The Deity Challenge Lineup - Game #8 - Mongolia

Laying the foundation

The plan is to go 6 city Freedom. At this point I have 4 cities, London + 3 self founded. I immediately switch to building two settlers and found cities 5 and 6 within 10 turns. I hope that I can get these late cities up and running fast enough so they both spawn a GS.

My biggest challenge early is catching up on culture, fast. My start of 4 points in tradition and 3 in honour is not ideal. I need to finish tradition in order to grow and get to Secularism ASAP, which will dictate how fast I can get through the rest of the tree. I befriend two cultural CS, hit a golden age and then pop a great writer. This allows me to finish Tradition at T116. This is also the same turn I research Education.

Diplo is a problem too. Even though most of the AI is listed as "Friendly", they won't renew my trade deals and my GPT/happiness takes a big hit. Luckily everyone is at war due to my earlier bribing. Alexander presents a good opportunity to take some of the heat off me when he captures Lhasa + 2 Incan cities. I denounce him on T124 and everyone loves me again. Unfortunately the next turn I get war dec'd by Alex and Attila.

Genghis the liberator

The unfortunate part of this war is that Alex is basically allied with every CS around me, including my 2 cultural friends. This delays Secularism significantly and prevents me from using cargo ships until very late. If I had the foresight to ally even one cultural CS beforehand it would have helped a lot. Regardless, I send 6 Keshiks and 2 Khans down towards Lhasa to free it. It's a slow process due to lots of jungle on my side, while Alexander has a clear path from his end. I liberate Lhasa for the first time around T135. It changes hands many more times before Alex finally runs out of units.

After securing Lhasa's freedom I move down south to liberate the Incan city of Machu on T163. Sadly Alex kills my lone melee pikeman shortly after and my fight against oppression must come to an end soon. If I had built a horseman or two I could have kept going and gotten a better peace deal. Oh well. I take 17 GPT (meh) for peace on T175. I hope that I have crippled Alex enough so that he and the Incans keep each other busy for the rest of the game.

I end the war with 8 Keshiks. Only one died due to a mistake on my part. 6 of them have range + logistics + march. Not bad.

Freedom Keshiks at work on T159-
Culture/tech timings: I open Rationalism on T133, and hit Secularism much later than I would have liked on T153. I research Public Schools ~T163 and World's Fair starts on T166. Bad timing leaves me no choice but to shift all of my production into WF before building schools. I Oxford into Radio on T171 and complete World's Fair on T179. It was a slow process because the AI barely helped me. Only Poland got a silver medal. World's Fair completion allows me to start the next phase of the game where I really pull away.

World's Fair production on T179-

Keshiks in space

Compared to the eventful turns earlier I spent a lot of time just hitting enter at this point. I never came close to another war.

World's Fair was insanely useful. It led to something like 5 policies within 20 turns. I used the free policy on Universal Suffrage. Then making friends with the three cultural CSs and a golden age pushed my culture per turn to 250+. I popped two Great Writers during this time, opening Commerce for Big Ben and getting to 5 points in Rationalism. From here it was your typical Freedom science game, minus a couple policies in Commerce for cheaper parts, and not as many RAs. I only managed to sign 3 or 4 because I couldn't risk more than two DOFs at once.

Diplo status on T195-
I researched Plastics on T204. Bought one lab, built 5. In the end, I bought all 6 SS parts at a total cost of 15k gold. Gold was never an issue with rich AI. I could have bought the parts 15 turns earlier no sweat if I needed to.

Generated 14 total.

12 Great Scientists.
- 7 naturally spawned
3 from capital
1 from second city (very close to #2)
2 from third city (PT + high production for early science buildings)
1 from 4th, 5th and 6th cities
- 3 from wonders (PT, Hubble)
- 2 from faith

Planted my first 2 GS
Bulbed 2 to start on Apollo earlier
Bulbed 2 to hit Rocketry in order to use last rationalism policy on Nanotechnology
Bulbed the rest in the last 4-5 turns for max beakers to finish the tree

I miscalculated my science at the end and ended up close to 10k beakers over. I would have finished ~6 turns earlier with better math.

2 Great Engineers. 1 faith bought used on Statue of Liberty. 1 naturally spawned used on Hubble.

Built 7 wonders, Oracle, Machu Pichu, Sistine Chapel, Porcelain Tower, Big Ben, Statue of Liberty and Hubble, in that order. The only one that I missed was Leaning Tower of Pisa. Casimir beat me there by 3 turns. With a more efficient opening I would have gotten it for sure. No LToP hurt a lot. It meant 1 less early GS and possibly 1 less spawned GS. This alone cost me an easy 10 turns on the finish because the major bottleneck at the end was in science and GS generation.

Unfortunately none of the religions near me took Jesuit Education for a reformation belief (I can only dream...). I ended up with some cities having Sacred Sites, which was semi useful, and some with To the Glory of God which was useless.

Freedom Fighters is a very underrated policy for any victory type IMO. The 6 Foreign Legion (maintenance free!) guaranteed peace at the end of the game so I could focus on the task at hand. Monty actually switched from "Friendly" to "Afraid" the turn after I took this policy, which I found hilarious.

Long writeup. Hopefully someone finds it helpful/interesting. This is a good example of where Freedom clearly beats Order in science, even though the game doesn't exactly lend itself to that victory type in the first place with Mongols and aggressive AI. Despite this, if I had planned for it from the beginning and executd a more focused opening I'm sure I could have achieved a respectable ~T230 or better SV.

Afraid Montezuma asking for a DOF-

Final turn-

Final demographics-

T88. Unlike most people, who seem to have gone after Liz first, I stole a worker and a settler from Monty and remained at war at him until I wiped him off the map at T82. I have a huge mass of units and will make them all Keshiks as soon as I hit chivalry in a few turns. But Liz has the Great Wall so I hope that doesn't make things too difficult for me.

My only problem is I only settled 3 cities and went liberty, so I may have problems in the renaissance keeping up with tech. If I can take London and Athens by T120 I think I should be OK.

But we shall see.

Poland nearly achieved CV at turn 321, but Monty defended his culture for 20-30 turns.

I selected "Spaceflight Pioneers" at turn 317, and I bulbed GE to build a SS engine.

I say weird for several reasons. One is that the map and location is not really for SV. And this must have been the 1st game where I've payed so much to AI civs. Pretty much nonstop bribes to 2-3 civs to fight someone else. Seriously what is wrong with England Also I have never seen so many wars in one game. It was fun

Anyway, I took 2 Aztec cities and then started playing standard SV game. I was the 1st to take Order. Huns and England took Order too but Poland, Inca and Greece took other policies. So everyone except Huns hated me and refused to trade luxuries. I had some serious happiness problems at the end of game and barely managed to stay positive. Had to build Neuschwanstein and a few castles. Had to buy a few stadiums too. And that is with 2 mercantile CS and all happiness tenets.

At one point aluminum was a problem but managed to get 4 pieces from England and 30 turns later extend the contract. Then got some more from CS.

PT, Sistine, Eiffel, Broadway, CN tower, Oracle, Kremlin, Hubble, Neuschwanstein, Manhattan (the plan was to buy nukes to scare AI but could not get uranium).

Tradition, Patronage Opener, Rationalism, Order.

Religion was from AI but faith was a problem and I bought only 1 GS. Timing was fine though since sattelite cities had to built spaceship in ~27 turns anyway. Finished my last part with GE from Order's 3rd level tenet.

Thanks for the map

Got off to a slow start, too passive. Settled the hill. B/o was scout, scout, worker, granary, caravan, settler, chariot archers 'til doomsday. Built one worker, stole another from barbs. Only two workers for two cities made everything slower than it should've been. Waited too long for pottery. Built one settler, got a decent location south with salt.

Went full tradition. Wish I'd done some Honor.

I paid Monty to DoW Liz around turn 70. He took a few of her cities, but still DoW'd me in the 80's. I defended with chariot archers, but his unit spam has continued nonstop. I got NC ~80, then beelined Chivalry, which I got ~106. Now with keshiks I'm moving bit by bit into his territory. Think I'm too late to win dom with keshiks. Not sure whether I'll try with artillery or attempt some other condition.

Interesting game, beautiful starting territory plus aggressive neighbors.

Stupid map, interesting civ set hampered by the map, too good start, way too many horses so it clearly needed some extra rules to slow things down at least a bit.
Pangaea doesn't need navy, domination doesn't need Honor nor much anything else from culture so no cpt buildings apart from monuments, no CSs will be harmed unless they're on my lands and clearly total domination is the way to go. Policies in general were few so staying away from the more reasonable choices was easy, Exploration was opened on T186.
Staying away from religion was somewhat involuntary as I did build early shrine but wasn't lucky enough to get a prophet. Faith was used only for Pagodas & Mosques.

With that many horses Genghis is ridiculously OP even though it took ages to get logistics but based on this play and quite a few with Harun I'll stick with my view that CA is better unit than Keshik or at least suites my style better. Not that the glory days of Keshiks is much beyond T150 but still it lacks some kick against cities especially when under negative happiness. CAs effective life span is way longer than that of Keshik's.



Since I don't play Tradition Liberty was a natural choice. Settled on the hill over the river, teched AH first and was disappointed with the endless horses. T12 stole 2 workers from Lizzy, sold horses to Monte to keep him happy and Pacha offered DoF on
T35. Liberty settler ready to conquer the salt flats and Monte had the same idea but active hugging turned him away. T39 Earth Mother pantheon and two more cities before T50.

Monte DoWed Lizzy T58 and went straight for London so I took York in a peace deal and started waiting the fall of London - bad move. The 5th city was too much, Pacha didin't pay full price and Alex & Attila DoWed me on T62. London went down to 0 hp quickly but jaguars apparently didn't have a city capturing bonus in their contract so they went home while Lizzy eventually killed all the catapults.
I was expecting some Hunnic & Greek troops to shoot at but nobody came apart from two Greek scouts destroying my trade routes.




T81 missed Oracle by 1 turn so Liberty finished was postponed. T84 4C NC, T85 Civil Service and T90 jaguars came hugging my borders and denouncement didn't stop him this time so DoW came T93 which really came few turns too soon. I had to buy walls, he pillaged 8 horses and most of my chariots were way down South hunting non-existent Huns. Lizzy was also hugging the border but didn't DoW probably because she was still in war with Monte.
T95 Liberty GS but it took a while before I managed to plant it. T99 Chivalry and 8 Keshiks ready to spread doom.




T102 Maria started spying as usual but I sent mine to Warsaw. T108 white peace with Greeks - still no troops from him but his CS allies were more than annoying. T113 Education which was decent.
Took a city from Attila and all his troops finally came out in the light - Kuelap was 'defended' by a single HA. Pacha did like even less me buying tiles into his border for forthcoming GG bomb and I really disliked his troops' direction of movement so I sold him a map of Greece and gave some spending money. I also paid Casimir to make a trip in Portugal.



T118 AC captured the hardest obstacle being the river.




T119 Poland denonced me and Maria followed a turn later. I refused Pacha's sudden DoF so he made one with Monte so taking Tenochtitlan T121 probably didn't please him but I hoped at least some his troops were enjoying Greek beaches by now so I denounced T122 and DoWed a turn later as I wanted GW before going any further.




T125 stole Banking to get into Renaissance and T127 Poland founded WC.
Cusco fell with ease as the local road helped a lot but preventing recapturing while killing melee took some extra turns and I assume all the horses had been eaten earlier.




T132 Maria was wiped off by Casimir so T133 I gave him a monetary incentive to go after Alex or more likely his CS allies and I DoWed Poland T137 but I was badly prepared to face the Hussars, Keshiks are too squishy against them. Burned the first city while building road behind Lodz and allied with Geneva took have at least half of back safe. After capturing sold it to Alex which backfired, again, as he made peace with Casi so I had to build roads on Alex's territory to have any shots on Warsaw but luckily Poland wasn't the the powerhouse I expected or more likely his frigates were mostly hiding out of sight due to sudden lack of iron.
T140 Belgrade finished Monte off the map, T148 I started my perpetual GA which helped quite a bit with my slight money issues. The income was decent but I had to give tons of money to keep my CS allies while gathering a nice pot to steal Alex's allies just before DoW. To my surprise Alex wiped Pacha off T152 so I paid him to go after Lizzy.

T154 Warsaw fell much easier I had re-plan the end game as I thought Alex would be much easier than Casimir which really wasn't the case by now. Krakow had Petra so I kept it and gave two cities to Attila who razed them as expected. Attila was kept in the game purely for his willingness to raze foreign cities.




T165 Lisbon taken so I made peace with Poland as I wanted more CS allies before going for Alex. T166 got spotted while stealing Acoustics from Alex so I took 5 CSs from him & DoWed on the spot to be on the safe side.




T169 DoWed Attila as well as his border expansion was screwing my road network, took one city while Cahokia wiped him off T174 at which point It was time to DoW Lizzy - freakin' coups from 0 influence. Not that Lizzy would be much of a problem but London was much better located than Athens for the final city.
T174 hit Industrial and finished Tradition. I originally though I could avoid Industrial altogether but at some point Alex was rapidly running away on tech and WHussars were deadly against Keshiks which were impotent against cities under negative happiness so I started to ran specialists to get into Dynamite in a reasonable timeframe but as usually, I overestimated the AI.
Alex had tons of Knights but nobody is scared of them and very politely CS units stayed out of the way and my pre-emptively build roads on Lhasa's land were actually usable. With little more camikaze attitude I could've taken Mycenae way earlier and speed up the process a lot but as usual I liked my units too much besides I needed to stay on positive happiness as much as possible hence waiting CSs to capture if possible - I only needed to take down the defenses.



T182 Riga took Poland's last city and T186 I had to open Exploration.
T190 London is mine - and so were three last Greek cities hence the -22 and even found the last NW by capturing city. No SotLs but ~a dozen galleases that really hurts hence I palnted 4 GGs for the land units to kill themselves on while shooting only arrows.




Since I didn't culture buildings not too many policies. Liberty was finished in reasonable time and the I dumped the rest on Tradition without much of benefits as I didn't build any wonders, really didn't any more food, didn't have troops to spare for sitting in the cities and free aqueducts was 100 turns too late. Mainly I just wanted to avoid policy benefits after finishing Liberty.
About tourism I didn't bother moving a single GW and the one GW I accidentally created was used for ~450 culture. 3 GAs were used for a Golden Age T148 onwards.


Way, way too good start and too much mountain preventing expansion and interaction with various civs - the Inca had by the best position but somehow managed to screw it up. Lizzy and Maria had nowhere to go, Attila vs Casimir was an even battle from the start so Casimir stayed relatively small while Attila was just small behind the mountains and desert while Alex was blocked by the CSs like Monte so after I got the 2nd city out I was in no danger whatsoever.

Due to the unexpected peace with Lizzy before taking London postponed my war campaign some 30 turns. Without the peace deal I could've taken London around T65 and then head straight to Monte unlike other civs he isn't too keen on pikes and swordsmen are much easier to deal with so Tenochtitlan long before keshiks was in sight and then split troops in half killing Alex off early. After that just kill stuff depending on if I'd had anyone left to trade with. In total domination games Attila is always nice to keep alive.

Decent money, manageable happiness even without religious perks and for Liberty nice pop growth, too. Casimir started with Liberty while others went Tradition or Piety and last religion was taken somehere around T65.

Liberty 4 cities. Stole 2 workers from Aztec's forward city (4 tiles away from my cap...) and made peace. Yet, I found that his settler was going to "my" salt expo so I had to DoW again to get it. Made peace asap, as I felt that England will DoW me very soon.

She DoWed me as expected, but with spear + 3 archers + CAs I could kill'em all. I built pyramid, as I wanted 2 turn road building (if it were quick speed, 1 turn)

Razed York and took London easily, and went for Aztec. I didn't want to go south with CAs as there were too many forest/hills/jungles. Killed him easily.

I had to build a long road to west, and started attacking Poland. He was runaway and had decent army as well. I got Chivalry t102 and had to upgrade CAs to take Poland forward city. After taking 2nd Poland city (had HG and Petra), I made peace and attacked Portugal and Huns. I had bribed a lot and Huns was fighting with everyone. He took Inca cap, which could make my life easier.

Portugal had like 2 archers and 1 warrior - wonder what she's been doing. Her cap had 5 wonders, including stonehenge and boro. I chose god of war pantheon and actually accumulated quite a lot faith, but could not found religion. Good thing was that strong religion that was coming to my land allowed me to buy pagodas! that helped a lot.

After getting some range+logistics keshiks, now I could attack Poland with castles+hills+GW. It actually took a while, but not difficult - shooting practice all the way. Army #2 took Huns cap and moved east. At t140, both Poland and old Inca cap fell.

I could buy open border from Inca, and that helped a lot. Using his roads, my armies near inca cap could get to Greece border at the very next turn and I started attacking. t141 Machu (inca city that was captured by Greece) fell, and t142 Greece cap fell.

Keshik so OP....

Incans are beast mode - huge empire with capital in spider web, have great wall and nasty terrain (as far as I can tell) ..
Currently "attacking" him from 3 directions (my capital with fresh recruits), Athens and Attila's court with battle hardened veterans - progress is slow ..

[EDIT: looking at the minimap - cusco is very close to army group attila's court

I have a "good angle" on Poland - trough Attila's Court there is open terrain all the way to his capital (a a lot of cities to burn trough) (happy issues)

I am not very good at domination! I read some spoilers after I got to about t120 and it looks like I am way behind. DOW'd Liz very early, many worker/settler steals. Settled on river hill SE of start, 2 expos to the S, took Earth Mother, but did not get a religion. Captured York and London with CAs, Archer/CBs, and Spear, kept both (I maybe should have razed York, but I hate such long roads with no cities near my core). I should have built more CA's, but wanted better infrastructure and happy and markets.

Spent a long time at peace, maybe 30-40 turns before DOW on Monte, again, perhaps a mistake. By the time I did he had Knights, and was quite irritating as my poorly trained Keshiks didn't do much. Capped his N expo (he took my ideal 3rd city spot, except 1 tile off coast - idiot) and sold to Huns who continued razing. Took Teotihuacan which had Machu - yes! Raze/sold another expo SW of my cap to Huns. Took Tenochititlan t132, just before Poland did.

Have kept Huns and Poland (runaway-ish) fighting, Inca OP and has GW, bribed him vs Alex and Alex lost a good city. Now Alex appears to be marching my way again, plus he has a bunch of CS allies near me. Vilnius wants gold, but hasn't mined it's own. I have had no CS allies since very early game with Vilnius. I can't help but think I've been making a ton of mistakes.

I only have 5 Keshiks, 4 XB, 2 Pikes, Horsey, 2 Scouts, Warrior. Stupid Warrior is my scouting unit SW and it is taking him forever to find terrain. NC about t80, Chivalry t110, Machinery t120, Education t130. I went Tradition open, Legalism, Honor left side, then Monarchy - then a tough decision. Go full honor and commit to Dom, or finish Tradition and try SV?

I chose honor, and I don't think it's going to be easy (again, poor dom skills here). I can't get a 2nd war between Inca and Alex, Alex would be the much easier target, but am thinking Inca first. Unless I can take Athens and then liberate Corinth? No idea how thankful he would be... The Inca terrain with GW is going to suck, and I have to take one of his cities on the way to Cusco because of city fire. Poland is 1st in almost everything, I can hit him now with my army, but there are like 6 cities and allied CS to plow thru to get to Warsaw, so will likely go counter-clockwise. I may likely get sick of this game - Keshik window will close before I get very far, I assume.

attila's court army really was 1 turn away from exposed cusco with flatland (desert) angle of attack

got gredy burning a greek city and one incan -9 happy - my army couldn't finish off a single incan musket - gambled to finish it of with my only horse in that corner of the map and lost it next turn (FAIL)

failed to build capital garden in time - did not annex london (should've annexed it long ago for science ) so london popped a GM delayng my great scientists ...

I NEVER NEEDED LANCER TECH SO BADLY !! they would be perfect for great wall bypass and to serve as meatshields for keshiks until endgame oxforded cavalry tech ..

had to annex attila's court to get some ladshnkecks close to the front line ..

Those messups will probably cost me 20 turns to finish time ...

It's not nice to see others struggling but it's somewhat comforting that one is not alone with set backs. My Western capturing horseman got killed the usual way - capture a city, sell it withouth OB & got relocated in worst possible tile resulting instant death though in this case it didn't really matter.

I only annexed Cusco & Krakow during the game - I'm generally lazy in that respect and I like handicaps. Cusco had nice production potential while Krakow had Petra and since I captured two veteran prophets annexing allowed me to temporarily convert & buy two extra Pagodas - I had use for all the happiness I could get but not so much for sci. Another thing was the total lack of anything useful in the cities like Warsaw.

Yup, as (I) said earlier Keshiks are squishy and they really could use some protection during their effective lifespan. No doubt, they will make great tanks as Cavalry later but it really takes some time to get there. I should've had few extra pikes but it's a bit late regret that now.

Funny how things are very different within few tiles range. Two pre-bought tiles & GG bomb and I 3 hill tiles with a road to shoot at while Pacha's defending troops were mainly on the other side of the river so GW made no difference whatsoever.
Warsaw was by far worst to take with only two 3rd ring tiles to shoot from and a river and half a dozen forests messing it up.

Struggling is indeed the word. One minute I've got two capitals under my belt and am about to take 3 and 4, and it's only T130. Next minute I'm stalling so bad I rage quit a computer game for the first ever time in my life.

I've been waiting for an out-and-out domination game on the DCL for a while and it turns out to be an intense frustration.

I'm just not sold on mounted units. Sure, they move quick, but they're just so weak against, well units that specialise in goring them on spears.

I think I will reload from the start and try Peddroelm's idea of making them into tanks, going tradition rather than honour, and trying to out-tech the outliers.