The Deity Challenge Line-up #19 - The Aztecs

t140 Pisa. I actually had to stop working university slots or else I would never spawn a GE. The reason why I went for it was because my GE would spawn a little after I would have researched Printing Press, and only Casimir discovered PP at the time. He never builds it, but it's the best wonder. I can choose GS as the free great person and then bulb Scientific Theory kind of "for free." Now I just need to push some culture.

PS: I actually have 272 Science per turn when I add university slots back.

Acken said:

I finished turn 217 with a classic 5 cities tradition. My mid game was rather average though with late secularism (T135) due to having lost a policy into commerce while having little culture.

Also I generated a Great Engineer due to a very early ToA. I'm not sure if it was beneficial or not, used it for big ben.

I think there's room for a 210ish. Turn unhappy in the last turn, I was at 1470bpt at my maximum.

Spoiler :

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Does a fifth city really make such a big difference? I won on t257, though I expected to win earlier on this map. I do not buy science buildings by taking loans, though. I also stagnated a bit due to happiness... nobody ever takes Freedom when you pick it first. I was also lucky to sell world leader vote to Gajah Mada for 4000 gold or something, and he didn't win anyway.

I bulbed 12 scientists for the last 12 techs. 1 from PT, 1 from Pisa, 2 from Hubble. I wonder if getting Pisa with GE was worth it... it does increase the count, but also gives +25% gpp generation. Go figure.

adcarrymaokai said:

Does a fifth city really make such a big difference?

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No, it doesn't. I won 214T with four cities (and without ToA).

Probably you do something wrong especially in late game (judging from screenshot from 200T you should win faster than 257T)

IronfighterXXX said:

Probably you do something wrong especially in late game (judging from screenshot from 200T you should win faster than 257T)

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Yeah, it seems so. I don't buy science buildings with gold, and I stopped growing a bit because I worked production tiles and sent a couple caravans for gold (only 3 internal caravans for food).

For some reason, I haven't been able to get more than 1200bpt with 4 cities, and why is that? I saw on your screenshots that you built trading posts on grassland with no fresh water. Does that make a difference? Also, how important is it to rush Free Thought policy? Before or after Ideology? I Oxforded Radio to get Freedom asap because I wanted Universal Suffrage policy asap. I built 2 guilds in my third expansion, so I did not get the Secularism bonus from those in my NC+Observatory capital.

I bulbed writers to finish Rationalism and pick Satellites, then researched pre-Atomic techs and bulbed every remaining tech, so I finished the 12-13 Atomic+Information techs within 8-9 turns. It just took me very long to get to Satellited from t200 Plastics.

I think one of your mistake is to keep writers and GA for a long time, I see you have 3GW and 2GA on the T200 screenshot. Yes using GW for world fair is good but getting key rationalism policies earlier is better in my opinion.

Acken said:

I think one of your mistake is to keep writers and GA for a long time, I see you have 3GW and 2GA on the T200 screenshot. Yes using GW for world fair is good but getting key rationalism policies earlier is better in my opinion.

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There was no World's Fair. I did not get to propose at all, and the AI's were too busy banning Jewelry and Silver.

I bulbed all GA's at the end for a 50-turn Golden Age to get all the gold I could. Great Writers were used to finish Rationalism to pick Satellites... but I guess I should have filled 3 Rationalism policies asap. I did not get a single RA that game, as well.

But still, at my max bpt, I didn't have more than 1200 with 4 cities, and I feel like I should have had at least 1350.

Slowly crawling through the old ones so ~80 into this and it's doesn't seem too hard, just extremely weird as I decided not steal any workers nor start early wars for any other reason instead I'm going for 6C NC for no apparent reason other than to try it out. Whether I'll stay away from Observatories & naval units like in the past few games is still open but I'll probably do to keep the games roughly equal in that respect.

In my severe sleep & coffee deprivation I also recorded the game & even did some commentary while creating this forthcoming fiasco. The commentary is lazy & crap at best but the pic quality should be better than last time. I still feel weird talking to myself and in fear of the big men in white coats coming to get me I didn't want tp talk to the whole time.

First part is available here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNOfKbHnPjE and next few should be processed soon.

The game itself up to T80.

Wow what a map - I'm down for a Turn 343 culture victory.

Pretty shabby timing I know but that was my first CV on Diety and I wanted to do something different from science.

Aztecs and the map seemed pretty good for a CV with the mountain. I started building some Jaguars (didn't bother with scouts) with the intention of terrorizing my neighbors - I had 5 by turn 30. Apart from stealing a couple of workers I found the Jaguars didn't really hold up as well as I hoped. For some reason barbs seemed to cause me a lot of trouble in this and I was bogged down trying to fight multiple Hand Axes rather than attacking my neighbors. So my Jaguars basically spent the first 50 turns just keeping barbs under control in my neighborhood in between healing so that ended any chance of attacking my neighbors.

Anyway the culture boost from military is nice which negates the need to build an early monument so you can focus building more Jaguars. Jaguars get much better with age and upgrades - all the unique promotions carry over. There's some nice choke points in this map so you can declare war on an AI, just sit back and farm them for culture.

The bonus to growth is nice as it lets you work more specialists than normal which is essential for a culture victory. The main problem I had was being beaten to Wonders. I missed out on Sistine Chapel despite specifically beelining it and was 2 turns out on Broadway but I managed to get Uffizi, Eiffel Tower and Sydney Opera House. Still my tourism only got to about 600 and I ran a little short of musicians so late game I was dependent on keeping the peace at all costs and paying hostile AIs a lot of money to keep open borders.
One important step is to use Oxford University to leapfrog to Radio so you can get an early Ideology and access to Eiffel Tower.
I also had to plant a 5th city later on to get access to 2 antiquity sites. With Hotels, Broadcast Towers & AirPorts that bumped my tourism up by about 80 so extra cities can be useful in certain circumstances if you are lacking the Wonders to make the difference.

So essentially Aztecs aren't a bad civ for a culture victory - my techniques and skill is not the best but you get a lot of free early culture which is useful for helping a CV. One difficulty with culture victories is that you tend to need a lot more social policies than a straight out SV. You'll need your full Tradition, full Aesthetics, 2 policies in Rationalism, maybe 1 in Exploration for Louvre and your Ideology.
The food bonuses come in handy and an early floating gardens puts you in the direction for Hanging Gardens which also helps. The Jaguar is a pretty decent defensive unit on forest/jungles which is helpful throughout the game giving the Aztecs a bit of a defensive edge. You should think twice before clearing all the forest and jungle between you and your neighbors...
They can also substitute for a scout quite effectively and they can be used more offensively on scouting, such as attacking barbs and camps, pillaging AI land, traderoutes etc.

Shortcomings. Well I really could have had a mid-game Great Engineer. But without any early engineer points I couldn't access any until faith purchasing in the Industrial period. So that left me with Great Scientists instead. Maybe I should have been bulbing them to get to Acoustics earlier instead of Academies but that is difficult to determine. Science victory has a much more precise formula but a CV is heavily dependent on grabbing as many of the key wonders as possible.
Regarding missing out on key mid-game wonders I suspect that civs that build Wonders like Temple of Artemis, Pyramids and Stonehenge are popping Great Engineers just in time to snag your Sistine Chapel or Leaning Tower when you are nearly ready to build it. Not sure how to get around that issue as 2 of those Wonders are very hard to get on Diety and 1 requires Liberty.

Shaved a whopping 1 turn off my previous fastest Science victory, finishing on T243.

good job. By the way do you always play with the strategic map off?

stormtrooper412 said:

good job. By the way do you always play with the strategic map off?

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I played Civ V vanilla on an old laptop that could only handle the most basic graphics, large/huge maps would crash mid-game, etc. When I got a new laptop, and bought BNW, I tried both views but I was so used to the simpler graphics that I eventually switched back to them.

I decided to take on this DCL for my next game, and I got

Turn 262 SV


My fastest non-dom victory yet. Settled 5 cities and bought all the parts. I'm overwhelmed by the number of GSes I generated in the game, first time I ever generated that many. Finishing time could be a lot faster because I took a huge detour and went on a huge artifact hunting. Also couldn't manage to mine all the hills in cap and thus I finished at this turn even though I have finished researching the last part tech a couple turns ago. No religion and only managed Sistine and PT for pre-Industrial wonders.

Yeah, I remember ending up with a couple scientists too many, because I started bulbing later than I should, where I should have saved at least 15 turns

T251 SV

Went for SV as soon as I see the growth potential, so built ToA early to stack with UB bonus. Problem was capital food wasn't high enough and eventually the expos population caught up to capital because of the UB bonus and lead to happiness problems especially with ideology pressure. I was at revolutionary wave for many turns and it stunt my growth around that time. I had to build stadiums to keep up. It doesn't help that 2 luxuries got banned and arts funding was passed which slowed my end game by a ton. Would easily shave 20 turns if those conditions didn't hinder me. No AI's tech rate is even close to mine and had lead ever since late Renaissance.

Grendeldef said:

In my severe sleep & coffee deprivation I also recorded the game & even did some commentary while creating this forthcoming fiasco. The commentary is lazy & crap at best but the pic quality should be better than last time. I still feel weird talking to myself and in fear of the big men in white coats coming to get me I didn't want tp talk to the whole time.

First part is available here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNOfKbHnPjE and next few should be processed soon.

The game itself up to T80.

Click to expand...

I did not know that you made some LPs!! I only watched a few mins of this one but I like your sarcasm!! Your commentary is very good but I was not expecting that voice which is oddly like Peds but a little more loud and clear.

It seems that with as many players who I read about complaining or struggling with Deity need to take some time and watch some of these Free LPs to see how the Pros do it! It is a little sad to see you only had 20 views on this LP Video 1! Keep up the good work though if you have the time since it is nice to see how you do it compared to reading your work which is good fun as well.

I am trying to finish the Brazil DCL but it seems I might be coming down with PAD which is Panic Attack Disorder so I am not sure if I am ready for jumping into any game at the moment. I have to admit that Panic Attacks are some scary crazy things to go through but I guess as far as I can read that they will end at some point and are not life threatening.

I recognized the Finland accent immediately and I didn't even see the location info beneath the display pic

I have started a replay of this map to compare. I wish I have logged my previous run in more detail:

Education T106
ST T159
Plastics T199

I have bought Unis, Schools and RLabs the instant they were available, using Jesuit Education someone gave me as a crutch because I couldn't spare the gold. I beelined Astronomy and rush bought a pair of Observatories but I actually ended up with slightly less science than my first run in which I'm pretty sure I didn't buy everything quickly.

The biggest issue in my science games still is the Rationalism opener. I can never seem to get it timed right for some 130ish Secularism, instead I'm forced to burn an interim policy (Commerce opener) and get Secularism at 150-ish.

I might finish around 250, might not

Finished on T262, fending off quite a few invasions by the end. I expected more but my culture and religion was the bottleneck, only bought one scientist and had to wait a bit for the Space Procurement to come online. Meh

Apparently, I never posted a screenshot:

I think I could have used RAs and an earlier NC and it would have been an under 250 for sure

Peaceful Science victory on T234. Wanted to work in some war to make use of the UA but couldnt see any chance to do so.