The Deity Challenge Line-up #17 - Germany

Settled on the hill due East and met Denmark very quickly. Managed to get one (and only one) Worker from him and now he won't make peace. It's worrisome.

I decided to play Liberty this game, just because. It turned out to be a nice Liberty capital -- all the Cows around let you do some productive growth while waiting for Collective Rule to come into effect. I even found a Pop ruin to really kick it up. My capital is Size 7 at Turn 42, and I just finished Collective Rule a turn before.

It looks like forward-Settling Denmark will be the order of the day. I would like to jump on the Dyes tile SE of El Dorado (a wonder which I did not find first, as should be obvious by my singleton city). That city will be able to buy out to a Gold, securing me a pair of unique luxuries that I'll really need to make Liberty work.

The problem, of course, is the terrifying sight of an angry Danish Composite Bowman. My army looks like it's going to be getting quite the workout. So, I'm going to pick up a quick Library between Settlers and beeline Construction ASAP. My survival may depend on it.

*I have two ruins in sight that I'll pick up next turn. It was really, really hard to resist not clicking next turn just... once... more...

I continued expanding into Denmark, plopping Munich down in an interesting spot. Pasture culture was gone by the time I could choose a pantheon, which left me grabbing Stone Circles. Munich was settled to pick up two more Quarries, and also gives me a nice potential General use -- I can Citadel SW of the lake to pick up both Gems and Old Faithful from Melbourne.

I also settled a fourth city off on the west coast, and then placed one more in the path between myself and Ethiopia. With so many cities, it took a while to unlock the National College. I decided to use my Liberty finisher for a Great Engineer and rush it out, sparing me some much needed hammers. The College will go up on Turn 92, which isn't unreasonable.

The war against Denmark has been back-and-forth. I almost lost Munich at one point, although it wouldn't have been a huge deal since it was still size 1 and without any buildings. I fought it off and thought I could push toward Copenhagen... and then Harald built the Great Wall. Guhhhhhhh. I tried to push anyway and ended up losing three Composite Bowmen (including both of my upgraded Scouts) before retreating. Quite a demoralizing blow. I was premature about building roads into Harald's territory and he used them against me to get places I thought he couldn't reach. My army is still respectable, but I'm not taking Copenhagen anytime soon. I really, really wanted to decapitate Harald before Berserkers show up, but it looks like that's not going to happen. Current beeline is Civil Service -- I'm going to need Pikemen soon if I want to not-die.

The good news is that Ethiopia's awesome religion is all up in my lands -- Pasture culture, Pagodas, and Cathedrals? Yes, please! If I can get my faith up to buy these I should have a very high happiness cap. I have a lot of happiness in general, really, so if I do ever take some Danish cities I'll be able to comfortably absorb them into a wide empire.

I fought Denmark with Composite Bows for many turns, with little effect. Sometime before Berserkers, I was able to put enough pressure on Harald that he was willing to give me cash for peace. I took the deal and teched toward Crossbows. Going up against Berserkers with Composite Bows is simply not an option, and probably represents the easiest way to lose on this map.

The Crossbows came online in time, and war started up again on Turn 126. I took some time whittling down Harald's troops then citadel'ed my way into bombardment range. It took 17 turns of fighting and a rush-bought Trebuchet, and I was finally able to take Copenhagen on Turn 143.

At this point the game is in the bag, and I plan to go straight for Diplomatic Victory. Hanses + Treaty Organization seems like a fun thing to try. It'll be interesting to see how I finish. I've sunk a ton of hammers and gold into military and am slow on science, but now I have a bunch of cities and security. I've done well with City-States and have kept up strong Culture and Faith growth, so some demographics do look good.

It was at this point that I took a hard look at all the City-States and realized that there are no Maritimes. That kinda sucks, as Maritimes would be great for my wide, food-light empire. Buuut there are also a million Cultural City-States, so that's an interesting twist.

After taking Copenhagen, I surveyed the terrain and determined that further war with Denmark would be difficult. I did want to liberate Riga (turns out there WAS one Maritime city-state... it just got eaten), but I didn't have a good path to get there. So I took a quick peace deal for a few gpt. If I end up taking Volunteer Army I might engage in one more war to free Riga, but other than that I expect peace the rest of the way.

I decided to go for Industrialization before Scientific Theory. My cities were underdeveloped, and rush-buying Factories looked like it would be a good way to make up for lost time. If I could find Coal, it looked like Factories would come online right around the start of World's Fair, giving me a hammer boost at a crucial time and enabling an early ideology. I did find quite a bit of coal, but it also turned out that some obnoxious person had proposed Embargo City-States in the World Congress. Given my Hanses and dreams of Treaty Organization, this was clearly unacceptable. So I decided to spend my Factory-purchasing money on City-States instead, to secure votes an prevent a disaster. This slowed my ideology down significantly, and I was only able to get third pick... but neither of the others had taken Freedom, so I managed to get what I wanted. I also surprisingly won World's Fair, putting me in a very powerful spot.

I am currently teching toward Fertilizer, which I'll grab before going for Research Labs. I almost never do that, but in this case I have a wide, food-poor empire with a ton of un-irrigated land. So the food boost from Fertilizer should be unusually massive. We'll see how it goes. I think I may still be able to get a sub-260 win out of this one. I expect this to be my last update before finishing.

Build my first city one tile to the east.
Once my first city had a pop of two I bought a settler and planted my a second city SE to El Dorado. My third I settled on the Ocean near the wine. Settled the last two after NC, one at the sugar and the other to grab the two silver in the south.

Denmark: Grabbed a worker from Denmark at T5 and he would not make peace with me again for the next 100 turns or so. So I had to cope with raging barbarians and him. For the last majority of the war, I had a worker trap setup in front of his capitol, which worked quite nicely and kept me in control of the war. Finally made peace around T122, right before machinery and got 9 gpt out of it. This early war delayed him so much, that we was behind all game long, and no real thread anymore, even though he planned a sneak attack now and then. Once I send him off fighting the Maya, the second time he became friends with my buddy Ethiopia,and the last time I popped the freedom army tenet and that changed his mind instantly. I think I could have handled another war, but did not want to spend the money on upgrading my units (had everything from archers and cbs, to xbs to gatlings).

The war with Denmark gave me two GG. One I used to get two more gold tiles near el dorado, the other one to take the gems from Melbourne. With those I had plenty of resources and happiness all game long. (except for a very brief moment around 200, which resolved itself by trade deals of my surplus lux expiring and Ethiopia picking Freedom). I did not build any colosseums.

Research milestones:

T78 NC
T114 Education
T151 Porcelain Tower
T165 Scientific Theory
T216 Plastics
T249 Rocketry

Went Honor opener, full tradition, commerce opener, Rationalism (used finisher for nanotech), 6 Freedom, tried to get to Mercantilism, but was a few turns short. First WF was voted down (WTF), with nobody voting for and Denmark against it. Proposed it again (gave me lots of positive diplo mod again), but only got 2nd rank due to lack of factories.

Spaceparts: Hardbuilt one part, bought the rest for 2590 Gp each. I did miss the money to buy the last part (even after I sold all my whole army and workers). It might have worked out, if I would have redirected my trade routes to external ones. Hardbuilding delayed the win for 3 rounds.

A lot of my troops were occupying the south, so no AI would settle there, Two turns after I moved them (to sell them), the first new city was settled, and another turn later the next settler showed up...

T100:


T200:


Win:

After the few nearly identical games I was keen on trying something at least slightly different so total domination was in order while sticking with Industrial era units & techs but no boats or Arties. I also wanted to limit the # policy trees & Nationals so I ended up filling Liberty & Honor and rest in Order while building NC, AG & WG and skipping the rest incl. Oxford.

First 75 turns were battling with Harald & his endless units, few lovely barbs while being constantly unit capped or over the limit & barely growing at all. Got a pantheon & even a prophet but didn't found religion which seemed utterly pointless.
Cathy took Aarhus so I had to take Copenhagen on T75 but instead of DoWing me she sent caravans to me which felt awesome and I changed my plans to attacking Pacal instead of her.
T83 Pyramids as it was available, T92 denounced Cathy just to join the club, T99 CS, T102 Kame built Oracle which was quite a surprise as I had ignored it completely in company of Pacal and I DoWed Cathy as Pacal seemed friendly enough besides my road building there wasn't fast enough. T105 5C NC, T107 Haile the spy master and finally T113 Machinery so I could actually start attacking Cathy instead of just having an endless line of Pikes holding up to Knights & whatever. T115 Ethiopian WC and T116 Haile DoWed but his long march towards Berlin was seen decades before but his CS allies were more troublesome. Obviously my spy got killed in AA on 1st try after Haile promoted his by stealing from me at least twice like Pacal and once someone got away without leaving a card. Wasn't the last time & won't be the last that made me question the sanity of the ingame spying concept as AA had double beakers of Berlin.

T131 paid Kame vs Pacal & T138 Lizzy vs Harald but sadly Rammy just wanted to bath in sun. I was mainly just shooting stuff for xp as I had to switch the attacking & defending armies to have a chance to capture Haile's cities. T147 Addis Ababa & fairwell to Haile, T148 paid Lizzy to DoW Rammy, T149 after some recuperating DoWed Pacal, T156 RIP Russia & DoWed Kame at which point life seemed easy the only obstacle being the distance to London but as usual I was very wrong.

Pacal sent few settlers which were easily killed but Kame the Octomom were settling cities everywhere like there were no contraceptives at all so instead of 2 armies I soon had 4 running all over the place trying to catch the spawns of Polynesia; it surely wasn't a Mononesia so my previous reasonable estimation of ending before T200 was out of the window. Also, I should've switched to producing Knights/Cavalry much earlier than I did as attacking England was postponed.

T181 Palenque, T185 Honolulu, T227 London & T237 Thebes after dozens of long turns just moving towards east & suiciding against carpet of Longbows. Thebes despite of it's 92 def was much easier to take than ~65 def London but one of the problems were the 2 hiding-behind-the-lines cities which I had to take before the capital.

I quickly lost count how many cities I razed but I wasn't in double digit negative happiness for more than 10 turns so happiness was easily manageable than in previous games.

The start would've been better had I sticked with 4 pre-NC cities instead of 5 but I didn't want anyone else to settle there and in the latter stages I should've annexed at least capitals but I just didn't bother as it didn't seem necessary in anyway.
To stay in Industrial I for a change stopped running scientists and the 2 GSs that spawned are still hanging around like a GA. 3 GWs were used for culture as soon as I got an ideology.

The game lost much of it's meaning around ~150 but until that point it was fun. Harald with Honor spammed units so even without honor or any chance attacking anywhere I got the 1st GG on T51 and I was in real danger of losing a city given that it was settled on the hill for the purpose of being attacked. The not so fun part of early war was horsemen one-shotting my Archers & later CBs.

After Haile's departure the AI's teching was crap which helped quite a lot but by the time Lizzy upgraded Longbows to Gatlings life got much easier.

Plan is 3 city NC, start warring with Composite Bows, aiming for DomV in sub-T185
Policies: Liberty, then Commerce
Religion - ignore
Cities - 2 tiles to right for capital; 2nd city by El Dorado. 3rd city further North by wine. The main purpose of placing the 3rd city here is to speed up troop movement between capitals, though it had a new luxury and horses so a reasonable build regardless.

Timeline
T29 established first TR, with Denmark (the general plan was to get a TR to my first target by T40, intending to attack 30 turns later)
T48 established second TR, with Pacal (general plan was 2nd TR goes to my 3rd target by T55)
T52 trade route FROM Copenhagen started
T56-57 (not sure why it's less than 30 turns) 1st trade route moved, now munich to Palenque (my 3rd target)
~T58 Construction
T58 finished Liberty! --> GE --> T59 3-city NC
T60 DOW Denmark
*They were warring with Russia to the East. I used my scout to pillage the road East of their capital, slowing the return of troops while I took the capital. I also sacrificed my scout to draw Copenhagens fire. This went extremely well.
T63 captured Copenhagen
T64 I built Pyramids; Great Wall built by unknown (only unknown left was Egypt; GW was in Thebes)
T68 Denmark wiped out Russia
Note: if you have 1 General with spread out troops, try to attack from 1 area, move the general, then launch 2nd round of attacks, so they all get combat bonus
T73 barb camp south of Copenhagen gave me Composite Bow
T84 capture Moscow
*shortly after I captured Novgorod. I specifically targeted the cities that were en route to Polynesia, leaving Denmark with 3 cities. In the peace deal, they gave me 2 of these cities (which I burned); they had upset enough other civs that their final city was captured (by a CS, who burned it)
T86 Machinery. I have 12 Composite Bows and enough gold (>1200) to upgrade them all!
*general plan was to continue with 2 armies after Machinery, with the Western army heading to Ethiopia and then working it's way East, likely to help with the final capital, and the Eastern army continuing East
T97 finished Civil Service; going for Chivalry next and might not bother with Theology/Education
T101 Western army captures Addis Ababa (3rd capital): Petra is only wonder
T104 Eastern army captures Honolulu (4th capital): Hanging Gardens, Temple of Artemis, & Terracotta Army wonders
T107 Chivalry done; going to ignore education and tech along bottom part of tree
T114 Western army captures Palenque (5th capital): 3 religious wonders, Oracle, University
T127 Eastern army captures London (6th capital): Chichen Itza, Great Library, Parthenon. Wanted to make peace immediately, but have to wait 2 turns due to deal with Egypt (it was a whopping 2gpt), which isn’t nullified by our war, apparently
T132 unified army captures Thebes: Great Wall Angkor, and Mausoleum

I only had a couple Crossbows earn level 4 upgrades (Logistics) towards the end; this is one of the drawbacks of a quick game that doesn't go into Honour and a player that didn't bother to build any barracks.

I'm very happy with how I executed things. I only ever attacked cities that were on the way to a capital and quickly built roads to connect my puppets (annexed first 2 captures, made the rest puppets) and, when possible, build ahead.