The Deity Challenge Line-up #28 - Russia

Stayed OCC for the most part of early game... dropped down two cities right after NC was done.

40 pop under 200 turns. Such craziness... even in the Inca or Aztec or the Spain challenges my population was not this high I think.

Victory. Planted everything and got everything I needed passed in the WC. No concerts necessary.

Moscow having exactly 1000 bpt on the winning turn.


Proof that the tpt is not due to winning IG. By far I think the first time I've recorded a 4 digit tourism in the deity challenge series.

4 city Tradition. I almost lost a spot by the Lake Victoria because Iroquois had already a city there but I still settled there and bought some tiles. NC around T75, Education T95. I could afford 3 universities. Petra was gone around T60 although I took the tech path to build it before NC, HG were gone too. I built Oracle though. I also missed some other wonders that I wanted - Sistine, Uffizi, and LToP. Nevertheless, the tech path was solid and I had no doubt about winning CV. Byzantine was a runaway with 35K or so, 2GM solved it.

Policies: Full Trad, Rationalism, Aesthetics. Patronage opener
Ideology: Freedom x7
Religion: none, different AIs tried to spread their own. I bought 1GM.

I'm guessing I'm not alone when I say I chose to settle in place....nothing like the great salt plains of Russia. I sent the Ruskie Warrior West, where he discover quite a few ruins, became a spearman, and even brought home a future member of the proletariate (worker) from Venice. Scout #1 went West, then South, and discovered even more ruins, quite often getting to them exactly 1 hex before the other global competitors. Scout #2 went south, learned to shoot a bow, found even more ruins, and killed some barbs at the request of nearby CS.

There were so many goodie huts, I can't really recall what each gave. On t20, I had 3 huts I had saved and managed to pop a faith hut, so Desert Folklore was founded. I'm going to have a very strong religion this game. 3rd religion....I founded the holy order of Cave Diving t45ish. Tenets are Tithe, Mosques, Coral Music (that's a diving pun....and I'm considering going for CV), and Religious Texts. I built HS on t103, so spread is going to be very easy.

Since this was such an obvious Petra set-up, I had the dilemma of hard-building it or going with my favorite....the Petra Gambit. Because I stepped on 3 culture ruins, I opted for the Gambit, thinking I could complete the Liberty tree before t65. Sadly, Gandhi built it on t60, so I chose a GS for the Liberty finisher to really kickstart my science. I also built Oracle, Museum of H#$^@@$%^%$, and got my NC on t92. I'm now beelining Acoustics and should be able to build SC around t120ish.

I've got 4 pretty strong cities. 1st expo went South to claim Lake Victoria and slow down Hiawatha's Northern expansion. 2nd expo went West, which ended up being a mistake. Shaka had asked me to DoW Pocatello, which seemed like a wonderful idea in about 10 turns. I was going to settle the 3rd expo in his face to the East, but there was a barb camp guarding my location, so I had to wait for an escort (I should have just bought an Archer). Poca grabbed the spot 2 turns before I got there (right on the turn Shaka and I DoW'd him) so I sent the last settler North for a 3 lux city. Although I have room for a couple of more cities, I may just stick with 4, even though happiness has been sitting at +15-20 for awhile.

About that war.....I don't think Shaka did much damage and he quit after about 10 turns before turning his attention to Morocco. I decided to keep the war going to build up XP and get a GG that was requested by several CS. I killed numerous Shoshone troops but he's still #1 in army strength, and he did pillage a few good tiles. I made peace right after the GG popped, and then Poca immediately became my BFF, trading me 2 luxes I needed for WLTK. Then Poca asked me to DoW Shaka. Since the Zulu are so far away, and it appears that these 2 represent the biggest military threats (assuming those Mohawk Warriors are just site-seeing around my borders), I decided to accept. This war should start in about 5 turns and I don't expect to fire a shot unless I send a couple of comp bowmen to snipe a few more XP.

Everyone on to the South and West appears to be very friendly, even if Enrico just annexed his 2nd CS right on my doorstep. I still wish we could liberate those cities. Big decision now will be whether to beeline Cossacks/Artillery for DV or go the Radio route and pump out science for a CV or SV. The fact that I chose the Acoustics route makes me think I've already decided on the latter path.

The bad news is that I'm not going to be anywhere close to finishing up Tradition before opening Rationalism, even if I do get SC. Hopefully, I can get WF proposed and win that. CS friends have been frequent, and I'm concentrating on Cultural CS (if Enrico leaves any). I'm guessing I won't get to do much in Aesthetics.

Tis also a shame that I can't take advantage of all of this iron and build a fleet of Frigates.

Quick question: Is there any consensus as to which is better for CV between Order and Freedom?

This most certainly is an odd game. Odd in that it is going about as smoothly as one could want. The joint war against Shaka was semi-useless, as all I did was kill a couple of his settlers and liberated 2 caravans. I gave him white peace.....and then he's buddies again.

The rest of diplo has been great. Morocco is useless, having never recovered from an early Zulu raid. Venice, Byzantium, and India are all DoF's and no threat (although Byzantium is leading in tech and culture....will keep an eye on her). The 3 warmongers keep trading wars among themselves. Poca was massing some troops on my Eastern border and wouldn't take a bribe against Hiawatha, so I denounced him and sent 4-5 units to guard the border. He left me alone and 2 turns later DoW's Hiawatha for free. Shaka joins in against Hiawatha and takes a city, cutting his empire in half and Poca takes Hiawatha's Eastern expo on my back door. Everyone then gets friendly.....for a few turns then the 3 trade partners and it's everyone against Shaka. The whole time I'm building infrastructure and just tech'ing away.

I propose WF and win it somewhat easily, which was helped greatly by having 5 workers chopping away. I even took Moscow off the project to finish up Oxford. Interestingly enough, this is the first game I remember where I got this many workers without building any OR stealing from any CS. I've even deleted a couple of captured settlers.

Oxforded into Radio (took Freedom, 1st Ideology). I did build SC earlier, then noticed that LToP was still out there (and nobody had founded WC, so I figured I had a shot). Built that, so now I'm pumping out GS pretty fast. I used Pisa GE to rush Eiffel, so that will be done in 2 turns. Also, timing worked out very well to finish PT right when WF started (with a bit of chopping help). So, yeah, I'm a wonder-monger this game. Given all of the GS I'll be generating, and the fact that I've got a ton of faith for 2-3 more GS, I'm thinking I'll go for SV.

Right before WF, Poca asked me to DoW Shaka with him. I agreed, as I find WF easier to win when others are focusing on war. Shaka did show up with some Impi, but I've got a double-shooting X-bowman stationed in St. Petersburg, and 2 more ranged units shooting across the impassable Lake Victoria (it's a great defensive Wonder). I'll give him peace soon enough, then liberate a few nearby Zulu cities after I get my Foreign Legions.

Biggest threat this game will be Poca and I'll keep an eye on Byzantine. Other than that, this will be a cruise to SV......unless I get a violent urge....that will depend on how much oil I have. I think I'll burn a GS to speed up Biology to find out.

I took India's cap and also Byzantine's but Gandhi nuked his own cities multiple times and killed off a lot of my highly promoted units. I never could make any forward progress against Pocatello and then formerly defeated enemies DOW'd me again with swarms of inf/rocket artillery. I was getting overwhelmed playing whack a mole.

This map is really good. I'm not just talking about our starting location either. Looking at the AI capitals shows that most are strong. Winding rivers, lonely mountains, thin ocean fjords, and productive lands. If this is typical of oval maps than these are a solid option for fast times. At the beginning of the game I thought "oval" was that map-type with a bunch of mountains and CS in the middle where the civilizations were spread around in a ring - it took me a while to figure out how that didn't make sense

What happens when I don't found a religion or pantheon? AI missionary spam. I was down to two cities with a majority religion at the end. Moscow is a tolerant place.



This was a great game for training spies, but a bad game for coups. 4.5 spies trained. Dmitri, Lena, and Tatiana pushing up daisies. Vatican City is deadly.



Operation block the Merchant of Venice (lasting 125 turns, or so). Compelling gameplay?

Some points in Order's favor:

-Faster happiness. If you need happiness around t150 Order is faster than the Tier 2 Freedom tenet.
-Faster hammers. Workers faculties, and 5-year plan both provide very solid hammer boosts, quickly. Freedom's hammers are tied to the Statue of Liberty, which is great, but requires more tech and needs to be built.
-AI seems to pick Order more readily. In my game only Venice went for a different Ideology. Same ideologies -> better tourism modifiers. (This is anecdotal).

Some points in Freedom's favor:

-The Statue of Liberty is great.
-The Broadcast Tower boost is great. But that requires another build + a tier 3 tenet. Slow.
-New Deal is great, I think

I consider CV to be partially a hammer VC, so I think Order gets a slight edge - certainly so if I have 6+ cities. Freedom probably is more reliable for a contentious victory where the AI is competitive since this will be a slower game, and Freedom takes a while to get up to speed.

This should be in the previous post but doesn't really matter.



Bought the 3 factories as I had a policy incoming in few turns so I practically got 3 from Autocracy T167. DoWed Morocco T173 after sending him against Venice. Marrakech was easy to take but the freakin' bedouin refused to give me Tangier so I had to raze few other cities & take it myself.




Most of my troubles with MK came from the sea and without navy my means to defend against it were limited. I don't know if carpet of units applies to seas as well but that's what Shaka had endless Galleasess while most of his ground troops were heading for Mombasa & Belgrade.




Enrico was somewhat surprised from the DoW between friends but he was too busy losing other cities to Theo to defend Venice. After 2 turns of war I took it T192 (the pic is from a turn after that) after killing exactly 1 unit. Meanwhile I also managed to finally pay Theo to attack India so I was fairly cozy having multiple war fronts.




No need to wait for denouncements so I DoWed Gandhi right away. I was expecting more serious opposition as he made peace with Shaka probably next turn after getting DoWed earlier. I also thought there was one more city in the fog so I was preparing to attack a bit more cautiously.





T195 WF was ready mainly by Theo but without my hammers. Taking Te-moak was a messy effort and I didn't pay much attention to Prague's navy so they snatched it right away from me which could've caused much more problems if they'd managed to raze it down or if Shaka would've retaken it. I should've made peace with India right after capturing Delhi despite of only white peace offers.





OB is lovely for prebuilding roads and even after few GG bombs Theo was friendly enough to pay full price for a lux. Bulbing for Plastics wasn't necessary but I had surplus GSs so why not. 2 turns of bombing almost abandoned city, not even much of navy around for an easy catch.





Double GG bomb here, too and Ulundi fell in 2 turns. Lost few Cossacks but more importantly the logistics arties were safe.





Nothing spectacular with Moscow or other cities either, just building something which takes more than one turn as the turn times were long enough already.


Earth Mother pantheon due to faith ruin but nothing useful was available so I didn't enhance or spread until last 10 turns in the game as I was hoping for foreign missionaries which never came apart from Yakutsk which swapped religion dozen or times so religion and faith were mostly useless.

Policywise something new as after finishing Liberty I took another one from Tradition for happiness, then left side of Honor, 2 in Rationalism & last 2 in Autocracy. Never had much happiness issues due to gazillion of luxes and no one else chose Ideology.

Spying was almost non-existent. 007 stayed in Moscow for the game without a single incident, 2nd one went to Delhi & accidentally stole Astronomy on T178 and the last spent his few days in Ulundi, I think.

Science was decent to say the least compared to others without Observatories or PSchools as I was the tech lead for most of the game. No need for internal TRs either and one GS was trying to solve the square root of -1 when the game ended.
I was planning to settle more cities pre-NC but Hiawatha was already annoyed with my 4th so I sticked with 5 - no shortage of decent spots but blocking Hiawatha & Poca was more important than settling myself.

The army that took Delhi: did they all swim through that narrow channel between Rabat and Fez?

I'd say the map is too good - there shouldn't be nearly endless city spots with multiple luxes under normal circumstances.
I originally though that Oval meant a donut with large(largish) sea in the middle, something like the Dutch game in previous DC series so my scouts got confused for not finding that sea. The saddest part of these kind of maps is already handicapped Venice - very limited options for Cargo Ships.

I was expecting some serious missionary invasion but nobody came to me or even to the nearby CSs which I finally converted ~T190 for some quests. I would've gladly used any of the neighbouring religions instead of my own.

The spying game was interesting and the first game I've played where there wasn't a single event apart from my accidental stealing - in this case especially I really wanted a pass option after being able to steal something.

In my game Venice used 2 MoV though I never saw one and only blocking I did was some of Hiawatha's early settlers for which I had to buy some expensive tiles but for most of the game money wasn't an issue anyway.

Nope, all my units were too scared of getting wet to dip into the water - apart from work boats & cargo ships didn't have a single unit in water in the game. Captured & razed Rabat after which I had almost safe Morroccoan road to Tangier & then built my own to India. Lhasa shot me few times but mostly it was busy with Theo's units.