The Deity Challenge Lineup - Game # 1 - The Zulus

Great read as always. I do miss these diety challenges but right now trying to focus on one more HoF submission before end of month.

Really nice write up there, kb Grats on the CV.

And as always glory7 shows why he's the master of Dom. Masters make things look easy. Despite the great guide I just can't move as fast as he does and I always stall and get bogged down at some point.

DingleBirdy said:

To anybody using glory's Zulus guide, what are you researching after Civil Service? In my game I'm tentatively going to rifles and industrialization. I'm hoping the game will be over in that general time frame.

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I should add this to the guide later if necessary. In general, if you are doing okay with Xbow RPG (XP stacking), all you need to build are impis, 2-3 knights, 1-2 siege units, and happiness buildings.

I usually go for chemistry, and get other techs including education later. You don't really have time/gold to get universities (and usually don't even need to - just take other well-developed cities). However, if things are not going well and you think you need artys, then you should get education asap while playing safe and just stacking XPs.

I heard that impis can be upgraded to rifles, but haven't done it yet.

Lol...you're op on pangaea, glory.

Dehli said:

I don't understand the nonchalant attitude towards this paticular game. You all think its so easy. My capital was suffocated and I couldnt get other cities in the right spots. France and USA declared war on me at the same time and took my capital in 10 turns or less.

Lately I have been killing on immortal and thought "this could be fun." Most my wins are science/diplomacy so I do need some practice. A question and it might be stupid. What does farmed xp do? and mean?

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this map could be actually fairly difficult if you do not go for liberty domination, since

1. you have aggressive neighbors and you are right in the middle of the map: likely that you have to pay them to fight each other and also get some units to defend anyway
2. you do not have enough space for tradition 3-4 cities
3. not that many irrigated farm spots and no observatory - your science potential is limited.

Cool I just read your guide glory7. There is a whole another strategy to this game I know nothing about. I have been on reddit civ forum for years and have never heard of using city states as bootcamps. Really ingenious idea. Is that something you do in all domination games? Last question for you glory. How long does it take you to play a game like the one you posted above? I see 139 turns but a lot has to go into that.

Fluphen Azine the chess analogy is really good. Thanks. I'll never be as good as some of the posters here lol. And kb, do you make videos of your gameplay? I would like to learn the culture game a little better and you really seem to know your stuff.

Dehli said:

Cool I just read your guide glory7. There is a whole another strategy to this game I know nothing about. I have been on reddit civ forum for years and have never heard of using city states as bootcamps. Really ingenious idea. Is that something you do in all domination games? Last question for you glory. How long does it take you to play a game like the one you posted above? I see 139 turns but a lot has to go into that.

Fluphen Azine the chess analogy is really good. Thanks. I'll never be as good as some of the posters here lol. And kb, do you make videos of your gameplay? I would like to learn the culture game a little better and you really seem to know your stuff.

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1. For domination games, I would do that whenever I have a chance. Getting logistics and/or range promotion is a key for all domination games. And getting faster is also very important, of course. Range+logistics Xbows are 3-5 times more powerful than non-upgraded XB, I think.

If you play continents/islands maps, getting range promotion frigates (60 XP... only 45 for zulu) guarantees the win.

2. It actually takes a while. Domination games take longer, so my guess is ~t140 takes about 6~8 hours (rough estimates).

Nicely Done KB... I guess Ulundi really did get to the sky... As in my game I never really worry about growing but my Ulundi did get up to 42 pop although it was at turn 356 lol. Anyway that is pretty tall for my style which I suppose you could call cheese style! I was thinking about how you roam with your settler. I seen you do it in that Imm Challenge we both played as Austria. Im thinking the next time I do play an Imm Challenge Im gonna try to roam around and get really close to AI cap and take it over asap. Just a thought for my next try. After seeing you do it on Deity I wonder if it is viable since you can rush a caravan and get really happy next to the AI.

Glory_7 ...You are the man! Im going to make it a point to start using your tactics and try to have stronger warmonger games.

Turns 224-359... Thats right!! Turn 359!!

Fluphen Azine said:

Also I think that happens in every game of mine on Deity if you settle your 2nd city while in a DOW the AI wants it, if you want peace.

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This is because the AI is usually pretty demanding, especially on Deity when they have so many more units - they think they can get you to pay up for peace because they don't realize their 25 Warriors aren't ever going to break your two CBs and a wall. The AI really likes to demand cities for peace deals, but they can't ask for your capital - but as soon as you have another city, it's fair game as far as they're concerned.

ravenmagus said:

This is because the AI is usually pretty demanding, especially on Deity when they have so many more units - they think they can get you to pay up for peace because they don't realize their 25 Warriors aren't ever going to break your two CBs and a wall. The AI really likes to demand cities for peace deals, but they can't ask for your capital - but as soon as you have another city, it's fair game as far as they're concerned.

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When AI is at the point it's willing to receive the peace, yet still thinks it's winning, at the beginning it'll demand for everything you have - additional cities, luxes or just gpt. I.e. the less you have, the less it demands. This is somewhat exploitable, because occasionally you can enforce white peace even if you are not totally broke. You can't trade away resources that are not in your territory (exchanged for duplicate luxes) and have little to no gpt if you don't work any tiles. Cheesy? Yes, but sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures.


Glory, gg. As always. Mind to post a couple of saves from different stages? 12-15 turns to Machinery make such a huge difference!

Fluphen Azine said:

Nicely Done KB... I guess Ulundi really did get to the sky... As in my game I never really worry about growing but my Ulundi did get up to 42 pop although it was at turn 356 lol. Anyway that is pretty tall for my style which I suppose you could call cheese style! I was thinking about how you roam with your settler. I seen you do it in that Imm Challenge we both played as Austria. Im thinking the next time I do play an Imm Challenge Im gonna try to roam around and get really close to AI cap and take it over asap. Just a thought for my next try. After seeing you do it on Deity I wonder if it is viable since you can rush a caravan and get really happy next to the AI.

Glory_7 ...You are the man! Im going to make it a point to start using your tactics and try to have stronger warmonger games.

Turns 224-359... Thats right!! Turn 359!!

Spoiler :

Nothing really special after I took down Washington and the American Scum. Just as I had planned from the start I would War and try to get his cap and after that tech up and blast into space. I did it this game with the lowest beakers I ever had. I don't think I went over +670spt. I did steal the top of the tech tree from Babylon from Optics to Refridgeration, that was nice. I also stole a few other techs from Carthage. Well since Carthage and Shoshone both went Autocracy that was a no brainer (IMO). I did the same and we were DOFs for almost the rest of the game. I had open borders with Shoshone all game and that was a first for me. I thought it was funny how I would put him in wars and he would go through my lands to go and fight! It really was funny using the AI to gang up on whoever I wanted. I put everyone at war constantly. I can't understand how Shoshone did not tech better. He was in 3rd place at the end and he had the best empire IMO. Also he and I had been RAing all game. I got a few RAs in with Carthage as well and 1 with Siam. So the wonders I built were Oracle, PT, and ofcourse Hubble. Social Policies were : Full Tradition, Comm/Wagon Trails, Full Ratio and 6 into Aut, double stealing spies were good here. Also I ignored Worlds Fair and came in dead last at 0 production. I did get the free scientist for Int Space Station though.

So I was thinking after I seen Carthage and Shoshone crushing Babylon I might be able to sneak over there and take that Cap and get some more spt that way right?! I got my DOFs to fund my war and I ended up buying a nuke and that scared everyone! The best thing I did was get Washington cause it had about 10 wonders in it and I love Petra with Itza and Notre Dame... that was nice. He also built 4 Manufactories and that city was 3 times the production compared to Ulundi. Anyway I get some Rock Art and 1GWI and 1Sam and nuke in beteween Babylon and Akkad. that brings both walls to half and Im thinking ok go get it but I notice the major warmonger problem so I decide not to take it. I think Ill just camp here for awhile and kill some units. No I decide to take his small peace deal and go home and defend anyone who might want to attack. Nobody ever does and I just tech up with all my GSs and RAs and build the parts and buy a bunch of nukes. At turn 359 I nuke Carthage with all the bombs and blast off into space. Im not sure but I might of been able to go as far as turn 380 or even later. Anyhoo that game was fun for me it had a little bit of everything and I think I've shown that if your new to this game and you take a city and lose it or even if you lose your expo... not to worry you still can do many things to get back in the game! Looking forward to the next one as this brings me up to 3-3 on Deity on this site and that is nice since I lost my first 3 Deity Challenges in a row lol! I am suprised you guys are going to start the next one on the 4th of July Weekend but thats ok, Ill be ready!

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Dear me, so Shoshone and Carthage were the military runaways in your game too? Carthage is one of the evilest civs out there I feel. Completely untrustworthy. You did very well to survive with both of them around for 359 turns!

And Poca is a dick too btw. You didn't get citadel-bombed by any chance?

About moving my starting settler I do it when
A) Land has no food (wheat deer bananas, river)/ is completely unattractive.
B) My starting location is close to a mountain range, riverless desert or impassable terrain, such that if I move my settler out of the cul-de-sac and wall it off with my starting borders, I am guaranteed to be able to expand back to my starting location at my leisure because no one can access it. (be careful if that barrier involves water though as some AIs get optics pretty fast so you might have to get optics too, to block them. In the case of desert without food AIs often will not settle there anyway so you can consider that a barrier as well)

I have no wish to forward settle on any AI though, but if it happens, it happens actually that's quite bad as you are asking for war to come in the case of aggressive AI (but at least if you do it with your starting settler they somehow will not ask you to stop settling near them... yet, and chances are your expansion is now going to be away, rather than towards the AI so if they want to hit you they will have to go through your capitol)

Funnily enough I have had DEITY games where after I forward settled the AI with my starting settler (and he was in rough terrain so one of his starting settlers did not get very far) he was audacious enough to try to bypass my capitol (unlike Nebby who wisely chose to go up north), being only two tiles away. What to do? Well duh, DOW and then block his path with my warrior. Shot his escorting warrior down with my city and warrior attacks and took the settler as a free worker. BAM! I've just turned deity into immortal, at least for that AI. (afterwards I grabbed his starting workers too) He suffered long and hard all game that game.

FML... Seriously, just as I thought I got my computer problems sorted...

Anyways, the promised writeup...

@Pilgrim:

1. omg for those longbows...
2. It seems that AIs backstab when you take 2-3 cities. I just try to make sure that everyone is at war with somebody so that they backstab with denouncement, not DoW.
3. Attached t90 save file (I think it was liberty finisher timing)

So, back to games being played by us mere mortals...

I haven't finished my game yet, but I had to write this up just because it is so classic civ AI. After I made peace with Washington and Dido and started to further develop my 3 cities and bide my time until artillery, Washington (still the military leader) DoWed Siam (my only DoF partner) and moved his massive army toward Siam's city to the near north. I traded OB with Siam and quickly moved a bunch of units to completely surround the city. Without my aid the city would have fallen almost immediately as it was surrounded by flat lands and had only 25 or so strength. Washington quickly got the city to 0 health with xbows and cannons, but couldn't take it. So for 40 or so turns, Washington continued to lose units while trying to take a non-takeable city. Siam was really awful in terms defense strategy. They kept producing elephants and suiciding them into the middle of America's troops, which although not in the least efficient was still semi-effective.

But here's the kicker. After I had researched Rifling and Dynamite (Oxford) on T203 (after a brief detour to get observatories and public schools so as not to delay my science progress), I upgraded as many cannons and impis that I could afford to artys and rifles and I DoWed Washington again. The next turn Siam and Washington peaced out and SIAM GAVE HIM THE CITY IN THE PEACE DEAL! Even though Washington had clearly lost the war (and a good chunk of his troops) and the city had healed back to full (now 50-some strength). Unbelievable. So I had to take that city first (which had a huge cultural border and therefore made my work twice as difficult with the Great Wall) and then take Washington. On turn 227 I finally captured Washington and its 8 wonders.

In the meantime Dido used her 12 votes to ban salt (!!!) even though I had been voting for her in the WC, which killed a large portion of my income. So Dido is next to go! She's only 3 techs ahead but is now the massive military leader, with lots of GWB. I could just turtle for a science victory now but screw that. The main issues I face are low income and lack of any oil or aluminum even though I have a decent amount of land. No way to currently get any CS allies due to lack of gold and Dido's massive influence with most of them. Definitely a lot more difficult route to victory than glory's Liberty strategy.

Mouse-over Trade Routes tells me what’s coming in and from who, but not how many turns left. I suppose I should watch the damn caravans more closely to see when a civ’s has left my ZOC = more willingness to DOW?

RedRover57 said:

In the meantime Dido used her 12 votes to ban salt (!!!) even though I had been voting for her in the WC, which killed a large portion of my income.

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Just sell her some of yours and chances are she'll vote it down.
I don't think her warmonger hate flavor is that high but take a look...
According to the chart on this site:
http://www.carlsguides.com/strategy/civilization5/diplomacy.php

Voting them to be the host AND helping then passing a proposal gives you a combined 40 pts to diplomacy (even more than DoF which is at 35); in comparison getting denounced by a civ they like better is a 20 pt hit while a straight denouncement is 35.

Unfortunately they all pale in comparison to warmonger hate which goes from 15 up to 100; if you wiped or almost wiped out a civ, chances are that'll cancel out any other modifiers.

Didn't actually have time to play but did it anyway because I wanted to look at Pilgrim's pics. Unlike him I was also totally focused - the problem is that my focus was still on World Cup. This resulted a slight problem in form of being totally clueless about what to do but to correct this imbalance I quickly noticed that I didn't have much of a clue about AI's doings either. Not really a solid starting point for world domination.

Anyway, settled almost on the spot, ran into a Mexican-American worker which I quickly recruited. That didn't make the local plantation owner Mr Washington very happy but it didn't worry me much as friends are overrated. Loyal to this belief I also declared a very minor war to Valletta for our mutual benefit though after borrowing his worker I think the balance turned into my favour.

After hitting a culture ruin I decided to follow my usual coffee, Liberty & more coffee plan. Kicked out a youngster called Settler @T32 and he went West as young men do camping beside a Babylonian dude with impressive beard. His younger brother, the damn drunk, headed East and set up his tent near wine. Mr Washington was annoyed with me in an alarming manner so I signed a peace treaty with X - as a sign of good faith I stole a worker from him in the meeting. Few turns later we smoked peace pipe together as apparently he had heard from his Siamese twin brother, Mr Rammy, that I actually was a very decent chap. Such a gullible individual.

A couple of caravans to Paris to check the latest fashion and to Babylon to admire the great beard kept me in decent money. The main problem was that the world was filled with tree-hugging pacifists so nothing much happened. A red-headed chick from the land of England proclaimed herself semigod and felt it necessary for the rest of world to worship her so I didn't get even chance to test my divinity - nor did much of anyone else for that matter. I think she is secretly using waterways for domination and I can't even swim yet. Since I had no lakes to practice I settled 4th city on the coast ~T50. Far from excellent spot but with GG bombing I got Valletta's spices.

As I was increasingly worried and bored with this utopian world and I denounced Dildo just because I could, a turn later I also pointed out that she really shouldn't be camping near me as the fish she had clearly wasn't fresh and the aroma would spoil my wine. And she just smiled - can't have that and while I was wondering what to do I finally managed to remortgage my palace and pay Nappy to spread his troops all over Pocatello's land. Not the best of plans but at least I got rid of my money. Few turns later I sold some internal organs and used the proceeds with 3 luxes for Dildo to have an American holiday. Obviously I went heavily red on happiness but I assumed it was only a temporary solution. Luckily, the now separated twin asked me to join him on a crusade against this evil woman who had so unjustly attacked a blood relative - I couldn't have been happier so I joined without even my expenses covered. Technically I could've been happier but not with less income. By this time it's T84 and I think it's time to start shooting.

The fundamental problem with game is timing or rather the total lack of it. Pangaea and std settings is exactly unlike any other game I've played in months. I've been solely playing large maps, anything but Pangaea and always with raging barbs which, especially on larger maps it changes the start quite a bit hence I'm going very familiar path with 4C NC early 70s - it was delayed a bit as I hard build all libs and jungles aren't exactly hammer rich tiles. CS within a couple of turns and then Xbows just shy of T100. Liberty will be finished ~T90.

As much as I hate Pangaea I didn't want to miss either so to add at least something for the fun of it - I'm going commando. Nope, I'm decently clothed but no wonders or CSs/CS quests. I accidentally filled one q when I got my salt back which made me friends with Lhasa for few turns but that should be it.

In immediate future I'll test some new arrows on Carthagian troops and then probably take Washington. Pocatello has GW which is most unfortunate. Siam & Babs would be easy(ish) targets but they are lazy builders so taking even just the capital leaves me out of any popularity contest, not that I'm gonna win anything in that area anyway but few trading partners would be nice.

Based on my so far short game & Glory's finishing time I seem to have seriously overestimated the skills of AI on std settings - teching directly to Xbows is probably way more quickly as the land mass seems quite small. Not that I'm on expert on that in anyway - had it been a map of my own rolling I'd have skipped it before T10 due to claustrophobia.

Fresh barrel of coffee and I might make it to T100+ or at one capital. I should prolly start taking some ss, too.

Well... On my third try I managed the Challenge as well.

Aibeit said:

Well... On my third try I managed the Challenge as well.

Spoiler :

Went 3 Cities Tradition into a Domination Victory complete with the entire map covered in Fallout (mostly due to the fact that Pocatello decided to go beserk and Nuke everyone on the map). Probably also the smallest Information Age Capital because Ulundi got nuked 3 times

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You messed up on posting that screen cap. I want to see what happened.

This is my second stab at this challenge. It's not that I don't think I could have won the first attempt, it's that I got really bogged down and made a ton of stupid mistakes. Anyway, I decided to take another go where I had more time to focus.

First, I settled in place and just went with it. As I was walking my warrior through the muck to the north I apparently stood on the spot where Rammy was trying to place his second city. Instead of waiting just one turn he completely back peddled and settled to the east. Really weird to see the settlers that early. After moving past Rammy I walked right into Nebby's front door and stole his worker. That was the last free worker I got for quite some time.

Napoleon immediately found where I was and settled as close as he could. I wanted to buy a tile to make him move his settler, but I was 1 gold short. As annoying as that was, America claimed early friendship with me, but still settled Boston right next to me too. F him.

I used Glory7's method of CS boot camp and declared war on Valletta as soon as I met them. For the next 80 turns or so I stood there and mauled his stupid little house. I ended up settling a city right below Valletta so I used my first GG to citadel bomb his lands. It really helped my units heal up quickly while still gaining xp.<---I've decided this is something I need to do with Immortals some day. I bet it can be crazy powerful. Also, by the time I finally made peace with Valletta I had two logistics xbows and the other range units were on the verge of the same feat.

I also was able to build the pyramids, which is something I actually decided before the game that I was not going to go after. On turn 55ish I saw they were still available and would take less than ten turns to build so I gave it a shot.... and succeeded.

Anyway, my initial plan was to go after Rammy first, then to Nebby, but as I was boot camping Valletta, America built the gw. My plans changed and Washington was my new first target. I bought a couple tiles right in front of him to make it easy access into his cap. Here are the progress pics so far. Going after Rammy next. Already have roads built.

t95-104