The Deity Challenge Lineup - Game # 2 - America

(IMO) Although most of KBs game was peaceful he certainly uses War to jump start his empire. He terrorized William by turn 5 and gave him peace later. Actually I love the strategy and plan to use it in the future.

About your game... Welcome back to Civfanatics and Civ V! Nice job defending the whole game! It must of been a bit of a pain having to fight 3 Civs the whole time. However, you still managed a respectable win time and Im sure you will only get better as you continue on your journey!

Well i know in BNW the warmonger hat is quite high and i only took 2 cities off attila after he DoW'ed me and did not wipe him completely.
I thought that would be an acceptable offensive action and the general DoW'ing of the AIs is not the problem but the location i was in.
In a Sandwich with 2-3 battlefronts its very hard to defend and take some revenge actions. I had the chance to get some more cities off Willam but i thought he would take the truce and keep it that way but he was a betraying bastard because my warmonger hate was to high already.

If i would play the game again i just would kill Willam early and get a better defensive position and the game can be finished ~20-40 Turns faster...^^

But i was relly glad when it was over

I guess i will now take a shot at the first Challenge for the funzies and get some SV or CV

I went tradition, in 7 turns filling it.
3 city NC (ready on T78), then planted the 4th one in the mouth of the wolf
Put Atilla in a war with the maya early, but they didnt fight at all. Currently he is in war with Netherlands and Maya again. Pacal has the great wall, so hopefully they will fight this time ...
Got 5 workers in total - 2 from Geneva, 1 from Netherlands, 1 from Maya, and an unexpected gift - barbarian worker that belonged to Jerusalem, who stayed in my borders for 4-5 turns (at the time when I had only 3).
I am not sure if I gotta push finding a religion, Pacal has one, and there are 2 pantheons on the other continent. So its possible to get one late I guess? I took sacred path pantheon.

The plan is to survive till flight, then conquer. My cities are very close to each other, so I do not expect to grow too much, but they can become reasonable in time I guess.

I must say I am liking where Im at now after 100 turns. I settled below the citrus and it paid off foodily. Met a couple religios city states and founded the food pantheon. I settled three cities before turn 40 and have gone full tradition. Huns showed on turn 54 and gave him something like 6 bucks a turn to fight Mayas. They are sstill at war but Pical keeps bulding wonders anyways.


I discovered the barrier reef and that satisfied requests from Cape town and Geneva. I allied both and funded a religion and was able to keep my pantheon in the capital. New York built Oracle on turn 75 to patronage opener. NY lost pantheon because of Mayas prophet which made me mad.

Highlights
stole 3 workers from the orange. warrior sat outside his dyes and kept swooping in like a hawk. Got one more from a barb camp.
Oracle turn 75
National College turn 78
Education 97 and purchased University
9 turs from renaissances era and 10 turns from rationalism opener.
third in literacy after 100 turns

I'm not entirely convinced that these starts with close AI are actually harder than having more space -- provided you can tip-toe through the early diplomacy.

Went to Fertilizer early, but, this being America, on a Continents map, I think I'll go for bombers this time around. I've yet to use a B17.

t150, Island Atlanta has been added.


1 turn before Flight (via Rationalism finisher. I guess I'll save Oxford for later )



There is a problem: no AIs has opened Ideologies yet. Flight is modern so ... I'm going to have to choose, and quite possible swap later. :sigh:

That is an early DoW! Attila is not very nice Luckily, being so early, I think you'll mostly face HA and Warriors which should fall quickly (obviously you survive based on your other comment).

So you fell for the mountain bait, huh? I actually don't disagree too strongly with the move, but it doesn't turn out well (bad luck). Check out all the good stuff in the 4-ring

2 horses
1 wine
2 citrus
1 ivory

Ouch. One suggestion: it might be worth staying at war with William/Pacal a bit longer. Often you can swoop in and get another worker and immediately make peace. You don't even need to have an extraction plan!

Looking forward to episode II, the heroic stand.

Attila's Court is mine. I'm healing up some units and getting into position to push on to Palenque. I bribed Attila to DOW the Maya two turns before I attacked him, which turned out to be doubly good -- his units were distracted, and he wiped out the Maya, opening an easy road for me. I don't expect to meet much resistance on the rest of this march. I might annihilate Attila if I can get him before meeting the other continent, but we'll see.

Wonders! Attila's Court had the Parthenon. Palenque has Stonehenge, Borobudur, Great Mosque, and 2 Holy Sites. I'm getting some very nice stuff. William also built the Temple of Artemis, which I plan to take eventually. I'm not necessarily going for domination, but I've got all these Crossbows and my neighbors just keep building juicy wonders...

For Religion, I took Pilgrimage + Holy Warriors as my starting beliefs. Unfortunately, William surprised me by founding a religion without a visible pantheon, and the Maya were pretty aggressive about spreading. So my fpt isn't where I expected it to be, and I haven't actually used Holy Warriors yet. But William isn't spreading much, and now that the Maya are gone I should have an easy time religiously dominating my continent -- Especially given the huge fpt bump I'll get when I take Palenque. For Reformation belief, I could take Evangelism or Unity of the Prophets to ensure good spread, but I'll probably just grab To the Glory of God (the Maya took Jesuit Education, unfortunately).

Without any cultural city-states, my culture was abysmal for a long time, but getting the Panthenon and two great works from Attila just gave me a nice boost. I also recently got the Artists' Guild (for culture, golden ages, and a couple city-state quests). Plus, my next policy will be the "secondary pantheon" thing and the Maya had +culture from pastures, which I think I'll get in every city. So my culture should get back into reasonable shape.

I'm probably going to go for science victory. I want to see how fast I can do it with a start that delays Education so much for warmongering purposes. I suspect it'll be just as fast as my peaceful SV times, if not faster. Obviously not gonna set any records there, but I suspect that this sort of path (the Crossbows, that is... not the Piety) is the easiest way to go for those of us who aren't gods of micro. Getting ~8 crossbows by around turn ~110 isn't hard, and should be an achievable goal for less-expert Deity players. It's enough to make conquest easy even without great tactics, and once you do some successful conquering victory is basically assured.

i chose order and got -32 happiness at the end due to inca, willam and the aztecs going autocracy and ethopia with freedom -.-
but rerolling an ideology seems as if you are beaten by an AI ... i cannot bear it

moved 1 tile to settle on river+mountain+ citrus 2nd ring. warrior went north and met netherland very early. I could get a ruin there and continued to scout.



ruins were lucky - T1 gold allowed me to buy citrus tile immediately, T5 pop (bought dear tile), T8 culture. With this culture ruin and mountain river cap, I opened with tradition.

I met 2 religious CS first and got free pantheon. I chose sun god - not planning to work on religion and just want to use quick benefit.

When I saw that Huns is very close and covet my land, I was like.. okay, maybe I have to fight with CBs in any case. I hard built 2 settlers quick, and settled NY (left of cap: wine, 2 citrus, horses, sheeps) and Boston (right coast: bananas and citrus, wine).

I bribed Huns with wine immediately, and they fought for a while. Meanwhile, I connected my first caravan to dutch cap and he asked for DoF next turn. I hard built one worker, got one from barb camp, and 2-3 from jerusalem. didn't steal any from other civs.

Sent 2nd caravan to dutch city as well. Boston soon got a route from babylon and Huns and dutch also sent caravans to me. I blocked huns settler so that he had to settle his 3rd city at the east coast - and I built 4th city between huns cap and mine. I upgraded 6-7 CBs around t70.




When huns took kathmandu and everyone denounced him (well, I bribed him to attack it ), I also denounced him and attacked. AI hun is so stupid and make too many battering rams... without any loss, I picked up all his units.

However, I lost 2 CBs before taking his cap. I realized later that he went tradition 4 and liberty opener (so screen just shows tradition 4). As I saw that he built pyramids, I somehow thought that he went liberty 4. oligarchy damage was a lot more than I expected. Noob play. anyway, took huns cap t103 and made peace.



my cities were doing okay - I am not expecting big growth for non-cap cities, so I have to conquer the world I guess. At least I had base buildings ready and got NC. I did not re-DoF with dutch and attacked him.



It took a while, but I took his 2nd city around t140 and cap t149. +10 happy wonder and two more. I built Machu pichu and finally getting decent gpt. I teched for education and machinary, and astronomy.



Groningen was taken by Jerusalem and was burnt down (I got "free" ally status with "giving back workers that I had stolen"). By the way, espn just showed Groningen, Netherland for world cup

I've thought about leaving the last city, but I wanted manufactory tile and his great works. I took it easily, and maya and bab denounced me as expected. my 2 caravans did not meet other continent civs yet, and right after finishing dutch, they met ethi and morocco. Looking at their city lists, I realized that Aztec got pwned by these two and they split aztec cities.

With my veteran CBs, I went for Maya. He built 10 wonders - thanks for these wonders in advance. I got artys around t180, but range+logistics Xbows almost finished him already. I got 9 great works from capturing his cap. t182 maya cap, and t185 mayans are out.



I got industrialization at t183, and dutch cap had coal . I started building factories immediately so that I could get ideology asap. Game is already won though - not sure which victory I go for.

I did something new for this game and kept a notebook handy to write down happenings. First things first I paid atilla the whole game to stay at war. He was at war with Pical and if he was not I put him to war with Babylon and the orange. He never stayed at war with those two up top long but him and the mayas battled for most the game and neither took any city from each other. I became the tech leader on 139 and never looked back. Researched Science ther on 154 and plastics at 199. I picked an ideology in the 170s and Ethiopian was next on 212. I chose order and montzy was the only other to chose it. Everyone else went autocratic and freedom.

One time this game I horribly messed up and decided to keep playing thru. I used a couple great scientist to burn through the rocket artillery tech because i was trying to time it to finish rationalism and get satt free. When the policy came up i found out I was one policy short of finishing rationalism. I almost quit because i thought if ucked up so bad. Instead I sent the tech path to advanced ballistics and waited for my next policy to get satt. I was so far ahead in tech did not worry about losing hubble. The rest of the game was boring. Faith bough a couple scientist, got one from a policy, couple from hubble, and that free engineer. I built all spaceship parts but used engineer for the last one. Won the game on turn 286 so I am very happy with myself.

Also the art funding passed in this game and I tried everything to get it revoked. Is it not possible for diplomats to get a reversal on that? I could of finished sooner if not for art funding right? One final thing I want to say. Someone wrote about buying nukes for diplomacy in another thread. Later in the game I borrowed 1500 from the Aztecs to buy a nuke. Everyone was afraid and i never had to pay for another war in the game. There are pictures from turn 150, turn 200 and the end.

Got the oracle on T89.
In the 2nd Maya vs Attila War, there was simply no movement ... Attila was not doing anything but shuffle his army around my borders and finally decided to attack the CS, after Pacal Allied it ...

I decided I have to keep it alive so it kills some of his army.



Finished Education T97 (gotta say - that was the fastest I ever did it with non-Babylon CIV )



T108 - the third war of Attila vs Maya was started ... I was hoping, that he will finally attack (nothing like this happened). So the AI does care about the great wall after all???

This time Kathmandu did not survive tho, as I had stopped protecting it with bodies.



T117 - Babylon entered Ren - send em a spy to see whats up


Shortly after Attila and Maya made peace. I bribed him to attack another CS, as I had DOF with Babylon and didn't really want to make him even more angry with me. Maya and Netherlands had peace treaty.

That didn't help at all - T128 Atilla finally attacked. 4 caravans (3 his 1 mine) gone + several deals.



I borrowed some money from my friend Babylon (I turned down the Netherlands DOF offer) and purchased a wall in Philly. That acted like a show stopper, as his melee units were afraid attacking, and I was killing the ranged units. After that killed a lot of the melee units as well, as I produced some more XBs meanwhile ...



At this point, he was basicly causing no trouble, but hes armies were messing up with my already scarce food ...

I stole some of his land and was waiting for targets to kill, so I can upgrade the XBs a bit. That was rather hard, as I was afraid attacking the cities, and hes units were not that many already.

Around T140 Maya decided to come to my aid and started hes 4th war with him.

There was a fight this time, he brought a very serious force which was decimated while trying to get the capitol. I had reserved a spot, so I can move in and I finally took it on T154




Can't say I had planned it, but still without my XB, Pacal would not take it for sure. His force created a nice distraction for the city and the ranged unit inside, so I lost two scouts and one swordsman during the whole war with Attila.

Best thing about it that the others can't really reach the remaining cities by land, so he will live and can basicly trade only with me and babylon.

Anyway - Pacal has 10 green modifiers with me and we are best buddies, as I had proposed WF, fought common enemy, traded with him etc.

Babylon for some reason did not say anything about the steal, but the red modifier is there, so I could not renew the DOF.

Netherlands is friendly, as he declared on Atilla too.

And the other guys, I had met em something like 10 turns ago, when William founded the congress.

So even with the major warmonger penalty things should be OK for now.


5% behind Bab in tech, but that should be no real issue. He entered Industrial 2-3 turns ago. For some reason Maya is in Industrial too, but I never received notification about that.


Now for the bad part:

1) My culture sux - I have full tradition, patronage + consulates ( i clearly overlooked how hard it will be to meet the remaining 8 CS ...) and rat opener.

I guess 2 points in commerce would bring more profit, still even at 25 with the pledge, I got some friendships with some resource quests, that give me some happiness and FPT, so I dunno ...

Trying to fix this with building some cultural buildings.

2) Food became scarce and there is no real way of repairing that before I get fertilizer or biology, so the expos are growing very slowly.

3) Babylon is plotting and I really don't need more wars before I get radar ...

Anyway, things look good. And I am enjoying the game, thats what matters the most