

Not sure exactly what went wrong overall, but I would say that the safest way to defend yourself is to build a military. Brazil are so good at CV they will get you a decent win time anyway, so pushing it back 20 turns and making sure you have adequate defence, is probably the safest option, especially with Pocatello and Alex around.

I made sure to build two archers and a warrior per city in the Ancient Era. I then roughly double the army every era so that I don't stay flat last. When I got reports from everyone that Pocatello was marching an army, I just blocked his units from getting to me. I think invading China was a way of getting to me, but I just kept him sweet by not denouncing, etc.

I used to think that 'no bribes' put one at the mercy of the AI but it really doesn't, provided you build an army for defence and play the best diplo game you can.

What happened in my 2nd attempt of this map, I was asked by my DoF Portugal to denounce Poca as a sign of support, and when I did that, she denounced me anyway. Then some turns later I was asked by Austria to denounce someone else I don't remember now and the same happened. Sometimes the AIs with openly want you to pick a side and that didn't really happen to me until recently, so basically if you have a DoF with both, it's a lose-lose situation because either way you will be known as a backstabber, regardless whether you bribe or not

I'm happy to be corrected by better players, stormtrooper, but my rule is this:

Denouncements are ONLY when, in a DomV game, I want to provoke a chain denouncement of a civ I'm about to attack. Done at any other time is folly.

DoFs are ONLY when there will be no negative from it. So if I am already DoF with the enemy of the person asking, the answer from me will be 'no'.

So even though you will be asked 1000x in each game to do certain diplomatic things, I just ignore them unless I want DoF with someone for whom there is no problem. I was DoF with Alex in this game, and later with Portugal as well. Everyone else was 'neutral'. Just the way I like it.

I haven't been asked to denounce since forever. Maybe my game is bugged? But then again, I very rarely accept DoF from AI's, and I would NEVER befriend Dido, Catharine, and many others. I also never give my embassy ever to Shaka. He covets your lands even without knowing where you are on the map; no need to provide him with that information. Same with Alex.

When I get to this game, I will try to do the same city placement as Acken: dropping the 4th city into Wu's face. I just feel like she will DoW me or citadel-bomb with all her generals. In the India game, Shaka dropped 6 citadels on my city because he didn't like its location.

consentient said:

I'm happy to be corrected by better players, stormtrooper, but my rule is this:

Denouncements are ONLY when, in a DomV game, I want to provoke a chain denouncement of a civ I'm about to attack. Done at any other time is folly.

DoFs are ONLY when there will be no negative from it. So if I am already DoF with the enemy of the person asking, the answer from me will be 'no'.

So even though you will be asked 1000x in each game to do certain diplomatic things, I just ignore them unless I want DoF with someone for whom there is no problem. I was DoF with Alex in this game, and later with Portugal as well. Everyone else was 'neutral'. Just the way I like it.

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That's pretty much the same gameplan I'm always using, except if there's a Civ I don't need to be friendly with but denouncing them would make the friendly ones even friendlier due to mutual hatred.

HOWEVER, this situation threw a big wrench in the works when I was ASKED to denounce Poca, which I did and then the denouncement came from Portugal 4-5 turns later anyway for absolutely no reason other than her being Maria the Mad I suppose

consentient said:

I made sure to build two archers and a warrior per city in the Ancient Era. I then roughly double the army every era so that I don't stay flat last.

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Roughly double? Do you build those units or do you buy them? I also have a habit of building 6 archers early but they tend to be the only armies I'll have for the rest of the game (and even these already cost a lot of fortune to upgrade!). As I said before, my build queue keeps getting longer because the hammer output can't keep up with the teching rate. I'm not sure how I can put units in there as well. And I don't think I over-built in my expos either.

otoh, perhaps I was doing it wrong when I used 4 troude routes outside of the 2 that goes to my cap to help my expos with hammer and I should've just send it to AIs to bring more money and green diplo modifiers? I absolutely didn't have any outside trade routes until my 7th and 8th trade slot.

Sending internal hammer routes is a bit of a waste tbqh, growing your cap and getting gpt (and precious early bpt) from AI ranks much higher in my opinion

Erneiz Hyde said:

Roughly double? Do you build those units or do you buy them?

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Either a militaristic CS ally will gift them, or I will build them. I keep money for RAs, CS alliances + emergencies. If you have good city locations then units take <5 turns to build.

adcarrymaokai said:

I haven't been asked to denounce since forever. Maybe my game is bugged? But then again, I very rarely accept DoF from AI's, and I would NEVER befriend Dido, Catharine, and many others. I also never give my embassy ever to Shaka. He covets your lands even without knowing where you are on the map; no need to provide him with that information. Same with Alex.

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It is a very rare event. Interestingly, I was also asked by Austria to denounce someone in this game(I forget who) and the time before that I can remember it was also Austria. I suspect it's related to the flavors of certain leaders.

It's not as rare as the AI demanding something from you, which I have had happen ONE time the entire time I've played this game, but it's rare.

Light Cleric said:

It's not as rare as the AI demanding something from you, which I have had happen ONE time the entire time I've played this game, but it's rare.

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I've never heard of this and I'm 2000+ hours. Who was it who demanded?

My guess is Bismarck or Suleiman.

It was Theodora of all people, actually:



Not surprisingly this was during the psycho fall patch G&K AI era May explain why it's not happened since but even then I never saw it again.

Basically she attacked me early(like all AIs did then) and I locked her in. Later my army was preoccupied with Bablyon so maybe she thought it was a good time to catch me with my pants down. Didn't work but the CS ally she had made it interesting.



It was actually really cool and I wish it would happen more often/at all.

I played only a few hours of G&K before I bought BNW. The AI on G&K was just completely mental and irrational. It's still a bit kooky, but at least there is some sense to it.

Yeah, I don't remember a single G&K game in which I wasn't attacked at least 2-3 times, it was impossible to peace together ( ) a turtling game

@Acken

How did you get a religion without getting a pantheon? I've never seen that before.

With shrines/temples/CS. Got it very very late for Deity. Didn't end up being very useful though.

You can't get a pantheon once someone enhances, which was the case around T50.

Ok, so somebody had already enhanced, denying you the pantheon, but 200 faith still got you the prophet? I always thought once you missed out on the pantheon that was it (disregarding piety/liberty finisher, hagia sophia, maya etc)

You can still get a pantheon after someone enhances as long as the number of pantheons is less than the number of possible religions.