The Deity Challenge Lineup - Game #9 - Rome

Link: http://manpanzeegames.blogspot.com/2014/10/civ-v-deity-challenge-rome-exploration.html

Screenshot:

At t171, I DoWed Portugal and started killing her units. So far, I could avoid warmonger penalty and could keep DoFs... but now, 2nd backstab didn't really go well. Got denounced, but so what.

I added several nau and privateers after 4-5 turns, using my privateers. I actually could use nau ability to get handful of gold.

t184, I took Portugal and Brazil caps. Meanwhile, iroquis "backstabbed" me and that was painful. Some of my units were in his ocean and got killed. I also suffered lack of irons.

t187, india cap fell. I was waiting for the timing, but since he pillaged Genoa's iron tile (6 irons...) I just took his cap, and got 2 lux plus gold and gpt instead of his cities.

Ottomans actually built lots of units and tried to recover his capital, but I just rush bought defense buildings and some units there.

I had tons of gold and could ally most of CS (13-14, I think). Sea trade routes certainly helped, and peace deals included gpt. And I plundered lots of cargo ships - I think I got more than 15 during the game.

I didn't really care about spt (didn't reach sci theory .. and in fact, no modern era). My spt was below 300 till I chose scholar at t189. Scholar added more than 100 spt =).

Ending ss: (too lazy to upload others... and those are just capital capturing screenshots so boring anyway)

Apart for the slow pace of the game and the disappointing time I'm expected this game will end (~T240 ?) I'm pretty proud how Neapolis turned out in the end (with the help of some food cargo ships) / production powerhouse able to take nice advantage of Rome building UA

Not seen in the picture is the frigate navy (~15) with more to come (finally) finishing mongols off (Istanbul has 7 coal) that will allow me to get factories/autocracy and leave some for ironclads (expecting to capture a few caravels at least) ..

Still haven't scouted path to Portugal and Iroquois capitals (why that public school is probably wasting precious Roman hammers - but at the very least revealing aluminium and oil can give extra production and trade income)

I haven't played Rome in ages and have no pre-set idea of what type of VC to go for. I settled on t1, 1 tile East. It's not exactly the lushest of starting spots, but it should be pretty good for production.

Because of the map type, I decided to only go with 1 scout. Opening BO was Scout > 1/2 Momument > Shrine (I wanted the Aurora thingy pantheon) > Monument ? Settler > Granary > Library

I had some serious goodie-hut luck, getting an early pop, mining, and culture ruin. Then, the luck really kicked in. I found a ruin with my Western scout on t17, and waited until t20 to pop it:



Vola! Dancing with Aurora!

My mighty warrior had slogged his way through the tundra to the North, discovered India (friendly fellow), and then stumbled upon another ruin t24:



So it appears that the mighty Roman Empire is going to be spreading the one true religion, Shark Diving, to the lucky heathens later on.

Of course, when I met India, his lower-caste workers were being overseen by 4-5 military caste warriors, so I didn't even attempt a worker steal. This left me in a bit of a bind, as I was not going to anger religious Lhasa and the other CS I had found asked me to clear out a barb camp, which my warrior promptly did, so I needed worker help. Ask, and the Gods shall provide on t30:



So, I've had more than my share of luck so far.

Tech order was Pottery > Mining (ruin) >AH > Masonry (I wanted/needed Pyramids) > Writing > Sailing (I was having serious happiness issues with 3 early cities) > Then on up to Philosophy.

I built Pyramids, but got beat out on Oracle at t75 (that never happens…stupid Polynesians) so in a bit of a spiteful move pumped out an 11 turn Museum of Halalalala. I'm building NC in my 1st expo as Rome is anything but a good science location. At least 1st expo has a river.

I've met Ottomans, Mongols and Poly. Not sure how or why Mongols got to our land mass, but I exchanged embassies with them and gladly accepted Ottomans' request to DoW him from across the globe (I figured it would be a good idea to get those 2 fighting ASAP). Ottoman's did settle on the Wester tip of our land mass, but I'm actually pleased by this. They won't be able to get a 2nd city down, and when/if I decide to rid the world of their awful accents, I can easily take that expo city and use it as a base to launch volleys across the passage at them.

Lhasa has been very accommodating. They asked for a GP about 3 turns before I popped my 1st one, then asked for a trade route (which I promptly supplied) and then a barb camp request shortly thereafter. I'm sitting with 120 influence with them and pumping out pretty good FPT. I was 3rd to religion and took Mosques (Pogodas went 1 turn before me) and tithe (so I'm no longer totally broke). India was very late to a pantheon and I'm hoping they don't get a religion. Not sure about Ottomans, but it looks like I'm going to have a pretty good religious game. Now, what to do with it…..

Cultural path was Tradition Opener (it looked like a lot of good tiles were going to be 2nd-3rd ring and it was pretty apparent I am not going to be a wealthy emperor) > Then full Liberty. I've to pick a direction to go when I finish Liberty.

I may take a GE and grab a mid-game cultural wonder. I think I can probably have 7-8 decent cities up relatively early and produce a lot of culture. Domination would still be a good option if I do this.

Alternatively, I could grab a GS and go for science, but I'm off to a pretty slow tech start (NC will be completed on t90 because of the diversion to build Pyramids).

Anyways, it's far from an ideal start, but I've a lot of options open to me. Just need to pick a direction…….

T111 Education and T118 joined the world vs Genghis match. Since I didn't have army or navy I relied on China taking Karakorum down and then capturing it with a single Galleass & a Knight - AI filling the 1st ring with ranged is fun for a while but it really should've fixed ages ago. Few turns later I liberated Samarkand in similar manner.




While my tech rate is sub par due to 6 own cities and general crappiness Maria is doing something weird as she went Rationalism & build PT on T149. She also took Order on T175 while I only got Industrial few turns earlier and had 3rd Factory ready on T187 and out of the two leftovers Autocracy seemed more appropriate. Few turns after that the minimalistic Hiawatha with 22 cities took Freedom.
I DoWed India T153 and surprisingly even with his 5 DoFs nobody denounced me but my advancement was slow partly because lack of happiness but also because 50+ def cities with Galleases & Xbows really hurt and I didn't even have wet dreams about range or logistics. The good part of slow process was the pop drop in all his cities. Delhi's capture was delayed until a natural GA though I reloaded T199 due to a wtf moment on 1st go - luckily after the game hanging twice earlier I set autosaves from 10 to 2 turns so all I did was a reload of T198 autosave.
Somehow on 1st go the game decided that all my roads were broken so I lost 9 happiness & ~100gpt without any reason. Not a biggie in itself but since I but I didn't want to postpone the capture of Delhi for 4 more turns and even with my lackluster imagination I thought some use for the lost money as well.




Maria is playing her own tech game with 10% ahead of me & Hiawatha. I didn't notice when she went Modern but GWBs arrived T191 and coastline is filled with Ironclads so I'm not attacking her with Frigates - more likely Suleiman or Wu while heading for Battleships. Not a single logistics yet which is always the problem when starting the war(s) late - while logistics makes a warpath quick & easy the lack of promotions makes it feel endless headbanging.

Apart from me Hiawatha has almost the half of world's cities but luckily no religion though my conversion process has barely started but the game will be long anyway.
Happiness is manageable as long as I have money to re-buy CSs after Hiawatha spares them few coins out of his 500gpt. I'd like to kill him but taking ~30 cities will take ages on equal weapons so I'll save him later while trying to convert his cities.

Only surprise in the game so far has been Maria running away so fast - Hiawatha killed his teching by settling every freakin' tree in the map and the rest of the pack is fairly equal apart from India and Genghis who got wiped off by Suleiman.

Things are looking rather bleak. I feel like I've been running in quicksand the past 100 turns, always about 10 turns behind. It's been a very peaceful world, something I'm trying to do something about, but have only been able to bribe 1 war. This may have backfired, as the Ottomans steamrolled Brazil. Portugal has the tech lead, and I'm still in 7th. She beat me to PT by 5 turns.

The peacefulness, I thought, was going to work to my advantage. I never even built a Roman UU, and was content to rely on Rome's UA and just build infrastructure. This has been pretty successful so far, as all 5 cities are now growing (thanks to cargo ships) and producing relatively well. Biggest setback was not getting to propose World's Fair. I had a GW all teed up and thought I'd have a good shot at it. Instead, Brazil proposes Arts Funding, which passed, and now my plan of kicking out science buildings super fast has hit a stumbling block.

Portugal was first to ideology (t165) and took order. t178 Ottomans followed suit. On the turn I popped Oxford for Radio, someone else went Autocracy. I guess I'll take Freedom and try to make a late science or domination run. I've got 3 GA's stashed, so I can get through ideologies pretty quickly, and I think I'll take out India if I can time Foreign Legions with either flight or artillery. Not sure which way I'll go. Probably flight, as I totally lack a navy.

No coal, of course, so I just traded for 5 coal from Portugal. I need someone, anyone, to slow her down. I can't even denounce my old BFF Sulemein because he went Order.

This is going to be a tough one.

have vision on the ocean paths towards all the remaining capitals .. Portugal is running away with the game - she has airforce - she'll have subs by the time I get there .. My relaxed science plan backfired - I'm now trying to crank up beakers a bit but is not easy ...

got beijing and one extra chinese city

Annexed Karakorum - will be my place to buy air repair airfoce (figters to protect from portugal) that I can place on chinesse cities and whatever foothold city I'll be able to secure in range of the main fight (air units will be somewhat in range from there - fleet will have to go literaly around the world and then some trough the crooked map labirinths to get to Lisbon) .. Also can build observatory there ..

Moving main fleet to delhi - will take a detour (~2 extra turns ) trough my Rome passage hopping not to trigger backstabbing questions - world still kind of likes me and I'll need the cash ..

Tech wise I'll get flight/prora but doubt I'll make it to battleships (especially with sub tech detour) -lost too many moves .. Moved estimated win time to T260-270 but maybe this is still overly optimistic - all remaining AIs have huge fleets,pesky CS allies and good (modern) tech .. Map doesn't help - proverbial maze to get to the remaining capitals ..

Social policy wise will finish commerce - mistimed factories/autocracy so wasted a social policy in exploration .. (ideology pressure is starting to work on my happiness - will need the faith brought great merchant gold )... Next will be the +15XP and 25%military unit production in autocracy - my core cities will have the base production to benefit ... Hermitage should finally be up soon .. And Stock exchanges ... Win guranteed - very late win time (compared to the best achieved on this map ) is the issue ..

No coal - only enough for 2 ironclads , no aluminum (could've sold it// extra hammers) , can't see oil yet ...Plenty of iron ..

No logistics frigate yet - no honor and delayed warring too much ...

What a lovely example of what happens when bad luck meets poor decisions.

The global love-fest finally ended after ideologies. The 2 strongest militaries, Portugal and Ottomans, both went Order, so they weren't going to fight each other. I gladly accepted offers to join wars (just to get them started), jointly DoWing Brazil, Mongols, and Polynesia (Maria asked me to join her, and I thought maybe Kamehameha might be able to slow her down somewhat). Even though I quickly made peace, while trying to finish up factories before getting my military up and running, I ended up getting denounced everywhere.

Gandhi joined me in Freedom, which saved my happiness for awhile, but it also meant he wasn't going to be my first target. I was instead going to set my sights on barely alive Brazil or Mongols, then hopefully turn on Ottomans.

I decided to hold off war production until I had Labs and Factories up, and decided to build a force of Battleships and Bombers backed by Foreign Legion. Bad choice. I should have gone with Frigates and Artillery. Had I done so, I wouldn't have resigned.

In t214, Sully pops a GG stealing my biggest oil stash. No planes for me. On the same turn, the 5 coal deal I had with Maria expired, with all 4 of my expos being 2-4 turns from finishing factories. Very bad timing on my part, and nobody on the map had more than 1 extra coal. I pretty much threw some shoes at my dog and ungracefully resigned.

Biggest mistake was not going Tradition. Mid-game lack of growth killed me.

2nd biggest mistake was building Pyramids and NOT getting Oracle. My workers were so freakin efficient that they had nothing to build for many turns so I ended up deleting 3 of my 5.

3rd biggest mistake was not getting the world fighting sooner. Every bad game I have on deity can be traced back to playing too passively.

4th biggest mistake was building Labs before factories.

And 5th, and final mistake, was not building frigates and beelining artillery. When I realized how far behind I was in tech, I should have gone full-artillery spam.

Oh well, live and learn.

i dont want to criticize too much but i think for a peaceful approach your city population seems far to low.

Did you use your trade routes internally? Because sea trade routes are absolutely OP for getting pop up which is the main goal when pursuing a peaceful science strategy.
And building only 4 cities with liberty seems inefficient (or your screenshots dont cover your whole empire). When you are not in need of the early hammer advantage which liberty gives you (and this is the case when you go peaceful) the free aqueducts help soo much in mid game.

So i would start over with a tradition start if you want to go Tall peaceful (which is feasible on this map) and try to use as much Trade routes internally as possible. (Due to your prior city placement you have only 2 pairs if cinnected cities via early trade routes which is not optimal

If i can help any further i can try to write up my summary a bit more detailed

Criticism is a good thing. It's how we get better and I appreciate it.

I agree about the city size being small. I don't normally play full Liberty and had planned on getting 6-8 cities up earlier, but Gandhi spoiled that (doesn't he know he's supposed to play tall?). I was already on the Liberty path and didn't adjust when I couldn't expand

I didn't get my cargo ships out soon enough, as you noted. I used the 1st one on Lhasa's CS request and the 2nd I sent to Gandhi for gold/science (I was doing poorly in both). I am wondering if it would have been worth it to divert from tech path to get a couple of more TR's earlier. In your critique, you mentioned "early". Do you have a general rule for X TR's by X-turn? Again, I haven't played many ocean maps on Deity, so I don't really have a good idea of how much to prioritize such (probably more than I did).

I think I will replay the map, and try a Trad/Lib combo (that's my most common approach). If I do get Oracle this time, I should be able to complete Tradition prior to Rationalism, especially given that lack of science bonuses.

I'm also going to do everything I can to get the diplo game to be more antagonistic, maybe even screwing with Gandhi a bit……perhaps dissuading him from Southern expansion.

While typing this and thinking of a replay strategy, it just came to me that I don't really need to sweat the lack of workers so much…..yeah, Roman Legions build roads…..I'm pretty smart sometimes.

Not a great start. I moved cap next to the mountain inland as you can see in SS. Sea routes and all of the sea resources around start certainly would have been nice but I did gain marble, wheat and river tiles. I ended up sending food cargos to my 4 expansions and a couple land routes to capital. I think moving was a good choice overall. Not a single coal, aluminium or uranium in my land. A few oil resources in the 4th rings of cities.

Polynesia forward settled me huge and screwed over plans for my second city. However, this gave me two risk free early trade routes providing 4 BPT each, so I couldn't be too mad. It's worth noting that I didn't have the opportunity to steal any workers this game - that kind of sucked. I couldn't steal from Poly due to the aforementioned trade routes, all of the city states were protected, and Gandhi was too far away for it to be worth it. Oh well.

Went Full Tradition, Commerce to Mercantilism, Full Rationalism and Freedom. Won both World's Fair and International Games pretty easily due to everyone else being at war. Without either one of those I would have been screwed for policies. The lack of culture CS nearby hurt quite a bit. I didn't get nearly as much mileage out of WF as I usually do - only had something like 120 CPT for using great writers.

Only built 4 late wonders. I GE'd Statue of Liberty and hard built Big Ben, Neuschwanstein and Hubble. Only one out of the ordinary there is Neusch-- I had some spare turns in my capital because I bought a Research Lab, so I figured why not? The culture, gold and happiness all came in handy.

No religion. Bought a few Pagodas thanks to Gandhi. He and Hiawatha wasted so many great prophets fighting over my cities.

Happiness was a problem all game. I was barely treading water keeping my empire happy throughout and spent significant gold on CS and buying resources. I built zoos everywhere and there was even a point midgame after I settled my 5th city that I couldn't help going unhappy for some turns. I do think that 5th city was worth it in the end though. With Freedom it generated so much extra gold and science.

No wars. In fact, I only built one unit all game, an archer (and my initial warrior got a spear ruin). I bribed Mongolia to attack a couple of people early (they got wiped out), then after that the world's hate focused on China. I also bribed Polynesia to attack Brazil just to stop them from being idle, and I believe one more late bribe to get Gandhi into war because he beelined nukes, heh. There was never really any risk of being attacked. The strongest military (Hiawatha) was far away and everyone hated several civs more than me. I could have signed a DOF with anyone all game pretty much. I had about 4 RAs pre-ideology, and a few post ideology. Gold sucked otherwise I would have signed more.

Settled my first GS, bulbed a few so I could complete Rationalism into Satellites, then bulbed the rest at the end of game.

My finish was far from optimized. Ended 30k beakers over (with an RA ending in 2 turns) and with enough gold to buy two more parts. This is mostly because I hard built hubble and waited for that to finish on ~T262 before the final GS push. If I had continued building hubble instead of pausing for International Games I could have finished 5 turns earlier or so, at least.

Anyway, this game was a nice change of pace. Definitely a weaker start than some of the previous challenges, but it just goes to show how much map and AI civ layout plays a role. Genghis is such a hate magnet that it's easy to stay under the radar early with him there, and then whoever takes his cities are prime candidates to take over the hate in second half of game.

edit: and one more thing, just in case anyone is wondering about my positioning of Ravenna. One tile to the left would have pretty obviously been the ideal spot, but when I moved my settler there a barb encampment spawned on that exact tile. It would have taken me a long time to clear with risk of that settler being captured so I just settled the city on the stone instead.

What a lovely example of what happens when bad luck meets poor decisions.

Biggest mistake was not going Tradition. Mid-game lack of growth killed me.

2nd biggest mistake was building Pyramids and NOT getting Oracle. My workers were so freakin efficient that they had nothing to build for many turns so I ended up deleting 3 of my 5.

3rd biggest mistake was not getting the world fighting sooner. Every bad game I have on deity can be traced back to playing too passively.


And 5th, and final mistake, was not building frigates and beelining artillery. When I realized how far behind I was in tech, I should have gone full-artillery spam.

Very rare are the games where everything goes according the plan but that demo isn't really bad enough to throw in the towel - I think I was 14% off the Maria's tech pace by that time.

Going Tradition is pretty much always the safe & easy option while Liberty requires more work and can backfire - the first 100 turns is usually coping with money & happiness issues unless there's a profitable war going on.

One always starts with too few & ends up with too many workers. Deleting is often the best of available options.

I really, really dislike not buying wars especially when the world is filled with treehuggers with a common enemy like Genghis. I wasn't properly prepared for the perpetual peace and due to it my plan of religious domination is probably screwed.

My game is slowly advancing with far from optimal path. Suleiman & Genghis are off the map, Maria soon, too and Pedro, Kame & Gandhi politely DoWed me so I don't have to hunt their units on foreign soil - life is much easier when they do drive-bys to be killed. Resurrected China is guarded and Hiawatha still semi-friendly but no real threat since I've passed him on tech. The rest of the game is capture & raze - rinse & repeat with estimated time of arrival T300+ depending on how much I focus on converting the cities. CSs are in odd mode here as they don't raze the cities but keep even the totally pointless ones which really isn't helping me at all.
Another problem is that everyone seems to be following Hiawatha's lead on settling everywhere where it's possible and few places where I hope it wouldn't be possible - it's not cool to raze 3rd city on same tile.

Pedro killed off Genghis early on, then Maria came in and killed off Pedro. China was in the game for a bit, but Maria killed her off too. I can't recall a game where she has behaved in such a manner. In the end it was Maria all over the map with just five civs remaining. Wonders seemed really easy to come by in this one because I was tech leader for so much of the game. I guess that's what happens when the AI is constantly at war. As for me, I was never at war once the entire game. I was friendly towards all AIs which helped me open their borders throughout.

I will come back and edit this in a bit with some pics and more content.

Regarding (early sub T100) Trade Routes:
You always got the option to go internal for food or external for money and science. And it is sometimes not very easy to decide between those two options.

The main reason a lot of people go for the science / gold one very early on Deity (the one you build after or before your settlers) is that it can give you valuable beakers for the early game which are otherwise hard to obtain.
But if you dont need a key tech to do something in the mid game and you are not totally gold screwed (like -20gpt^^, i had in the early game constantly negative gpt for 50 turns ) i would always prefer the food trade routes (esp. the sea trade routes) because they benefit you with gold and science as well due to the increased population and they give you this boost permanently. The Sea trade routes cost a lot more hammers to build, so the early bpt boost is not as significant as it would be with a T40 land caravan to a neighbouring capital. Thats why i prefer internal sea trade routes as long as you can keep up the happiness (which was also a major problem in this game, because you only had 5? unique luxes if i remember correctly (whales, marble, copper, pearls, ivory (and silver if you settle far enough into ghandis face))) and due to the fact i was too lazy to scout early i had not really good trading partners nor more than 4 CS to ally with.

Regarding CS quests its the one of the exceptions i would make if you need the CS ally for happiness / food / culture but normally you can ally your surrounding CSs via Barb camp clear quests or "find any civ".

I dont have a X Trade Routes by Turn X scheme but i try to build them as soon as they are available and i wont to any major research detours for getting extra TRs (besides the early Sailing which is mandatory in this game)

And i do this not only on coastal map starts (where the sea trade routes are so OP the food you get out of them is far more important than the 10-20gpt eraly) but also on pangea where the decision is a bit tougher what you need.

I hope i could help a bit but there are certainly other strategies possible

Good stuff, and thanks.

As I'm recalling what I did with the first Cargo Ship (not sure why I capitalize names of objects…..just seems right), as I said, it went to Lhasa. Lhasa also asked me to clear a barb camp and crate a GP, which I did. However, Lhasa only offered FPT and Ivory. I was already kicking out a ton of FPT (Aurora) and since I already had tamed my domestic pachyderm (I already had ivory), the only benefit was for some GPT, which, although scarce in this game, was not worth the opportunity cost.

I'd have been much better off sending this 1st Cargo Ship to another Civ or to my 1st expo. That 1st expo, which I had decided to make my science city because Rome lacked fresh water (dumb in retrospect) was the weak link in my growth. Despite the river/grassland, it struggled to grow early because I built my NC, Writer's Guild, and NE there…..dumb in retrospect.

The lack of freshwater in Rome suckered me into doing unconventional stuff and, well, we saw the results.

I consider this a good lesson learned and I thank you for your feedback.

I'm interpreting your comments as saying that my game was still winnable? I suppose, given the AI's incompetence in war, that you may be correct. I'm not normally the quitting type, but given my unfortunate choices (translation: stupidity) I had made it so much harder than it had to be. Developing a strategy for my empire and executing it are what makes this game addictive for me. Spamming units and spending hours right-clicking to kill AI units is less fun…….but, I guess I underestimated the ability to come back from a suboptimal position. Perhaps I'll go back to my t214 save and see if you are correct and this was salvageable……

Very tough game indeed!

I settled in place, but for the rest of the game I wished I'd moved one to the left to that connecting tile, firstly for the extra fish I'd have had, but also for the additional traderoutes that would be possible. Rome really didn't have many good trade routes available early game (that changed a bit with later tech allowing longer trade routes).

I wanted to settle my fourth city at the spot of Pataliputra (Ghandi), but he beat me to it. So I just passed him and settled for the silver. To be honest I was lucky my neighbour was Ghandi and not some other AI, because this way I was pretty sure I could forward settle on him this far, and still be relatively sure I could keep it. If not for that I'm not sure I'd have had enough good city spots.

AI's were all super friendly with each other, signing RAs by the truckload. Diplo wise my best decision all game was to denounce China when I saw she wasn't friends with anyone. After a couple of turns other AI's started denouncing her, making her a pariah and "most hated" for the rest of the game. Although she came close to annihilation, I was really hoping she would survive because I was getting some good diplo out of denouncing. Oh, and Mongolia was killed by the Ottomans before I got to even meet them. I just noticed one of the Ottoman cities was called Karakorum . I never declared on anyone but I did instigate a couple wars near the end to distract some of the AIs.

Culture was very slow because I had to invest all my gold into mercantile CSs for happiness. I went full tradition, and then a very slow rationalism. Ideology-wise I started off with order, following Portugal and hoping to maintain good happiness that way. But almost all AIs when freedom after that, forcing me through 2 turns of revolt into freedom as well. That settled all hapiness problems, but this way I never came further than 4 policies, meaning I couldn't get to the policy for buying spaceship parts...

Built almost no wonders (hubble, dont remember if any other, dont think so actually). Did get religion, but due to Ghandi spamming it never spread beyond Rome. Still, it gave me extra growth and production .

Anyway it ended up being a really close game. The AIs were raging with their research agreements, meaning they even got into the information era before me. (I'm not sure if this is normal but usually I interpret this as a bad sign. I try to pass them by around atomic at the latest.) So for reference I included the "known techs" graph which shows how close it came to the end before I managed to pass them . Good game!

the science delay backfired something fierce

will hopefully get battleships in about 14 turns, I'm about to backstab and hopefully suicide/zerg Iroquois capital with no logistic frigates , privateers and 3 ironclads ... (has ~80 defense) .. Subs slowly making their way towards Portugal - have oil and tech to buy air repair fighters - lack the cities to move them to front line... Chinese cities lack +XP infrastructure to make buying in place worthwhile ..

Thought this would be an easy frigate map - messed up the opening , failed to scout the maze in time (lost science as a result) - and so the win time runs further and further away (although after Lisbon falls all the rest will be in range and drop like dominoes ...)

also problems uploading the next episode (two 24 hour upload failed attempts - might need to re-encode that one )

Hah, maze is indeed a proper word for this map - I spent 20 turns just sailing to Portugal after beating down Suleiman. Had the runaway been anyone else it'd saved me 15 turns with the setup.
This map is probably something which caused someone to write a mod which prevent s polar ice from touching the mainlands - I thought very warmly of such mod since T100 since my fleet of Titanics was running into icebergs all over the map. I also was soon convinced that this game needs the Engineer from Civ 2 with few extra abilities like ice breaking, canal digging etc.

Ended my own session on T298 with Hiawatha left with few cities while waiting few cities to burn and last prophets running around for their final mission. I'll end up the game ~310 by which time all but a couple of twin city CSs should be converted. I should've gone Piety much, much earlier but for a while it looked like Maria was actually planning to win. DoWed her T256 & wiped off T270 - stealing her CSs before DoW rendered large part of her army useless. Before & after that period it's been gathering faith & mopping crappy cities though Order Hiawatha is more than annoying. 3 pop cities spawning like flies and Pedro's missionary waiting on the spot - lovely team work which I really didn't need. By the time I DoWed Hiawatha he had 34 cities and 3 settlers running amok - probably there were more but those were near my borders.

With Irorquos capital sniped their entire front soon colapsed allowing me to farm XP and gold (capturing and burnig cities) .. ~10 more turns to battleship tech ..subs begining to make it in possition , money situation decent - Portugal and the map should soon be conqured (estimate win time ~T280 - pretty sure map is finally runnning out of surprises)

Oh yeah- still no logistics frigate yet - can I make it all game ?