Into the Renaissance

I gave this scenario another shot last night. I played England on Emperor to try for the crusade achievement.

I went through the Liberty tree first to score the free Settler, bonus production, and eventually a great person. When the great person came, I selected a great scientist since research is tough to get rolling.

I sent my initial swordsman and settler south to found a city near Gibralter. This seems like a good opening move for the eventual crusade. I plan to attack the Almohads at some point to build a power base of experienced units for the crusade. The victory points for taking their heathen cities are a nice bonus as well. Gibralter built the National College and will fuel research later on. Unfortunately, the GS I received from Liberty could not be brought down since France had blocked off my ability to sail south...the best laid plans of mice and men

As expected, the dirty Celts tried to go Braveheart on me, but I was prepared. London and Cardif (I named the cities according to geographic location) churned out swordsmen and composite bowmen for the first several turns while my workers (one from the start and one from Liberty) built a rod and improved tiles. After the Celtic DOW, I build a couple catapults to complement the force. My units leveled up as the Celtic forces impaled themselves on my fortified hilltops (some of them cleared of forest to ensure line of sight for the bowmen behind). After her forces were eliminated, I marched north to Edinburgh taking four Celtic cities (and renaming them along the way).

I saved the game about 50-60 turns in. I plan to continue after work today. I will post some screenshots later.

What good is a spy if it will take 134 turns to attempt to steal a technology in a scenario that be over with in 111 turns?


Lisbon has a few units waiting...must of known I was coming.

You technically have a numerical advantage, but holy crap that will be a tough fight.

Mesix said:

What good is a spy if it will take 134 turns to attempt to steal a technology in a scenario that be over with in 111 turns?

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That generally means that the city is bad for tech stealing (missing tech infrastructure) or has a counter-espionage spy there.

Best bet is to move and find a better location.

When I played (just to get the achievement), my steps were:

1. Take out the Celts ASAP. You can pre-emptively DoW if you want, otherwise if you settle aggressively towards them they will happily DoW you themselves.

2. You will likely need Open Borders with France and/or Spain to get to the Mediterranean. Watch out for Barbarians.

3. I actually sent a Settler of my own down to Gibralter and settled it well before Isabella got even close. I also sent another settler to settle one of the islands just off of Jerusalem.

4. My original plan was to use Holy Warriors to instantly buy an army near these staging grounds. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring a missionary (I was new to G&K) and in fact, both of these cities were quickly converted (the Gibralter one to Islam, and the Jerusalem near one to Orthodox). So I had to build/buy/move an army there myself.

5. Saladin and the Turks were mostly hostile to me. In my game Saladin took Jerusalem early on (in some games it is the Turks) but I had to go through Turkish territory to get there. He wouldn't sign OB with me and I didn't want to DoW him just to move through his territory. However, for some reason he did instantly change to Friendly one turn (I happened upon it by chance). I signed OB and then the next turn he changed back to Hostile. I suppose you could stack enough diplomatic bonuses to get him to sign OB if really needed.

This scenario is damn fun! Playing as Swedes, wrestling with Russia for control of baltic city-states, and when Mongolia asked me to join war against them I replied I'm ready in ten turns. Now to build a 'grand army'.

It just seems that in history all great campaigns into Russia end to invader's defeat. We'll see.

Haig said:

It just seems that in history all great campaigns into Russia end to invader's defeat. We'll see.

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Define 'great', as the Finnish have been able to put up some good fights against the Russians in the past

I really liked this scenario, if you start off in Europe it is important to choose which civs you would like as an ally. I started with the Dutch, so to avoid conflict in the North I made an early friendship with the Swedish, which also guaranteed my expansion into Denmark, Germany and southern parts of Poland.
Austria is too much of a liability with its UA, bribing other nations to DoW them and trying to capture Vienna is really important. Otherwise you might find yourself in a bad position when they've married with Vatican City.
France tends to have a conquering spree, they do not seem to be quite popular. Important to keep as an ally in earlier stages to avoid direct conflict with them, otherwise this could work out very well for Austria. Peace with France will work out very well for early exploration.
Spain would be a useful ally against France, they just seem to dislike one another. Bribing the Spanish into war against France will prevent the French from becoming too powerful.
The Celts and English are a bit of a 50/50, the English could be useful in wars against France while the Celts could be useful for wars against the English. It kind of depends on how the game is developing.

One thing I really like in this scenario is that the AI invests heavy in its own protection, I've seen CS like Cologne, Antwerp and Prague with their territory filled with units and Warsaw going on a conquering spree against Austria. I'd like to see something more similar in the regular game, making it more difficult to conquer or bully them. And perhaps that they do not raze every city but keep some as well (I remember from once in Vanilla that a CS had captured another CS... that looked hilarious and cool), that would actually make them dangerous.

Haig said:

It just seems that in history all great campaigns into Russia end to invader's defeat. We'll see.

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Well, almost all

I started a game of this map today as Saladin and the Ayyubid Dynasty. It's certainly more fun than I was expecting!

My initial plan from the start was to warmonger as much as possible. I started this by raising an army and taking Jerusalem for myself which nets me 10 Victory Points per turn, and then turning my attention northwards to the Byzantine Empire. Any city of theirs I take gives me a big chunk of Victory Points and if all goes well in the next war I'll have the Orthodox holy city! Mecca obviously is located right next to me so it's easy to keep them under the heel too.

I've just started a new war with Byzantium but I think it may be a tough one. I've noticed that they have a lot of up to date units and they will be on the defensive. The Honour Policy tree is helping me out a fair bit with regards to my army. I'll post some screenshots and update later in the game.

A warning to those playing the scenario for the first time: Swordsmen don't cost Iron, but Longswordsmen do, and so do Musketmen and Cannon. This was a bit of a surprise, especially considering how rare Iron was in the game I played.

Frigates also require Iron, and the other ships do not, but this is normal to the regular game.

Also be aware that some of the upgrade paths are not available -- Triremes and Pikemen in particular can't be upgraded.

Finished this over the weekend and had a blast. Played as France which has some pretty nice land but NO IRON...that was annoying.

Anyways, started by clearing Spain out of Southern France and proceeded to invade Italy. Had to kill like 5 city states to get to Rome so it was really slow...took me almost half the game. At that point I was wayyyy behind in score but it started to look better from that point.

After the Italian city states were pacified I turned to Spain, and took about half of the Iberian peninsula. Then I turned on the Dutch. By that time I had such a huge puppet empire I could actually afford to hold onto some CS. By the end I was over 1,100 gold per turn (in golden age) and won the last 2 elections.

Protestantism has way better beliefs than Catholicism so I just let the reformation happen...didn't matter since I controlled both holy cities. My empire officially switched over about 20 turns before the end.

Its really weird the way Iron is treated in this scenario....its needed for a lot of units but not very plentiful at all. You have to secure a pretty big empire (with crappy units) just to be able to build the good units, at which point you don't need them anymore...

Haig said:

This scenario is damn fun! Playing as Swedes, wrestling with Russia for control of baltic city-states, and when Mongolia asked me to join war against them I replied I'm ready in ten turns. Now to build a 'grand army'.

It just seems that in history all great campaigns into Russia end to invader's defeat. We'll see.

Click to expand...

tofofnts said:

Well, almost all

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While not a full on invasion, this one didn't end well for Russia either.

Russo-Japanese War

I decided to start over with my English crusade game. This time, London is the only English city on the Island of Brittany. I used two settlers (one from the start, and one from Liberty) to seed colonies in North Africa and Turkey. I plan to war with the Ahlmonds and the Ottomans to rack of victory points and the Turkish colony is positioned nicely for an eventual attack on Jerusalem.

Here is a screenshot of an added bonus in North Africa. "There be iron in them thar hills!"


I have six iron. Canterbury will net me six more, and the nearest Ahlmond city has another six. This is 18 iron which will make my forces very formidable in the coming crusade!

London was eventually attacked by the Celts. I posted a thread in the Strategy and Tips forum about how I used GG Citadels to fend off the invasion and mount a counterattack.

"Island of Brittany"?

While less fun, you probably can get the achievement also on a random map. Which seems much easier, since it is way smaller. I did it on Prince, but all the Christians got mad at me?

I am not a big scenario player, but this one got its hooks into me. I started as Austria and married into the Vatican, but realized you can not get an achievement for Austria (yeah, I am a Achievement addict). Really want to try the England and Turks one. I am not a big warmongerer in Civ5. I really do not get how to take cities with so few units so quickly. I persume no units should die.

I actually also had the idea of taking left side commerce as the celts. Then I produced 3 catapults and 2 Pictish Warrior (which are stronger than swordsmen in the scenario) but was met by an equal force including Longbows(!). This was on Emperor.

Wuddel said:

I actually also had the idea of taking left side commerce as the celts. Then I produced 3 catapults and 2 Pictish Warrior (which are stronger than swordsmen in the scenario) but was met by an equal force including Longbows(!). This was on Emperor.

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I use this strategy for the Celts/England (and variations of it for others) all the time.

What you need to do is take the left side of Commerce and then go to your capital and set it to production focus. Lock down food tiles until you aren't starving, then lock down the rest. Improve your luxuries/worked tiles while building the catapults/etc.

Should be able to wipe out England/Celts pretty quickly (give or take diff. level). But I did use that opener to take Paris early as the English. With the Celts, take London first.

AriochIV said:

A warning to those playing the scenario for the first time: Swordsmen don't cost Iron, but Longswordsmen do, and so do Musketmen and Cannon. This was a bit of a surprise, especially considering how rare Iron was in the game I played.

Frigates also require Iron, and the other ships do not, but this is normal to the regular game.

Also be aware that some of the upgrade paths are not available -- Triremes and Pikemen in particular can't be upgraded.

Click to expand...

and Knights upgrade to Lancer/Cossack/Hussar/etc.

the map is randomly seeded. I've seen 4-5 lux starts and 0 lux starts. So as long as you have something in between it's an 'ok' start.

the upgrade changes are needed. Caravels are projects in the scenario, so it wouldn't do to upgrade anything into them. Austrian LK spam converting to Austrian Hussar spam is not a good thing for scenario balance (not that Austria didn't break it already).

haha the picture under "My score on the last turn"

Diplomacy is still a mess !!!!!!!

Mesix said:

What good is a spy if it will take 134 turns to attempt to steal a technology in a scenario that be over with in 111 turns?

Click to expand...

MadDjinn said:

That generally means that the city is bad for tech stealing (missing tech infrastructure) or has a counter-espionage spy there.

Best bet is to move and find a better location.

Click to expand...

There's no better location. You're just best off not tech stealing in this scenario, unless you level up your spy maybe. I sent a spy to go tech steal from a 5-star potential city with no anti-espionage buildings, and yeah, 100+ turns for me as well. Might as well just rig city-state elections.

I use my Spy for diplomatic purposes. I travel about establishing surveillance and sharing intrigue (to get the diplomatic bonus) and then move on to the next civilization.