The Deity Challenge Line-up #33 - Songhai

This is my third map and it seems that the first two were rated easy and I agree that the Russian Map was very easy for whatever a player wants to do with that map. The England map was easy but a little more on the tricky side for Domination and a little bit too much work for me to get into Longbows when I had a wall of water on one side and a wall of CS goodness on the other so for me it was a no-brain turtle game.

This game is harder but a little more annoying to me. I would like to get the War Machine rolling but I opted to play a tech game and friendly on all fronts. The one thing about this game that I am happy about is that I was able to block any sort of city spam from The Hunnic Empire with my one little warrior and I brought over an archer as well trying to take out a barb camp that I was late to. I bribed him to war with Germany so that should keep him busy and it seems he didn't try to expand to his West and is playing Friendly with my only DOF Morocco.

My NC was around turn 85 and I had to rush buy 3 Libraries which is unusual but I wanted to try to get a religion and my other expos just didn't have much in the way of growth or production. I guess all this jungle will be nice now that I have EDU on turn 111 and rush bought the University.

I would of enjoyed trying to take down England in the early game but she was too far and I find her easier to deal with after getting the tech advantage on her so I gave her a free lux and some gold and my 1st Trade Route to get her to ally me but no avail just yet. She did send me two Trade Routes and I took mine out of her to start sending food to Gao. She seems to have taken over Austrias capital.

Went for the easy route here: GWBs -> Bombers -> XCOM. This is an average result since I knew the map. I wasn't sure whether to go for CV or Domination until t170. I like air forces since the conquest speed is very fast once Radar is researched - especially if GWBs have been piling in the experience.

Flight 183 (Radio earlier)
Radar 213

The first war was GWBs against Renaissance England. Those Longbowmen are obsolete, Liz:



By the time of the Indian war, bombers are speeding up the pace of conquest:



Nice triple XCOM final capture with Bomber support from land and sea:

Had a good start with a culture ruin and 1 or 2 pop ruins. Stole workers from england,austria and 2 from Sydney.
First time around i played sloppy (it was late) buying one library in my 4th city in the north before realizing
that the other in the south took quite some time to finish library there.I also had quite a few problems with barbs from the 2 camps in the south,
it was tricky to hold the wine and horses there. Especially when horsemen arrived. Archers are very vulnerable to quick horsemen and 2 archers is
not really enough to hold against that.
So around T60 i decided to reload from trick 30 the next day but i played far enough to experience that double dow on trick 80 just when i started NC.
I wonder how dangerous that dow really is as Atilla was still fighting Germany and Liz had just made peace with Theresa so her army was nowhere in sight.

Anyway next time around i planned better, founding the city in the north first, not (much) barb problems there and this city has much better production.
Instead of watermills and 2 early caravans i delayed sailing and prioritzed archery->writing this time. Game went much better now, finished 4 city NC around T80 (instead of starting it).
And this time i had 6 archers on the map instead of 3. I was kind of looking forward to that dow as with NC finished i had room to build a lot more archers
and i had the money to upgrade to CB. But this time no dow. As a result i'm in a good position now T100.
Edu was in T97 and i bought universities in Gao, Taghaza. Still made (at least) one mistake i had enough archers
this time to hold the horsemen at bay but it would have been so much easier if i had built one spear.

Will build a fifth city near the fishes and the marble when i have a worker free to connect the marble, have money for a lighthouse and a cargoship from compass prebuilt. I also need
some more happy from either connected ai lux/mercantile cs or circus/colosseum. I'm in doubt about the faith mountain spot,
the expansionist in me says grab it but apart from the faith mountain there's
not much there, a citrus everyone has and cow and a whole lotta jungle. It's also close to Atilla, this must be a bad idea. I should have scoutet that region earlier,
i would have seen the land isn't that good for another city and i would have built Thagaza one tile to the east.


CV and SV are good both good options from here as i am probably in time for all the renaissance wonders. And i have to choose now, CV -> aesthetics here, SV -> patronage.
What would (objectively) be best from here? Also Atilla is quite agressive but is it normal that Liz declares war so early and so often? She was Theresa's throat
round trick40 and has just declared for a second time on the austrian lady.

It wasn't a pure science game - I built the Sistine Chapel thinking I might want a CV. There was also more than the usual investment in units and upgrades. I also messed up the Modern era transition. I wanted World Ideo as the 2nd vote and so rushed Radio (t153) just before the vote - unfortunately the next Proposals went in before the Industrial Era vote tallies and so I was left out of power. Misplay there. Flight can be reached before t170 on this map, but I guess GWBs also need some nicely developed cities.

Nice opening For a good CV I look for plenty of beakers (check) and good production cities (check). The CV competes more directly with the AIs and some of these games show a strong Morocco. SV is fine as well, but you don't have any observatory cities so chasing a fast time (sub 230) could use the 5th and/or 6th city. My games don't usually commit to a VC until the first World Congress proposal or the decision to build the Sistine Chapel. Pisa is very useful for both but the GE option is a lot more attractive to a CV, so that is another decision point.

You are solidly in a winning position for either, but, objectively, I think this is a relatively superior position for a CV.

Nice job with the England game. I'm glad a few dozen games more experience has kept me a whole turn ahead of you I agree with you on Order, until the SV starts to dip below t215 - at that point the production bottleneck starts to get harsh with Order. All the recent sub 200s I've seen posted have been Freedom games.

Edit: Liz is usually quite peaceful. The only thing I can think of is that she likes to expand, and is a little cramped up there. She is more likely to be Guarded and Hostile than most...

I agree about VC. Thinking the game over i also came to the conclusion that no observatory is a pointer SV may not be the best way to go forward. I'm ahead of my England game right now but that'll fade since i will go 5 cities here where i had 7 + observatory in the England game. I can probably not beat my SV time there.

CV is interesting, first game from the forum i played was the Russia game where i did CV. Didn't post about that one, got CV around T240 iirc. See if i can beat that time there. May not be easy since the Russia map was fantastic and Morocco is quite strong in my game.

Indeed i couldn't beat your SV time in the England game. I replayed it 3 times also for practice. First time i messed up just researched and bulbed the techs without thinking too much about the order. I believe SV time was just before T240 then. Took a good look at the tech tree and read up on some issues, replayed from plastics, managing T226 with quite a lot to do at the end.

At that time i read about your SV time so i played it a third time from plastics to see if i could beat it This time i bulbed a bit faster to Apollo so i could have 2 minor cities finishing a part in time. This made the end game much easier At T224 i bulbed PF but didn't get the tech that turn although i had the beakers. Some of the beakers listed only come in next turn. With even more mm i would have been able to get that right. Luckily i realized by then that i could only buy my last GE this turn so i could only use it T225 and there was really no way around that, relief that i didn't have to go through it a 4th time

A totally standard 3 city tradition with a turn 75NC and an early tithe/pagodas/production/messiah religion due to Kailash. Picture 2 shows my cities several turns later. First food caravan to the cap and the rest to Morocco for good science and gold.

Atilla settled an early city on my side of the mountains so I expected trouble. Lizzie wouldn't make peace after an early worker steal and attacked me on about turn 100; upon seeing her units I had to bribe Attila to attack Bismarck or he'd probably have hit me from behind. I fended off England and DOW'd Attila on turn 143 once I'd hit Chemistry for cannon [Picture 3]. Here I took my time taking his 3 cities due to needing cavalry for the mountain choke point [Picture 4]. His cap fell several turns after that screenshot in a rather uneventful fashion.

I Oxforded Dynamite on T166 (2GS bulbs beforehand) and that's when the real war started. Morocco was the clear target and I sent the majority of my units to attack him and some to attack England, which was a mistake (see above-mentioned Berber Cavalry ridiculousness). This was my reload moment; about 10 turns back in order to send 100% of my army at Morocco. Despite this focused attack I still lost a good few cavalry units to him. His cap eventually died on turn 185 after I had fought my way through 3 of his other cities [Picture 5].

Here I split up my forces and just over half went back north to England, Germany and Venice. The rest went north and assaulted an already broken India, who had had his lands laid waste to by Morocco. From there they continued further north as fast as possible to take Vienna off England. Vienna had Notre Dame, the Forbidden Palace and the Great Wall, and thanks to my minus ~5 happiness I needed it before taking more cities. -4 to +17 was a decent happiness swing [Picture 6]. Those units then stayed around Vienna and lured Lizzie's army away from London.

I had built a road from Gao to London, so my units soon got there and started attacking. Her army was full of annoying +1 range Gatlings, who'd have guessed? Her army score was almost 300k but I'm assuming a lot of that was ships, as she captured Jenne a few turns before the end of the game with a monstrous naval assault. That was far too late to any effect on the game though and London was conquered anyway [Picture 7].

Venice was a walk in the park as always. Enrico had been at war with Bismarck because I made it so, and mostly had pikemen left to defend. I didn't expect him to have much, so I only sent 5 artis, 2 rifles and a cav across the sea [Picture 8].

Germany, on the other hand, was no pushover. Not so much his army, which mainly consisted of rifles, but the 2-tile choke point that had saved him against Attila. A couple of citadels were needed to push my way through. I actually managed to use the other Songhai UA War Canoes after a couple of units went for a watery frolic too close to his cities. Berlin died on turn 207 like Venice and London [Picture 9].

Picture 10 shows my cities at the end of the game. Note the clear lack of Jenne

Techs: Philosophy ---> Education ---> Machinery ---> Chemistry ---> Dynamite.

Social Policies: Tradition 6, Commerce 6, Patronage 2.