Shoshone Overview- Aimed at Deity Pangea play

Is it still worth getting Consulates with the Pledge to Protect nerf? I tried it out and it didn't seem to do much.

After a few false starts and one worthy try that ended in being overrun by the Americans I finally got my first Deity win with this strategy. Not pretty -- it was...damn, turned it off without checking, but around t290 or so. Managed to get everyone to declare war on tech leader Germany to distract him from finishing his own SV. Thanks for the guide~~

Magil said:

Is it still worth getting Consulates with the Pledge to Protect nerf? I tried it out and it didn't seem to do much.

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Since the patch I've found Consulates to be completely worthless. Because the new Patronage finisher is actually a hindrance rather than a benefit (IMO), I don't ever choose Consulates or the policy that requires it.

Going down the left side of the Patronage tree, on the other hand, is often very useful.

Hey Tich and crew, I wanted to say this guide was amazingly helpful! I've never beaten Deity before, but by following this guide I was able to do so on my first try! It took me until turn 312, so I was quite sloppy, but I saw how to do things much better in the future. Thanks!

Plumfairy said:

Since the patch I've found Consulates to be completely worthless. Because the new Patronage finisher is actually a hindrance rather than a benefit (IMO), I don't ever choose Consulates or the policy that requires it.

Going down the left side of the Patronage tree, on the other hand, is often very useful.

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There's a new patronage finisher?

Been playing civ since the beginning, but only started playing Civ5 a year ago, BNW in October, so I have a lot to learn. I've been winning on King consistently with different civs and victory types. However, my play was quite sloppy. I was not doing a lot of the micromanagement things that you need to do to win at higher levels.

I read through this entire thread and learned a lot about the game. Followed the strategy (on Immortal) and applied a lot of the basic micromanagement strategies that I learned in this forum. I won a space race victory (not early though, turn 307) and had hardly any military throughout the game. Was friends with everyone and only had to pay someone to declare once (Catherine). There are a lot of things I could tighten up in my own play, but the strategy definitely works.

Thanks for posting this guide.

Just finished my Shoshone Deity game an hour ago. Re-rolled once cuz i have exactly 4 hammers in my 3ring of the capital even with moving. I rarely win on Deity, most of the time Domination. I got to say thats a hell of a guide. Won 250ish SV without any problems also 2nd in hammers and 1st in crop yield. Really, really nice job writting this

Id agree that Tich has produced some nice guide - didn't manage to be succesful really but sharpened a few mechanics in the process -

Tich, thanks for this guide! I love the Shoshone, and I always felt that they were among the best civs, especially on Deity when land is scarce.

I just tried it and was able to deny the AI so much land. I got a DV at around 260.

HOWEVER, if I would have gone for an SV, it probably would have taken an unimpressive amount of time.

1) How are you able to have such large pop cities AND fill up most of your specialists?

2) I only really had one question, but I wanted to make it stand out by numbering it.

I notice in my games that my most populated cities usually plateau around 21 population, and my SVs are just over 300 turns. I want to be able to get sub 300 SVs, but I feel there is something I've been missing with growth. The only thing I didn't do according to your guide was settle by mountains.

Mountains = observatories and observatories shave like 20-30 turns off victory time. Maybe more.

Shoshone are my fav civ <3 Personally I prefer liberty but this is an awesome guide.

JustinianIV said:

Tich, thanks for this guide! I love the Shoshone, and I always felt that they were among the best civs, especially on Deity when land is scarce.

I just tried it and was able to deny the AI so much land. I got a DV at around 260.

HOWEVER, if I would have gone for an SV, it probably would have taken an unimpressive amount of time.

1) How are you able to have such large pop cities AND fill up most of your specialists?

2) I only really had one question, but I wanted to make it stand out by numbering it.

I notice in my games that my most populated cities usually plateau around 21 population, and my SVs are just over 300 turns. I want to be able to get sub 300 SVs, but I feel there is something I've been missing with growth. The only thing I didn't do according to your guide was settle by mountains.

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21 pop seems very low for turn 300, generally you want to have that much in your capital well before turn 180 with a decent start (a river/plains start being my idea of decent) Only work science specialists if the other ones slow down your growth too badly, try to get the specialists from citizens who would usually only be working a hammer tile, and dont use science specialists in cities smaller than ten pop unless you have food routes.

You want the capital to be at size 20 before t150. This is easily achievable with food caravans.

Cromagnus said:

You want the capital to be at size 20 before t150. This is easily achievable with food caravans.

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Yeah I was thinking this but since I haven't played in a week or two I wasn't sure whether it was perfectly accurate

Thanks dire and cromag. Though I do have problems with growth, I meant to say that my populations slows down after around 21 in my cap for some reason.

I will try to use food caravans and not run so many artist slots.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, this guide doesn't suggest building archaeologists, is that right?

JustinianIV said:

Thanks dire and cromag. Though I do have problems with growth, I meant to say that my populations slows down after around 21 in my cap for some reason.

I will try to use food caravans and not run so many artist slots.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, this guide doesn't suggest building archaeologists, is that right?

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At the time it was written archaeological dig sites were considerably worse than they are now, since it was pre fall patch. I'd say it's a judgement call.

So, merging the ideas from here with some I got elsewhere and using Babylon instead of Shoshone, I just got my first sub-200 science victory ever--turn 193, 1330 AD, and on deity.

From here, I took:

(1) Build 3 scouts first, and bee-line them to meet as many trading partners as possible as early as possible;
(2) Ignore religion, except for maybe a pantheon if you happen to get a religion goody hut;
(3) Sell your extra resources to other civs, including all your horses and iron;
(4) Build no military, and pay other civs to fight each other;
(5) Build exactly 4 cities, as that is the number that benefits from Tradition;
(6) Build at least 3 of your cities next to mountains even if that's not the ideal spot, for Observatories;
(7) For Social Policies, go Tradition->Rationalism->Order->Patronage;
(8) Get loans from friends by selling GPT for flat gold;
(9) Standard sized Pangaea map to give lots of trade partners that can be met early

To that I added:
(10) Build at least 3 of your cities on coasts, because sea resources give lots of food and
(11) Since you're fine for cash from the above, use your sea trade routes to give your cities +10 food and +10 production. I had always assumed internal trade routes meant transferring food and production from one city to another--it doesn't, that food and production just magically appears out of thin air. +10 food in the BC era is insane.
(12) I hit the sea techs a bit earlier than advised to get lighthouses early; then harbors after eduction; then hospitals after after labs--all of which increased growth;
(13) I did build opera house in all cities so I could build hermitage, which didn't take much to do and more than doubled my culture over what is recommended here. I used the extra culture to nab that top-tier Order policy that increases food and production from internal trade routes by 50%--+15 food or +15 production per internal sea trade route!--and rather than getting consulates, I went down the left side of the tree as far as the policy that gives you 25% of CS ally research. I was raking in enough GPT--over 200--to just buy CS's outright.
(14) Restarting until my settlers were within 3 moves of a plot next to both a mountain and a coast.

I'm not as big a fan of spanning farms as the author is. Even with Civil Service, a plains farm with fresh water is 3 food 1 shield, and a grassland farm is 4 food. Compare to sheep--3 food 2 shields, 5 food 2 shield 3 gold fish, deer anywhere, wheat anywhere--and trying his advice I neglected shield improvements. Farms are OK for non-resource tiles, but virtually any resource will be better, and for non-resource tiles you need a mix of mines as well. The biggest reason to put your city next to a river or lake isn't farms, but the ability to build gardens.

I was only able to befriend 3 of the 7 civs I met. I tried the various methods I've read about to make the others friends, but none worked, so I only had 3 RA's going all game.

I only made 3 academies, saved the rest for direct bulbs, and still ended with 1911 BPT. All my cities were in the mid-30's for pop by 900 AD due to the insane internal trade food bonuses for cargo ships.

PS--For my 2nd proposal, I proposed World Idealogy--Order, and had enough city state allies to pass it. With my extra culture over the base recommended here, and Order being the world ideology, I didn't have unhappiness from other civ's ideologies, and most that took an ideology after the vote took Order--though that was too late to help with RA's.

Turn 193 SV on deity? Care to share any screenshots or saves?

I just wanted to say I appreciate this write up. It is very similar to my playstyle, though I have not yet played shoshone (I am an America civ lover bitter about how the new shoshone's UA is does most core things America does much cheaper and much faster, so I've sorta boycotted them on moral grounds). It is amazing how controlling ruins gives you so many crucial early game bonuses, from a free pantheon (with desert faith it can be a self-sustaining religion with 0 investment, like a religious civ), an instant 4-5 pop capital into multi-hill settlers from the UA, to holding off early DOWs with Composites without archery and/or allying CS with barb camp quests before anyone else can reasonably do so playing economically.

You may have sold me on playing a game of shoshone, but I won't feel any less dirty for having played them.

Edit: first win with shoshone was a t260 spaceship. Despite bogey/par-ish finish time there were quite a few problems, a tundra/crab start, lost the world fair, only 2 people building the world fair, so it burned an entire golden age worth of bonus production, then I lost by 30 shields. Public schools and the world fair came up at the same time as well, I had no local coal, aluminum, or uranium, Greece wasted pretty much every one of my city state ally attempts, and there were no other scientific civs in the game pushing tech costs down with me. Shoshone certainly can salvage just about any start though, damn.

Yeah I've no idea why the OP would suggest that you propose the World's Fair as soon as possible and pour all your hammers into it. He seems to take winning the WF for granted, when on Deity it's far from that, especially when you only have 4 cities capable of producing .

Perhaps he's just been lucky with it, but in my games I can bribe the AIs into wars all I want, and there'll always be at least one who will put 1000+ in 4 or 5 turns. It's just impossbile to compete with that in a peaceful game, so 9 out of 10 times you're better off putting just the 350 required for a free SP and call it a day. It's just not worth the risk when there is so much stuff to be build in early Industrial Era (Schools, Factories, etc...).

Not to mention all these times when one civ does T90 banking and rushes Forbidden Palace and another one goes for Printing Press and founds the Congress so you can't even propose the damn thing to begin with.