The Deity Challenge Lineup - Game #8 - Mongolia

According to my warmongering mentor consentient's advice, I marched my troops southeast to face off with Mr. frat boy.


Took a while to get everything there, Athens t147; ToA and FP... not that good of wonders.


Got stuck in this chokepoint for quite a while against great wall ex-friend Pacha who denounced me and a turn later asked what my troops were doing around 5 tiles from his borders; I gave the honest answer. Alex was asking for 100 gpt, Knossos back, and all my luxes for OB. Needless to say I declined so took a while for me to break through with workers.


Cuzco fell t158. MoH is nice but otherwise the wonders are rather underwhelming. At least the great wall will defend nicely against backstabs by Alex until artillery get out.

I see a route to Atilla's cap and then southwest to Warsaw. The problem is Lisbon which is behind a whole multitude of cities.

kb27787 said:

Pretty amazing city to take... My keshiks have just arrived (went for education first in the end)I'm probably now also public enemy #1... uh oh... I rarely had a choice in the matter... he only had 2 cities and one of them was clearly in the way.
So after chivalry, what tech next? (science theory or dynamite?) And who would you go after if you were me?

Click to expand...

Wow ... really nice Capital... look at all those wonderful wonders! I don't think I can advise you since you have two caps down and have a better tech rate compared to my games at this point. I am not sure how much you need dynamite with these Keshiks! Honestly I used Keshiks for a very long time. Longer than anyone elses Dom game that won! I used a choke point with 4 or 5 of them killing all sorts of better units like GWIs and what not pressing into Poland very slow and later I used Nukes and Xcoms to take the last two Capitals.

I know Acken advised to take down Greece first and work your way West but you seem to have a pretty good handle on it and honestly you have a better handle in general compared to me and it seems you have a better handle on Warmongering as well. Of course you have a huge edge on me in Peaceful play as well. Heck your just an all around better player by far so I am sure you can figure this out easy peasy!

Aztec

From last time; I was scared to death of Cassy's UU which shred keshiks and fight toe-to-toe even against cavalry (he also had Himeji castle); so I got OB from Atilla (who was the only "friendly" civ I had left, and went for him first.

It was a long slog. He had UUs and rifles, and galleases. (and if I had taken out Atilla first I'm sure he would have frigates too); and papercut is indeed very fitting... my 5 core Keshiks who had stood with me since the English war (shock3 drill3 logistics range AND march promotions by the end of the game) were doing 5-8 damage to those cities per shot (With Red Fort things get much worse); however, with some Khan bombing and roads it's such that Keshiks can still get two shots off despite being a good 6 tiles away from the city. It's almost like having planes... but planes you know, actually deal damage... whereas these Keshiks only tickle. Takes a good at least 10-15 turns to get a capitol city into the red, many more if units come to block their path, with 8 keshiks, which is close to saturation as far as terrain goes.


That took longer than I expected... (here I bought a great merchant, thanks to commerce finisher (which net me a whopping 1400 gold) and annexed London; I had around 6 frigates bought when I tried asking Cassy for OB... to my surprise he only asked for 3 luxes for it! So my horses headed northwest right away) At the same time I Dow'd Atilla from the east with my newly acquired 8 artilleries.


Cassy stole Lisbon from me with a hussar after the city got into the red (he was also at war with Maria), so I Dow'd him again and took it back with help from frigates.


Finished it just under 200 turns. Whew.... (it's amazing how fast artilleries melt cities!) Gold was just insane... I don't think you need honor finisher at all... (full commerce + faith for merchants is already crazy strong)

Overall plan was to focus on war as much as possible, aiming for a relatively quick domination. I conquered the English and Aztecs with Chariot Archers, a Spearman (upgraded warrior), and had 1 horseman during the Aztec war. I completely wiped out these first 2 opponents - they cannot denounce me if they're dead!

I had previously agreed with the Huns request to go to war with Poland, so that's were I went after wiping out the Aztec. At turn 107, I had conquered 2 Polish cities, completed Chivalry and upgraded, made peace with Poland (2 cities and ~30GPT), and moved West to start working towards Lisbon. That main/Western army got Lisbon quickly and came back just in time for the peace treaty to expire and take Warsaw (also quick), then Attila's Court, which took slightly longer due to rivers and surrounding cities.

During the above wars, I built up a 2nd army that eventually went to the East end of the map, before declaring on the Greeks. I went over to the East because I thought attacking them from the North-West would have heavy casualties as I would have been squashed between Greek Expos and their 2 city state allies Lhasa and Kabul. I didn't have enough money to buy out the CS. I took 1 expo and Athens cleanly and made peace, but Alex would NOT give me open borders, so I went South through Kyzyl. The plan was for the Eastern army to take Cusco as the Western army took Attila's Court, but that failed.

Both armies were approaching Cusco at about the same time, so I had 19 Keshiks, 2 horsemen, 1 crossbow, and a Pikeman (with March) encircling Cusco. I had 6 great generals (though I disbanded one that just could not get around Kyzyl), so I did what any sane person would obviously do and made Attila give me his expo closest to Cusco and set up 5 Citadels around Cusco just for fun.

Cities
Moved East and built on the hill. 2nd city to the south surrounded by Salt. 3rd city south-east by the mountain; this one later built Machu Picchu, which was the only wonder I went for.
Aside from capitals (all puppets): I kept York to make a nice core of cities, Lodz as my base while conquering out West, and the Hun city near Cusco for my grand finale.

Build Order
Pretty sure I went Scout x2, Settler x2 starting at T9 (bought a Chariot Archer), then a late Monument, Chariot Archer or 2, library, national college, etc.
Expo 1: monument/library/chariot archers/etc.; expo 2: library/monument/chariot archers/etc.

Social Policies
Full Honour (right side first) and the Commerce opener, so only 7 policies selected.

Tech
Tech order was roughly left-side Ancient, then beeline Philosophy, horseback riding, currency, guilds or civil service, Chivalry...after that I just clicked on Banking, though near the end I got Sailing and Optics as I had a bottleneck of units coming to Cusco from the south through Kyzyl. To help me get my units through faster, I also allied with Kyzyl and declared war on Riga, so the Kyzyl units moved West.

Religion
Put no effort or (non-faith) resources into religion. London had Stonehenge, which is how I first started accumulating Faith, but I was actually too late to get a pantheon. I was able to get Pagodas in 2 of my first 3 cities; that's all I ever used Faith on.

Great Wall
Was not a problem, as it was in Cusco and I spent a total of 1 turn attacking the Inca.

We showed no respect to the Great Wall!