The Deity Challenge Lineup - Game #10 - Polynesia

T304 Hubble ready and started mass bulbing towards Stealth but every tech required two GSs so I only got it T312 and domination still looked like the way to go but I changed my mind soon afterwards. My problem was rapidly sinking, already minimal, cash reserve to I upgraded 8 SB before hitting negative gpt. That was also part of the reason bulbing when I did even though it was far from optimal time.
T309 Dido & Oda started swapping nukes, T312 Sydney OH, Japan became influencal over me so only Carthage to go anf WF finally started and Japan basically build it in one turn with his 43 cities at that point - I settled for safe 350(.58). The increasing worry about negative gptand potential boredom in the last turns made me DoW Dido on T315. Luckily she was so screwed with happiness issues that her response wasn't even half hearted - endless subs just running away, nothing that could be described as air force and nukes were saved for Oda so in 3 turns I liberated Vilnius, burned one & sold one city to Oda, managed to destroy most of the navy near Aotearoa without losing a unit.
T318 I also build CN Tower mainly to prevent Oda for having it. Lack of Aluminium was a bit of a problem and I was about to GG bomb some from Kyzul where I lost my 1st unit but capturing Saguntum T321 solved that issue for a moment, settled on alu & even bombed Quebec's alu just for me, nice. Japan already had nuked most of the city's defenses away and it even had Prora.




T324 liberated valletta, too and for a change the AI wasn't in a gatherer mode but spent all it had. I also build 2 SS factories and started building parts as a backup plan.




T327 Oda joined the Information era but was not heading anywhere near Internet so he wasn't gonna win anytome soon after all. As a one extra safety measure I bought his vote for WL in case that the others would suddenly fall, mainly Dido.
T330 Utique with Macchu Picchu - nice but a bit late. Selling few cities to Oda got me back to positive gpt and razing cities on the 2nd continent some decent cash.
T334 Carthage fell with ease even without SBs as didn't dare to bring'em in the range of her nukes and those in Ulundi only reached as far as Macchu. Hippo Regius would've an option as nuking it would've meant fallout on her own territory, too but still it seemed far too risky.




Parts ready, one in Ulundi, two in Tenochtitlan and 2 + GE in Honolulu. I had nukes, carriers & XComs enough to take Kyoto, London & Cusco in two turns if needed but the timeline would've been roughly the same.
Two more GSs would've spawned had I not stopped running specialists and I could've bought 2 more so timing was far from optimal. I even ended up buying the 500 faith prophet & converted few cities.




2nd continent after razing half a dozen cities. Karalis was a planned mission for long but Lixus an afterthought as it had the uranium & aluminium.

Japan was quite impressive but went into negative happiness in the last few turns. My happiness went through the roof even without too much help from religion; 50+ while razing half a dozen cities isn't every day stuff for me anyway and it peaked somewhere around 74.

Policywise full Tradition the Exploration and Rationalism opened before Order. Ended up filling Ratio as I need all the cash I could get and on the other didn't want open any more trees. Not totally what I planned before the game but not too much of a detour either.

The late war was sort of funny. Due to limited oil I had quite a few subs and nothing wrong with those but when upgraded they became hilarious especially when Dido didn't shoot back - nuclear subs are awesome, half the world is visible and they one shot everything apart from carriers and are fast enough to move around effectively especially with few perks.

Slightly tricky start & and I had few pre-game thought I followed despite them being a handicap but I welcomed the opportunity to lose a game for a change.
My religion was crap and the way I used it was worse but that was part of the plan. Ended up buying 2 GEs, 6 Pagodas & a Prophet with it. Even something in form of spreading the 2nd continent would've given few more gpt if nothing else.

Scouting was bad as I missed Sri Pada for ~150 turns - that'd have been a nice city location much earlier but the unlucky 2nd continent CS quests was more annoying. I really can't produce a GMe on T40.
Not much luck with WLtKDs either but that gave opportunity to sell more luxes than otherwise - main problem throughout the game was lack of money.

Shaka was in Exploration both games, and built Louvre in this one. He built one coastal in this game, and captured several, so it was useful. In the Sweden game it said 3 in Exploration, which I believe means he had 3 beyond the open. ...With no coastal cities, LOL.

I was having an insane amount of fun playing this one. Until Monty came for me and especially me all the time, and while I did manage to survive long enough, he came at me with everything he got, while being at war with Poland, so yeah, he's just that crazy.

I suppose it could have gone the other way if Shaka wasn't killed off that early. Instead, this one wouldn't really go well, especially since I was in the negative gold all the time and Harbors were just too far down the tree. It needs a different strategy definitely, preferably the one where Monty simply isn't around

Meanwhile, Japan didn't wait around in wasting Lizzy but did little to help me with Monty either. I'm probably gonna hit the waves the next time I try this

This was one of the hardest starts I've had. So went for the ever popular Small Piety strategy (which I'm sure you will all be ever so happy to hear). The problem is, this time there was hardly any faith opportunities near the capital (I settled down on the coast, at least I had that going on for me combined with Polynesia's unique abilities). So the only real plan was Stonehenge but that was taken off me by an Unmet player, luckily for me I had only invested a few turns into it and hadn't wasted any forest chops. Still, seeing as my ridiculously close neighbour Monty went Liberty and chose a non-faith pantheon, I thought I might be able to scrape a religion using God-King. I was ever so slightly optimistic of being able to flip non-religious Poland and Zulu, who were also very close. I decided not to DOW any of the Civs, choosing instead to steal two workers from two separate City States (no new CSs greeted me with gold anymore but it was probably worth it). Not incredibly for Deity, Monty then got a religion, and went into Piety, and built Borobudur, Hagia Sophia and Great Mosque of Djenne. New plan: no missionary spam and settling a lot of prophets. Piety prophets are great, by the way: I had 5 tiles by the end with 6F,5C,3G plus food and/or production. With all that faith I chose Jesuit Education and got instant universities, public schools and research labs in all my cities as soon as I researched the techs. So, anyway, I had to forward settle both Monty and Casimir (redoubling the importance of no DOWing), adding a fourth city on the island to the south with the natural wonder and marble. I did get quite lucky in that noone seemed to be interested in Colossus, so I picked that up around T100 together with the Mausoleum, both of which turned into nice little earners. From then on it was basically following the Small Piety strategy, along with exploiting the Polynesian's UAs to get ruins and fulfil CS quests on the new continent. Being next to aggressive neighbours isn't the worst thing in the world, as long as you can always make sure they're all at war with each other. Every civ was at war with at least one other civ pretty much 99% of the time but it was money well spent. I also did my best with diplomacy - the Small Piety strategy more than anything else is about diplomacy, so I'm really glad I've started trying to use it, as it will surely benefit me in general play - I always had a rather simple approach towards Diplomacy. Anyway, so the increased culture from Moais and Holy Sites really propelled my SPs forward and I was able to get the important policies in Patronage before Renaissance. From then on, with lots of gold coming in and everyone on the continent going Order (after Japan flipped), I knew I'd win, it was just a case of when. Japan scuppered my plans of a T302 victory by puppeting about 6 CSs (in the midgame where I had no resources to prevent it) and then taking a capital thus kicking out my diplomat, which meant I missed out by 1 vote. So it was a long and boring wait for 20 turns with my compuiter trying to process such a big map and Japan's 100+ cities.

The AI does suck but for me beating this challenge first time with such a crappy start is rewarding for me.

Lost my capital before t50 to the Aztecs, thought I was safe because everyone was denouncing everyone and Montezuma came to me twice to DoW Shaka so I figured he'd do it eventually without me needing to bribe or join in. My second(new cap) was all ready in place down to the south near the wonder(can't think of its name atm) so I decided to keep playing. 3rd city on the new continent near the other mountain wonder(Uluru or Kili can't recall), 3rd city on the far side of the new continent to get the spices and dyes and 4th city on the coast to get lake Victoria.

I'm nearing t300 before I stopped playing trailing immensely in science, my happiness sucks since my cap is limited in food so monarchy ain't working too great. Honolulu has switched hands multiple times, Me->Monte->Poland->Shaka->Poland->Japan(soon). The Aztecs got eliminated by Shaka before he died he came to me to ask how my empire didn't succumb to a barbarian invasion which I told him it had around 2000 years ago by some fool wearing a peacock on his head. England and Inca got wiped by Japan.

So now my SPT is starting to rise but I'm far behind in techs(I think 15+), GPT is meh, did manage to build Colossus super late but couldn't use any trade routes for 30ish turns because I was across the ocean and Carthage has a stranglehold on city-states so DV is out the window. Only chance is tourism victory but I need Shaka and Japan to stop fighting each other and take out Poland(insane amount of culture). DomV ain't happening lol.

Might try to finish but lost interest in playing from so far behind.

As others have said, this map was hard and I didn't really beat it straight up. I got a turn 289 double DOW from Carthage and England, with Dido dropping the hammer on me. After losing 1 city, being close to losing another city, and with the capital under heavy siege and doomed to fall eventually I reloaded turn 288 and payed a hefty tribute to both aggressors. It worked, and if I had been on my A game I should have started paying tribute to Carthage when she went Autocracy and had the number 1 military. EBeth hated me at the time, so I'm pretty sure she was the instigator. Since Dido attacked Casimir a few turns later for some horses and coal, I think she just wanted to put her military in the field.

So when saw the horrible marshes surrounding the start, I was immediately looking for someplace else to settle. My warrior saw ocean after moving, so I headed that way and settled on the silver. Early scouting revealed generally bad dirt in my area, and I didn't really see how settling in a marsh between Shaka, Casimir, and Monte would help me win a peaceful culture game.

I opened scout/scout/monument/scout/scout, gambling that the 3rd and 4th scouts would find enough ruins overseas to justify delayed expansion/infrastructure. I think they did their job, as I found a ton of ruins and was able to find decent expo sites on nearby islands pretty easily. The expos weren't very strong, but I think swimming over to the other continent would have delayed my national wonders too much and I didn't feel confident about being able to project enough of a military presence to secure safe landing spots for my settlers. As it was, I had trouble securing two of my three expo sites from barbs. Barbs were a real problem for me, and Nuku Hiva was 100% pillaged by a barb musketman at one point as I swam my limited military around fulfilling quests and taking out nearby camps.

I got my pantheon and first prophet from ruins, but I didn't see a decent pantheon around so I just went God King to help me get my settlers out. Early on, gold was pouring in nicely and I was able to rush in some unis. Then I hit a gpt wall, and struggled to stay in the black for most of the game. I broke into the Renaissance with Astronomy to get my ITRs going, as my growth was pretty awful. Plus I was really noticing the lack of city connection gold. I could have then gone for Acoustics and Sistine, but no one had founded the world congress yet so I thought I'd go for LToP and use the GE on Uffizzi instead. Plus, I didn't have a garden in my capital. I got beat to LToP by Shaka! who must have teched for it right after gunpowder. I could have easily built the Sistine as it turned out, but oh well. After that, I was struggling to keep my science/growth/gold... everything ... going. The start was slow, then I started to catch up and pass the AI in the Renaissance, and then I hit a brick wall when I ran out of good tiles to work in my expos. I fell behind, and didn't hit the Internet until 268 or so. Even then, I didn't finish all of my Tourism boosting buildings/policies until almost turn 300. But when I did, I had over 1000 tourism. It took 3 GMs to seal the deal, and 145gpt to get open borders from England (my gpt finally got right around turn 260 or so).

I somehow won the WF, but doing so killed my infrastructure building in my expos and put schools/factories on the back burner. I was absolutely embarrassed in the IG, and barely got Silver before they finished. Casimir built the Firewall, but he went into Freedom (he was going Diplo) before me and we had great relations so GM bombing him was never an issue. I actually stole two workers from him at the start, and got a DOF the turn after we made peace. We were BFFs, and the DOF was always immediately renewed.

From a public relations standpoint, I did a good job of keeping all of these maniacs warring with each other instead of me. That did have something to do with my gold issues, but not a lot. I saw every COD coming and bribed that person into war with someone else. Things were a little dicey when Shaka mopped up Monte (he swallowed up Pacachuti right away), he went Autocracy and suddenly didn't like me after recently asking for a DOF. The jerk GG bombed me twice, and after I got everyone else to dogpile him I jumped on too. I tried to take the Aztec city that owned my tiles, but 3 Xbows, 2 Infantry and 1 scary pikeman were pretty flaccid and couldn't seal the deal before Casimir did. I didn't really have the happiness ceiling, so I wasn't too upset. Dido didn't mass troops or anything before her T289 attack, so I was kinda blind-sided even though I had warning from my Diplomat that she was thinking about it. England was stuck on the other side of the map, so I wasn't even a little worried about her DOW or not, except for the loss of the tourism multipliers.

In the end, it was Moais FTW. I wouldn't have even thought of attempting culture with another civ given this dirt, but I had enough faith in Moais to try and ride it through to a late win. It helped that everyone was too busy killing each other to tech well, and no one thought science was important enough to even open Rationalism. I built the PT sometime after turn 250. My only other wonders were Sydney and Hubble (right at the end just because I could). Tonga was pumping a whopping 570 tourism with only a themed museum and no wonders. I put the NVC there, and it wasn't until the game was over that I realized I could have moved a piece of literature there and bumped up tourism another 6 overall. That wouldn't have made much difference though, as it all came down to having 10k musician bombs and staying alive.