Turn 81 DCL/IDS Series

btw, I LOVE the Inca map (except for the fact that you went liberty; looking at the terrain, I'm sure you could hard-build it)
Ethiopia (aka. Mr. Defense rarely makes offensive units and rarely declares war)
Polynesia (Super Expansive but otherwise does not war or wonderwhore at all)
Korea (Mr. Science but he took piety and now his tech sucks... also super friendly and low war flavor)

And Ethiopia blocks the only possible thorn in my side (Germany) with the south expansion. I love him so much for that.

All 3 AIs have the highest "nice" ratings on my scale (nice, to me, is friendship willingness + loyalty); it would be a shame to backstab them (you have nice neighbors who let you borrow a cup of flour here and there so you'd want to share the cake you just baked with them, right?) so if I were to DoW, I'd go for jerkass Germany who seems to like taking over my CSs (and maybe invite a couple of friends to the party)

btw FA... if I take over your save, I'm making peace ASAP. You are at zero happiness with growth in one turn, Machu is severely underdeveloped, and it seems you want to fight muskets with just a 4 XBs... it's not surprising you took diplo rather than domination, so if we're going diplo (aka the VC which relies on AIs being too dumb to spend their gold) we might as well not war and play nice for a while (at least until artillery). :lol:

I'm thinking if we do this pass-the-baton thing more often, it would help if the write-up includes as much diplo history as possible. That would help avoid unpleasant surprises. Again, I apologize for my inability to play over the next several days.
well in my game everyone is singing Kumbayah with me except England and China I think, and they are too far away to want to plot against me or have much they can do to me even if they want to. I have quite a few lux trades so bear in mind to renew them. Overall the empire is small enough to be able to afford constant WLTKD and gold for CSs, and you have a lot of freedom to do whatever you want because Cusco is rich in both food and hammers. Once you get factories I recommend getting archaeology and sending them out to build landmarks for Ethiopia (and Polynesia and Korea too) which, given their flavors, will be your circle of BFFs all game. Germany you can ignore since Ethiopia is very strong on defense. England and China have nothing to hurt you with (inland sea blocked by ice in the north); if they are culture gimps or you are not going for CV you can be nasty to them even. Hiawatha's usually a nice fellow anyway so let him be your friend if he wants to, but don't feel obliged to cater to his neediness.
Korea is wonderwhoring (starving his city to do so, my spy tells me), but I've eclipsed him in science some turns ago and am stuck with a lvl2 spy... trying to catch whoever's been stealing my tech to get him to lvl 3. I would suggest buying some coal from AI just to prevent them from being first to an ideology, go into modern and adopt Freedom. Civil Society will skyrocket your capitol's growth (am working a lot of slots) and then SV is really easy. CV is possible as long as you get Louvre (watch for Polynesia or England as they sometimes take Exploration but your fpt is high enough for an emergency GE or two, nothing to worry about)
 
btw, I LOVE the Inca map (except for the fact that you went liberty; looking at the terrain, I'm sure you could hard-build it)

Glad you enjoy this map as much as I do. It really did set up well for a 3-4 city Inca.

The Liberty choice was made early….mostly because it's my preferred way of going for Petra, but also because given the cramped quarters and the fact that I wanted 2 ocean cities, I needed to expand quickly. Hard-building Petra can make that difficult without sacrificing infrastructure.

The rest of your write-up (Diplo-wise) differs enough from my own initial play-through that I am tempted to find a couple of extra hours (who needs sleep?) just to see the differences first hand. I'll probably have to wait a bit as that sleep thingy is calling my name.
 
@Fluphen Azine: id forgotten totally about this but i never finished the Boudicca game. one question:

Spoiler :
upon taking over your save, every time i met a CS I was instantly dropped to -20 status(-30? dont remember exactly) and never got any 'meet them' gold. do you remember what was going on to have them insta-hate me? i might get back to it but i wanted to remember to ask you about that.
 
@Fluphen Azine: id forgotten totally about this but i never finished the Boudicca game. one question:

Spoiler :
upon taking over your save, every time i met a CS I was instantly dropped to -20 status(-30? dont remember exactly) and never got any 'meet them' gold. do you remember what was going on to have them insta-hate me? i might get back to it but i wanted to remember to ask you about that.

LOL that happens when you don't meet any civs and you keep DOWing a CS to steal workers and pillage over and over while your repairing hexes. Funny the Civs didn't know or mind but the CS's took it personal. I am up to about 300 in my game and it looks like I am going to lose the race but not bad for my first try at Full Piety Warmonger style but I didn't expect to be on a Cont all alone so that threw a monkey wrench in my original plan. I did take a bunch of cities with battleships but it looks like it is going to be too late perhaps. I'll finish one of these days! Oh and I expanded to 7 cities which really messed things up, that was a major mistake.
 
ah. since i never play that way, at least DoW more than one CS/AI, i havent created that kind of CS hate since GnK, iirc. that was definitely a bucket of cold water on that game when you dont even get 15g for meeting them. cant even pledge until it recovers to 0. definitely a new challenge for me.
 
btw FA... if I take over your save, I'm making peace ASAP. You are at zero happiness with growth in one turn, Machu is severely underdeveloped, and it seems you want to fight muskets with just a 4 XBs... it's not surprising you took diplo rather than domination, so if we're going diplo (aka the VC which relies on AIs being too dumb to spend their gold) we might as well not war and play nice for a while (at least until artillery). :lol:

First off I do have some CS's helping in the war effort. I think I have Holy Warriors as well helping me faith buy units and with some worker baiting it is easy to keep killing the units but they do keep coming and coming and it takes some time to capture those cities but it was easier taking Hawaii's cities sort of.

The map and starting at turn 81 is pretty tough for me to get a Domination win. I can pretty much go for any VC starting at turn 0 but for some reason CV doesn't appeal to me. Lately I've been enjoying a peaceful start turned into wars and ending with Diplo VC. I'll get bored and go back to straight Domination or Science. I've had many games where I could win a CV through Domination but it would take longer turn times so I usually just settle for whatever victory is fastest near the end.

I agree Diplo is the easiest VC and CV is most likely the most complex but in all honesty the AI screws up all the VC's, so it really doesn't matter which one you choose the AI is going to usually let you win. Domination seems like the one VC where you force the win and the AI really can't do anything about it. I don't see a problem with playing total peace and going for CV. I am pretty sure I could get the hang of that type of game very easy since you have laid out all the ways to achieve this. Perhaps one of the future DCLs you can promise to go full Domination before the game starts and I will promise to go Full Peaceful CV and we can see if we both can achieve victory since I know they are both are weakest points for victory for our style of playing the game. I think in that challenge you would have the harder of the two choices depending on the Civ and Map of course.

I just found out on the Aztec DCL that the Deity AI will vote for you as WL which is something I only thought was possible if you bring a Civ back to life giving you 4 free votes. Now that I know you can get 16 votes or more for very little gpt it may be possible to run out the gold monster AI and win the game outright. Most likely not possible in most games but I have had many games where all the AIs left in the game did not have over 2k in gold so it was not possible for them to buy out enough CS's but of course I have seen many of games where the AI has left 50-75k on the table. The best was when Alex left over 100k on the table, I did not think that was possible lol!

Now you could get into playing the game the way you play it with certain rules making things harder and different but as you have shown many times you are still going to win with ease so it really doesn't make it harder per say it just makes the player feel better about how they went about winning the game. Some players feel like they are cheating if they abuse the AI or bribe all game long. I do not feel that way. Even when you play HOF or GOTM you do not have to play the game with special rules you just have to play with no reloads unless your game crashes. This is one rule that I agree with and I live with the mistakes I make in my games and try not to reload unless it was something major because I was clicking too fast but lately I just live with that as well and just play on. One game awhile back I clicked on voting in favor of a repel when I meant to go against it but I didn't reload I just said ok I lose you win Mr AI!
 
This doesn't fit the OP in that this is one of my own games, but it sort of fits in the sense that we are nearly at 80 turns. I found myself wondering what other people would do at this point. It seems to me that there are two choices: attack Siam, or attack Rome. The latter would obviously be a long slog, and rather dangerous given the size of the opponent.

I went Liberty, as did Rome. Siam went Honor.

Spoiler :
Screen Shot 2015-02-14 at 11.08.11.jpg

Spoiler :
Screenshot 2015-02-14 20.54.16.jpg
 
Thanks!! Perhaps I will continue this for a little revenge since I lost this IDS 7 Rome game and since you have a stronger set up/start it might be much easier for me especially since I already have prior map knowledge but I will have to put it in line since I am going to give the AW series a crack for the next few days!! Either way ... even if I do not play this all the way through it will be fun to take a walk around your Empire for awhile!

This doesn't fit the OP in that this is one of my own games, but it sort of fits in the sense that we are nearly at 80 turns. I found myself wondering what other people would do at this point. It seems to me that there are two choices: attack Siam, or attack Rome. The latter would obviously be a long slog, and rather dangerous given the size of the opponent.

I went Liberty, as did Rome. Siam went Honor.

One thing is for sure! I would capture that free settler of Siams :)!
 
One thing is for sure! I would capture that free settler of Siams :)!
Indeed! That's what I did. I ended up taking the capital without *too* much trouble -- partly helped by Rome, who joined in the mayhem. But I stopped at that point because I couldn't work out what to do next. The obvious thing would have been to attack Rome, but he looked too powerful, and I didn't fancy the long slog, always supposing I could overcome him. I replayed the opening with another strategy, but it wasn't really much better. AI cities all over the place. I gave up and moved on -- in fact, I rarely play more than about a hundred turns. I still don't quite know what I'm doing wrong, but I suspect it is a combination of being too timid and not being able to weigh all of the factors properly.

I'm also beginning to think that this game is more about ideas than I thought it was. You have to be able to come up with ideas as solutions to the problems you are constantly presented with. If you don't have a fertile mind, you end up just clicking hopefully.

Anyway, thanks for the reply!
 
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