The Deity Challenge Line-up #40 - Korea

the Zulu and the Greeks.

The accelerated start (worker, scout, AND mining?) felt like cheating, it enabled me to grab some land that wouldn't have been possible (lake Victoria coastal, but gave up the mountain). Even though the early game went very smooth, I made some mistakes (like the spot for my second expo) and I was soon low on happiness and low on GPT. In the classical era I had to sell 2 of my luxuries to get the Zulu off my back, and that put me in massive unhappiness, I couldn't even buy luxuries because there were none to sell and couldn't get any CS alliances (the quests did gave me alliances for a couple of turns, and friendship status with other CSs, but I didn't have any money to buy the influence required for the alliances). I had to get construction before Civil Service, which I normally don't do in a peaceful science game. Once I had colosseums, circuses and circus maximus set up the happiness was good, but that delayed me a lot.

I had a love/hate relationship with the Zulu, at first they were coveting my lands, even though they didn't now were they were. They marched a massive army consisting of CAs, Spearmen/Warrios, Archers and Catapults towards my capital and although I had 5 archers, one Spearmen and one Warrior I couldn't really defend because they were scattered in my cities which were really far apart. I bribed the Aztecs to Dow them, and that made the army retreat. After a while Zulu wanted friendly relationships with my empire (I don't really know what that means), they even sent me a caravan. We were pretty friendly up until ideologies when they started hating me again. They, alongside with the Greeks settled really close to me, and once the Open Borders treaty expired I couldn't get it back and lost the city connection to my third expo. In the end after denouncing the Greeks the Zulu became friendly again, gave me open borders for 2 GPT and even some aluminum which I needed because I hard built 2 parts.

I've never been in major wars, I dowed the Zulu to get and undefended Settler (in renaissance I think, it felt like poking the bear), and the Greeks in a joint dow with Shoshone, in the end the Aztecs dowed , but they didn't do anything. I just turtled and hoarded money to buy spaceships.

I had the lowest cultural and faith output out of all my games, I didn't even get a filler policy between Tradition and Rationalism (when I realized that I could get to renaissance before my next policy, I stopped working the writers guild). I got a pantheon (one with nature), which enabled me to get a religion, but I soon lost the pantheon in the expo, and I never enhanced my religion (it was pretty bad anyway, tithe + food from shrines and temples). I did manage to get 1000 faith to buy a scientist late game, so the initial shrine wasn't totally useless.

I didn't get any early wonders, got beat to Oracle. I also wanted LToP, PT and Big Ben but they were gone pretty fast. Late game I got Eiffel Tower, SoL, Hubble and the Neuschwanstein.

All AI capitals were set to 3 pop with Granary and Water Mill, and 5 extra ruins scattered in their neighbourhood, except Cathy who was set to 2 pop because she was most likely to get DF.

As I said before in another post the dude in the NE (Persia) went off of a tradition/commerce/rationalism start, got every important wonders such as LToP, PT, BB. I wasted quite a few hammers trying to compete with him on those. Maybe the starting advantage combined with tradition totally snowballed him. In the end, he got punished since I bribed Alex against him and he eventually lost his capital and got reduced to 6 pop. Just like history when Alexander conquered Persia.

The only early wonder I managed to get was Hagia Sophia for the extra prophet which I used to enhance religion. My religion was a growth + mosque, but wasn't relevant since only my capital kept my religion. Monty and Cathy would battle over the religion in my other cities. Cathy's was monasteries which was great for the culture, plus Jesuit education, which wasn't that great since faith cost was too high. Monty had the happy temple religion which was also nice since I needed the happiness.

Nobody went Freedom, so I used faith GE to rush SoL to save some hammers. The only other wonder built was Hubble, where there were again no competition, none of the AI in the era yet.

I wanted to experiment with how wide I can possibly go, so after the 4 city NC around turn 78, settled 2 more cities to the East of Seoul. Of the original 4 cities, 3 of them including cap had a mountain. The other is on LV. The additional cities settled was one on coast and the other on river/mountain. The coastal one would feed my LV city if needed. (It never did since I ran into happiness cap very soon afterwards.) I build coliseums as soon as they were feasible, and eventually zoos. When I was building zoos, finally got enough gold to buy and coup CS and that fixed my happiness problem for a while. Later I had to trade lux for 28gpt to keep happy once ideologies come into play. Stadiums were built in some cities just in case near the end.

In the end, my capital had 37 pop and other cities 25-30, I had to stop growing some of the other cities to help generate gold for buying SS parts. My end Bpt was 2116 which would increase to 2185 when on research focused and working the correct tiles. It accounts for 3% or so increase.

I settled LV city no problem, but had to block Pocatello's from settling the 2 eastern spots. Eventually he got a city south of Seoul, but it was well out of range anyway. Alex on the other hand settled a city unexpectedly without any lux/resource just north of Seoul on the lake, and eventually GG bombed stole my horse. He was a pain in general with the CS thing and also stole my citrus on my NW city. He was hated by every AI due to the wars I bribed him against, and eventually I had to denounce him to gain favor from other AI. Cathy hated me very early on in the game and I had to bribe Shaka and eventually Alex to soften her up. In this game her tech rate was horrible for some reason, maybe because of the lack of expos for her. Shaka was really scary in this game, was at war with every other AI at some point and still survived mostly intact. I didn't try to manage diplo with him since he had to go through Cathy to get to me anyway, so eventually he was hostile towards me. But at some point, he wanted to DoF me but of course I refused. Stay friends with Oda and Pocatello through the game, both were very loyal which wasn't expected, especially from Oda. Monty/Darius didn't hate me but wouldn't ever trade more than 6gpt for some reason. I have no army other than 2 scouts, 2 archers/CB and 2 late gifted units, so bribing is all that's needed to avoid war.

One thing I didn't know is you can build a SS part partially, then cancel it and buy the same part to get refund on the part. It may help squeeze out some extra cash if you don't have enough time to build the part.

Just need to pick a scapegoat. This is both the easiest and most ingenious diplomacy I ever had in this game. All I did was paid Alex to war with literally everyone, so that they can all hate him and like me. I still have DoFs with Darius, Cathy, Shaka, Oda and Poca. All I did was denounce Alex at one point. A safe buffer of Cathy on side and Poca on t'other means neither Alex nor Monty would ever get to me.

ALL maritime city states got eaten though so I could only grow using smokes and mirrors, but now with Civil Society and Fertilizer, I'm likely going to finish with 45-ish pop.

One thing I'd like to ask, is it worth to buy and plant a Prophet to get science from him and have him pay himself off by not delaying the faith scientist a lot