Deity Challenge #14 - India

The biggest setback was losing Mumbai, the city with the Oracle, to the Americans, because they got B-27 bombers while I had no Flight. I decided to go for a peace deal and bunker down regardless. Peak culture was 780 per turn with Mumbai, then 750 per turn afterwards. I mined on top of some of the landmarks in order to get a 7 turn Utopia. Was a real nailbiter as both France and Russia were very close to completing their spaceships. In the end I paid everybody to go to war with everybody and DOW'd Catherine and Napoleon myself for good measure. Have no idea exactly how close I came to losing, but it was close.

Domination VC will only happen when the 2nd continent has no other cities but yours & CSs. Later starters are encouraged to follow this instead of the original if any.

After taking Washington I decided after all go peacefully as Cathy was massive and I had no adjacent cities to her also Attila was too on the other side of two CSs and a lake and impossible to bribe to war, very odd indeed.

Befriended with Nappy, Gustavus & Dido so I got 3RAs going on from T115. Build two settlers one to settle on the coast and one to sail overseas as soon possible, around T120 accompanied by two caravels, a conquistador, an IWE and scouts. Unfortunately I didn't find the shortest way across the sea and the distance was greater than expected so I had to postpone discovering industrial for some 12-14 turns as I founded the 5th city on T154 & hit industrial then two turns later. Cathy went there T139 so I was slowly catching up but she had way more techs than I did. Few turns after that I bought a settler and went North towards the desert area to settle for oil as soon as it was available, alumininium was around so I wasn't too worried.
Finished PT on T158, got RA with Sully, too and was 3rd on Literacy only 3% behind Cathy just after RAs but 10 turns more & she'd runaway again up to 10% so some decently impressive bpt without RAs as she fighting 4 wars simultaneously - I wasn't totally innocent for that but what annoyed me seriously is the AIs skill to collectively play against me while they're with each other. Nappy had 3 times the military Cathy, Sully & Attila had and yet Attila does absolutely nothing, Nappy hugs the border but nothing more while Cathy mops the floor with Sully & still manages to settle on every freakin' tile around. This and running away with tech which isn't visible on the battlefield nor had she as much money or gpt than the rest of the bunch. In total I paid Nappy for times to attack and none of those made any new cities availlable in Tour de France. He took two Askia's original cities in their 1st war.

Cathy went Modern on T183 while others were dropping off the pace significantly and went renaissaince few turns after that. England was downt to two cities, Dido played OCC and somebody had released Washington out of his misery Sully having crappy cities all around me.
Finished Louvre T189 to have some GA time later after a natural one which was tricky and slow to achieve but it did nice things to my mediocre cash flow. Plastics @T191 but I build instead of buying RLs apart from one - apparently the cash had better things to support. Cathy went Atomic T205 and finished Manhattan & Apollo practically right after that so I bulbed few GSs and bought a GE with faith to get Hubble T228. A change of focus even at this would give a launch date somewhere around T250-T260 but that's beside the point. Cathy was building parts so a war was imminent unfortunately she also had the largest military so I couldn't get anyone else to go along with me.
Initial nuke fest to get rid of the closest cities and nukes but it's inconvenient due to the nearby CSs and Ottoman cities and moreover their units - I really didn't need two front wars at this point.
As I left it last night I was (slowly) capturing Russian cities around Moscow while nuking Moscow occasionally the keep it unoccupied while my few bought SBs & cruisers were hammering local Russia settlements - not real military resistance there but the cities 150+ def takes a while. As I couldn't keep nor needed anymore crap cities I liberated few for Sully hoping that he'll get on my side sooner rather than later. On the other continent I ran into problems with captured cities as I couldn't raze them constantly as it'd put me double digit negative which I can't afford yet but I can't keep them either so I circumvented the rule which I didn't clarify clearly enough - capture, annex & sell or capture & give away. Two possible solutions neither one which I'm happy about but for plausibility I might have to do. The original idea & my rule from the past was that annexed city can be sold after the resistance period is over - giving cities away is a meh, uncertainty.

Policywise two Patronage fillers after Tradition, Rationalism open T133, then 2 in Order, back to Rationaslism for Secularism, Patronage left side and the last one yet to Free Thought. An odd path but I had way too few worker throughout so I've lacked trading posts and therefore money.

This might go for a while as I hope none of the others are going for early sci VC so I'll have some time to kick Cathy around. If possible I want Nappy to engage the war and help him out in taking Moscow so I don't have to clear the other continent. After that it'd be a 3 horse race between me, him & Attila which is much probable to end satisfactory.

Some difficulty value added by graphics in start of the war.



I assumed this meant Cathy was one short of space ship so nuking Moscow & surroundings become increasingly temptive.

Wow this map is already trying my patience. Turn 40 and Washington forward settles on both the salt and pearls. Declares war on Turn 50. Took the cotton and decide to play it out a bit to see if it is salvageable He gets great wall, hits Renaissance on turn 80, and since he had long swords I assume it is likely minutemen. Quit the game.

No problem, try again just need to be a little quicker. Washington settles his fourth city on the salt at turn 34, 2 turns before I would have been able to take it. Sigh...

Hey, third times a charm, right? Manage to get four cities up, but a double DoW by both Washington and Suleiman. Not overly concerned, but then a barb sneaks in from the back and pillages all my tiles. /ragequit... enough for one night.

I haven't given up on this map yet, at least not until I can give it one good attempt. Washington being a complete jerkface isn't making it easy though. I don't know if I should be amused or annoyed that it was Washington in my last India game that was a roadblock as well.

Yeah, Georgie boy was really trying to kick the natives out of their lands - 6 cities before T50 and still settling new locations when I took his cities instead of building units to defend. Sadly those cities were nowhere near luxes but later it turned out that there where oil & uranium.

Whether or not my game works out as a win I'm gonna test the same ruleset on std 8/16 (or possibly 8/20) map which in theory seems much easier now - even with the annoying graphics bugs and a new bug at least to me. After clearing fallouts from flood plains they turned into normal desert tiles with an adjacent river; not so cool when trying get the pop back.

Mining was the first lux tech, Masonry the second, Calendars the third, and Trapping the last. As I recall, I went Philosophy before Trapping. At capital size 3, with a granary (scout - monument - granary - settler - settler), I hard built 2 settlers consecutively. I was negative happiness for a short time after founding the second city. I mined the salt first and brought the worker down to work the quarry for the marble after that. I put the third city on top of the cotton. After taking care of per-city unhappiness, I was pretty much in the clear for avoiding negative happiness. The second city, on a hill next to salt, built a library first, and the library was bought in the third. I may have had some whales or something in there too, from a city state...

Well, I think this map is beyond me. After a few reloads and a 400 gold bribe to my bro Atilla to keep Washington off my back, I was able to actually get it going. 79 NC, 115 Unis. The point I am at in the game now is actually very similar to the first one you posted, Grendel. I have all of Washington puppeted D ), although I've managed to keep Ottomans mostly off of that part of the continent. The others are fairly crippled or contained.

Problem is time. I think a regular domination game with zero rules would be pushing it, so not sure how the hell I'd be able to get a settler to the new world, clear out the Ottomans, clear the new world of Huns, then swing back again to finish off Huns all within 100 turns.

I'll look at the map again later, but I think it would take a much better player than myself to pull it off.