The Deity Challenge Lineup - Game #9 - Rome

Ok Im up to turn 135 in my game and it is a bit of a mess for me. A huge love fest with all Civs and they all love each other with RA, RA, RA and Im here with no RA lol! However I don't mean to sound like an ass but Rome with hardly no iron on a small cont map... lol wtf!!?? Seems a bit of a waste for the way I play Im probably just a bit upset after getting rolled by the Zulu in challenge #4 a few hours ago so forgive me if Im out of line. I'll edit up my B.O. and story in a little bit.

I knew Grendeldef would give us a map/civ that would challenge us. I don't usually play Rome so it is kinda strange to me. Im not sure I see the point of a non-naval Civ on this map but its something differnt for sure. Im not happy with the way my game is going but I usually never am. Onto the B.O. and story.

I seen all those whales and sheep and tundra and thought it might be good here but lets see if I can find something else and send my 1st expo back to this spot. That plan failed when the hawaiians founded Samoa there in just a few turns . Those bastards are pretty far away from me but somehow they made the journey anyway. My warrior upgraded to a spear and I scouted with him. I decided to play nice with India and Hawaii but maybe that was a mistake. I've been wanting to play a more peaceful approach but that seems to just get me behind more than if I go to war. I had to move my settlers with no protection because of issues with barbs to the South of Rome and also Lhasa wanted a North camp cleared. Amazing I made it to both locations without a barb popping up and stealing my 2 settlers. Ofcourse you can see I moved Rome over to the river and mtn. India is a pain taking my CS's and they are a gold monster as well. They have some nice Wonders and my plan is to get dynamite and try to take Dehli and maybe 1 expo. I land locked myself and it might not be the best option on a water map lol! I was hoping to get 4 cities up but happy is a problem and so is time and space. Im really playing this game as fast as I can since I am going on a cuise ship for the next 8 days or so, so I want to finish today if I can. I have no army really. I had a few troops but I gifted them to CS's for some influence for smiles

B.O. : worker first... did I just say that ugh ok worker first!( I never build these but seeing it was a small cont map I wasn't sure I would have anyone to steal them from), That being said, down the road I had no chance of worker steals and didn't want to steal from Lhasa since they were giving me faith. I did get a Religion but Gandhi is going to be a monster in that department. LOL ok what was next oh ya... monument, shrine, settler, settler, granary, caravan, library, archer, rush buy archer, Oracle which I missed since Ganhi got it turn 83 , ok so water mill instead you bastard... NC t90ish, market, circus, cavanasary, colosseum, EIC, PT t174, Nat Epic, garden... etc.

In my expos it was something like Granaries first, libraries, caravans, markets, happy buildings... etc. (I put the writers guild in cumae)

I have no roads as of yet and it has been alot of loan gold to keep these CS's to keep my empire happy.

The last 10 games or so I have won the WF very easy but this game was tough. I only got 4th place so at least I had enough for a free SP but losing that is going to hurt for sure.

My Dipol is going pretty silly actually. I think I am DOF with everyone except China and Mongolia who just lost his capital to the Ottomans. I wish I could use some gold for RAs since I have PT but Im planning to use it for a war with India in the next 15 turns or so. (Rome is plotting against you India and they covet your lands/wonders )

I think that about sums it up for now. Anyway break time and try to finish a little later down the road

I put myself in a mess with this late war with India. It was about to go great until he got flight and I had to retreat. I did put him at war with Portugal and Hawaii and another Civ I think. We all denounced him together. So now I'll have to try to get Anti-Aircraft up before I can attempt to push back in. This is the part of the game where I get worried Im gonna lose for sure lol. Portugal is 9% ahead on tech and I'm 1% behind the average. She worries me a little with her culture game and this game is starting to give me a headache so Im not sure if I can finish today or not but I'll try.

Son of a $%^&^ ... I had to wave the white flag on this game. Im in a stalemate with India (the whole world is at war with them but not helping lol, I think they are just too far away with alot of ocean.) The main reason I had to give up and lose this game is because Portugal is about to win a CV at about turn 260ish Id say. She is just about influentual with everyone and rising and rising. I can't believe Brazil couldn't help out in that area. Oh well Im in a slump now, thats 2 in a row for losing which I was due for anyway. I did rush this game a bit but that is no excuse for my poor play. It could be that Im not used to this type of set up but I doubt it... I just played bad. Damn Shaka and now this lol. I'll be looking for some revenge with challenge #10 when I get back from vacation. I wish you all the best in this game and I know you better players are gonna show me how it is done!

did not start this yet but

water map - build 2-3 coastal cities - rush navigation - spam galeas/frigates - profit
could it be that simple ? remains to be seen

checked whether this is inland sea: apparently left side of the starting point was a big ocean. Settled there - how could I resist 2 more whales? one more fish at the 3rd ring was a bonus. But it was weird that I could not find 2nd unique lux.

Found early culture ruin and decided to go 2 scouts first and tradition opening. Soon I realized that there were only 2 CS and india in this continent...

I could steal 5-6 workers from Genoa. my archer (upgraded from scout) waited 2 tiles left from the iron, which was at the 3rd ring of the CS, and took workers. This helped a lot. I didn't build/buy any worker myself. Around t80, barb settler came to my 4th city... I captured it and didn't return it to Brazil =)

Got DoF from india early, and sold whale for 240g to buy lighthouse. Did barb quest and find brazil quest for Lhasa.

cap BO: 2 scouts - granary - shrine - trireme - work boat - trireme - 3 settlers. Lighthouse rush bought asap.

4 cities up by t70. 2nd: marble SE of cap, 3rd: pearl NE of cap, 4th: ivory, west of cap. Went for tundra faith pantheon, and later shrine +1 happy, tithe and religious community.

When I saw that lots of caps are coastal, I decided to go compass beeline (edu later) for frigate rush. I rush bought 2 univs (sold all gpt and deleted 5 workers) so that I could steal navigation. t126 astronomy complete and my spy stole navigation (he stole civil service earlier). Education was t119, I think.

Don't have gold, but I can take ottoman cities to get some gold to upgrade frigates. Mongols took several CS earlier and everyone denounced/DoWed him. I will liberate those CS to get CS allies and erase warmonger penalty.

While I checked that all caps are coastal (embassy), I am not sure that some of them are located in inland sea - need to scout and make some land army if I need to.

things are not going so well for me in this one (even after restarting once - to place Rome on the tile connecting 2 oceans - it is a rather poor capital location but with strategical benefits for the future)

was concerned of lack of worker donors on the neighborhood (could only steal 2 from lhasa ) and went liberty instead of honor and settled extra cities ...Currently about to finally DOW scourge of the world mongols (everybody hates and wars with) with a small and inexperienced frigate fleet (portugal is tech leader - she's usually useless) .. My usual fail scouting tactics resulted in me finally getting to meet some city states (past the ones on my continent) past T170 ..

Thinking about oxfording Industrialization and building some factories to speed up frigate production (so much infrastructure and no much actual military unit production)..

SP wise - liberty, 3 exploration, about to go commerce ..

Indian converted my 5 cities - built up shrines and temples (ouch gold maintenance) to be able to buy 5 mosques (and maybe some monasteries in the future)

there is a 1tile broad entry into the middle ocean east of polynesia capital.

i did as usual a science game and it looks like i will finish around T280, will update later when i got the game completed

i decided to settle where the warrior was because i did want to have a 2nd lux in my capital range (the marble).

BO: 2x scout (found culure ruin into Tradition) granary shrine 2x settler

I did steal a settler from India at the top of the island and one from Genoa and transferring both back to my capital did take ~20 turns -.-
Stole another worker from genoa and made peace with both.

Settlers did have to go on an extended journey as well, as the first took 20 turns to get to his spot and the 2nd 10 turns because i settled just into india face.

3 cities up @ T52 (settled a 4th one much later to the west with the ivory)



I could get some more workers from the barb camps around and got NC T83



The main problem was in the beginning that the trade routes were too short to connect Antium and Rome. Still i had a somewhat hard time to keep happiness up because of imba sea food trade routes.

Got Oracle and won Worlds Fair which was not very difficult because of the hammer-rich tileset.

I had to deflect Suleiman from attacking me twice (into the Mongols and into Brazil) which led to him conquering some stuff and global hate for him.

After that i cruised through the Mediaval and Renaissance Era while stealing some techs from Polynesia (biggest one was Industrialization while getting public schools) and trying to get the science going.



I was the first getting to Modern and getting an Ideology (even though Maria, Polynesia and the Iroquois reaching Industrial 30 Turns earlier) and took Order and with winning WF i got greedy and went for the T3 Tenet with boosted internal trade routes rather than finishing Ratio and i had problems to get the GE spacepart tenet in the end.

I lost about 20 Turns because i could not buy GS and misstimed RAs due to this.

Reached nearly 600 bpt on T200 which was nice for the very bad starting location but sea trade routes make it possible.



In the end easy victory



All in all an interesting map. The bad Starting position made the early game hard and it took me 200 turns to get the science lead.

I was lucky that India did found a very early religion with Pagodas and Mosques and i decided to use that religion rather than founding my own which gave me a good early happiness boost. And with a planted GP and the faith from Aurora from capital and Lhasa i could buy both building fairly quick in my cities when he converted them,

It was quite a diplomatic game with a lot of bribing and some denouncing of Mongolia and Suleiman but the rest of the world was happy friends all game long which resulted in a LOT of RAs and i had PT which helped a ton (but no Ratio finisher due to food-greed)

Another nice thing was that i did propose World Ideology Order before anyone did choose an ideology which led to all but Polynesia and Mongolia choosing Order as well.

And on the last note it was VERY costly to keep the WLTKD going and sometimes i could just not afford giving 3luxes worth of gold away... which led to not so satisfying pop numbers

ottoman was a piece of cake. My galleass were stacking up XPs by killing his triremes, and I took one of his coastal cities to upgrade to frigates.

t137, I took his 2 coastal cities and sold them to Brazil for more than 40gpt in total, and took cap. Got cape town for the peace deal, and liberated it.

I immediately went for Mongols and destroyed them. Gave beshbalik away, kept capital, and liberated 2 CS.

I sailed for china cap, as it had GLighthouse and GW (and it was on the way). I already got 3 range frigates so it was easy. t152 cap falls. Instead of a city, I asked for all her gold and gpt (about 45 gpt) and she loved this counterproposal.

AIs were too friendly to others (tons of DoFs, prolly due to the common enemy Mongols), so it was difficult to bribe. I finally got poly to attack 2 AIs, and denounced him later (backstab). Other AIs joined by denouncing him, as he backstabed and DoWed first.

I took his cap at t169 and 2nd city t170 (both had like 4-5 wonders). My 2nd fleet is going through the 1-tile path in Iroquis sea.

Settled the isthmus to get access to both seas, and to get extra whales. Decided to go wide/Liberty because of all the open terrain, and to maximize the 25% prod bonus. Snagged a bunch of huts, but so few CS's! I was really late to meet AI and didn't build a trireme until t143. Focused on buildings, esp in cap, but not enough Uni's yet, so much to build, science is poor.

Settled river W and then raced to the mtns far W to nab Ottoman whales. Danced with archers to keep Pedro's Settler/Warrior away - they sat in the drink for like 40 turns before settling opposite coast - blocked my access to pearls the whole time. Then settled SE on marble, and the river NE, but Captain Underpants had dropped a city and expanded tiles like crazy, so the city is cramped. Late city on coast for whales/fish.

Sul didn't like the forward settle, I bribed Mongols to DOW as I saw several Sul units in the water and he had a big navy. Mongols apparently took 2 CS's, one liberated by someone, he's doing alright. Everybody has offered DOF, some 3 times. Turned down, I'm just turtling - no entanglements.

The big decision was SV or CV. India had the fastest rel marks I have ever seen, and took SS, asshat. Decided to go GP for Liberty finisher, and have DanceOfA, Tithe, Pagodas, Monasteries, and Rel Texts. I couldn't believe I got 2 buildings. So debated going Piety into full Rat to burn GS later, or fill Exploration to get coastal bonuses and later hidden sites. Delayed Renn to buy as many faith bldgs as possible cheaper - but have now gone 2 into Rat - likely to go Exploration here on out. Considering another city either NE on coast, or if there is a spot elsewhere - gonna spam Museums. I have never taken Exploration opener with no navy before.

The start looks like Tradition friendly which I won't do so I ran around few turns before settling on the riverside hill. Nothing new with Liberty start either as Rome wants to be large - not because of the UA but due to history. Also since all roads leads to Rome I don't need trimeres with this otherwise I've been very conservative my special rules.
Money, two maps, Writing & upgrade from the ruins so 2nd city was settled T40+ and 3rd T51. Polynesia offered me free labour in form of an unprotected settler which I gladly took as Lhasa got the worker out as late as T29.
T39 Dance of the Aurora so I settled the next cities on tundra and it's been a classic Liberty start catch-22 loop even though I befriended with Kame, later Gandhi & Suleiman whom have all been broke most of the time and even Pedro offered DoF which I refused as I wanted to keep open a potential war front.

Basically I've been lacking happiness & money the whole game not because of a bad map but the mechanics of Liberty. No surplus luxes to sell and the cities really aren't self-sufficient with happiness. Nothing to sell means no money to buy tiles to get something to sell and since the border expansion superbly avoids any hammer tiles building stuff is extremely slow which isn't helped by negative happiness. A late lucky break with Genovese quest and selling my own luxes to ally it keeps me now most of the time happy. I've also built Colosseums & Circuses earlier than usually.

By the time I was ready to swim across the seas a Brazilian troll city prevented me for long for doing that as I couldn't get positive gpt to buy OB and Suleiman didn't have CS yet - I had barely Pottery so slow the teching seems. And buying the OB from Brazil without gpt was another semi epic task.

One ex-scout archer has been camping Lhasa for workers but the other three members are busy enough to fight off the barbs. TR to Delhi and now to Brazil as well but it was delayed by barbs and them pillaging Pedro's caravans to Neapolis really didn't help - horsemen vs scouts & archers is tricky business.

If I ever had a plan to use Lhasa for target practice it died out quickly as I can barely support this minimalistic army. T96 5C NC and Liberty finished same time, T97 CS and somebody unknown hit Renaissance, I sent my spy to Delhi after failing to figure out the current tech order with this new UI I'm trying out. Total Domination is/was the plan here but on religious side things don't look too good. Gandhi was the first to start a religion and and someone has quite a number of cities by now. On hindsight I could've started Piety for a change but it's too late now.

Plan by now is to get Galleases after Education & then attack Gandhi purely because I need to stop him spreading his religion for several reasons. After that the target will be somebody who offers well placed cities and/or hates me enough, now it's only Genghis who dislikes me and all but him are very friendly with everyone as I decided for once not to buy wars but just start them. So far a very easy promise to keep as I couldn't buy the paper DoW was written on even if I wanted.

Feel free to express disgust in everything regarding this particular challenge and I assume Dingle is equally interested in feedback. The site isn't too pleased with personal insults but I don't mind even those - it'd just line up nicely with my general disliking of map scripts & few aspects of the game . But still, it's too much fun to play occasionally so I keep playing - a personal dilemma but I can live with it.

I chose Rome after all since it's rarely played. In vanilla it was do or die depending on iron but in these days the AI just can't kill one off in the early turns (Shaka is an exception) so Rome isn't as dependant on iron anymore.
Small Continents had few reasons.

1) it's not Pangaea.
2) it has some sort of predictability and low sea lvl is there to prevent the game being island hopping - with some luck the map should offer opportunities for land and sea based plays ie while the std Galleass/Frigate domination is probably viable the extra land should give some use for Rome's UA and even UUs.
3) hopefully it offers more versatile diplomacy options than Continents besides we've had few of those already
4) a civ + map combo which aren't mutually supportive which should add some difficulty and for the purpose of these challenges offer more variety in playthroughs.
5) with limited iron supporting endless legos and frigates might be tricky even though they are not supposed to co-exist in masses.

But since I did want to play this with others I only played for ~5 turns each map I rolled just to check that no NWs beside the starting spot.

Hah, there you nailed it by yourself. Being out of comfortzone is good.

Same happened to me but my 2nd scout spotted the settler in the sea early enough so I walked side by side with it until it landed & stole it.
This isn't that rare behaviour at all but it requires the human to move 3+ tiles from the spawning point and an opportunistics AI which haven't settled the 2nd city on T2. The AI values the starting point highly and will try to settle it from far away in proper circumstances. It is one way to lure an AI to settle nearby but works much better on Pangaea type maps and to be really beneficial the nearby land needs to be good enough