The Deity Challenge Lineup - Game #7 - Ethiopia

T275 build Pentagon, T279 bulbed Stealh, T280 Rati finisher for XCOMs and T281 Hiawatha gave all but cities in peace deal. Razed the the badly placed heretics and gave Oda the rest but he ran into happiness problems so he razed few of them as well. The game didn't approve our deal and insisted that I should be in charge and dictate the building order sadly the local management didn't allow it and to solve the dilemma I had to reload, twice. I assume the problem was that while getting the city and set it razing I set it to build Stele before handing it over to Oda and the game just didn't handle that very well.




T283 captured Nagoya but since Harun had nukes I dared not to occupy the surrounding but used the Doom from the Skies instead. Luckily Poca send troops there so it didn't get nuked after all after I tested them. Liberating Cape Town & Samarkand both twice gave me nice instant allies. Logistically the land-only approached is hard to justify and that long road wasn't cheap.
T289 WC with my votes decided to beahed everyone not following Tengriism but it was too late to have any serious effect on conversion rate so I used inquisitors & prophets instead.





T290 Harun started building parts but lost the interest and Mecca on T295 and Harun's problem is visible in the pic - insane number on battleships but very planes. He had 40+ oil sometime before the DoW but I only killed half a dozen planes. Resorce penalty battleships though offered continuous cash flow with being much use to him as shooting zero hp cities only makes sense to AI and it should learn to nuke troops instead of only cities. After Nagoya burned down I had a safe passage for land troops but SB & XCOM combo requires so much less manouevering that other troops mainly secured the path of the prophets.
T296 GFirewall though Harun nor Poca didn't steal from me lately but I didn't have much useful things to build either. Hiawatha was ready for next expansion so I DoWed him and Oda DoWed me next turn - bad career move as CSs rolled over 3 of his cities 2 turns later and I took the rest with ease. Only units he had were Galleases.
T298 ISS was ready as I saw no reason for anyone else getting it and T302 policy GE was used for CNT for happiness. Harun and Oda died on next turn as luckily both avoided settling 1-tile islands; 2-tiles is way better.






The rest was running around with prophets which I had 5 left in the end. I overestimated, again, the military oppositon so I had too few workers cleaning fallouts and waterways didn't seem safe enough so MK captured T310 with the starting warrior upgraded to Mehar Sefari for total domination including religion; 39 cities in total.

Despite of mostly running -200 to -450gpt for the last 100 turns money wasn't too much of an issue. Happiness played a larger part and I had few rebels but nothing serious. Part of blame is on me as I stopped managing cities in any degree of efficiency - SBs if there was aluminium available and XCOMs otherwise. Also by not building boats I was without Whales & Crabs despite of Athens & Rome having them.

Religious conversion was much harder than domination as Hiawatha was really a pain from the start. He started slowly with only 3 cities but around T70 settled 8 more in matter of few turns. On the other hand Poca & Harun had an even contest fighting each other and best part of early religion was the friendly religion sharing Alex. Casimir's got rolled over by Hiawatha's. Staying away from Piety doesn't have too much of an impact when conversion is accompanied by razing cities late in the game.

Policywise Liberty, then left side of honor before Rationalism opening, Order for happiness, Honor finished and the Order & Rationalism without a long term plan. Commerce would've been awesome but I deliberately stayed out of it like from Piety - one must try out different things.

Hiawatha was annoying as always as was Casimir but he had much worse dirt to play with, Augustus major disappointed but he didn't have early iron, Alex surprisingly friendly until Oda ran over him who had all the hammers in the world and only Alex to kill. Harun & Poca had all the money but without meeting others it doesn't help not that AI is particularly good at spending anyway.

2/3 into the game was crap but the final third was more entertaing - I can't remember when I was last time triple-DoWed out of which two had larger armies than I did, awesome. Too bad this they were naval superpowers which had next to nothing effect on me and Harun's nukes got killed in the cities which is sad - endless potential for nuking from the carriers which AI generally is very keen on.

Happiness became a VERY serious issue, so we solved it like this: a super spy was sent to steal electricity from the Arabs, and Oxford opened up Radio, so that we were first to claim ideology (autocracy) at around t.182. This, effectively, delayed Flight by 10 turns, but it was simply the only choice, as happiness was needed ASAP.



Hiawatha proven to be one stubborn chief. Onondaga has fallen, so did his northern cities, yet he only came to us at t.201 and offered all of his cities for peace. We accepted, and sold 6 of his cities to Pocatello, who decided to keep 2 and raze the other 4. The wondrous deal propelled out GPT to nearly 400 per turn. While finishing off the Iroquois, we sent half of the army to start softening up the Japanese. 6 artillery units, 7 cavalries, 5 gatlings, 3 mehal sefari are currently pulling in towards Satsuma from every direction, where 1/3 of the Japanese defensive force already perished with a minimal loss on our side.



In 6 turns a Great Scientist is going to bulb Flight and Ethiopian army will simply become unstoppable. Mercantilism, Autocracy's mobilisation and Big Ben are already in place, so buying a bunch of g.w. bombers (and many other units too) at low prices looks like a most efficient thing to do. Happiness is not an issue and a lonely worker was covertly sent to pre-built a 4 tile road between Japanese and Arabian empires. Theoretically, the rest is going to be a walk in the park. We'll see what the Arabs and the Shoshone will have to say about that.

World's fair is 5 turns away and this time it IS going to be passed, since we effectively control the world congress. Protectionism is 2 policies away and a great writer is saved to make this happen as soon as we win the fair.



To be continued.

PAST
-met rome early stole a worker (kept war for a while)
-faith of stone circles went out before I could pick partheon (went with faith from natural wonders)
-built 2 settlers at pop 3 - 1 for kilimanjaro - one for coast (site with copper and 4 fish)
-pretty lucky with barb quests - had culture CS and maritime allied for ever (finished honor ~T70 and was forced to dump a policy in patronage (2 turns from meedival) )
-rome had me in checkmate position ( silly with only 1 balista 1 legion and 2 warriors) so I had to make peace and detour to construction (composites) (big delay to philosophy and machinery)
-got machinery at turn ~105 burned antium and puppeted Rome in preparation for annexation (no university but had TOA and Chichen ITZA - score ! )
-moved up to killimanjaro pilgrimage site and DOWed Poland - burned 2 forward cities and with great sacrifices got his capital ~T140 ? .. (lost at least 2 xbows one think had logistics and range ( )
-quebec city (my ally captured buffer polish city between Iroquois and me ... Waited a bit due to happy issues (lvl 3 spy died coping Buenos Aires ) and DOWed Iroquois .. Burned my two GS (opening dynamite) but failed to bring university in Rome online in time so Oxford delays artilery ..

FUTURE
Think I should be able to deal with the Iroquois (capital) before T200 ..
Next should be Greece (coastal), Japan(costal - will need settler on istmus to open it to the (imaginary) fleet), Shoshone(coastal) and finally Arabia ... Will need to build a fleet ..
I'm a few turns of finishing commerce but culture situation is not very promising - also industrialization is a way off (will need to hard build slow factories if I have coal ) .. World hates me (had to lie/backstab/attack without provocation a few times ) ...Poor faith generation (Warshaw helps a little ) ..Economy is pretty weak - lacking some pillaged traderoutes - seas not safe (have one almost dead caravel for a fleet - and 20+ planned frigates ) .. Once Iroquois are pacified I might be able to trade with them ...

AI's tech rate was decent - needed landships (30+) to break trough the isthmus (at the end was losing 3-4 per turn (battleships) but could buy back immediately (outspam deity AI ) ..

Got late public schools, conquered and kept lots of cities and burned most GS before public schools - had to wait a long time for landships .. (had I had the tech, culture (happiness) would've probably been the bottleneck anyway )

Invested a lot of resources trying to get a navy running but it was a treacherous map, probably never had more than 5 logistics frigates in my fleet at any time (recklessly fighting subs and GWBs without destroyers/subs I tend to incur losses) .. Overall fleet justified expenses (honor finisher bounty) but was not a significant factor in win time ..

Rest of videos should be up early next week.

For the capital, I moved east to settle on a hill, and sent the warrior south, whereupon I immediately ran into a Roman settler. Rome was going to settle in my face, so I looked at the terrain, decided what spot the AI would pick for a settle position, and planted the warrior directly on that spot. This was a very fortunate, as it avoided early, all out warfare with Rome. After a few turns of staring at my warrior, he sent the settler somewhere east. A few turns later, when the coast was clear, I began stealing from the seemingly endless supply of workers directed at Rome's second city. The AI is was suprisingly poor at recognizing the deception, the only thing which stopped the worker stealing bonanza was that I simply had enough, and barbs starting becoming an issue, so I got a white peace with Caesar.

Tech and social policies were pretty standard, full tradition and Pottery, Mining, Animal Husbandry, Masonry (marble, stone), Archery, Writing, up to Philosophy, then Civil Service. Sent an early caravan to Caesar to get an early science boost and repair relations a bit. I was suprised to see Hanging Gardens available, checked the AI and very few actually went Tradition (only Caesar that I could see), so I made an attempt and was successful. Then, rather oddly, I noticed that Chichen Itza was also available, but the only AI that I did not know about built it after I put in a few turns (Arabia). NC was in the mid-70s, and Education Turn 98. I also got Oracle in my second city, Harar.



At turn 100, there were a lot of victory types that seemed viable, but I decided to make another attempt at a Deity cultural victory. The production around the capital was not great, but population was, probably a more natural SV. This time around, when I was close to Pisa, I paid for quite a few wars to keep all the AIs busy that might build it, particularly Rome, Arabia, Hiawatha, Shashone, etc. This tactic mostly worked, as I was able to get Pisa, Globe, and Uliffizi, plus Porcelain. After being forced to dump a few policies into Commerce, I opened Rationalism, opened Aesthetics, Secularism, and then focused on Aesthetics. After that, it was a push to Industrializaton (no coal, of course), Scientific Theory, and then Archaeology. Got coal from a CS, and then the second ideology from 3 factories (Freedom, for New Deal and Media Culture).



The mid-game was pretty peaceful, I just avoided problematic friendships with AI that might be elmininated (Poland, Greece). However, after killing Arabia, the Shashone were starting to run away with the game on evey front: culture, science, production, military, tourism. So, I spent a lot of time building up production for the International Games and micro-manged every bit of production out of my cities. Even then, I had to bribe Pocatello into 3 wars to distract him. Probably unrelated, but he sent a fleet of Frigates toward my coastal city of Lalibela during the International Games (was he actually trying to distract me?), which I redirected at my only friend, Rome. This was also necessary after I saw how much production he was dumping into the games. It was a pretty underhanded move, but even then, International Games were barely won because Pocatello's production was simply out of control. Of course, he also began refusing Open Borders right after the games, and trapped my final archaeologist in a pocket inside his territory. I was at max tourism around turn 250-255 after national visitor center and internet, so this was frustrating.



At around turn 265, after asking for open borders for about 20 turns, I simply had enough, and could not wait to musician bomb him any longer, so I sent a fleet of nuclear submarines over with 3 musicians in toe, prepared to declare war on him, and then musician bomb him off the coast. Then, just as internatonal games were up, the turn right before the war declaration, he asks to trade open borders. Sorry Pocatello, but the Musicians were purchased at peak tourism, so you lose anyway. This mess delayed the game about 15 turns.



Overall, I learned a few things. You must get open borders with the runaway AI a few turns before the International Games vote. Apparently, the AI is not completely stupid, and will refuse open borders once the International Games passes. The key mid-games wonders are a little bit less risky if you pay for wars right beforehand. Still, the Louvre is probably a safer bet with this group of AIs. Five cities is probably one too many, parituclarly if you have a low-prodution city, as it influences the production of the Hermitage and National Visitor Center.

The isthmus in this map was NOT good at all. The Pangea suggested that I did not need an early Atronomy, but the early scout I sent was unable to traverse the gap due to barbs (he died), so I met the last AI late. I should have pushed Astronomy when I could not locate the last AI. I needed to know about that AI (Haram) when building Sistine, which I did not get. Even worse, I did not have a clear picture where all the archaology sites were later in the game, so filling the last museum slot was not possible. I also need to build early production boosters sooner, as it has a cumulative effect later on in the game. For example, I delayed a lighthouse in my coastal city for far too long. Finding the right balance between production and science is pretty difficult for a CV, I just need more experience.

After going through the standard CV, I made an attempt at a sacred sites CV, but it stalled out around T140 or so. There is a lot of space, but Pocatello gets pretty cranky when you settle near him, so I could not hold the ground. He went from super friendly to war in the span of a few turns. Same thing with Caesar. Too many warmongers?

I don't know if it is repeatable due to random number generation and such, but check out the first paragraph of my spoiler. I tend to follow major geographic features like rivers during early scouting (looking for a second city settle location), so I stumbled upon Rome's settler immediately.

There is another major challenge on this map, especially if you chose domination...but that is later in the spoiler.

So, I kept the war with Rome going until I expanded. Almost lost my cap in the process, as there were 3 Legions + Ballista and an Archer. My two archers were barely scratching the legions ...

Had to settle Adwa offcoast, as there was a camp on the hill, and the space was crowded with scouts and a Iroqui warrior.

Settled Harar on top of the Marble. The plan here is to expand with a Citadel into Wellington.
Lalibela is on somewhat decent slot, managed to get there in time so I stole the Gems from the CS and expanded into the Truffles.

Its a shame, that I could not manage to snag the slot north of Antium, but Rome went there too fast ...

So at the end we are here.



I had to slow down growth for a while, because of Happiness issues. After I bring up the Truffles, and get Zurich with the caravan, things should be OK on that front.

Religion is lost cause - I founded 4th (probably because of the poor pantheon choise - I got Earth Mother instead of Stone Circles, because of the expectations to settle where Cumae is. Got Tithe and +15% production. It seems pointless to enhance fast, as I doubt I will keep it except in the cap. Polish religion is nice at least - it has Monasteries, Cathedrals and Jesuit Education, so I intend to plant the prophet and get monasteries where I can.

Now I am thinking about the main plan for the future. I am currently friends with Iroquis and Japan (selling the horses for gold helped a lot!).

Education should be next, and then I guess I should do something about Rome. Problem is, that if I go for XBows after that, that might be a bit too late? I imagine education should be here around T110, I already have construction, so 10-15 more turns after that for xbows, and then I can try to take Antium and Rome?

Other option is Artillery, but I really have no idea how to proceed techwise if I go that route.

Any advices?

I assume Alex will come whomp on Rome. Alex and Noda were hostile to each other, but no headway either way, so W for Alex was path of least resitance. In my game Rome settled 2 desert cities E that Alex took easily that turned out to be alright late game (Poland got one and I got the other). I would think there is a decent chance that Alex will come knocking on Antium, so you might get a chance to snipe it with a well-timed Renn attack?

Alex already lost his first war with Oda (lost Knossos, a bit north from Florence), so I am not very sure how well he will go this game.

Poland should be easy to bribe to attack Rome, but I am not sure that will do any good - both Cumae and Neapolis are very well protected from the polish side ...

All I need is to take Antium, and that should be fairly easy as its on flatland and on the wrong side of the river. That city has fantastic late game potential, as basicly all tiles are fresh water. If he loses it, he's basicly done, as Rome will be cut off from the other cities and they are pretty bad anyway.

I have never played with Ethiopia on Deity before, but they are versatile enough, so we'll see what victory condition I go for.

Settled on t3 on the river/hill. Rome witnessed this historic event, so I realize right away I'm right in their face. I sent my mighty Warrior East to see what type of havoc he could create and he returned several times with splendid plunder in the form of free Roman worker/slaves. He also managed to push Roman expansion much further East than Caesar had planned (later turns out it pushed Rome into Alex's face, which probably is a good thing).

BO was Scout > Scout > Steele > Settler > Granary > Library >Museum of Halalalala > Settler >Oracle > NC (t82).

Expos built Steele > Library

Settled 2nd expo on Holy Mountain, kinda crowding Hiawatha, but after promising to not settle anymore, he's been rather chummy since.

3rd Pantheon, took +2 from quarries. 3rd religion, and Pagodas and Tithe were still there. I'm cranking out FPT, and built Hagia Sophia. Converted my cities and 1 CS request, finished religion with Feed The World and Religious Texts. Already bought all 4 Pogodas.

Social Policies were Tradition Opener > Left Side of Liberty > Finish Tradition >Now ready to open Rationalism. Nice thing about Steeles is that free culture buildings will all be Amphitheaters, meaning quicker Opera Houses than usual for me.

I was slow on Guilds, due to HS, and Education was t112, but I've got 4 pretty good growth and production cities.

I'm not sure if I'm going for culture or science here at this point. I guess it will depend on if I can snag some culture wonders…..I should have a GE ready to buy shortly.

Diplo game has been average, as Greece, Japan, Rome, and Poland don't like each other, but have been expensive to bribe. Several AI-generated wars have resulted in Caesar losing 1 city to Alex. I did get to propose World's Fair and should be positioned well to win it.

Military is weak right now, but I should be fine. I've got excess horses and iron to bribe away threats and I've got money and beakers to upgrade army on short notice.

I missed Sistine Chapel, so it looks like I'm going to go Science route.

I was able to get Japan to DoW Greece and Hiawatha to DoW Cashimir 5 turns before WF. It wasn't cheap, but this turned into one of the closest WF's I've seen. 5 civs were over 400, and I won with 615, so it was worth it. I had 2 GW's waiting, so I'll burn through ideologies very quickly at 1600 per pop.

I also got 2 1/2 cultural CS allies at about the same time, so CPT got up to 205 quickly. Finished PT a few turns later in 1st expo, and had to wait a few turns for Electronics before Oxfording Radio (1st to ideologies).

I faith bought a GE for Eiffel Tower, and with 59 FPT, should have another GE ready for SoL. Yeah, I'm going Freedom, although I can make a good argument for Order this game. I just figured my Ethiopian Riflemen (whatever they are called) will combine with Foreign Legion and I'll be pretty much impenetrable. I'm half-tempted to send my FL's on a suicide attack on Rome while he's off fighting elsewhere, but I don't quite have enough ranged units to back that up and I can see a couple of Frigates in his harbor.

The whole world wants to go to war with Japan. I'll likely join in to generate some brownie points. Tech lead as soon as I start bulbing GS.

The victory was slowed a bit because of Arts Funding. I never got control of the WC, as CS competition was very fierce (even Alex never got over 20 votes), and I needed to use my limited funds to upgrade units and save for the final SS part. About all I could do with my 6-or-so votes was try to keep Alex from hosting.

This was a very balanced game, with the only capital lost being Rome (by me), despite quite a bit of constant warfare. My civ score was a bit higher than usual for me, as I built more wonders than usual and Rome had a couple.



I only had to bribe a couple of wars, but Poland DoW'd me late so I got to mow through his ancient navy and obsolete W-Hussars as I just turtled around Rome. That war lasted until the end, I only lost a couple of units (to stupidity), and I was never threatened.

I'd be remiss if I didn't give a tip of my cap to Hiawatha for being the best Northern neighbor since………well…Canada. He didn't spam his religion at me, DoW'd when asked, and was a game-long fair trading partner. Thanks Hiawatha, I'll try to remember your good deeds next game…….or not.